Apple Silicon biggest rival might be Google

[Zest28]

Looks like Google has an ARM chip that use accelerators for their own tensorflow software, which is huge for machine learning.

Who knows, maybe someday you could solve machine learning problems on a laptop with a Google chip that would normally require big expensive servers?

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

Google does have some cool stuff. The other day someone was teaching Korean in my office but I didn't know what language it was at the time, Apple Translate app doesn't have an auto detect language feature or the ability to translate in real time but Google translate can so I just held my camera up to it. Additionally, when the individual came back who was teaching they said Google was much more accurate than Apple.

While Apple is excelling with hardware I think Google is going to mop the floor with them when it comes to software so if Google can just get rid of those Qualcomm chips then who knows. That said you'll be a privacy price with Google so it's a fine balance.

 

[senttoschool]

No.

Google's Tensor SoC is a repackaged Samsung Exynos chip with a custom NPU. This custom NPU is faster than Android NPUs but is still significantly slower than the NPUs in the A14, A15, and A16.

Google does not have the scale to design SoCs that can rival Apple Silicon. They do not make enough hardware themselves. They rely on third party vendors.

The true Apple Silicon rival in the next few years is Qualcomm with Nuvia. After that, perhaps Nvidia, AMD, Intel or a Chinese tech giant will challenge Apple Silicon.

 

[Retskrad]

Apple likes to tout how far ahead their chips are compared to the competition. However, my iPhone 13 Pro is just as fast or sometimes even slower than my Pixel 6 Pro. Either Apple is doing a poor of writing software to take advantage of their alleged fastest CPU's on the market or Google is a better software engineering company and Android is able to do a lot more with less.

 

[leman]

Google has more data which translates to better ML models. So yes, their NLP stuff will be better than Apple unless there is some sort of qualitative change we can't anticipate yet. Hardware-wise I'd say that Apple technology stack is better. The A14 NPU for example s said to have a throughput of 16TFLOPS. If this is FP16 throughput (because as it seems ANE is 16-bit), that's kind of massive, as for example a desktop RTX 3060 has 51.2 tensor FP16 TFLOPS in comparison.

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

Apple likes to tout how far ahead their chips are compared to the competition. However, my iPhone 13 Pro is just as fast or sometimes even slower than my Pixel 6 Pro. Either Apple is doing a poor of writing software to take advantage of their alleged fastest CPU's on the market or Google is a better software engineering company and Android is able to do a lot more with less.

I would argue that these days most users wouldn’t notice a difference in actual hardware as long as the UI is smooth which is why Apple still gets away with 60hz screens. Google is primarily a software company so in theory they should have quality stuff but it feels as if they’re spread too thin. I would love to see Google reduce their inventory, become more in-house with software/hardware, and use more premium material’s when they do. I’m sure a Google user would love a Chromebook designed as well as a MBA but they’re not.

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

Google has more data which translates to better ML models. So yes, their NLP stuff will be better than Apple unless there is some sort of qualitative change we can't anticipate yet. Hardware-wise I'd say that Apple technology stack is better. The A14 NPU for example s said to have a throughput of 16TFLOPS. If this is FP16 throughput (because as it seems ANE is 16-bit), that's kind of massive, as for example a desktop RTX 3060 has 51.2 tensor FP16 TFLOPS in comparison.

But Apple doesn’t do anything with it. Their translate app is miles behind Google’s, lidar is a joke and will burn your device up within minutes, Siri is still the worst assistant, and nothing in the new iOS leverages what others haven’t done for a year or two now.

Same’ol song and dance with Apple. Years behind claiming they want to perfect a feature to their standards only for it to be watered down. If it wasn’t for Apple’s consistency and support I would be thinking about a Google Pixel this year after that abysmal 14 release.

 

[leman]

But Apple doesn’t do anything with it. Their translate app is miles behind Google’s, lidar is a joke and will burn your device up within minutes, Siri is still the worst assistant, and nothing in the new iOS leverages what others haven’t done for a year or two now.

Their computational photography is pretty much industry leading. As to the rest, yeah, Google has more mature NLP models.

 

[Retskrad]

Like Lester Freamon said on The Wire, it all makes sense when you start following the money. Amazon and Microsoft have the best cloud services because they invest the most talent and capital in that area. Google has the best AI models and the most data because that's where they invest the most. Apple has the fastest chips and best consumer hardware design because that's where they invest the most.

