Eric Bron (eric.bron.delete@this.zvisuel.privatefortest.com) on February 4, 2015 3:42 am wrote:
> > Go to this page:
> >
> > http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a72-processor.php
> >
> > and click on the performance tab. 3.5/1.9 ~= 1.84.
> >
> > And don't forget to note the title "Increase in sustained performance in smartphone power budget.
> >
> > That makes it hard to even guess how much IPC increase there is, or what top performance
> > is compared to unconstrained A15/A57.
>
> indeed, and thank you for the link
>
> btw reasonable people seem to dismiss insane IPC gains:
>
> http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37140914&postcount=20
>
> https://twitter.com/TheKanter/status/562788528137187329
>

At the risk of offending people from ARM...I find that ARM's marketing to be absolutely ridiculous and deceptive. Comparing IP blocks at different process nodes is just bullshit designed to obfuscate the value that the microarchitecture is adding. That is just as terrible as when Intel tries to talk about advances in server performance by comparing against Nehalem-EP.

While a comparison against an old core on a old process MIGHT be indicative of what users MAY experience, it simply isn't even remotely apples-to-apples. Moreover, USERS DON'T BUY FROM ARM. It's just rubbish.

At least Nvidia's marketing does proper generation to generation comparisons.

ARM has plenty of smart architects, and frankly the marketing group does a disservice to them by not talking openly and honestly about the value they are adding for customers. Intel will honestly tell you that improving IPC by 5% is hard - and that's the truth for their design point. ARM has much lower performance cores that have way more low hanging fruit, so 10-15% should be feasible. It's better to be honest than try and dress up someone elses technical innovations (e.g., TSMC's FinFETs) as your own magnificence.

Put another way, I can travel from point A to point B at roughly 120mph. Does that mean I am an amazing speedy person? No, it means I have a Honda Civic and can find the highway...

David