AMD Claims New Laptop Chip Is 30% Faster Than M1 Pro, Promises Up to 30 Hours of Battery Life

[JamesHolden]

But all those architectures competed for the same PC market, which is now nothing but a tiny niche in the margins of the giant smartphone chip market.

The PC market is hardly a "tiny niche." Comments like that undermine your credibility.

Well, of course they do! TSMC became the largest chip maker with over >50% global market share, because their biggest customer, Apple (buying up 25% of the whole production) pushed them to build more and more factories with ever smaller process nodes. That's where the iPhone performance comes from. AMD is only able to order 4nm chips from TSMC, because the A16 Bionic paid for the factory.

I was referring to overall R&D spending, not manufacturing. No argument that Apple and TSMC have spent a lot of money building factories.

I'll give you a sound 25 year guarantee with an 80% chance on 50+ years and longer. There's only one company (other than Apple) left that makes any profits in the smartphone market. Which means there is already an Apple monopoly on computing. They may not make the most phones, but they make all the profit in by far the largest electronics market ever. And whoever wants to take the chip crown has to compete without money in the most money driven high-tech industry known to mankind.

I'm so tired of the stupid "they make the most profits" fanboy argument. What does that have to do with anything? Despite them "making the most profits", there are plenty of other companies out there developing and selling tech, doing tons of R&D, etc., and they seem to be doing okay.

Your argument is just hyperbolic fanboy nonsense. Like I said, look at the history of the tech industry and chip architectures. Apple has switched architectures multiple times because things hit a wall. Assuming that Apple will always be the leader because they've had a good ten year run is no different than the people who said Intel could never be beaten or Microsoft would control the computing world forever. I'm sure they found plenty of pointless graphs to post too.

 

[Malus120]

PowerPC was IBM and Motorola designing the chips, the difference now is that Apple is designing the chips and merely using a foundry like TSMC to produce them. Aka, they are free to use Intel foundries once they are competitive in 2026?

Now it is a design race.. X86 vs ARM. AMD and Intel brought out the copiers to mimic Apple silicon overall design, but they still are lugging around X86 legacy crap.

However, 2023 will be apple dominating with 3NM chips. That hopefully run Ray Tracing cores or something equivalent(Ai) Apple has bought ALL the capacity at TSMC 3NM production for 2023.

Having lived through both, I understand the difference between the PowerPC era and now (the Apple Silicon era).

But for the point I was trying to make it doesn't matter who is designing the chips. The point was that when your on a different arch, with different design priorities than your competition (both of whom exclusively make CPUs) you can easily find yourself on the back foot.

As for all of x86's "legacy crap," I'm not saying you're wrong per se, but many an architecture that touted itself as a leaner and more efficient alternative is either no longer around today or relegated to small niches . Heck those were basically the talking points in favor of PowerPC back in the day!
While ARM in general, and Apple Silicon at the high end, have already done more to disrupt x86's dominance than most other architectures ever did, I think it would be a mistake for anyone to underestimate what can be achieved with "crusty" "old" x86.

For the record though, I hope you're right that Apple will come roaring back with some amazing Apple Silicon Macs in 2023.

Exactly. First they were almost twice as fast. Then only by a small margin. Then they had to add a second processor to stay competitive... then had to dump the platform.

“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.”

I certainly hope Apple Silicon doesn't fall down this path and continues to do well but I can already see some worrying signs. An over reliance on process node reductions and being on a more advanced node than the competition, throwing transistors at the problem, being tied to a mobile first design paradigm, the Mac SOCs always being based on a 1-2 generation old iPhone SOCs, etc...

 

[Gudi]

The PC market is hardly a "tiny niche." Comments like that undermine your credibility.

What's the size of the smartphone market? 400-500 billion dollars per year.

I was referring to overall R&D spending, not manufacturing. No argument that Apple and TSMC have spent a lot of money building factories.

What do you think are the main costs in building a chip factory? Concrete mixers or research and development.

I'm so tired of the stupid "they make the most profits" fanboy argument. What does that have to do with anything? Despite them "making the most profits", there are plenty of other companies out there developing and selling tech, doing tons of R&D, etc., and they seem to be doing okay.

No, there are not. Every advanced enough technology becomes a monopoly. There's only one company that builds all EUV lithography machines and another one that buys most of them and builds >80% of all chips smaller than 7nm. There are no words to describe the insignificance of those also-rans waiting to be sherlocked. The most-efficient laptop cpu is merely a waste product of iPhone chipmaking. Just like that Apple took the lead in the PC market. And the burning fire behind this success is the giant and still growing smartphone market which Apple has cornered and created.

