Power efficiency is not something that Intel has ever led the industry in, regardless of process node.
Have people forgotten why Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel to begin with?
Even selling mobile SOCs at a loss didn't allow them to break into the handheld mobile device market.
They're not selling at a loss. They're not selling at all. They spent money to develop something nobody wanted. The bulk of the "handheld mobile device market" is low performance low power low cost processors.
Intel showed up with a medium performance medium power medium cost processor, which nobody asked for. It wasn't cheap enough for the low end and it wasn't fast enough for the high end.
They might have actually made money by charging less for it. That's what the low end of the market cares about, and if they were competitive with ARM on price and better on performance, that could have succeeded. But Intel didn't want the ARM vendors' margins, so what they got instead is nothing.
Where the M1 sits is a different market. "Core i7, but with a process advantage instead of a disadvantage, so more power efficient" would win there pretty easily. See also Ryzen.
Have people forgotten why Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel to begin with?
We aren't talking about being more power efficient than IBM's desktop workstation architecture of the 90's. We're talking about having better power efficiency than ARM.
Intel has never been anywhere near that, regardless of process node.
They're not selling at a loss.
Now that they have abandoned their attempt to enter the handheld mobile device market? Sure.
However, to attempt to break into that market, Intel intentionally sold their chips at a very large loss for quite some time.
Intel is subsidizing its chips — practically giving them away to partners — and recording the transactions as "contra revenue." Intel is shipping its mobile processors and offering refunds or rebates to the vendor for using them. If devices with the processors don't sell, Intel gives its partner, say Lenovo or Dell, a refund.
We aren't talking about being more power efficient than IBM's desktop workstation architecture of the 90's.
What we're talking about is the thing that Apple puts in laptops. And there is a reason they switched to Intel and not ARM at the time when they did.
We're talking about having better power efficiency than ARM.
There are two classes of ARM processors you could be talking about.
One is the kind they put in low end Android phones. These have excellent performance per watt because they prioritize efficiency over performance. They are thereby slower.
The other is processors with performance competitive to Intel Core processors. The only ARM processor in this class is Apple's, and it has a process advantage.
However, to attempt to break into that market, Intel intentionally sold their chips at a very large loss for quite some time.
This is confusing two things.
One is how much it costs to manufacture a chip vs. how much you sell it for. The other is the net profit or loss of the business unit, including the R&D cost of developing the microarchitecture.
Intel's problem with Atom isn't the performance per watt, it's the price/performance. It's too slow for how expensive it is. It's not that much faster than much cheaper ARM processors, so nobody wants it for that price. What they were asking was so excessive that even after heavily discounting it, it was still too expensive. The only place it really got used was netbooks running Windows where being x86 was the thing that made it worth the premium. So they never reached the volumes needed to recover the R&D.
To compete with low performance ARM processors in the low end of the market, you have to compete on price. Intel doesn't want to do that, but nothing else will work there, because that market is highly price sensitive.
In the high end mobile market, i.e. workstation-class laptops, Intel had the best performance per watt up until the point that they lost their process advantage. Before then no ARM processors in that market had better efficiency because no ARM processors in that market existed.
Comments
Power efficiency is not something that Intel has ever led the industry in, regardless of process node.
Even selling mobile SOCs at a loss didn't allow them to break into the handheld mobile device market.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186367-intels-mobile-div...
Have people forgotten why Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel to begin with?
They're not selling at a loss. They're not selling at all. They spent money to develop something nobody wanted. The bulk of the "handheld mobile device market" is low performance low power low cost processors.
Intel showed up with a medium performance medium power medium cost processor, which nobody asked for. It wasn't cheap enough for the low end and it wasn't fast enough for the high end.
They might have actually made money by charging less for it. That's what the low end of the market cares about, and if they were competitive with ARM on price and better on performance, that could have succeeded. But Intel didn't want the ARM vendors' margins, so what they got instead is nothing.
Where the M1 sits is a different market. "Core i7, but with a process advantage instead of a disadvantage, so more power efficient" would win there pretty easily. See also Ryzen.
We aren't talking about being more power efficient than IBM's desktop workstation architecture of the 90's. We're talking about having better power efficiency than ARM.
Intel has never been anywhere near that, regardless of process node.
Now that they have abandoned their attempt to enter the handheld mobile device market? Sure.
However, to attempt to break into that market, Intel intentionally sold their chips at a very large loss for quite some time.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-to-hit-40-million-mobile...
What we're talking about is the thing that Apple puts in laptops. And there is a reason they switched to Intel and not ARM at the time when they did.
There are two classes of ARM processors you could be talking about.
One is the kind they put in low end Android phones. These have excellent performance per watt because they prioritize efficiency over performance. They are thereby slower.
The other is processors with performance competitive to Intel Core processors. The only ARM processor in this class is Apple's, and it has a process advantage.
This is confusing two things.
One is how much it costs to manufacture a chip vs. how much you sell it for. The other is the net profit or loss of the business unit, including the R&D cost of developing the microarchitecture.
Intel's problem with Atom isn't the performance per watt, it's the price/performance. It's too slow for how expensive it is. It's not that much faster than much cheaper ARM processors, so nobody wants it for that price. What they were asking was so excessive that even after heavily discounting it, it was still too expensive. The only place it really got used was netbooks running Windows where being x86 was the thing that made it worth the premium. So they never reached the volumes needed to recover the R&D.
To compete with low performance ARM processors in the low end of the market, you have to compete on price. Intel doesn't want to do that, but nothing else will work there, because that market is highly price sensitive.
In the high end mobile market, i.e. workstation-class laptops, Intel had the best performance per watt up until the point that they lost their process advantage. Before then no ARM processors in that market had better efficiency because no ARM processors in that market existed.