It all makes sense why Windows Phone failed, why the Google hardware devision is basically a side hustle for Google and why Apple is so far behind in AI.

 

[maflynn]

Who knows, maybe someday you could solve machine learning problems on a laptop with a Google chip that would normally require big expensive servers?

1950s - who knows maybe someone will create a computer language so we don't have to program in machine code.
1960s - who knows maybe someday someone will develop a mainframe that doesn't take up a huge building
1970s - who knows maybe someone will create a computer that can sit on a desk
...

My point, which i'm sure is obvious, is that progress will mean doing things now that were unthinkable years prior.

 

[Mr.Blacky]

Apple likes to tout how far ahead their chips are compared to the competition. However, my iPhone 13 Pro is just as fast or sometimes even slower than my Pixel 6 Pro. Either Apple is doing a poor of writing software to take advantage of their alleged fastest CPU's on the market or Google is a better software engineering company and Android is able to do a lot more with less.

What did you do to compare processing speed? The typical "open-and-close-a-bunch-of-apps"?

 

[exoticSpice]

Apple likes to tout how far ahead their chips are compared to the competition. However, my iPhone 13 Pro is just as fast or sometimes even slower than my Pixel 6 Pro. Either Apple is doing a poor of writing software to take advantage of their alleged fastest CPU's on the market or Google is a better software engineering company and Android is able to do a lot more with less.

this is because unless you do intensive stuff on your phone like render.
It's all the same. Apple Sillicon is wasted on iDevices.


On Macs its a different story, compliling code is very quick and silent and sips power compared to AMD/Intel laptops.
Apple does have fast CPUs we can also see this in Linux on a M series Mac.

 

[exoticSpice]

If it wasn’t for Apple’s consistency and support I would be thinking about a Google Pixel this year after that abysmal 14 release.

Pixel 6 was just as bad as iPhone 14s. Seems me Apple is putting less effort into iDevices these days. Heck the Watch Ultra is a MASSIVE update. Hopefully Apple steps up.

oh and Apple recently opened a Mac Processor research center in Israel.

 

[mi7chy]

More reason gloating about Geekbench is a joke because even if it translates to real world performance, Apple doesn't allow you to do things like run emulators to take advantage of it. Smarts can't be measured by Geekbench anyway.

 

[GMShadow]

More reason gloating about Geekbench is a joke because even if it translates to real world performance, Apple doesn't allow you to do things like run emulators to take advantage of it. Smarts can't be measured by Geekbench anyway.

Vegans, crossfitters, people who emulate ROMZ and tell themselves it's as good as the real thing, they're all eager to let everyone else know what they do.

 

[ian87w]

Google’s effort in making the assistant as useful as possible (so more people use it, more data Google can gather) is commendable as Google is probably the only assistant that can recognize a breath of languages. And the ML on the Tensor chip will definitely help that.

But as a general SoC, the Tensor is still way behind. The Tensor 1 barely gave performance per watt as good as the old Snapdragon 865. Tensor 2 I believe just matched SD888, which goes sideways in terms of efficiency. Apple is still king in pure performance per watt. Google might catch up, but it would be a while.

 

[wonderings]

Ultimately it comes down to the OS. Lots of companies are making fast chips, faster than most users need or can even use. End of the day I want an OS and a fast computer, but I would take a slightly slower computer spec wise to run in an OS that I am more efficient and prefer.

 

[mi7chy]

Who knows, maybe someday you could solve machine learning problems on a laptop with a Google chip that would normally require big expensive servers?

You already can with $60 USB Google Coral Edge TPU which makes an i7-7700K about 11x faster on classification with it than without.

https://blog.raccoons.be/coral-tpu-jetson-nano-performance

 

[Gudi]

Google is primarily a software company so in theory they should have quality stuff but it feels as if they’re spread too thin.

Google is an advertising company. They produce targeted adds based on big data evaluation. They are not a software company and not a tech company. They give away free software in exchange for harvesting even more user data.

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

Google is an advertising company. They produce targeted adds based on big data evaluation. They are not a software company and not a tech company. They give away free software in exchange for harvesting even more user data.

