Info TOP 20 of the World's Most Powerful CPU Cores - IPC/PPC comparison

Richie Rich · May 15, 2020

Added cores:

A53 - little core used in some low-end smartphones in 8-core config (Snapdragon 450)
A55 - used as little core in every modern Android SoC
A72 - "high" end Cortex core used in Snapdragon 625 or Raspberry Pi 4
A73 - "high" end Cortex core
A75 - "high" end Cortex core
Bulldozer - infamous AMD core

Geekbench 5.1 PPC chart 6/23/2020:

Pos	Man	CPU	Core	Year	ISA	GB5 Score	GHz	PPC (score/GHz)	Relative to 9900K	Relative to Zen3
1	Nuvia	(Est.)	Phoenix (Est.)	2021	ARMv9.0	2001	3.00	667.00	241.0%	194.1%
2	Apple	A15 (est.)	(Est.)	2021	ARMv9.0	1925	3.00	641.70	231.8%	186.8%
3	Apple	A14 (est.)	Firestorm	2020	ARMv8.6	1562	2.80	558.00	201.6%	162.4%
4	Apple	A13	Lightning	2019	ARMv8.4	1332	2.65	502.64	181.6%	146.3%
5	Apple	A12	Vortex	2018	ARMv8.3	1116	2.53	441.11	159.4%	128.4%
6	ARM Cortex	V1 (est.)	Zeus	2020	ARMv8.6	1287	3.00	428.87	154.9%	124.8%
7	ARM Cortex	N2 (est.)	Perseus	2021	ARMv9.0	1201	3.00	400.28	144.6%	116.5%
8	Apple	A11	Monsoon	2017	ARMv8.2	933	2.39	390.38	141.0%	113.6%
9	Intel	(Est.)	Golden Cove (Est.)	2021	x86-64	1780	4.60	386.98	139.8%	112.6%
10	ARM Cortex	X1	Hera	2020	ARMv8.2	1115	3.00	371.69	134.3%	108.2%
11	AMD	5900X (Est.)	Zen 3 (Est.)	2020	x86-64	1683	4.90	343.57	124.1%	100.0%
12	Apple	A10	Hurricane	2016	ARMv8.1	770	2.34	329.06	118.9%	95.8%
13	Intel	1065G7	Icelake	2019	x86-64	1252	3.90	321.03	116.0%	93.4%
14	ARM Cortex	A78	Hercules	2020	ARMv8.2	918	3.00	305.93	110.5%	89.0%
15	Apple	A9	Twister	2015	ARMv8.0	564	1.85	304.86	110.1%	88.7%
16	AMD	3950X	Zen 2	2019	x86-64	1317	4.60	286.30	103.4%	83.3%
17	ARM Cortex	A77	Deimos	2019	ARMv8.2	812	2.84	285.92	103.3%	83.2%
18	Intel	9900K	Coffee LakeR	2018	x86-64	1384	5.00	276.80	100.0%	80.6%
19	Intel	10900K	Comet Lake	2020	x86-64	1465	5.30	276.42	99.9%	80.5%
20	Intel	6700K	Skylake	2015	x86-64	1032	4.00	258.00	93.2%	75.1%
21	ARM Cortex	A76	Enyo	2018	ARMv8.2	720	2.84	253.52	91.6%	73.8%
22	Intel	4770K	Haswell	2013	x86-64	966	3.90	247.69	89.5%	72.1%
23	AMD	1800X	Zen 1	2017	x86-64	935	3.90	239.74	86.6%	69.8%
24	Apple	A13	Thunder	2019	ARMv8.4	400	1.73	231.25	83.5%	67.3%
25	Apple	A8	Typhoon	2014	ARMv8.0	323	1.40	230.71	83.4%	67.2%
26	Intel	3770K	Ivy Bridge	2012	x86-64	764	3.50	218.29	78.9%	63.5%
27	Apple	A7	Cyclone	2013	ARMv8.0	270	1.30	207.69	75.0%	60.5%
28	Intel	2700K	Sandy Bridge	2011	x86-64	723	3.50	206.57	74.6%	60.1%
29	ARM Cortex	A75	Prometheus	2017	ARMv8.2	505	2.80	180.36	65.2%	52.5%
30	ARM Cortex	A73	Artemis	2016	ARMv8.0	380	2.45	155.10	56.0%	45.1%
31	ARM Cortex	A72	Maya	2015	ARMv8.0	259	1.80	143.89	52.0%	41.9%
32	Intel	E6600	Core2	2006	x86-64	338	2.40	140.83	50.9%	41.0%
33	AMD	FX-8350	BD	2011	x86-64	566	4.20	134.76	48.7%	39.2%
34	AMD	Phenom 965 BE	K10.5	2006	x86-64	496	3.70	134.05	48.4%	39.0%
35	ARM Cortex	A57 (est.)	Atlas	0	ARMv8.0	222	1.80	123.33	44.6%	35.9%
36	ARM Cortex	A15 (est.)	Eagle	0	ARMv7 32-bit	188	1.80	104.65	37.8%	30.5%
37	AMD	Athlon 64 X2 3800+	K8	2005	x86-64	207	2.00	103.50	37.4%	30.1%
38	ARM Cortex	A17 (est.)		0	ARMv7 32-bit	182	1.80	100.91	36.5%	29.4%
39	ARM Cortex	A55	Ananke	2017	ARMv8.2	155	1.60	96.88	35.0%	28.2%
40	ARM Cortex	A53	Apollo	2012	ARMv8.0	148	1.80	82.22	29.7%	23.9%
41	Intel	Pentium D	P4	2005	x86-64	228	3.40	67.06	24.2%	19.5%
42	ARM Cortex	A7 (est.)	Kingfisher	0	ARMv7 32-bit	101	1.80	56.06	20.3%	16.3%

