Apple is an existential threat to the PC

[Bondrewd]

That “shitty tablet CPU” seems to wipe the floor with its non-tablet competitors

Because no one, and I mean no one, is making scaled down, lobotomized tablet SoCs anymore.
Dead market outside of iPad's really.

They all have the same clock and power profiles.

No they don't lol, M2 boost is fake altogether, rated for 3.504 and running 3.31 irl.

keep an eye out on those M2 Pro/Max reviews.

Sir they're out already and it's a small incremental bump that costs power.
They're good parts, but magic's gone, especially against iso node parts like Phoenix.

 

[neckthrough]

?
They're both power consumption graphs.


Anyway, on another note: I'm checking out of this thread, and probably soon from B3D. There are dozens of reviews posted in this thread, and almost every hardware reviewer on the planet has praised the performance, energy efficiency, and battery life of M1/M2 Pro/Max/Ultra as being industry leading even against newer parts from Intel and AMD. If you're not convinced now, then you'll never be convinced. Partisanship will always overcome facts and evidence, and continuing this discussion will lead this thread going the way of Architectures & Products.

Peace out and keep an eye out on those M2 Pro/Max reviews.

I recently upgraded my work machine from a top-end Thinkpad P1 to an M1 Pro Mac.

The battery life is freaking *obscene* (in a good way). This thing could have had half the battery capacity and it would still be obscene.

There's something to be said for total hw/sw co-design and full-stack optimization.

 

[Bondrewd]

There's something to be said for total hw/sw co-design and full-stack optimization.

No, it's literally about low uncore power.
Your TP P1 is burdened with Intel, which has terribad SA power.

 

[neckthrough]

No, it's literally about low uncore power.
Your TP P1 is burdened with Intel, which has terribad SA power.

Are you saying AMD has better uncore idle power, or that this is a problem with all x86 platforms? In either case, is there any publicly available information on this?

 

[Bondrewd]

Are you saying AMD has better uncore idle power

Obvious things are obvious.

is there any publicly available information on this

Someone in China probably microbenched the things to death, do I assume so.
Otherwise, nothing public in Western tech media.

 

[Albuquerque]

No, it's literally about low uncore power.
Your TP P1 is burdened with Intel, which has terribad SA power.

I think this answer is a little too hand-wavey.

The power consumed by an NVMe drive, the DIMMs refreshing themselves, the LVDS logic and related backlight, and the wifi card are significant contributors to battery draw. CPU power characteristics, especially at light loads, are very low for basically everyone in this space -- uncore or not.

Apple has spent an amazing amount of time ensuring each piece of hardware is doing the right job, and further has refined the drivers for each piece of spec'd hardware to match their power demands. This is something the Windows ecosystem just doesn't have, full stop, and their power difficulties tell that story.

 

[Bondrewd]

the DIMMs refreshing themselves, the LVDS logic and related backlight

It's LPDDR, there're no DIMMs, and the panels Apple sources are nothing special at all (much like the iPhone panel is whatever latest gen Samsung panel tech).

The power consumed by an NVMe drive

Modern NVMe drives like SK Hynix P41 are just stupidly efficient so I doubt Apple has any relevant advantage there.

and the wifi card

It's literally Broadcom, an off-the-shelf one at that.
The one inside your iPhone is also Broadcom.

are very low for basically everyone in this space

No they aren't, ADL-P682 SA power can reach horrible 6W under relatively modest loads lol.

Apple has spent an amazing amount of time ensuring each piece of hardware is doing the right job

All OEMs do them, either themselves or while being shepherded by Intel/AMD.

and further has refined the drivers for each piece of spec'd hardware to match their power demands

Apple drivers are notoriously dumb and skinny, they offload a sizeable chunk of functionality into the on-chip firmware.

and their power difficulties tell that story.

The "power difficulty" is all on Intel.
Apple SoCs are still more efficient than the likes of RMB, but that's down to having best-in-class LITTLEs and the node advantage (and AAPL media engine is reasonably more efficient than VCN3/4).