Google not a tech company? To limit Google to just an ad company in the year 2022 is wild. YouTube, Google Maps, Android, Google Suite, and the big daddy Google search. These are things that didn’t exist before Google and it changed the world.

Hate Google all you want but respect what they did.

 

[Gudi]

Google not a tech company? To limit Google to just an ad company in the year 2022 is wild. YouTube, Google Maps, Android, Google Suite, and the big daddy Google search. These are things that didn’t exist before Google and it changed the world.

Hate Google all you want but respect what they did.

YouTube existed before Google bought them for an insane amount of money, which bordered on investment fraud. Google Maps is a free service provided to the ad-invested user. It's not a technology you can buy like a Garmin, which existed prior. Android is an illegal copy of iPhoneOS. It's success is based on a free-with-data-sharing license. So it's also not a software you buy with your own money. No idea what this Suite is supposed to be? And yeah, stupid Search we all use for free. No software, no hardware, just ads ads ads...

Basically Google is the new Gatekeeper to the Internet, which has replaced AOL in this role. And I value them as much as I did AOL, piece of **** garbage. 💩🚽

 

[maflynn]

Google is an advertising company.

That's one part of google (Alphabet) to be sure, but they are also more then an advertising company. They design processors, they create operating systems. They made the google glass, they dabbled in autonomous cars (I'm not sure if they're still)

Like Apple (another technology company) they do many things, some things that could be considered non-technology.

 

[Sheepish-Lord]

YouTube existed before Google bought them for an insane amount of money, which bordered on investment fraud. Google Maps is a free service provided to the ad-invested user. It's not a technology you can buy like a Garmin, which existed prior. Android is an illegal copy of iPhoneOS. It's success is based on a free-with-data-sharing license. So it's also not a software you buy with your own money. No idea what this Suite is supposed to be? And yeah, stupid Search we all use for free. No software, no hardware, just ads ads ads...

Basically Google is the new Gatekeeper to the Internet, which has replaced AOL in this role. And I value them as much as I did AOL, piece of **** garbage. 💩🚽

Per the wiki YouTube.com went live Apr 2005 and Google bought it Oct 2006, Google made YouTube what it is that’s the reality. Google Suite includes things like Google Docs and is the new generations MS Office. The rest of your comment just seems uneducated and hateful so no idea why you’re on a tech site. Surprised you aren’t ranting about Microsoft/Bill Gates yet…

 

[ArkSingularity]

YouTube existed before Google bought them for an insane amount of money, which bordered on investment fraud. Google Maps is a free service provided to the ad-invested user. It's not a technology you can buy like a Garmin, which existed prior. Android is an illegal copy of iPhoneOS. It's success is based on a free-with-data-sharing license. So it's also not a software you buy with your own money. No idea what this Suite is supposed to be? And yeah, stupid Search we all use for free. No software, no hardware, just ads ads ads...

Basically Google is the new Gatekeeper to the Internet, which has replaced AOL in this role. And I value them as much as I did AOL, piece of **** garbage. 💩🚽

How is Android an "illegal copy of iPhoneOS?" Android and iOS are about as similar as Ubuntu and Windows. These are two completely different platforms, they would get laughed out of the court if Apple sued and said "you illegally copied iOS"

Also, do you think the world would be a better place if Google Maps (or free services like it) didn't exist? Do you remember the days when people had to pay $129 for a GPS update to Garmin every year? Everyone bought paper maps of their cities because GPS systems were ridiculously expensive and often inaccurate. If someone called you and said "Come to my address at 123 Newbrook Avenue" you stretched out a map on a table for and created a route, by hand, for 20 minutes. By hand.

There was no Siri (or Google's Assistant) that could just respond when you say "take me to this address" and pull up a free GPS. That didn't exist. The world was way less convenient back then, and if you could poll people and ask if they would prefer it now or then, I think most would prefer it now.

I don't appreciate Google's overzealous user-tracking practices either (this is part of why I proudly use Apple devices), but I would not even remotely call them the "new AOL". Those two don't even belong in the same sentence.

 

[mi7chy]

they dabbled in autonomous cars (I'm not sure if they're still)

Waymo One autonomous ride-hailing service operates in Phoenix AZ and San Francisco CA. There's also Waymo Via trucking service.

https://waymo.com/waymo-one/

https://waymo.com/waymo-via/