TOP 10 - Performance Per Area comparison at ISO-clock (PPA/GHz)

Copied from locked thread. They try to avoid people to see this comparison how x86 is so bad.[/B]

Pos	Man	CPU	Core	Core Area mm2	Year	ISA	SPEC PPA/Ghz	Relative
1	ARM Cortex	A78	Hercules	1.33	2020	ARMv8	9.41	100.0%
2	ARM Cortex	A77	Deimos	1.40	2019	ARMv8	8.36	88.8%
3	ARM Cortex	A76	Enyo	1.20	2018	ARMv8	7.82	83.1%
4	ARM Cortex	X1	Hera	2.11	2020	ARMv8	7.24	76.9%
5	Apple	A12	Vortex	4.03	2018	ARMv8	4.44	47.2%
6	Apple	A13	Lightning	4.53	2019	ARMv8	4.40	46.7%
7	AMD	3950X	Zen 2	3.60	2019	x86-64	3.02	32.1%

It's impressive how fast are evolving the generic Cortex cores:

A72 (2015) which can be found in most SBC has 1/3 of IPC of new Cortex X1 - They trippled IPC in just 5 years.
A73 and A75 (2017) which is inside majority of Android smart phones today has 1/2 IPC of new Cortex X1 - They doubled IPC in 3 years.

Comparison how x86 vs. Cortex cores:

A75 (2017) compared to Zen1 (2017) is loosing massive -34% PPC to x86. As expected.
A77 (2019) compared to Zen2 (2018) closed the gap and is equal in PPC. Surprising. Cortex cores caught x86 cores.
X1 (2020) is another +30% IPC over A77. Zen3 need to bring 30% IPC jump to stay on par with X1.

Comparison to Apple cores:

AMD's Zen2 core is slower than Apple's A9 from 2015.... so AMD is 4 years behind Apple
Intel's Sunny Cove core in Ice Lake is slower than Apple's A10 from 2016... so Intel is 3 years behind Apple
Cortex A77 core is slower than Apple's A9 from 2015.... but
New Cortex X1 core is slower than Apple's A11 from 2017 so ARM LLC is 3 years behind Apple and getting closer

GeekBench5.1 comparison from 6/22/2020:

added Cortex X1 and A78 performance projections from Andrei here
2020 awaiting new Apple A14 Firestorm core and Zen3 core

Updated:

EDIT:
Please note to stop endless discussion about PPC frequency scaling: To have fair and clean comparison I will use only the top (high clocked) version from each core as representation for top performance.

Thunder 57 · May 15, 2020

The fact that a P4 shows up on your PPC list should immediately disqualify the results. Doesn't matter though. Based on the replies no one is taking you seriously. Besides, you don't provide any analysis or commentary. You basically just show up and say "Apple good, others suck!".

Hey, I don't see my Zen+ on there. I should build a P4 or K8 system stat!

Thunder 57 · May 15, 2020

What a child! Downvoted because I dare to disagree? You have been nothing but trouble to this forum since you started. You make up measurements and spew BS. Guess I'm an idiot for not running an A13 in my main computer.

Markfw · Jul 2, 2020

Richie Rich said:
Too much writing trying to hide garbage under the carpet.

Answer this:

"Double power efficient core designed for high frequency would run around 6 GHz today (twice power efficient core 2^(1/3) = 1.26x higher freq = 5*1.26 = 6.3 Ghz before hitting same thermal limit as inefficient core at 5 GHz)."

Is that true or not?

I have refrained from posting here. But in light of the most recent posts, You really need to read what others have said. The biggest thing of what is wrong with your posts, is you can not extrapolate based on small wide cores and big more narrow cores. And low power usage vs high clock speed. Everything you are trying to say is based on extrapolation AND YOU CAN;T DO THAT.