Your argument is just hyperbolic fanboy nonsense. Like I said, look at the history of the tech industry and chip architectures. Apple has switched architectures multiple times because things hit a wall.

You still don't understand how many more smartphones are sold each year than PCs. There will be huge architecture shifts in the future, but all driven by the needs of smartphones.

Assuming that Apple will always be the leader because they've had a good ten year run is no different than the people who said Intel could never be beaten or Microsoft would control the computing world forever. I'm sure they found plenty of pointless graphs to post too.

Nobody said always. But it won't be companies stuck on building PC chips that will challenge Apple in the future. The most likely outcome for Intel is bankruptcy. Their R&D investment in x86 technology is useless in the ARM era and their factories couldn't keep up with ASML and TSMC powered by Apple tax. Intel has to find a new niche in which it can contribute something of value. The PC market will linger on for quite some time, just like horse and carriage existed next to the first cars. But it will be gone!

 

[Abazigal]

But it is. History is littered with examples. In fact, no chip architecture has maintained its lead forever. Do you really think Apple invests more into chip design than Intel or AMD? I doubt it. Apple has a nice lead now. Nothing guarantees that lead will last the next five years, much less forever.

Apple has the advantage of needing to design chips only for their unique use cases. In this case, they are able to prioritise battery life, sustained performance when not plugged in to an external power source, and better thermals.

This also means that Apple is willing to cede certain markets, like Intel’s emphasis on absolute performance, because Apple has no products designed to work under such conditions.

I feel it’s this combination of design, hardware, OS, software, and ecosystem integration that give Macs their unique advantage. As such, I don’t feel it is very meaningful to say “oh, this alternative beats the Mac in one area under very specific situations, therefore Apple is doomed”.

 

[M3gatron]

Being old enough to remember the G4 fiasco..... I have two thoughts here.
1) AMD is simply playing catch up, which is great. Q1 2023 to finally make a comparison to a Q4 2020 chip. Better late than never.
2) AMD leapfrogs Apple's CURRENT attempts and we watch for 18 months as the G4 M2/M3 is stuck.

NO, they are announcing their new chip and comparing it with what's currently available on the market and they are able to test. SIMPLE, LOGICAL, REASONABLE.
Also the Ryzen 9 7940HS is only the mid-range 8 core APU, the top of the line APUs will have 12 cores and 16 cores.

It's funny but ignoring totally predictable emotional responses on this thread and pointless jokes I was absolutely certain that one of the main attack points(because everybody that compares it's product with an Apple product it's a clear enemy on this site even if AMD has been one of Apple's best hardware partners) would be the fact that AMD are comparing their new CPU to the years old M1. Fun fact Zen 4's design was finished in 2020 and Zen 4 was meant to be released in 2021 but wasn't mainly because of the chip shortage. The M1 Pro is not a Q4 2020 chip, you can add a 1 at the end to actually be accurate.

Now to more constructive remarks, AMD's Zen 4 laptop chips were always going to be a huge jump in performance and efficiency mainly because of the move the TSMC's superior manufacturing node. This is where most of apple's superior efficiency comes from and logically the effect is similar on other CPU architectures, SD 8 Gen 2's CPU also has a big efficiency improvement vs previous generation.
Now why did AMD compare their APU for the first time with Apple's M Silicone? Very easy, because they feel really confident about the efficiency of their new chip and want to capitalize on that. It's obvious that because of such comparisons reviewers will pay extra attention to R9's 7940HS power consumption. If efficiency wasn't great AMD would have just compared themselves to Intel and show a performance lead and a huge efficiency lead.
Ultimately Windows laptops with AMD CPUs will see a huge improvement in efficiency in 2023.

 

[M3gatron]

Nobody said always. But it won't be companies stuck on building PC chips that will challenge Apple in the future. The most likely outcome for Intel is bankruptcy. Their R&D investment in x86 technology is useless in the ARM era and their factories couldn't keep up with ASML and TSMC powered by Apple tax. Intel has to find a new niche in which it can contribute something of value. The PC market will linger on for quite some time, just like horse and carriage existed next to the first cars. But it will be gone!

Such a prediction is laughable.
Intel is US's biggest chip manufacturer, the probability that it will go bankrupt is very very small. AMD made big mistakes and had a lot of years of terrible financial results plus a big debt and unfavorable obligations to Global Foundries and didn't go bankrupt and right now are actually doing better than ever. Intel isn't anywhere close to a similar situation.
And the PC market will be gone? LOL 🤣

 

[M3gatron]

You do realise, it's a comparison between not the most powerful Apple chip, which is over a year old, on Cinebench, which is optimised for x86 cores, not ARM?

