• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    That depends on what you mean, but here are a few reasonable explanations:

    • Intel’s chips are still on their Intel 7 process (similar to TSMC’s 7nm process), whereas AMD is using TSMC’s 4nm process, so AMD’s CPUs are 2 nodes ahead; smaller process generally means more transistors in the same area, as well as lower power usage per clock
    • AMD’s chiplet architecture makes it easier for them to move the CPU bits to a smaller arch, and the IO bits can stay on a cheaper arch (e.g. AMD uses 4nm for the cores, 6nm for the IO die); this increases yields and dramatically reduces costs, so AMD can invest more in architectural improvements
    • ARM prioritizes battery life over performance, so performance per watt won’t be great at the high end, but it’ll probably win at the low end; they also don’t make their own chips (just designs), so comparing process nodes is meaningless
    • AMD focuses on different aspects of computing than either Intel or ARM, so perhaps they’ve just done a better job optimizing for what you care about

    Anyway, that’s my take.

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      And for AMD’s 3D v-cache chips, there’s an enormous energy benefit, as taking stuff from the (much larger) cache is far more energy efficient than constantly going back and forwards to RAM.

    • sauce@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      Correction, meteor lake’s (Intel 14th gen) CPU tile is on the Intel 4 process (though admittedly that’s a 7nm euv process). And they’ve also moved to a chiplet design. (CPU, GPU and IO are on 3 different processes)