Gideon · Jul 7, 2020

Richie Rich said:
I can feel the fear and panic among x86 fanatic fans

Oh what trolling. I'm actually really hopeful of ARM making a breakthrough in server performance and start taking massive market share (for that to really happen we probably have to wait for Nuvia).

I think few here argue that in a couple of years this will start to manifest itself and in the 5-10 year timeframe x86 might indeed be the dinosaur of old mainframe but it's far from set to stone.

What I really do hate is when trolls come to forums, monopolize and hijack any discussion about ARM. Produce endless threads with tables that are absurdly biased and of questionable accuracy and present themselves as the only all-seeing messiah that allowed to preach about the "goodness of ARM" with every other forum member being a "zealous x86 fanatic".

Hitman928 · Jul 8, 2020

name99 said:
I've read a bunch of Richie Rich's stuff, and the criticisms, and I would not, on average, call them "valid criticisms". They tend to be of the form "we don't like the numbers you've produced, so go find other [impossible or irrelevant] numbers".

For example
- complaints that GeekBench doesn't represent something or other about CPUs. Show us SPEC so we can see memory performance.
- well SPEC doesn't represent large I-footprint and lots of dynamic linking. Show us browsers.
- well browsers don't represent large system performance. Show us data warehouse numbers.
- well you can't generalize from Graviton to Apple. And anyway I don't care about any of that, how fast does it play my favorite game.

He has been told repeatedly that IPC doesn't scale across a reasonably frequency range (say 2 to 5GHz) and responded by showing that, for a wide range of use cases it pretty much does.

I have not seen ANY technically informed and intelligent criticisms of the work he has done, just a whole lot of "I don't want to believe it, therefore [silly objection]".
You can disagree with him (and me) on certain "beliefs" that are difficult to prove, things like
it makes more sense to concentrate on brainiac design than on frequency. But that's not what I am seeing, what I am seeing is just an unwillingness to accept even the basic starting points of his arguments.
If he says "Apple has IPC twice Intel, and therefore can match Intel at half the frequency" that's essentially a statement of fact. When someone responds to that with random nonsense about how Apple is "cheating" by using large caches, or will never be able to get to 5GHz like Intel, or how IPC is a meaningless metric, and by the way, different ISA's use different instruction counts; those are not valid criticisms, those are petulant whinings by people who clearly don't understand technology. Debating society attacks, arguing about the supposed exact meanings of words or insisting that some 5% difference is significant -- those are indications that the person doing the argument has the mind of a lawyer not the mind of a scientist engineer.
And fine, attack with a lawyer mind on legalistic grounds.
But don't expect the scientists and engineers to be impressed by legalistic arguments...

How about him ignoring dozens of valid Geekbench scores from x86 CPUs that have significantly higher "IPC" than what is in his chart and do so simply because he doesn't find them valid for some unstated reason? How about him "calculating" the cost of Graviton2 and Ampere based upon his estimated size of Graviton2 and Ampere from a mix of core sizes and made up numbers and refuses to change it even when presented with info from Altra that he is grossly underestimating the die sizes? How about ignoring all benchmarks for any ARM based server CPU that is not Spec or GB? How about him trying to prove Blender results show the same relative performance of his Rpi4 against Ryzen as did GB to only be proven wrong and then later lie about it?

Is this what you are defending and anyone who brings up these points is just whining?

DrMrLordX · May 15, 2020

Hayabusa Rider said:
Heading over to the Geekbench site and looking at top performers, the A13 doesn't even show up as a top performer. If one browses the specific processors such as the a13 and the 3700x the comparison becomes absurd. I don't know much about particulars compared to many here but it seems to me it's bit like golf. If one goes about it right any drunk can beat the best pro out there with the right course and handicap. In the real world, not so much. I understand what you are saying but AFAIK there's not anyone using the A13 because it's faster than everything else.

As far as fixed-function hardware goes, I was being mostly pedantic. You are, of course, correct. Mind telling @Richie Rich for me?

UsandThem · May 15, 2020

In case anyone is wondering, I've already been in this thread
four times in only two pages of responses.

Going forward, I'd advise all users to keep the discussion
focused, and without insults.

AT Mod Usandthem

DrMrLordX · Jun 28, 2020

Doug S said:
You don't. IPC is mostly meaningless, because people care about actual performance not performance per clock. Far too much attention is paid to it on these forums.

Oh, snap. There goes this entire thread.

Hitman928 · Jul 5, 2020

Richie Rich said:
Top 10 Performance Per Area thread was locked due to Gravion2 again (obviously it comes from EPYC owners). They think that by hiding of these information will stop evolution. Obviously this isn't going to work.