Is also optimized for ARM

New Cinebench Version R23 Supports Apple's New M1 Chips

The benchmark also focuses on heat soaking your CPU cooler

www.tomshardware.com

But I get it, when M1 was putting a good show in Cinebench it was a great benchmarks, when it's losing to other chips suddenly Cinebench is not good anymore.

 

[SactoGuy18]

The new AMD CPU's may be fast, but you know it's going to operate way hotter than Apple's SoC's and likely consume a lot of battery life per charge.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

How is Apple anti-competitive in the chip manufacturing space? All the big companies are *reducing* their 3nm orders…

For some folks, Apple merely existing is anti-competitive because, if Apple didn’t exist, then folks would buy something else! Apple existing is causing folks to buy their products and THAT’S UNFAIR!

 

[M3gatron]

Competition is good. Always.

However, Apple is still winning.

This is not even out yet, and it’s fighting against the end of Apples year+ chip.

That combined with 3nm, Apple is definitely winning overall right now.

Is the M2 Pro already available or at least announced? Ca you provide some links?
And you think AMD won't move to 3nm? Zen 5 is supposed to be a big architectural change + 3nm. Do you think that will result in weak CPUs?

 

[M3gatron]

The new AMD CPU's may be fast, but you know it's going to operate way hotter than Apple's SoC's and likely consume a lot of battery life per charge.

No they won't run "way" hotter(the max temp is 100c just like on the M1/M2) and won't consume way more battery per charge. The use of TSMC 4nm pretty much guarantees that.

 

[macfacts]

Great! It still runs windows tho... 🤣

And 0 apple tax, can probably run Linux too.

 

[0924487]

If anything, it looks like Apple Silicon has really increased competition between the chipmakers. This is a great thing, something that was badly needed a decade ago.


If the M2 max comes out and outperforms AMD’s Laptop chip, then I would consider that the competition has caught up to Apple sooner than we thought they would.

If the new M2 max comes out and it lags behind AMD‘s laptop chip, that’s pretty bad for Apple, in my opinion.

It's quite clear, Apple faced major brain drain in their silicon division, and the impact is starting to show since last Fall.

 

[Kottu]

What the hell were they doing all these years? Giving us underpowered chips? All of a sudden both AMD and Intel releases powerful yet energy efficient chips.

 

[geartau]

and doesn’t allow Apple to sit around and make idle improvements.

you mean how they're still increasing performance and efficiency on the A chips despite android devices still playing catch up on old A chips?

yeah ok. talk about getting that non-sense outta here

 

[aibloop]

Having lived through both, I understand the difference between the PowerPC era and now (the Apple Silicon era).

But for the point I was trying to make it doesn't matter who is designing the chips. The point was that when your on a different arch, with different design priorities than your competition (both of whom exclusively make CPUs) you can easily find yourself on the back foot.

As for all of x86's "legacy crap," I'm not saying you're wrong per se, but many an architecture that touted itself as a leaner and more efficient alternative is either no longer around today or relegated to small niches . Heck those were basically the talking points in favor of PowerPC back in the day!
While ARM in general, and Apple Silicon at the high end, have already done more to disrupt x86's dominance than most other architectures ever did, I think it would be a mistake for anyone to underestimate what can be achieved with "crusty" "old" x86.

For the record though, I hope you're right that Apple will come roaring back with some amazing Apple Silicon Macs in 2023.


“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.”

I certainly hope Apple Silicon doesn't fall down this path and continues to do well but I can already see some worrying signs. An over reliance on process node reductions and being on a more advanced node than the competition, throwing transistors at the problem, being tied to a mobile first design paradigm, the Mac SOCs always being based on a 1-2 generation old iPhone SOCs, etc...

Don’t worry about Apple, they got trillions in the bank and a 3 year lead on AMD and Intel.

What may have happened is that the recent global instability has caused political pressure on apple to not lean into Intels core business too hard. But alas that ship has sailed…

But all those architectures competed for the same PC market, which is now nothing but a tiny niche in the margins of the giant smartphone chip market.

Well, of course they do! TSMC became the largest chip maker with over >50% global market share, because their biggest customer, Apple (buying up 25% of the whole production) pushed them to build more and more factories with ever smaller process nodes. That's where the iPhone performance comes from. AMD is only able to order 4nm chips from TSMC, because the A16 Bionic paid for the factory.

