At the spring conference two days ago, Apple released the M1 Ultra processor, which is the fourth product of Apple’s self-developed M1 processor. It is equivalent to the previous two M1 Max. Both the CPU and the GPU are quite powerful. Comparable to top PC processors in the benchmark test.
Although many people do not believe it, the performance of the M1 Ultra has indeed made the three PC chip giants AMD, Intel and NVIDIA feel the crisis. Although the single-core performance is about 20% worse than the Core i9-12900K, the multi-core is comparable to the Ryzen TR 3990X processor.
On the GPU side,Compared with the highest-end discrete GPU, the M1 Ultra consumes 200W less power with the same performance, and only 1/3 of the power consumption of the popular discrete GPU, and this highest-end discrete GPU refers to the RTX 3090.
Of course, some of these performances are paper data published by Apple, and some are third-party tests, which are relatively simple. For example, the game performance cannot actually reach the RTX 3090 level, and there is a lack of advanced technologies such as light tracking.
At the same time, don’t forget that Apple’s self-developed chips still have some imperfections. For example, the frequency of the CPU core 3.2GHz is much lower than that of the Core i9’s 5GHz+, multi-core does not support hyper-threading, and the GPU still lacks light tracking and many game manufacturers. Optimization.
Although there are still some gaps, no one dares to underestimate the potential of Apple,The architecture of the M1 series has been used for two or three years, and there will be a new M2 processor at the end of this year at the earliest. At that time, the performance of the CPU and GPU will be upgraded again.
Apple’s rapid progress in self-developed ARM processors has also made some PC players feel a crisis, and even jealous – there is a post on reddit in the past two days that has been discussed very enthusiastically.One netizen said that he is very jealous of the current relationship between Apple and ARM. On the one hand, Apple’s M1 Ultra processor is exciting, and on the other hand, the overall stagnation of Intel and other companies has put Apple ahead.
This netizen’s opinion is very interesting and representative. The chips of the PC giants are also being upgraded every year, but obviously there is no such improvement as Apple, let alone AMD/NVIDIA/Intel, and there is no manufacturer in the Android camp that can follow suit. Competing with Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung’s ARM processors either use the public version of the architecture, or they are getting worse and worse, even if they use AMD’s RDNA2 architecture authorization, it will not help.
There is a Chinese company that is willing to spend money to build its own CPU, GPU and software ecosystem. However, due to well-known reasons, they are temporarily unable to launch self-developed processors.
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