No it was locked to consolidate multiple threads on the same topic.

Markfw claims that estimated 350mm2 Graviton2 is more expensive than EPYC Rome (Zen2) due to yield penalty for monolithic chips. Let's calculate yields (Die yield calculator):

AMD Zen2 CPU chiplet (8.6 by 8.6 mm = 74mm2) .... yield 92.91%

AMD Rome IO die (20.4 by 20.4 = 416mm2)................yield 66.91%

Graviton2 monolith ( 18.8 by 18.8mm = 353 mm2) .... yield 70.96%

Graviton2's yield are not bad at all. It's not going to be more expensive than Rome especially when you include Rome's huge 416mm2 IO die. Ampere Altra offers their 80-core die with disabled cores down to 32/48/48/64/72 cores to further increase yields. IMHO Graviton2 and Altra manufacturing cost is similar to GPU so pretty low. It's amazing that these 64-core ARM monsters could enter desktop/workstation for the price of 16-core Ryzen 3950X. Great for customers. We can choose between 16-core speed demon or 64-core ARM monster. Last year there was announcement of 64-core ARM HiSilicon KungPeng 920 at ATX board but it never showed up sadly.

First, you're probably giving a pessimistic number for all three examples as I doubt the defect density is that bad for TSMC or GF at this point. Second, Mark never claimed Graviton2 was more expensive than Rome that I saw, he said that it was possible. Also, is Amazon offering lower than 64 core solutions for die salvaging? Not that I'm aware of. So you haven't considered that in comparing costs between Rome and Graviton2. You mention it for Ampere, but Ampere doesn't make Graviton2 so I don't see how that's relevant.

You also ignore that Rome's IO die is made on an older and much cheaper process from GF as well as the fact the the IOD will have a different defect rate than the compute cores because it is made up mostly of completely different types of circuits. Producing a chip on 7nm is going to be at least 50% more expensive than on 12/14nm due to the more advanced node costs and further maturity of the 12/14nm node. Additionally, the compute cores for Rome are used across server, desktop, and HEDT and so there is all kinds of die salvaging and product binning that can happen for maximum profit.

You also should be looking beyond yield due to defect density (your quoted number) and take into account yield due to partial dies. Basically, the smaller your chip, the better you can place them around the edge and you will get more usable dies as a percentage of the wafer. If you also consider this angle along with the ability to salvage dies on Rome across multiple SKUs and markets, it only looks worse for Graviton2. Yes it will look worse for the IO die as well, but again, you're taking that hit on a node that is much cheaper in the first place than the 50+% more expensive 7 nm so ultimately your costs will be much lower for the IO die than the Graviton2 die. Do I know that if you do the full calculation for Rome that it will be cheaper than Graviton2? No, I don't and I don't expect that when comparing a full Rome chip to Graviton2 that it will be cheaper 1:1. But bringing in the full scope of the situation with AMD's strategy of chiplets being common across the entire desktop/HEDT/server space and using a cheaper process for the large IOD puts it in the realm of possibility when you look at the total cost structure.

To be honest, this is whole thing is so silly. Graviton2 and Rome have very different designs and purposes. How many sockets does Graviton2 support, how many PCIe lanes? Maximum memory capacity? All of these things add significant power and area. Yes they obviously compete because Amazon uses them in their own cloud servers, but Amazon isn't letting anyone else use Graviton2 so their points of competition are very limited. The Ampere line is a much more direct competitor to Rome but those seem to be largely MIA from what I can tell. Have they announced any design wins? As I've said before, I'm all for better CPUs, I don't care which ISA they use. But the reality is right now x86 is dominant and it will take more than a competitive product to displace it. Maybe the next round of ARM CPUs will dominate x86 in every way and take over the world. Great, I'm all for it. But let's let it happen and discuss when we have real independent review numbers to use rather than endless speculation and fuzzy math to try and prove a point that everyone will ignore anyway until independantly verified hard numbers are produced.

Hitman928 · Jul 8, 2020

name99 said:
*You* neglected to mention some other interesting points. Like
https://www.top500.org/lists/green500/2019/11/

Why are you pointing to the Green500 list from 8 months ago? This is the latest one:

June 2020 | TOP500

www.top500.org

You don't think it's of some significance that a more traditional and easier programming model manages to match (and slightly exceed) the rather more difficult and specialized GPGPU model?
What does flexible mean? Well let's consider another supercomputer benchmark:
https://graph500.org

Yes, the Fujitsu supercomputer will be easier to program for and get closer to max FLOP rate, that is definitely an advantage. However, it also depends on what the purpose of the machine is. Just like pretty much everything, it's a trade-off. If you have specialized code that can already make very effective use of GPGPU, then the coming supercomputers based around x86 and GPUs will dominate the Fujitsu supercomputer. If you need more flexibility, then the Fujitsu computer may be the better option, but what is the cross section of programs/use cases that can make effective use of the wide Fujitsu vector paths that can't effectively use a GPGPU code path? I don't know. Clearly there's a market for both solutions, but it seems to me like the vast majority of HPC supercomputers are being built with a GPGPU model, so it seems like that is still the preferred path for most of the people who are using these systems. If I'm wrong, then I'm sure we'll start to see more and more A64FX based systems and/or A64FX like designs popping up as the basis for these giant HPC systems.