I'll give you a sound 25 year guarantee with an 80% chance on 50+ years and longer. There's only one company (other than Apple) left that makes any profits in the smartphone market. Which means there is already an Apple monopoly on computing. They may not make the most phones, but they make all the profit in by far the largest electronics market in history. And whoever wants to take the chip crown has to compete without money in the most money driven high-tech industry known to mankind.

View attachment 2137598

Woof…

Yep, that IS the situation, however I do believe that the recent disturbance in the geopolitical situation throws a slight wrench in the gears of what would be ordinary commercial competition.

If you look at foundries being built. Intel is making a fairly big bid. And they will receive the 1st new sub 2nm/Angstrom era UV litography machine. Ofcourse likely TSMC will receive the 2nd and so on. However the fact that China is off the list for receiving tech from the Dutch company that makes the UV litography machines, there seems to be sown some doubt if they get that tech into Taiwan. But ofcourse they are also building foundries in the US and will likely then do sub 2nm in the US foundries.

You could be right. Intel might have an unreasonable climb since they skipped the smartphone era. I am guessing Intels very public bid for Apple to build at their foundries is aimed at the period when TSMC does not have the 12 angstrom UV litography tech…

 

[CarlJ]

"Our new top-of-the-line laptop chip is a bit faster than Apple's mid-line laptop chip, released 14½ months ago", carefully not mentioning Apple's top-of-the-line laptop chip - the M1 Max, also released 14½ months ago - and not mentioning that a M2 Pro/Max will likely be along soon.

Competition is good, but in absolute terms, they don't have much to trumpet here.

 

[evertjr]

Highly doubt these claims. There are two separated claims that are hardly related.

If it can be faster it's using more energy, there's no doubt, no way a x86 chip will ever be more efficient than an ARM, specially compared to Apple state of art design. There's no magic here.

To reach 30 hour battery its likely running a huge ass laptop with nothing running. Windows energy management is just pathetic, not even Linus trust microsoft with laptops anymore.

I'm fairly certain M1 still smokes whatever AMD is releasing under the same thermal envelope.

 

[gund1234]

wake me up when i see 8 hours battery life in real life on any laptop other than MBP or MacBook air.

 

[gund1234]

Neither Apple or AMD make chips

Apple doesn't make iPhone either.
Apple & AMD design chips, TSMC/Samsung manufactures chips for them.

 

[neilpmas]

Apple doesn't make iPhone either.
Apple & AMD design chips, TSMC/Samsung manufactures chips for them.

True - but when the whole article is based on comparing a chip based on TSMC 5mm to a chip designed on TSMC 4mm and TSMC are doing 100billion on chip fabrication research in the next 5 years I think it needs pointing out.

 

[bmustaf]

Love the competition. AAPL needs as much of it as it can get.

That being said, as bad as macos is getting quality wise, I don’t care how fast and efficient this chip or any x86 stuff is: because why, it’ll crash and burn or make me pull my hair out faster?

Linux desktop is looking better and better as macos goes to hell but not quite there yet imo.

 

[v0lume4]

AMD’s mobile processors have been killer for a while now. Everyone always talks about Intel but for some reason sleeps on AMD. Lest we not forget that AMD has also been on TSMC’s nodes for years, like Apple (Intel has their own foundry which is still lagging behind).

This is awesome news for the market for those who want Windows machines. This is also great for folks who don’t want to pay Apple’s absurd prices. I don’t know if these ship with AMD’s new mobile GPU’s onboard as well? If so, machines running these CPU’s will be little gaming powerhouses as well. Right up my alley!

Folks here pondered how long Apple would stay ahead. It took about a year to year and a half for competitor performance to catch up. Now we’re seeing the power efficiency catch up too. If Apple only has node shrinkages to rely on from here on out, then it’s going to be really interesting to see if they’re able to stay competitive.

 

[bmustaf]

Also, it was announced during a presentation driven by a 14” MBP with an M1 chip in it. Almost as good as those Samsung tweets trolling AAPL send from “Twitter for iPhone”.

Come on, I love the idea of giving AAPL come competition, but these guys can’t help but trip over themselves.

Apple’s 14-Inch MacBook Pro Was Used For AMD’s CES Keynote, The Same Presentation That Undermined The M1 Pro's Performance

AMD was caught using Apple’s 14-inch MacBook Pro during CES 2023 to show a presentation while mocking the M1 Pro

wccftech.com

 

[v0lume4]

Great! It still runs windows tho... 🤣

You say this as if it were a negative.