Apple called the 1Ghz G4 “practically a supercomputer” and posted unitless graphs (just lines on a screen) when introducing the M1… so it’s par for the course for the valley?
While I agree with spins, I don’t agree with overall judgement.
M1 chips were a boom for Apple from day 1 even almost all 3rd party software was not optimized.
So this can significantly ramp up the experience of PC laptops. Of course it is very unlikely to push them above Macs, but the race may be more interesting.
M1 didnt even increase Apple’s market share. Also Mac buyers and developers were forced to embrace M1, because there would no longer be x86 Mac products. That’s not the case with Windows, where 99% of the laptops sold will still be x86 in 2024, and while that number might decrease a bit going forward, the vast majority of Windows devices sold and owned will still be x86.
Apple has Rosetta 2, which translated x86 apps on install into ones that function extremely well on ARM. Usually much faster on the base M1 than natively on the previous most powerful i9 Intel Mac.
Windows has nothing like that, and resorts to emulation, which is much slower. Qualcomm chips would have to be MUCH faster than Apple silicon just to match them.
QC is hoping to beat the mid level M2 in one metric right around the time the M4 series is released.
Rosetta only analyzes startup sequence and caches that translation so that it doesn’t have to be computed every time. Everything else is even technically impossible and is a simple emulation.
One thing to note is that M1 chips have few tricks to provide faster emulation. But Qualcomm can do the same.
The most egregious claim was Qualcomm boasting that it was the first ARM based CPU to hit 4 GHz when it wasn’t anywhere near shipping
He’s right that Windows’ ARM story is still a mess in the absence of anything remotely resembling Rosetta 2. I am looking forward to Qualcomm laptops running Linux, however.
As for dismissing Qualcomm’s performance claims, the big difference is Qualcomm bought Nuvia, which was started by Gerard Williams, the brains behind Apple Silicon, and indeed Apple’s progress since Williams left has been lackluster and mostly due to process improvements, so Gruber is being both churlish and complacent there.
Arm windows literally runs x&6/x64 code just like rosetta2 does.
I think ARM64 can only run x64 apps not x86.
He’s right that Windows’ ARM story is still a mess in the absence of anything remotely resembling Rosetta 2. I am looking forward to Qualcomm laptops running Linux, however.
It can emulate x86 & x86_64 software just fine.
Another day, another braindead take from Gruber. Is his entire blog just screeching about Apple’s competitors? It’s embarrassing.
No, he also likes the Yankees
What is wrong about what he said? It’s brain dead just because it is, without any rationale whatsoever?
Marketing is… marketing.
Well that’s a lot of seething and also some straight out incorrect/outdated info. If X Elite benchmarks are true, it is already with 90% of M3 single core and equal to M3 Pro in multi-core at 23W.
Sure it’s a new platform and it’s adoption will be slower compared to Apple, but as a starter they got all major OEMs coming up with laptops using this Chip, earlier it was just 2-3 companies.
And their claim that Snapdragon chips are “years” behind is just ignorance at this point.
The M3 Pro chip was sandbagged… it has less (but better) cores than the M2 Pro, as they pulled it back to being more mid-range in the tiers than before. It used to have the same CPU as the Max, but now the max is substantially more powerful than the Pro as it pulled far ahead this generation.
And the QC chips will be releasing around the time the M4 series is released.
Microsoft hasn’t given up on ARM, windows for ARM is ticking over in the background ad I believe got some big updates this year.
It will take 5y minimum to be a considerable choice for the majority of f existing windows users imo
Still milking the access journalism gravy train, I see. Speaking strictly of his schtick, and not calling him a journalist.
Apple is the type of company to design chips to work best for their customers’ actual use cases. Qualcomm is the type of company to design chips to look best in a benchmark but suck for day to day use.
Great takedown.
Apple did the same thing with the M2 Chip, compared their performance to “the latest Intel Macs” 3 years after releasing the last Intel Mac. It’s all a stupid game