Apple is wealthy and powerful, and gets the cream of the crop - i.e. the first batch of the new 5nm output. This isn't new, apple always releases their models a few months before equivalent snapdragons come out. This is a meaningful advantage, to be sure, but if you're trying to figure out how much apple's perf win is due to their great chips and not merely a generational gap, it's misleading. Comparing the s10 today, which is clearly on a inferior process to the iphone 12 pro today isn't useful from this perspective. It's better to compare the upcoming 5nm 888 to apples A14.

And here, the numbers just don't back up the claim that apple is running rings around qualcomm in terms of performance. Not just that; the difference between apple+qualcomm chips hasn't changed all that dramatically over the years; if anything it's gotten smaller.

Yes, if you look at power at equivalent performance that looks better for apple, but then that's always the case because nobody runs client side CPUs at an optimal perf/watt power, but faster. It's also not really how people use their phones, is it? People don't turn off the high-power cores in iphones; they use em as designed, i.e. at approximately equivalent power, just faster.

The point here isn't that Apple's win doesn't exist; simply that it's not the mythological night-day difference it's sometimes painted to be. Furthermore, because apple consistently releases earlier on a new process node, at the moment of their release the perf numbers look better than they are on average over the products lifetime; in effect, you're seeing the combination of both Apple's good CPUs, and a 1 generation gap. Then there's the fact that Apple's CPU's are so fast due not solely to the skill of their silicon division, but also their willingness to spend for more transistors. We don't have numbers for the 888 yet, but it's very likely going to be a lower-cost design if history is any guide (and the anandtech article goes into some other non-obvious ways in which is saves costs too, like power planes, that I bet apple is willing to go the extra mile on).

All that matters, because you're trying to predict how other CPUs will perform, and thus need to tease out the impact of stuff like process node, and apples willingness to spend extra on larger caches, and x86 vs ARM - and just ascribing all that perf uplift to apples magic pixie dust won't help you make predictions regarding the rest of the CPU market in the future.

> We don't have numbers for the 888 yet

The 888 uses the same Cortex-A55 cores mentioned above (the same core all the Android SOCs have been using for a couple of years now) with Apple having a 4x performance win at the same power levels.

Do you have a citation for that? Benchmarks don't typically target the efficiency cores.

In any case, I think it's tricky to read to much into microbenchmarks like this; the overal system perf in any case does not have anything near like that perf difference, but instead a slowly shrinking gap (as described before, and supported by links to evidence).

I'm still curious about those efficiency cores mind you, even if I don't think it has much impact on the overall point. Also, one of the things qualcomm intentionally skimps on is powerplanes, I'm assuming for cost reasons - and that means low-perf power will be suboptimal. Then again, I'm not sure how much that matters.

(Don't forget the context of the Altera ARM server CPU and what it means for intel/AMD; efficiency cores probably don't tell a very meaningful story of qualcomm vs. apple, but certainly don't apply in that space, yet).

The source is Anandtech running SPEC on them, already given above.

SPEC is not a microbenchmark. It's been the industry standard for comparing completely dissimilar CPU architectures for decades.

I though you were talking specifcally about the low-power cores (and I couldn't find a site specifically comparing those, but even you could find those, it would be a weird niche (micro) benchmark, because it's not clear if those cores are used like that.

In any case, the link you shared (https://www.anandtech.com/show/16192/the-iphone-12-review/2) backs up what I said; the overall SoC perf of the 865 is quite close to that of the A13 (which is it's same-gen competitor). The specfp score of the 865 is 74% of the A13; the specint 64% (the 865+ is 3 percentage points better here). And the joules consumed by the A13 is significantly higher than the 865 for both benchmarks (the 865+ uses more energy than the 865, but less than the A13).

In fact, the geomean of perf and power between A13 thunder and lightning cores is pretty close to on the money for the 865, for both power and perf!

All in all, the 865 looks pretty competitive in the benchmark you linked; pretty much smack between the high-power and low-power cores of the A13: more efficient than it's high-power cores, but slow, and faster than the A13's low-power cores, but less efficient. Unfortunately, the page doesn't include the 865's low-power cores in the benchmarks, but from the point of view of disproving the apple-domination story it doesn't really matter: clearly competitors can build cores that are close to the cutting edge of apples power/perf tradeoff; they just choose slower, more efficient designs.

Where are you getting a 4x improvement in performance?

> Where are you getting a 4x improvement in performance?

From the link you just quoted.

Here it is again:

>Look at the difference between Apple's "little" cores and the stock ARM "little" core.

>The performance showcased here roughly matches a 2.2GHz Cortex-A76 which is essentially 4x faster than the performance of any other mobile SoC today which relies on Cortex-A55 cores, all while using roughly the same amount of system power and having 3x the power efficiency.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16192/the-iphone-12-review/2

Ah, right I see what you're saying. However, note that these other SoC's don't rely on A55 (not alone - this is what I meant by microbenchmark; as it's comparing a small bit of the chips in isolation in a way you'd never normally use them), and that the A14 should be compared to the 888 if you want to tease out the design bit (apple's) from the process bit (TSMC's). Early 888 benchmarks look good, but it's more reliable to compare the 865 to the A13 since those numbers are clearly solid by now (no unreleased SoC shenanigans). And the 865's high power core is clearly competitive with the A13; it's slower (around 3/4 speed), but more efficient, not less than the A13 - again, the link you posted shows that.

So even if the low power cores in the A14 are impressive; clearly other competitors are capable of getting results that are competitive with apple on the same node - at least for the high power cores.

I strongly suspect the low power cores just aren't a priority for qualcomm; but in any case when in comes to servers (what this all started with), clearly the high-power cores are the ones that matter, and it's equally clearly not the case that apple's lead looks unassailable. It's been shrinking year by year, not growing, and the difference isn't as large as it's made out to be.

Looking at this data I get the impression that Apple has more resources to throw at the problem, and that some parts of their solution are simply better - but the difference is quite small, and they use more transistors to get there, and need more power planes (thus cost) to get the greater efficiency. The big difference is simply how much head start they get at TSMC, which is a question of money, not some secret design sauce.

And again this all started on a thread about server CPUs and memories of how slow chromebooks were (i.e. not talking of efficiency cores in isolation, but SoC perf overall). And for that I think data speaks for itself: Apple has a significant lead - but a small one, that's been shrinking over the years. There is no evidence they're in a class of their own at the same process node - other chips are 3/4 as fast and more efficient, and that seems like a reasonable tradeoff. Nor incidentally is this just a 2 horse race; much as samsungs chips are derided, they're not that much worse, and likely much of that is due to the inferior process node. Huawei too seemed competitive pre-trade-war, sometimes beating qualcomm. Given that at the same process node there are 3 different competitor that come so close, it just does look like Apple's design is really all that unique. It's quite conceivable a different ARM competitor might catch up in a few years, given the current trends. Then again - only if they get a slot at TSMC, since there are rumors that Apple has already bought much of the 3nm production, and as intel showed in the past - decent design with a process node advantage is a winning combination. But Apple needs that process node advantage to keep a large lead.