The other variable is AMD's and Intel's attempts at a unifying programming space to make it easier to program for and better utilize these GPGPU based systems. We'll see how much success they have with this.

As to why some people keep posting about ARM on this forum, that's like asking "Why do you keep caring about the truth?"
The mainstream has been happy to post everything from selective quoting to ignoring facts to outright lies for years now; apparently hoping that some combination of avoiding and misrepresenting reality will change it. That strategy has become ever less viable now (though it's certainly still in play) so people are trying alternatives, which tend to be some combination of
- attack the individuals, regardless of what they say.
- complain that they are posting too much (what? really? there are TWO threads about ARM along with ten thousand threads about x86; and about 2/3 of what's in the ARM threads is ARM hate-skepticism)

People posting about ARM is fine. Posting a lot about ARM is fine. Coming into threads that have nothing to do with ARM and inserting ARM into the discussion over and over again and creating multiple threads on the same topic is not fine. That's what people are complaining about.

Vixis Rei · Jul 8, 2020

name99 said:
Given that Richie Rich started this thread, and started it with an explicit "Here's how ARM is doing well" agenda, it seems a bit strange to complain about people "hijacking it" and inserting ARM into the discussion...
If that's happening in an essentially x86 thread (I mostly don't read those) complain in that thread. But complaining "ARM thread is being used to talk about ARM. OMG!!!" makes very little sense.

The name of the topic is "TOP 20 of the World's Most Powerful CPU Cores - IPC/PPC comparison". So it's a top 20 list, listing the worlds most powerful CPU cores, but it's also a IPC/PPC comparison between these said CPU cores. When i look at the list on the first post i don't see any of these worlds most powerful CPU cores listed.... Maybe 1 of which people would consider pretty powerful but none that i would consider most powerful. It's also only a list using geekbench5.1. There is some CPU's listed on that list from 2012 and going as far back as 2005 so it's not a list of recent CPU's at all. So i am rather confused, there is nothing that makes sense about any of this. Not to mention that there is an Edit at the bottom of the post clarifying that because people found easy to see massive exploits/ flaws in the chart regarding frequency that none of that data will be used. I don't get any kind of "Here's how ARM is doing well" vibe from any part of this thread, and it's definitely not in the topic title where it should be. It looks alot like intel marketing.

I'm not sure if you read any of the other threads when he posted basically the same information on 5 different threads, 3 arm related and 2 x86 related threads, and when 1 arm thread died it leaked onto 3 x86 threads and 2 arm threads. I like reading about any kind of technology but if we're discussing a arm CPU and it's inner workings / specs i'm not interesting in hearing about how x86 is suddenly doomed and vice versa with countless meaningless charts of inaccurate/irrelevant information. I just want meaningful discussions. it's why i'm here.

Hitman928 · Jul 8, 2020

name99 said:
OK, so let's recap.
You complained that Richie Rich was dumping data in multiple threads.
So he collects all the data and dumps it in one thread.
And you're STILL complaining. Now about the name of the thread. Now that he's using the thread for precisely what he was told to use it for.

Seems an awful lot like the issue is not how much he is posting, but that you don't want to see what he is posting; and you don't want anyone else to see it either, you just don't want those facts in the public record.

This thread is what it is. You can perfectly well avoid it, like I avoid the ten thousand x86 threads that I'm not interested in. If he's spamming those, complain in those threads.
But don't complain that he (or anyone else) is doing exactly what you told him to do -- extolling various evidence about the performance of ARM in a thread created for precisely that purpose.

Again, what you are missing is that he didn't do that, the mods forced it by merging the posts from multiple threads into a single thread which is why you are seeing people complaining about multiple threads, many of those posts were made before the mods merged the threads. He was already asked multiple times to stop posting about ARM in unrelated threads but he continued to do so which is why people are posting in this thread about it because they don't want to further derail the unrelated threads.

As far as "facts" go, he constantly ignores all facts or criticism that doesn't line up with the narrative he is trying to tell. I'm fine with a differing of opinion and back and forth discussions, but when the same poster literally ignores post after post of valid criticism and literally refuses to include valid data that doesn't fit into his preconceived notions in his tables and calculations, people are going to get sick of him continuing to post the same things over and over. Many posters have shown that he is working from false premises and bad data in many instances but he just pretends like they never posted these things at all and will continue to reiterate the same bad points over and over again. He is quickly wearing out his welcome here from the forum community because of it.

