Article says "Apple officials literally claimed that the new MacBook Air using Apple’s custom M1 chip is faster than 98 percent of all PC laptops sold THIS year." (emphasis mine) The event video says LAST year: [this video] "I can tell you that I am 98 percent sure that any of the above laptops listed will wreck the MacBook Air doing any of the tasks I just named." ... those laptops listed got reviewed 2020 so I think they're 2020 models.
Primary source for Apple's performance claim wording
Here's the initial announcement video with a timestamp where they called it the "worlds fastest CPU core". They've very quickly stopped using that as the tagline, but it was part of their initial marketing push. [this video]
[this video] "Worlds fastest CPU core" Of course it's more reasonable to compare it with other low power CPUs in laptops, and not desktop CPUs with 5x the TDP that cost as much as the mac mini before you even buy the rest of the PC, I agree with you on that - I'm just pointing out that people are making these comparisons because Apple themselves did it first.
> He's not wrong though. I own an M1 Macbook Air, and while there are some workloads that it can outperform my desktop at My point is that this isn't even an interesting conversation to have. Your desktop can outperform a chip that runs an iPad? Cool story bro. > they were forced to revoke their claim of having the "fastest CPU cores" after it was vehemently disproven. Their announcement explicitly said "when it comes to low power silicon." So many of you insisted on missing this part it's practically a meme now. Watch the accouncement video here: [this video] and scrub to 8:45 and actually listen to what is said. > laptops with dedicated graphics Why should they be forced to compare their integrated graphics to laptops with dedicated graphics? This is yet another uninteresting comparison. Of course a machine with some dedicated mobile 3080 is going to win the day in a head to head. But it's an absurd comparison because said machine will draw vastly more power and be heavier to boot. It's a different category of machine at that point. > I seriously worry for Apple if this is all they were able to get out of the 5nm node on ARM I think you're the only one who's worried. Apple very clearly laid out their design goals with the M1: supremacy at performance per watt. And the fanboys protested with "I can build a faster desktop" or "my 4.5 lb laptop with dedicated graphics can get more FPS." It's just baffling. You've missed the whole point.
Primary source showing claim was about low power silicon
> That’s what Apple explicitly says. Why they don’t match with measurements is another matter… (and no, it’s not a typo) Ridiculous. You're just making things up. It clearly doesn't have a 160kB 6-way L1 dcache. Nor are the small cores 64kB 6-way -- those don't even divide that's ridiculous. Why do you say it's not a typo? They "explicitly" say it is 160kB in that backwater code comment. They also explicitly say it's 128kB in this presentation [this video] so what makes your source the authoritative one?? Pretty obviously it's a quick cut and paste job with a typo (two in one line actually) in it. > ECC? Needs hugepages? Or hardware erratum? I don’t know for sure. ECC? Erratum? Come on. It's clearly because it's 128kB.
But are you not implying it with original statement? Apple has publicly stated during their keynotes (albeit with slides that present minimal information) the efficiency their CPU holds over the aforementioned companies. And that isn't even going into the mobile space where Apple still holds the crown when it comes to performance on synthetic workloads. Revisiting the keynote where the M1 was introduced [1] at 8:48 Apple states that the M1 uses the world's fastest CPU, which ties back into your argument, but then at 9:51 talks about performance per watt. Apple does it again when the M2 was announced [2] at 58:21. This isn't to say your argument isn't a valid one, and I hope I didn't give the impression that it is wrong; the optics has, at least in my perspective, shifted towards preferring power efficiency over raw performance output. What with tech news of x86 CPUs and GPUs from Nvidia and AMD consuming more and more power the M1 and M2 sip power by comparison. No one doubts the performance of Apple devices, it's mainly efficiency by which it does so that has everyone paying attention to it. [1] [this video] [2] [link]
Keynote source for M1 fastest CPU and performance per watt claims
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