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Bodhitree

macrumors 68020
Apr 5, 2021
2,041
2,154
Netherlands
Let's hope Qualcomm's SoC can put pressure on Apple.

It seems to me its more a question if Qualcomm’s Nuvia-powered products can carve a niche out of the Wintel laptop market, based on performance and battery life. If people don’t see a clear advantage to buying them, it’s going to eventually be a non-starter as a commercial product.

Comparisons to Apple’s M-series chips are no more than a marketing ploy, Apple’s market is MacOS laptops and because they control the OS there won’t be much competition there. At most similar-performing laptops will stem the tide of switchers from PC.

Apple’s laptop performance lead comes in two main forms, low-end laptops with killer single-threaded performance at the 1000 dollar price point, and premium laptops with great all-around performance and battery life at the 2500 dollar price point. If Qualcomm are going to provide one SoC they have to decide where to price it for the OEMs.

And wasn’t there a lawsuit by Arm?
 
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senttoschool

macrumors 68030
Nov 2, 2017
2,618
5,440
What improvements does TSMC N3/N3E bring over TSMC N4P?
1679840425741.png

 
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dgdosen

macrumors 68030
Dec 13, 2003
2,797
1,439
Seattle
Does anyone know how big the Gen 4 dies will be? Compared to M2 Or what can be expected with an M3 die shrink?
 

Xiao_Xi

macrumors 68000
Oct 27, 2021
1,615
1,081
Does any of these figures have merit?
Does it make sense that M3 wins in single-core by such a margin to Qualcomm's SoC, but loses in multi-core?
What configuration could 8cx have to reach 1800 in single-core and 14000 in multi-core?
What configuration could M3 have to reach 2500 in single-core and 11000 in multi-core?
Would such a leap between M2 and M3 be possible?
 

senttoschool

macrumors 68030
Nov 2, 2017
2,618
5,440
Does any of these figures have merit?
Does it make sense that M3 wins in single-core by such a margin to Qualcomm's SoC, but loses in multi-core?
What configuration could 8cx have to reach 1800 in single-core and 14000 in multi-core?
What configuration could M3 have to reach 2500 in single-core and 11000 in multi-core?
Would such a leap between M2 and M3 be possible?
Yes.

Here’s my calculation for M3 GB5:

I expect M3 to show a much bigger improvement over M2 than 15% because it should be using A17 and 3nm. Remember that the M2 is using A15, which would be 2 generations and 1 node behind M3.

  • M2 GB5 score is 1950.
  • A16 improvement over A15 in ST is 11%. 1950 * 1.11 = 2165.
  • Let's assume that A17 will have a 20% improvement over A16 because it will be using 3nm and we're hearing reports that A16 ran into engineering issues. 2165 * 1.2 = 2597. A score of 2600 GB5 seems reasonable for M3.
  • If we go by your assumption that doubling the power can yield 40% more performance, then 2597 * 1.4 = 3635.
I don't think doubling the power will yield 40%. It seems a bit too good to be true. Perhaps doubling the power will yield 25% more performance. That's still an extremely impressive 3200 GB5 score.

Anyways, I doubt Apple would double the power for M3 Ultra. Their own marketing is centered around efficiency.
I calculated to 2600. Just 100 of the tweet. But maybe the Pro or Max versions can reach 2600.
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,416
19,502
Does any of these figures have merit?
Does it make sense that M3 wins in single-core by such a margin to Qualcomm's SoC, but loses in multi-core?
What configuration could 8cx have to reach 1800 in single-core and 14000 in multi-core?
What configuration could M3 have to reach 2500 in single-core and 11000 in multi-core?
Would such a leap between M2 and M3 be possible?

Didn't the same person previously claim ~ 2100 GB5 score for the phone Snapgradon 8 Gen4? Why would the laptop chip be that much slower?

To your other questions, sure, there can be a disparity in single core and multi-core ratio if one chip has more lower-performance cores (which would boost the multi-core score). And sure, a 30% performance improvement over M2 is probably realistic (if optimistic) for a new u-arch on 3NM node. But honestly, I don't trust any of these numbers.
 

dmccloud

macrumors 68040
Sep 7, 2009
3,086
1,851
Anchorage, AK
Does any of these figures have merit?
Does it make sense that M3 wins in single-core by such a margin to Qualcomm's SoC, but loses in multi-core?
What configuration could 8cx have to reach 1800 in single-core and 14000 in multi-core?
What configuration could M3 have to reach 2500 in single-core and 11000 in multi-core?
Would such a leap between M2 and M3 be possible?

The person who posted that doesn't have any merit. let alone the junk they post as "fact"...
 

senttoschool

macrumors 68030
Nov 2, 2017
2,618
5,440
To your other questions, sure, there can be a disparity in single core and multi-core ratio if one chip has more lower-performance cores (which would boost the multi-core score). And sure, a 30% performance improvement over M2 is probably realistic (if optimistic) for a new u-arch on 3NM node. But honestly, I don't trust any of these numbers.
30% is a tad optimistic but totally realistic. We have to remember that M2 is using A15 and A16 is 13% faster than A15 in ST already. A17 is two core generations ahead of A15 and one major node leap.
 

jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,823
4,546
Does anyone know how big the Gen 4 dies will be? Compared to M2 Or what can be expected with an M3 die shrink?
One of the problems is that N3B only gives a very small shrink to SRAM and N3E gives none for all practical purpose. A large chunk of transistors is used for memory so don’t expect much die shrinkage if any.
 
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leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,416
19,502
One of the problems is that N3B only gives a very small shrink to SRAM and N3E gives none for all practical purpose. A large chunk of transistors is used for memory so don’t expect much die shrinkage if any.

And that’s where the new fancy patents about die stacking come in :) I suspect that at some point it’s cheaper to manufacture half of the system on 5nm and pay for advanced packaging rather than try to fit it all on a single 3nm die…
 

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,416
19,502
Well, N3 probably allow Apple to clock their caches higher. As it is now, M2 running at 3.5GHz is still slower than what LPDDR4X-4266 can push, never mind LPDDR5. I suppose their cache sizes is big enough and likely no need to go much higher.

Does it even work like that? I thought that cache and CPU frequency had to be somehow matched? My impression was that improvements to cache bandwidth usually come from wider cache path (e.g. M1/M2 can only fetch 48 bytes/cycle from L1 while Intel can do whopping 128 bytes/cycle with AVX-512.

I am genuinely asking, I really don't know.
 

quarkysg

macrumors 65816
Oct 12, 2019
1,242
829
Does it even work like that? I thought that cache and CPU frequency had to be somehow matched? My impression was that improvements to cache bandwidth usually come from wider cache path (e.g. M1/M2 can only fetch 48 bytes/cycle from L1 while Intel can do whopping 128 bytes/cycle with AVX-512.

I am genuinely asking, I really don't know.
My understanding is that cache and CPU clock has to match too, so that means CPU clock will also increase.

The problem is that when RAM bus clock is different from CPU cache clock, delays has to be inserted, once data starts bursting from RAM. Once data is in cache, it's basically low latency fast memory, but it needs to be fetched from RAM first.

It's been a long time since my logic design course tho.
 
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