Michael S (already5chosen.delete@this.yahoo.com) on August 16, 2014 2:54 pm wrote:
> Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on August 16, 2014 2:24 pm wrote:
> >
> > I stated in a previous post that David and I maybe ultimately agreed that the x86 tax was worth
> > about two development years, and that continues to me to seem like a good way to view it.
> > Does this mean two extra years to create an equivalent performing CPU, or that, *with the same sized team
> > and same process*, an ARM or POWER device would lead an x86 device by about two years? I'd say, from the
> > very limited evidence we have, both interpretations are reasonable. IF, for example (we'll see soon enough)
> > an Apple A8 performs generally at the level of a Broadwell-Y
> > (a flexible metric --- there's absolute single-threaded
> > performance, multi-threaded performance, AVX-assisted FLOPS, performance/watt, GPU performance, dynamic
> > range of performance etc --- but let's ignore the details for now) one could reasonably argue that the
> > x86 complexity tax is the equivalent of about two years in process improvement.
>
> That's also flexible metric because there will be several Broadwell-Y devices - from i7 to i3.
> i7 does not really look touchable in any absolute (not per-watt)
> CPU-related metric, but especially in single-thread.
> Well, not just Broadwell, Haswell-Y is almost certainly untouchable as well.
>
> http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/712255?baseline=603360
>
> Anyway, comparison of Apple A8 vs Brodwell-Y is not exactly the most illuminating, because
> designs targets differ quite significantly. Broadwell-Y is still Broadwell, which still supposed
> to collect majority of its revenue in 15-80 W space rather than in 8-11 W space. Also the
> fact that Broadwell is not much more than a shrink of Haswell can't be ignored.

Actually there will be NO i3, i5, i7 Broadwell Y's. Broadwell Y lives in a new category called Core M, which occupies a different advertising space from i3, i5, i7.
Don't you love Intel marketing?

You seem to be defensive about how this competition will turn out, but I'm not trying to skew anything. I'm genuinely curious. I can make predictions about some things but others (for example GPU) are honestly anyone's guess.
I was using Broadwell Y because of my larger point of a two year advantage, and that way we get two CPUs released fairly close in time.

I'm happy if you'd rather run the comparison with A8 against the current Atom, but that will doubtless lead to complaints of being unfair because Atom was released six months ago or whatever. Intel hasn't yet told us when it will release Atoms on its 14nm line (yes, the same 14 nm line that is performing healthily, that has a huge fab in Arizona dedicated to it, and that is currently creating CPUs that ship in extremely few products. Make of that what you will...)
For all we know 14nm Atom won't be out for six months (same time as the dual cores) or 11 months (same as the quad cores) or even later (if the process, in spite of Intel's claims, has lousy yields or is difficult to port to; and money-losing Atom doesn't get to see it until after all the rich kids go first), so it could be a long wait if we want to compare that with A8.