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A comment on AMD Claims Arm ISA Doesn't Offer Efficiency Advantage over x86. Parent comment

Re:AMD Claims Arm ISA Doesn't Offer Efficiency Advantage ove... by simonh on Tuesday September 09, 2025 @08:08AM (#45180809)
Right, so as I understand it people see that x86-64 designs score poorly on a set of benchmarks and infer that it is because they are x86-64.

In fact it’s because that manufacturer has made architectural choices that are not inherent to the x86-64 ISA.

And that’s just hardware. MacOS gets roughly 30% better battery life on M series hardware than Asahi Linux. I’m not blaming the Asahi team, they do amazing work, they don’t even work on many of the Linux features relevant to power management, and Apple has had years of head start on preparing for and optimising for the M architecture. It’s just that software matters, a lot.

So if I’m reading this right, ISA can make a difference, but it’s incremental compared to the many architectural decisions and trade offs that go into a particular design.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:AMD Claims Arm ISA Doesn't Offer Efficiency Advantage ove... by bee_rider on Tuesday September 09, 2025 @02:09PM (#45185955)
> So if I’m reading this right, ISA can make a difference, but it’s incremental compared to the many architectural decisions and trade offs that go into a particular design.

This is true, but only in the sense that is very rarely correct to say “Factor Y can’t possibly make a difference.”

[ Parent | on HN ]