New RISC-V based CPU destroys M1 Efficiency with Up To 18x better performance per watt

[TheReal1980]

So where can I buy it?

[whm1974]

2 hours ago, TheReal1980 said:

So where can I buy it?

A RISC-V CPU with board? Well SiFive will be offering one in early 2021. Most likely it will be in limited numbers at a time and sell out as soon as they get them in stock. Note: doesn't have a iGPU so you will need a video card for the mITX board it will be on.

 

 

[jaslion]

On 12/5/2020 at 3:29 AM, WereCatf said:

Misformed? These benchmarks are entirely fricking useless, unless one specifically wants to compare 8bit MCUs with no FPU, MMU, vectorized instructions, DDR RAM or practically any modern features! Sure, advertising the enormous efficiency and high clock-speeds will look good in headlines and will fool people into thinking this is something far better or meaningful than it actually is -- this thread itself contains multiple examples of people not understanding the actual implications -- but...no, just no; Coremark - results are NOT even remotely indicative of desktop-like workload performance.

Fully agree with you here hence why I made an edit to illustrate what I meant a bit more. If they can push theses numbers to desktop level performance then it's nice otherwise it's a souped up microcontroller which can be nice but isn't really needed.

[Blade of Grass]

9 hours ago, cj09beira said:

i see risc-v completely taking over the embedded market which right now is mostly arm, things like low power computers of the arduino, raspberry, teensy, variety  etc will likely move over, mostly due to nvidia and the reduced licensing cost

Lots of embedded systems just use off the shelf components though, which explains why they're largely all ARM. So really, most of those systems will have to wait for available RISC-V components unless they're going to change course and do internally developed chips, which is unlikely. 

[NotTheFirstDaniel]

10 hours ago, cj09beira said:

except apple isn't making any big grounds on that front, the use of arm on servers, and embedded pcs had done most of the heavy lifting

But on the consumer desktop? Before WoA and Apple Silicon, the only use of ARM on desktop were Chromebooks and Windows RT. Computers such as the Raspberry Pi did not take off in the base consumer market because it wasn't marketed to them. They might have furthered Linux on Arm, but the majority of desktop consumers weren't affected by this.

[leadeater]

13 hours ago, NotTheFirstDaniel said:

But on the consumer desktop? Before WoA and Apple Silicon, the only use of ARM on desktop were Chromebooks and Windows RT. Computers such as the Raspberry Pi did not take off in the base consumer market because it wasn't marketed to them. They might have furthered Linux on Arm, but the majority of desktop consumers weren't affected by this.

The work done by the developments on the server market and custom ARM chips very much did help, everyone benefits from technology and design improvements made in silicon and processor technology. It's not just about software, software doesn't come if people do not believe the target hardware is capable and ready.

 

Apple is actually a very risk adverse company, they might try new products but they never do anything on unproven technology and hardware. Apple was never going to transition to ARM for desktop until after ARM for servers showed high performance and hardware capabilities to do what they need to deliver a product that want to.

 

Before high performance ARM server CPUs were developed the only usage was embedded and very low power applications and were completely unsuited to desktop and laptop systems, and servers. Apple was never going to be the company to start what was needed to change this, and they weren't.

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

The work done by the developments on the server market and custom ARM chips very much did help, everyone benefits from technology and design improvements made in silicon and processor technology. It's not just about software, software doesn't come if people do not believe the target hardware is capable and ready.

 

Apple is actually a very risk adverse company, they might try new products but they never do anything on unproven technology and hardware. Apple was never going to transition to ARM for desktop until after ARM for servers showed high performance and hardware capabilities to do what they need to deliver a product that want to.

 

Before high performance ARM server CPUs were developed the only usage was embedded and very low power applications and were completely unsuited to desktop and laptop systems, and servers. Apple was never going to be the company to start what was needed to change this, and they weren't.

I don't think the advancements in the server market has anything to do with Apple moving to ARM. You have to remember that Apple has been making custom ARM chips for longer than high performance ARM cores have been a thing. 

I think their logic and actions makes perfect sense even if you look at them in isolation. 

 

They need a chip for their phone so they pick the most efficient core at the time. An ARM chips. 

Then they started making their own cores because they wanted a higher performing solution (at the time when ARM was only releasing low performing chips). Apple was the first company to release a 64 bit ARM core. 

Then they saw how well their performance stacked up against even desktop processors. Their phone processors were starting to catch up with Intel's desktop parts, and this was around the time Intel started having serious problems. 

Then a couple of more years went, Apple probably experimented with Mac Minis with IPad chips, and then they decided the time was right and pulled the trigger. 

 

You have to remember that Apple have been making their own ARM chips for over 10 years now. 

[leadeater]

57 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Apple was the first company to release a 64 bit ARM core. 

Well they weren't, it just happened by a company nobody here would care about or be nearly as wide scale as Apple in a mobile phone.

 

Quote

In 2011, AppliedMicro became the first company to implement the ARMv8-A architecture with its X-Gene Platform. In November 2012 at ARM TechCon, AppliedMicro demonstrated advanced web search capabilities and the ability to handle big data workloads in an Apache Hadoop software environment with the X-Gene Platform using FPGA emulation. A silicon implementation of X-Gene was first exhibited publicly in June 2013

 

57 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I don't think the advancements in the server market has anything to do with Apple moving to ARM

Apple was already using ARM, they moved to making their own in 2008 while also hiring Jim Keller, and also acquiring the company has was previously employed at P.A. Semi.

 

57 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I don't think the advancements in the server market has anything to do with Apple moving to ARM

Yes they do, many of the companies working on creating these high performance processors were all directly collaborating with ARM to develop the archecture and incorporate in to the standard and designs everything that is/was required to create high performance ARM cores which Apple directly utilized and benefited from. Who releases the first commercial processor on a given architecture does not wipe away all the work from everyone else involved to create that architecture in the first place.

 

And Apples original intention back in 2008 was only to target low power mobile devices.

 

Apple observes and adapts, rarely do they lead, never as far as I know in terms of hardware.

[Kisai]

On 12/7/2020 at 11:33 PM, leadeater said:

 

And Apples original intention back in 2008 was only to target low power mobile devices.

 

Apple observes and adapts, rarely do they lead, never as far as I know in terms of hardware.

 

They tend to lead in adoption of standards, but not always. For example USB, Firewire and the removal of floppy discs were apple. Likewise the removal of optical drives, displayport+thunderbolt, usb-c+thunderbolt are all things that Apple put on their machines first before others did. And arguably Apple fumbled their USB-C+Thunderbolt roll out since they put it on the Macbook air in 2018, while Lenovo, Dell and HP put USB-C+Thunderbolt only on a small fraction of their laptops, and some laptops have the USB but no thunderbolt, and barely beat Apple to it (late 2017 vs late 2018.)

 

Desktops however. No Dell desktop that I'm aware of lets you use usb-c with displayport. Only laptops. If you plug in a USB-C dock into a desktop, things go wonky as the iGPU isn't wired to the USB-c port's.

 

Anyhow. As for Risc-V, or ARM or whatever Apple's decisions are on things. I don't think this will change anything, because ultimately there are no laptop/desktop RISC-V SoC's, and since linux builds for non x86-64 platforms tend to range from "barely working" to "must be compiled yourself" there's still a ways to go before RISC-V ends up in anything not embedded available to consumers.  So comparing it to the M1 is like comparing your home router/modem to your desktop.