Markfw · Jul 8, 2020

name99 said:
I've read a bunch of Richie Rich's stuff, and the criticisms, and I would not, on average, call them "valid criticisms". They tend to be of the form "we don't like the numbers you've produced, so go find other [impossible or irrelevant] numbers".

For example
- complaints that GeekBench doesn't represent something or other about CPUs. Show us SPEC so we can see memory performance.
- well SPEC doesn't represent large I-footprint and lots of dynamic linking. Show us browsers.
- well browsers don't represent large system performance. Show us data warehouse numbers.
- well you can't generalize from Graviton to Apple. And anyway I don't care about any of that, how fast does it play my favorite game.

He has been told repeatedly that IPC doesn't scale across a reasonably frequency range (say 2 to 5GHz) and responded by showing that, for a wide range of use cases it pretty much does.

I have not seen ANY technically informed and intelligent criticisms of the work he has done, just a whole lot of "I don't want to believe it, therefore [silly objection]".
You can disagree with him (and me) on certain "beliefs" that are difficult to prove, things like
it makes more sense to concentrate on brainiac design than on frequency. But that's not what I am seeing, what I am seeing is just an unwillingness to accept even the basic starting points of his arguments.
If he says "Apple has IPC twice Intel, and therefore can match Intel at half the frequency" that's essentially a statement of fact. When someone responds to that with random nonsense about how Apple is "cheating" by using large caches, or will never be able to get to 5GHz like Intel, or how IPC is a meaningless metric, and by the way, different ISA's use different instruction counts; those are not valid criticisms, those are petulant whinings by people who clearly don't understand technology. Debating society attacks, arguing about the supposed exact meanings of words or insisting that some 5% difference is significant -- those are indications that the person doing the argument has the mind of a lawyer not the mind of a scientist engineer.
And fine, attack with a lawyer mind on legalistic grounds.
But don't expect the scientists and engineers to be impressed by legalistic arguments...

How about the MANY times he has estimated things with no valid basis for his estimations. And for one the price of graviton2 ? Nobody knows, but the post that shows every reason in the world why $500 is an insanely low estimate ? And the size ? and not accounting for monolithic vs chiplets in the size estimate ? I could go on. He keeps ignoring anything that does not fit his agenda. My opinions have nothing to do with x86 vs ARM, but everything to do with logic and reasonability.

A reasonable discussion of ARM would be welcome.

coercitiv · May 15, 2020

Also a brand new CPU from Intel - 1153 @ 3.2GHz, that's 360 PPC.

This PPC World Top changes by the minute!

AmericanLocomotive · May 15, 2020

...and these things all seem to be assuming the CPU core is remaining pegged at its fastest turbo speed. I doubt that 3950X is staying at 4.6 GHz the entire test (based on how my 3900X works). That is probably why the EPYC Part has better "PPC" - it just stays at a fixed speed the entire time.

What about Geekbench itself? Is it the same source being compiled between x86 and iOS?

The compiler being used? Maybe whatever compiler you use to compile code for iOS is just highly optimized for their CPU architecture? x86 benchmarks and compilers tend to avoid CPU/architecture specific optimizations in order to be "fair" to all CPUs and not create situations where code might run on one system, but not another.

coercitiv · May 17, 2020

Thunder 57 said:
IMHO, the argument you should be making is performance per watt.

He can't argue for performance per watt while also aiming to prove a theoretical Apple high performance CPU will be superior. The goal is best ST performance in the world, and this PPC classification is great because it "normalizes" performance and then allows the reader to dream of unicorn CPUs.

Notice how he keeps insisting on maximizing clocks within platform constraints, basically comparing x86 chips pushed to their power/thermal limits to ARM chips running on passive cooling frequencies. It's the same discussion we had in the previous threads, only this time he blatantly refuses to even update his World Top with valid results such as the EPYC score provided by me or the Ice Lake score provided by @Hitman928.

He chooses the metric - PPC - but even then feels uncomfortable when Ice Lake jumps from ~320 PPC to ~375 PPC at virtually the same clocks. That's the level of insecurity.

coercitiv · May 17, 2020

naukkis said:
A13 is also better than in those Richie's results, it's a phone chip and won't sustain it's maximum clocks in heavy stress tests.

That's great, link one of the best results and ask the OP to update the table. Isn't that how this thread should work?

