Well half “made by Apple” and half “made by TSMC.” I can already tell you that if Apple were making their chips on Intel’s fabs, they would not be quite as efficient and I’m being generous to Intel. You have to have good logic and good manufacturing and then you have to get both to mesh well since you have to design around the manufacturing. Besides having a good design, TSMC is also a huge reason why AMD is beating Intel at power efficient x86 chipmaking. Else, terrible manufacturing process, terrible power efficiency.
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I learn from the best here. 
You guys are set on killing all my dreams, eh?
Fine, fine. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that tablet PC are going to be same old with incremental improvements for the next X years.
What I don’t understand why MS would be content ceding the next-gen tablet space. iPad Pros are essentially unchallenged for mobile productivity, so-much-so that even Apple fans shun the MBA/low-end MBP and just wish Apple would release pro apps for iPadOS.
The SPX represented the last glimmer of hope that Windows tablet PCs would would rise from the ashes of legacy x86, and usher in a new era of Windows productivity in mobile.
OEMs look to MS to ‘prove’ a market with a halo device. When MS succeeded with the original SP, they followed. But that interest in 2-in-1s has been flagging for years now, with convertibles crowding out the niche.
Now when MS kills the SPX, it’s essentially signalling to OEMs, “it’s not worth it, don’t even try creating an IPP competitor”. Just swap in ARM into your old designs and call it a day.
This is really ok? Excuse me, I need to go drown my sorrows…
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Ah, there’s the rub. I’m not sure the Windows road map is as locked down as the iOS/Mac road map - hence the OEM behavior.
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No, you make total sense, even too much sense. And though it makes sense, you would have to live in a corporate world for just a few years to understand the incompetence running these companies. Microsoft could have switched to AMD two generations ago (beginning with Renoir, or Ryzen 4000 series) and gotten longer battery life and higher performance but opted to go with Intel’s inferior process technology. And now instead of going further with AMD who has the trump called TSMC, they are totally casting that aside. About the only companies making sense and seeing the benefits of AMD are the handheld gaming PC makers, with Valve being the title bearer of that niche. So maybe we should beg Valve to make the Steam Deck 2 penabled with a Wacom EMR digitizer? Microsoft certainly is making dopey moves with x86. Or here is a conspiracy theory for ya: They may be using Intel to drive a narrative. If they show x86 at its worst efficiency wise, then they can make a compelling case for going exclusively ARM if and when NUVIA’s M series killer breaks cover. Then again, I am probably giving them too much credit. They probably got some tantalizing discounts from Intel (who recall has lost all their business with Apple) in exchange for x86 exclusivity on their entire Surface line. They lusted that instant money rather than taking the long view on future profits and customer retention.
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I think the profit preservation is with MS OEMs corporate sales. A lot of corporate shops complained about the AMD processors.
Interesting. Anecdotally, at least, I have daily access to several systems including AMD-based thin clients, NUCs, HTPCs, and desktops in addition to Intel-based Surfaces and NUCs. My firmware and driver issues have been overwhelmingly with the Intel ones including the Surface I am writing from. About the only reason (and understandably, it can be a huge one depending on the sys admin you’re talking to since it is often used in deployment and management) I could see Intel winning over AMD in the corporate world is Intel’s vPro.
The thing is, Surface devices are MS specialty exclusive inside US border and maybe several EU countries. You hardly see any surface here in Asia or other parts of the world, so the user base affected by their chip usage is not nearly as much as, for example iPad. Surface devices are harly a representation of Windows devices outside the US. Here to buy an iPad, they are available
in any stores, big or small, used or new. Surface required pre order and hefty import fee.
Just mentioning: A few years agos my boss got a Surface Pro from company for work. This year he got an iPad Pro instead. Surface devices seem to had lost all its hype on this side of the world.
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Yeah but otoh eg Asus made an awesome gaming tablet so its not all doom and gloom. HP and Asus also make some smaller business tablets. You also still see chinese brands making all kinds of Windows tablets (they have celeron/pentium procs but even those are okay now).
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As much of a conspiracy fan as I am, this one can’t be true give the ENORMOUS installed x86 base - it would be like trying to convert the entire fleet of vehicles in the US to electricity at one time…
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Well, people said the same of Apple initially with their M series. If NUVIA delivers and really delivers on the performance while WOA continues to implement emulation tricks like the one @Desertlap mentioned recently of using the neural engine, then why continue on x86 if ARM can run the same programs anyway with longer battery life? Or at least, why not make x86 the sidekick instead of the star player if it’s no longer the preferred option of the two?
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They kinda did that with the Pro. I guess we’re going to see how it all shakes out between x86 and ARM. Of couse, the dice are loaded or the deck is stacked (pick your favorite gambling metaphore) with the addition of 5G on the ARM version of the Pro.
