Apple M1 CPU

[muziqaz]

Comparing with Intel will artificially make M1 look a lot better than it is in the real world.
Intel are stuck in the past due to major issues.
AMD are the benchmark to see how good your chips are.

Can you buy M1 chip separately and build a PC around it? No. So any comparisons with AMD are kinda pointless. AMD mobile chips are not destroying Intel's mobile chips. They might be winning against intel, but not by much, so nothing would change by much if you used AMD chip to compare to M1. When Apple releases their server chip, then I would understand if people wanted it to be compared to Intel AND AMD, since AMD is leading Intel in server side by huge margin.
But with M1, nah, I'm not too fussed if they use Intel for comparisons, as those still show how impressive M1 is from architecture point of view

 

[muziqaz]

Yes, in the context of POWER systems which cost tens of thousands of pounds, an M1 laptop priced at £999 with a high performance chip in it does indeed challenge intel on price/performance.

you are pitching one or two lonely products against 10s of thousands from Intel I'm sure Intel has plenty of products which would rival M1 product in price/performance. Or AMD to that matter

No, the theory time is over, it's now happening in practice.

Nah, still "theory" See bellow

No, but amazon do - https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/graviton/

Can you buy hardware from Amazon for your own deployment. Graviton is for Amazon use only, you can obviously buy their instances on the cloud

Of course - but that doesn't mean that it's still all roses for intel. They're losing the most valuable tech company on the planet as a customer, their tech is losing its competitive edge to AMD and the market is diversifying away from x86. I'm not sure how you could look at that and not say it's worrying for Intel.

I'm not denying that Intel is in bad position. Even with Pat taking over, it will be years for them to get back to the right ways. And M1 is the least of their worries at the moment, however direct the impact is
Let's face it. AMD took the sandpaper, ran it across the back of Intel, Intel applied some bandages, AMD waited a bit for them to dry, ripped them off again, then comes Apple and asks if Intel would like some salt on the wound

 

[ChrisD.]

They're losing the most valuable tech company on the planet as a customer

I don't think they will care that much, the amount of SKU they deliver to Apple will pale into insignificance compared to AWS, Dell, HPE, Fujitsu, Cisco etc.

 

[Jimmy Weirdarms]

I'm sure Intel has plenty of products which would rival M1 product in price/performance. Or AMD to that matter

Where are they then? Out here in the real world, they're being left behind.

Can you buy hardware from Amazon for your own deployment. Graviton is for Amazon use only, you can obviously buy their instances on the cloud

Who buys hardware these days? Have you worked in tech recently? The cloud is everything.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

You realise Apple is 13% of the ENTIRE PC market right?

What ever way you want to look at it, that’s huge, especially for one player in the market to lose.

Again the issue for intel isn’t necessary the Apple M1, it’s the catalyst for change which is the huge issue. As soon as the M1 came out MS suddenly sparked into action on getting 64 bit working on windows for ARM.

Other companies putting a substantial amount of resources into getting something to market to compete with the M1 USPs which ARM provides.

 

[Jimmy Weirdarms]

I don't think they will care that much, the amount of SKU they deliver to Apple will pale into insignificance compared to Dell, HPE, Fujitsu, Cisco etc.

Apple account for about 8% of the PC market (13-15%% in the US), 4th largest player after Lenovo, HP and Dell. It's not fatal but it's a decent hole in the revenue.

And to echo the poster above - it's not just about losing Apple, it's about the market showing signs of diversifying away from "all x86, all the time". Which those of us who remember the days before "All x86, all the time" are rather looking forward to ...

 

[muziqaz]

I don't think they will care that much, the amount of SKU they deliver to Apple will pale into insignificance compared to AWS, Dell, HPE, Fujitsu, Cisco etc.

I am leaning to agree with this. Intel is selling everything they produce. I'm sure Apple negotiated good prices for Intel CPUs, so now Intel can sell Apple rejected stuff to others at different prices However, Intel is losing their brand exposure within Apple enthusiasts

Where are they then? Out here in the real world, they're being left behind.

You have Apple buyers who will never buy normal PC and you have PC buyers who will never buy Apple, so until you can buy M1, and place it into your own non Apple system, Intel is not being left behind

Who buys hardware these days? Have you worked in tech recently? The cloud is everything.

You would think that everything is in the cloud, however not everything is in ARM cloud. Amazon developed their own chip for their own deployment and not to sell to others. Intel/AMD develop the chips to sell to everyone.

 

[smilingcrow]

Can you buy M1 chip separately and build a PC around it? No. So any comparisons with AMD are kinda pointless.

Pointless comparing M1 with anything based on that 'logic'.

AMD mobile chips are not destroying Intel's mobile chips. They might be winning against intel, but not by much, so nothing would change by much if you used AMD chip to compare to M1.

Ryzen 8 core is killing Intel in heavily threaded workloads.

M1 is very impressive, but versus AMD you are looking at an APU with the older Zen 2 core on an older 7nm process.
When you adjust for that the performance difference will shrink.
This doesn't take anything away from M1, but let's keep it real here.