Antey · Jun 26, 2020

Ok, i made my own WebXPRT3 PPC chart, anandtech uses it so is 100% valid (yes, i had to say it)

WebXPRT3 PPC chart 6/26/2020:

Pos	Man	CPU	Core	Year	ISA	WebXPRT3 Score	GHz	PPC (score/GHz)	Relative	Relative
1	Apple	A13	Lightning	2019	ARMv8	187	2,65	70,6	100,00 %	103,42 %
2	AMD	3950X	Zen 2	2019	x86-64	317	4,6	68,9	97,66 %	100,99 %
3	Intel	9900K	Skylake	2018	x86-64	348	5,1	68,2	96,70 %	100,00 %
4	Apple	A12	Vortex	2018	ARMv8	163	2,53	64,4	90,80 %	94,42 %
5	AMD	1800X	Zen 1	2017	x86-64	237	4	59,3	83,96 %	86,83 %
6	Apple	A11	Monsoon	2017	ARMv8	137	2,39	57,3	80,81 %	84,01 %
7	ARM Cortex	A77	Deimos	2019	ARMv8	120	2,84	42,3	59,88 %	61,92 %
8	Apple	A10	Hurricane	2016	ARMv8	82	2,34	35,0	49,36 %	51,36 %
9	ARM Cortex	A76	Enyo	2018	ARMv8	97	2,84	34,2	48,40 %	50,05 %

PT - WebXPRT results

Principled Technologies Durham, NC, Industry-leading technology assessment, fact-based marketing services, hands-on testing of technology products, deliver the facts, testing reports and videos

www.principledtechnologies.com

EDIT: This is not serious.

DrMrLordX · Jun 27, 2020

Richie Rich said:
So you accuse AnandTech cheated the tests since 2019 A13 release?

Part of the problem with these attempts at conversation is that you put words in people's mouths thusly. People have been cheating at SPEC in general, and usually its the compiler vendors, NOT the individuals who conduct the benchmarks themselves. So no, Anandtech specifically isn't cheating their SPEC numbers. But any SPEC2006 results they (or anyone else) have ever published after compiling with ICC for x86 targets would have inadvertently cheated libquantum, at a minimum. Which should tell you that other cheats are also possible . . . they might just not have been caught yet. SPEC, as a benchmark, is not the most reliable thing in the world, and SPEC2006 in particular is rather old now.

Now that you've attempted to beat that dead horse, would you care to consider all the other problems with SPEC2006 and GB5? Before others have to tell you?

DrMrLordX · Jun 27, 2020

Richie Rich said:
Andrei uses GCC and LLVM compilers:

And you've missed my point entirely. But hey, thanks for trying.

Doug S said:
All you guys who are holding onto this belief that Apple's SoCs will somehow be exposed when A14 based Macs ship in six months are going to be doing a lot of backtracking and crow eating.

Nobody's eating crow. The problem is that some people are using . . . questionable techniques to try to compare mobile SoC cores to desktop and server cores.

Apple's A-series chips may actually be faster than anyone - including Richie Rich - suspects. Or they could be slower. When you use complete horse manure to try to create a realistic picture of relative performance, you just don't know. Hell I can't even get Geekbench 5 to significantly tax my 3900x in GB5. Is it even using AVX or AVX2? The only tests that seemsto push it at all are Structure from Motion and Ray Tracing.

To contrast GB5 with CBR20 (4.4 GHz, 1.344v-1.38v)

CBR20:

ST: ~49W package power
MT: ~162W package power

GB5:

ST: ~42W average, peaked at 46W in Structure from Motion
MT: All over the place, so average seems pointless, but it was ~91W. Ray tracing seemed to push power up to around 142-147W, while Structure from Motion hit the 130s.

Pretty sure Primate Labs claims to use AVX, but . . .

name99 · Jul 3, 2020

Markfw said:
I have refrained from posting here. But in light of the most recent posts, You really need to read what others have said. The biggest thing of what is wrong with your posts, is you can not extrapolate based on small wide cores and big more narrow cores. And low power usage vs high clock speed. Everything you are trying to say is based on extrapolation AND YOU CAN;T DO THAT.

You don't need extrapolation to
- compare benchmark numbers from existing iPad Pro against existing Macs (from MBA up to iMac Pro and Mac Pro)
- to compare the power numbers in each case

We know how this plays out!
- iPad Pro single threaded beats almost any Intel CPU for most tasks. Intel still has a small advantage if your form factor can sustain running at 5GHz+ (about 4GHz+ for Ice Lake), or if you can make aggressive use of AVX512, or if you make aggressive use of AES.
- iPad Pro scales slightly better than Intel up to the 4+4 level (compared to say Intel 4 core+SMT)

Here's an example:

iPad Pro (12.9-inch 3rd Generation) vs MacBook Air (Early 2020) - Geekbench

OK, that's state of the art today. Extrapolation comes from
- can Apple add more cores? Why not?
- will adding more cores hurt them? Maybe, but the evidence TODAY is that whatever they need to scale from one to many-core (cache structure, memory controller, NoC, memory ordering constraints, ...) works better than Intel's equivalent on the same problem.
- can Apple boost performance for the A14X/Z? Why not? There's no reason they can't pick up the 20% or so that's already there in the A13 over the A12, presumably they can (out of share laziness) just pick up the iso-power faster transistors of TSMC 5nm.