 

[Albuquerque]

Again, from a total integration perspective, a few hundred milliwatts of power savings on the CPU aren't enough to solve for the massive battery life differences.

Yes, there are LPDDR4 memory chips, however Apple spends the time to work directly with the chip manufacturers to ensure they're getting the utmost-binned parts for Apple's desired power and performance. Same statement with Broadcom -- it isn't an off the shelf implementation of any old Broadcom B44, it's a specific, bespoke implementation Apple has coordinated with Broadcom to get exactly what they want at exactly the power and performance envelope they need.

And Apple owning the entire OS and driver stack to precisely work with (not everything, but) specifically the hardware they've chosen goes even further to ensuring the entire ecosystem is as efficient and performant as possible.

 

[Bondrewd]

a few hundred milliwatts of power savings on the CPU

It's not a few hundred milliwatts, it's an order of magnitude difference between Intel SA and Apple uncore power.

however Apple spends the time to work directly with the chip manufacturers to ensure they're getting the utmost-binned parts for Apple's desired power and performance

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat~
no they're bog standard JEDEC LPDDR speed bins, sources from multiple vendors no less.
you literally can't have any other LPDDR, at all.

it isn't an off the shelf implementation

Yes it is, Broadcom even generously provides the datasheets needed.

And Apple owning the entire OS and driver stack to precisely work with

That means diddle squat, just a nothingburger statement.

goes even further to ensuring the entire ecosystem is as efficient and performant as possible.

this sounds like you work at Apple

 

[Laurent06]

I have a P1 as work laptop. I don't care about battery life as it's plugged all day long. But that thing is horribly noisy; fans are always on and start spinning fast as soon as one or two cores are used. I regret my decision to pick that Thinkpad rather than waiting for Apple Silicon based Mac being available. My next laptop will be a Mac without hesitation.

 

[Albuquerque]

It's not a few hundred milliwatts, it's an order of magnitude difference between Intel SA and Apple uncore power.

It really isn't.

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat~
no they're bog standard JEDEC LPDDR speed bins, sources from multiple vendors no less.
you literally can't have any other LPDDR, at all.

Yes it is, Broadcom even generously provides the datasheets needed.

That means diddle squat, just a nothingburger statement.

this sounds like you work at Apple

Your replies are nothing burgers, nothing at all. You resorted to almost literally "blah blah blah" -- why even bother?

So you think I'm an Apple shill? Maybe you're an AMD shill then? Here's me and my non-Apple pedigree: I have responsibility for core infrastructure of a Fortune 250 retailer for the last eight years, before that I ran half the IT shop for a nonprofit medicaid provider for a flyover state, and before that I ran the x86 architecture group for another Fortune 250 retailer for the back half of my 15 year tenure there. My household contains a singular Apple device, an older iPad mini that my wife uses to talk to her parents who both only know iPhone and thus only understand facetime.

My life centers around Enterprise-class hardware; I've done hardware at this scale for 20 years, and I'm still doing it today. I'm very good at understanding power draw of unique devices, I have to be to ensure rack power is balanced against total compute output. And no, the uncore power savings are not that big, and yes the rest of the platform power savings are that big. It just so happens this is the good side of 100% vertical integration; we can also talk about the bad things, such as ecosystem lock in, far diminished customer bargaining power, abuse or simple bypassing of standards...

CPU power, core and uncore, for both Intel and AMD are in hundreds of milliwatts range. Yes, the M1/M2 processor is capable of a whole lot more computing at a lower power ceiling, just like ARM is able to do the same. But no small part of how good Apple's battery life has been for years (eg back when they were still using Intel processors) is the tight control they maintain over their entire hardware supply chain, and their operating system, and their drivers, and their native applications.

There's no single player anywhere in x86 who play at this scale, not even Microsoft.

 

[Bondrewd]

It really isn't.