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Only, we seem to be seeing that there is no magic there behind the Apple Silicon as M2 has so far shown few improvements over M1.
It’s almost like they got much of their performance improvements from low-hanging fruit and making choices that others had decided not to pursue (whether that be due to inability or unwillingness).
I think that is a bit harsh. The entire integrated chip that is M1 is far more advanced and performs more functions than anything coming from other vendors, so I don’t think we can expect huge gains chip over chip going forward without another size or die breakthrough.
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At least outside the US, moving to ARM is not happening anytime soon. Surface devices, even intel ones are hardly mainstream, let alone WOA.
Also I don’t expect WOA to have the flexibility of x86:
- no locked bootloader
- ARM chips, mainboard, RAM, SSD, GPU being sold separately so users can build their own computers
- a Windows on ARM distribution that anyone can download and install, and wider compatibility with self-built systems mentioned above.
- letting the Linux crowd the freedoom to build distribution for said ARM computer
Not happening anytime soon, or perhaps never.
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That’s Windows statistics, not Surface, though I see your point. Thing is, if ARM becomes fast enough, and is way more efficient, then it doesn’t matter how many people have older x86 hardware. They will buy the shiny new thing if they find it’s snappy enough. More specifically, if the emulation performance reaches a point that ARM doesn’t get in the way and it is transparent to the user, then most people (who don’t know an ARM from an arm and a leg or x86 from the nuclear launch codes) won’t care what’s under the hood. People just want to do their office work and play their app games and they could care less about the hocus pocus going on in the black box if it does the magic well enough for their purposes.
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I agree. There is little incentive on the hardware partner front currently. I am speaking to Surface and Microsoft’s immediate goals there. If ARM Surface becomes fast enough that it’s transparent to the user with the advantage of longer battery life, then that will become the latest and greatest next thing that hardware partners will want. I realize too that the biggest thing getting pushed in Brazil where many friends live is two or three generations old Pentium-based systems at Lojas Americanas. So it is going to take a while before ARM takes off in mainstream PCs worldwide and that’s again a big if depending on if NUVIA delivers in US markets first.
And depending on what other technologies get caught up in the “national security” export control expansions.
Biden’s Chip Restrictions on China Show Shift in US Views on Technology - Bloomberg
I’m hopeful about the Nuvia stuff now that they have been swallowed by Qualcomm, but already the hype across the board is ridiculous, even with some here. In other words, I sense major disappointment coming…
And I still haven’t crossed out Samsung’s Exynos as we’ve seen some promising WOA protypes running that chip which tells that Samsung may have cut a deal to get out from under the exclusivity Qualcomm currently has on WOA
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Well, considering how underwhelming Apple’s M2 has been, even if NUVIA’s first entry is only 10-20% off from Apple’s M series, I’d still consider it a huge win in my book. I did some digging this afternoon and found some promising results here below for Surface Pro 9. It’s not like Qualcomm has not been delivering huge gains gen-over-gen already. Meanwhile, Apple is sitting on their laurels with 0% IPC improvement from M1 to M2. Here is where we sit right now with the current players. Compared to Apple, Qualcomm even without NUVIA has already been making colossal gains with approximately four times the generational gains compared to M series (11% versus 40% for single-threaded improvement gen-over-gen; 21% versus 89% multithreaded improvement gen-over-gen). If Qualcomm continues this extremely steep trajectory of gen-over-gen performance rate of improvement, they will easily surpass Apple M series in one and half generations. As another note, on Microsoft SQ3 (using Geekbench 5 as a rough guide) emulated x86 performance should be roughly close to what native ARM performance was on SQ2 or how native apps felt like on the Surface Pro X. That’s huge, meaning running x86 programs should be transparent or mostly indistinguishable to most people. I can totally live with what the native performance was on the Surface Pro X for my x86 programs.
| Model | Single-threaded Geekbench 5 | % Increase Gen-Over-Gen | Multi-threaded Geekbench 5 | % Increase Gen-Over-Gen |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple M1 | 1704 | 7207 | ||
| Apple M2 | 1899 | 11.44366197 | 8725 | 21.06285556 |
| Microsoft SQ2 | 801 | 3185 | ||
| SD 8cx Gen 3 / Microsoft SQ3 | 1123 | 40.19975031 | 6013 | 88.79120879 |
| SD 8cx Gen 3 / Microsoft SQ3 (x86 to ARM emulation) | 595 | 3215 |
Sources:
iOS Benchmarks - Geekbench Browser
Mac Benchmarks - Geekbench Browser
Microsoft SQ2 - Geekbench 5 CPU Search - Geekbench Browser
LENOVO 21BX0008US - Geekbench Browser
SD 8cx Gen 3 (SQ3 in next Surface Pro X?) already out, much better performance and battery life : Surface (reddit.com)
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