- can Apple boost performance via IPC? OK, that's the one most risky extrapolation, but cof course the most interesting. If they have say 80% more 5nm transistors, can they do something useful with them. I cannot PROVE that they can. What I can do is say
+ they have done so reliably for quite a few years now
+ there are probably still a few known techniques for improving IPC that they are not yet using. It's hard to be sure because we have no idea quite what they are using today. But there are a constant stream of good ideas (that "just" require more transistors) out of academia for better cache placement/replacement algorithms, better prefetch, better branch prediction, compressed LLC, long term parking, ...
This is even apart from the obvious wins they could (probably have) added like SVE, and AMX (still there on A13, still, apparently unused by anything -- I'm guessing LLVM support is still not yet quite ready for the public.)
+ Apple chose this year to make the ARM switch. They didn't have to do that. They could have delayed. Which suggests they know how well A14X/Z stacks up against Ice Lake (and probably Tiger Lake)...

- can Intel boost performance via frequency? Once again who knows? But once again, look at the tape. If you think Apple's track record is irrelevant, that tomorrow everything could change, and likewise for Intel.
If you think that tomorrow Intel will be shipping 5GHz on 10nm, and in 2022 6GHz on 7nm; meanwhile Apple IPC for A14 will be no more than, say, 5% over A13 sure, go right ahead, tell us that. But hemming and hawing about "you can't extrapolate, no-one knows the future!", give me a break. We ALL KNOW the future is uncertain. But we also all make plans based on reasonable extrapolations...

Hitman928 · Oct 5, 2020

Richie Rich said:
Maybe you missed the part where Intel uses for L3 cache lower uncore frequency as well.
Maybe you missed the part where Apple big cores runs at 2.6 GHz, little cores at 1.8 GHz and GPU < 1 GHz, so L3 SLC cache also runs with some multiplier. Apple's L3 cache is shared with GPU and NPU as well. This shared L3 cache for GPU is something AMD Renoir and Intel can only dream of. Not speaking that they have no NPU to be connected to L3. Apple is light years ahead anybody.

Intel's cache ratio is ~9/10, not 1/4. That was really just a side note anyway, the main thing is that the whole core was custom designed for high frequency compared to a standard A72 core. This was just a proof of concept project to promote TSMC's foundry. No one is arguing you couldn't clock an ARM chip up to high frequencies but you'd have to make some design changes and the extent of the design changes would depend on what chip you started with both in terms of uarch and physical design.

I admit A72 at COWOS is not 100% core copy but maybe 99% copy. Minor changes. When ARM can do this minor changes for some experimental side project like COWOS then imagine Apple with all their massive resources.

OK, since you know what has and hasn't been customized, why not lay it out for us? What blocks were changed and what blocks weren't? How did their stack effect frequency? Which Vt cells did they choose and why? Let's see the details of this 99% unchanged design.

Intel and AMD should be scared not because high frequency ARMs (that's easy to do) but because chiplets on interposer. Neoverse V1 stated using HBM2E memory and coherent chiplet architecture.

So AMD and Intel should be scared that ARM server CPUs will start using technology AMD has been using for years now? Somehow I doubt this keeps Lisa Su up at night thinking about it.

I doubt that on this forum are people with technical background. Best people like Andrei left this forum due to permanent attacks form knowless people. Just search what happened in Graviton2 thread. How you want learn lesson #10 about multi-wave propagation when you don't know lesson #1-9 how the pipeline stages works and what is critical path length? Otherwise you would never claim that ARMs cannot be clocked to high frequencies. There is a paper regarding multi-wave you can google it.

Stop trying to deflect away from the topic you brought up. No one ever claimed you couldn't design an ARM CPU to reach to high frequencies. Geez man, is all you ever do is create straw man in your arguments so you can feel like you are constantly winning? You are the one who brought up multi-wave propagation in digital circuits so I would like to hear your explanation. If you really understood it, you should be able to explain it in a way that anyone could understand but since many on this forum have advanced degrees in computer science/EE, I think it would be fine for you to go in to lots of detail. So let's hear it, what are the details, pros/cons, why should it be used on modern high performance CPUs? Don't tell me to just go google it, I want to hear what you have to say about it.

beginner99 · May 15, 2020

Can I make a 100-wide CPU and run it at 1 mhz and then calculate the ghz score and it counts?

Gideon · May 15, 2020

You should probably add *in geekbench* to the title.

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