Dude I'm quoting internal Intel assesments.
The SA power on bigger Intel parts like 682 is a total dookie, it literally caused a regression in battery life for laptops that went for P682 last year, coming off TGL-U42.

 

[Albuquerque]

+1 to my ignore list. Really can't be bothered to listen to even more blah.

"oh I'm an insider, trust me!" "oh and you're an Apple shill if you don't believe me"

 

[Bondrewd]

Really can't be bothered to listen to even more blah.

All you have to do is to look at 2022 X1c.
It's a bettery life regression because SA power went up on P682.
You don't need to be so dense.

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

CPU power, core and uncore, for both Intel and AMD are in hundreds of milliwatts range.

Complete utter nonsense. In idle, Intel is burning anywhere from 3-4W more on the 6+8 compared to an M Pro (double the memory width & BW!), add in another watt delta to a regular M part. The ADL 2+8 die is literally faster than the comparative 4+8 (cut 6+8 die) at the same power because how how crap the larger uncore is on the latter and burning power for no performance benefit.

 

[MfA]

Existing creditcard companies should be scared by the way, Apple is playing nice with them for now ... but that can go sideways fast for them.

I completely missed this last year, but it's hard to keep up with the tentacles of what will likely become the largest monopoly in human history. Ecosystem is a natural monopoly, there can be only one (without regulator intervention, but they will be far far too late).

Project Breakout, Apple's plan to become it's own payment processor.

 

[wco81]

I completely missed this last year, but it's hard to keep up with the tentacles of what will likely become the largest monopoly in human history. Ecosystem is a natural monopoly, there can be only one (without regulator intervention, but they will be far far too late).

Project Breakout, Apple's plan to become it's own payment processor.

Well right now the whole industry is in the doldrums from the pandemic spending surge or forward-spending.

PC sales overall are down, as are sales of Macs, so whatever processor advantages Apple may have had isn't threatening anyone, not the PC industry. There are all kinds of discounts to be found for even M2 Macs released in the last year.

Smart phones sales overall are down. Apple is still generating good revenues but right at this moment, sales are not expanding.

Reports of Apple taking over are greatly exaggerated.

At least for now.


That said, earlier this year, they did say they had 2 billion active devices in the ecosystem. I don't know if that necessarily meant they all were using iCloud accounts or that they were all paying iCloud account subscribers. Likely not 2 billion paying subscribers.

So they could leverage it into financial services. I've been looking into maybe getting an Apple Card and the savings account which is offering 4.15%. Not the highest interest rate but not the lowest either.

But they're partnering with Goldman Sachs so I don't think they're taking over banking or the financial industry so much as partnering with them.

At least for now.

 

[MfA]

Consumer banking is a low margin business, investment banking is pennies and steamrollers.

Credit cards and payment processing, that's money printing ... that's where Apple is expanding.

 

[MfA]

Apple's Mac market share jumped even though PC sales fell for the sixth consecutive quarter

The year-over-year Mac shipment growth comes even as the broader market and competitors notch sharp declines in shipments, and as the Intel transition wraps up.

www.cnbc.com

Meanwhile Germany is the last major European economy where Iphone isn't steamrolling, I give it two more years.

Ecosystem is a natural monopoly and Apple is increasingly sucking all investment out of basic technology investment (displays, mobile processors, broadband etc.). I think the window on the launch of a competetive ecosystem has closed, goodbye PC, it's been nice to know ya.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Ecosystem is a natural monopoly and Apple is increasingly sucking all investment out of basic technology investment (displays, mobile processors, broadband etc.). I think the window on the launch of a competetive ecosystem has closed, goodbye PC, it's been nice to know ya.

How is Apple rolling its own silicon and operating systems removing investment in technology? Display technologies, OLED, QD, foldable, seems to be higher than ever, as does investment in improving network technologies.

Can you point to some actual evidence of investments reducing, and where you can, can you pinpoint Apple being the cause? Because I've see no evidence at all and you're been plugging away at this narrative for five years now.