 

[ChrisD.]

However, Intel is losing their brand exposure within Apple enthusiasts

I think this is the biggest impact. I'd imagine the relationship between Intel and Apple has never been good and probably more bother than it's worth for Intel. Apple are notoriously closed and difficult to deal with from a commercial perspective.

 

[smilingcrow]

You realise Apple is 13% of the ENTIRE PC market right?

Maybe in certain countries or do you mean worldwide?

 

[Jimmy Weirdarms]

You have Apple buyers who will never buy normal PC and you have PC buyers who will never buy Apple

Well this is nonsense, I have a macbook sat right next to my PC here and use both happily. I know lots of people that use both.

however not everything is in ARM cloud.

Yet.
Support for ARM platforms is growing across the board. If they continue to give cost savings in terms of power, and can keep up in terms of performance, this sector will continue to grow.

Intel/AMD develop the chips to sell to everyone.

Right, but they now have competition from these other chips in the laptop and server spaces, competition they just didn't have before, when they're already under pressure from AMD.

Intel might well stay the largest vendor for a while, nobody is disputing that, but the market is changing around them and they've lost the tech lead. Even some of their investors are calling for their design and fab units to be split to make them more competitive.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

@muziqaz its that kind of thinking is why Intel are in the place they are now.

Your completely ignoring the fact that once Microsoft sort the software side out, you can bet your house on the likes of Dell, HP and Lenovo making a serious effort to launching their own ARM based products targeted at the PC market.

At the moment ARM is a bit of a ‘hobby’ because the software is terrible. But as soon as it’s sorted they’ll have a decent product to roll out.

 

[Jarrod]

Mine looks reasonable

➜  ~ iostat -Id disk0
              disk0
    KB/t xfrs   MB
   23.85 44514119 1036644.46

65.67 85308186 5470740.91

5.5TB since November

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Maybe in certain countries or do you mean worldwide?

The poster behind me clarified it’s 8% global and 13 represents the USA.

 

[HACO]

Intel aren't the competition if you are looking for performance.
The question is how will Apple compare versus AMD in terms of performance and availability.

It's not about theoretical performance, it's about what people buy in the market.

Intel is the competition because Macbook competitors (high quality build, screen, long battery life) laptops (business, professional) are all Intel right now. Think Dell XPS which is the main competitor to Macbooks lineup. When AMD CPUs go into those kind of laptops (instead of cheap or gaming ones), then we'll have Apple vs AMD competition as well.

Right now, Apple and AMD are literally not competing in any market segments.

 

[HACO]

Nah, still "theory" See bellow

Can you buy hardware from Amazon for your own deployment. Graviton is for Amazon use only, you can obviously buy their instances on the cloud

You would think that everything is in the cloud, however not everything is in ARM cloud. Amazon developed their own chip for their own deployment and not to sell to others. Intel/AMD develop the chips to sell to everyone.

You can't buy Amazon Graviton, but you can buy Ampere Altra (80 cores, 250w, 8-channel ram, 128x PCIe 4). They support 4TB of ram and you can buy them right now. Gigabyte makes motherboards for them. The 32-core version is only $800.

Anandtech reviewed them a couple of months ago and the 80-core version held its own very well against AMD EPYC 7742 (64-core):
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16315/the-ampere-altra-review

 

[muziqaz]

@muziqaz its that kind of thinking is why Intel are in the place they are now.

Your completely ignoring the fact that once Microsoft sort the software side out, you can bet your house on the likes of Dell, HP and Lenovo making a serious effort to launching their own ARM based products targeted at the PC market.

At the moment ARM is a bit of a ‘hobby’ because the software is terrible. But as soon as it’s sorted they’ll have a decent product to roll out.

I'm not saying that ARM will never push through, just saying it is not gonna happen right now.
The question is "when", and it does not depend on ARM itself, but on 3rd party, which are not known to be on point with their software development

@HACO how is Altra doing so far in the market? marketshare wise.

 

[muziqaz]

Pointless comparing M1 with anything based on that 'logic'.

And that is my point Comparing M1 to Intel shows you "why" intel lost Apple, comparing M1 to AMD is just curiosity

 

[Jimmy Weirdarms]

just saying it is not gonna happen right now.

It already is. The world's most valuable company is selling laptops based around it. It's not the market leader, but pretending it's not already here/now is just disingenuous at this point.

 

[HACO]

I'm not saying that ARM will never push through, just saying it is not gonna happen right now.
The question is "when", and it does not depend on ARM itself, but on 3rd party, which are not known to be on point with their software development

@HACO how is Altra doing so far in the market? marketshare wise.

No idea. Probably <0.1% given that it's just released in the second half of last year.

It already is. The world's most valuable company is selling laptops based around it. It's not the market leader, but pretending it's not already here/now is just disingenuous at this point.

While Apple is not a laptop market leader in terms of market share, they are a leader because they are trend makers. Everyone follows them where they go. There's a whole range of Windows laptop products designed and marketed specifically to existing and potential Apple customers.