Arm's Cortex X925: Reaching Desktop Performance

(chipsandcheese.com)

71 points | by ingve 2 hours ago

5 comments

  • pdpi 1 hour ago
    Kind of weird to see an article about high-performance ARM cores without a single reference to Apple or how this hardware compares to M4 or M5 cores.
    • ezst 36 minutes ago
      That would only matter (to me, at least) if those Apple chips were propping up an open platform that suits my needs. As things stand today, procuring an M chip represents a commitment to the Apple software ecosystem, which Apple made abundantly clear doesn't optimize for user needs. Those marginally faster CPU cycles happen on a time scale that anyway can't offset the wasted time fighting MacOS and re-building decades-long muscle memory, so thanks but no thanks.
      • pdpi 16 minutes ago
        Sure. Insofar as Apple Silicon beats these things, "I'll take less powerful hardware if it means I'm not stuck with the Apple ecosystem" is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff to make. Two things, though.

        First, I don't like making blind tradeoffs. If what I need (for whatever reason) is a really beefy ARM CPU, I'd like to know what the "Apple-less tax" costs me (if anything!)

        Second, the status quo is that Apple Silicon is the undisputed king of ARM CPU performance, so it's the obvious benchmark to compare this thing against. Providing that context is just basic journalistic practice, even if just to say "but it's irrelevant because we can't use the hardware without the software".

      • flembat 10 minutes ago
        When purchasing any ARM based computer a key question for me, is how many of those can I purchase for the cost of a Mac mini, and how many Mac mini can I purchase for the cost of that, and does that have working drivers...
      • spiderfarmer 8 minutes ago
        > represents a commitment to the Apple software ecosystem

        I don't see how that's holding you back from using these tools for your work anymore than using a Makita power tool with LXT battery pack.

    • SG- 1 hour ago
      Same, I wish Chips and Cheese would compare some of these cores to Apple Silicon, especially in this case where they're talking about another ARM core.

      A few years ago they were writing articles about Apple Silicon.

    • amelius 17 minutes ago
      Apple does not produce general purpose computing parts.

      This is an industry blog, not a consumer oriented blog.

  • xarope 12 minutes ago
    I can't seem to find any power draw or efficiency figures (e.g. <perf>/watts).

    Only found this which talks about performance-per-area (PPA) and performance-per-clock ()I assume cycle) (PPC): https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1gvo28c/latest_ar...

  • Incipient 51 minutes ago
    Without being a cpu geek, a lot of the branch prediction details go over my head, however generally a good review. I liked the detail of performance on more complex workloads where IPC can get muddy when you need more instructions.

    I feel these days however, for any comparison of performance, power envelope needs to be included (I realise this is dependent on the final chip)

  • dinglo 51 minutes ago
    If ARM starts dominating in desktop and laptop spaces with a quite different set of applications, might we start seeing more software bugs around race conditions? Caused by developers writing software with X86 in mind, with its differing constraints on memory ordering.
    • jordiburgos 9 minutes ago
      Only for the hand-written assemply parts of the source code. The rest will be handled by the compilers.
    • ivolimmen 44 minutes ago
      If you go around your OS yes that could be the case but you can already have issues using the application from machine to machine with the same OS having different amounts of RAM and different CPU's. But I am not an expert in these matters.
    • runeks 24 minutes ago
      Wouldn't the compiler take care of producing the correct machine code?
      • mhh__ 22 minutes ago
        The compiler relies on the language and programmer to enforce and follow a memory consistency model
    • dd_xplore 39 minutes ago
      The major issue is these days most software is electron based or a webapp. I miss the days of 98/XP, where you'd find tons of desktop software. A PC actually felt something that had a purpose. Even if you spin up a XP/98(especially 98/2000 VM) now, you'd see the entire OS feels something that you can spend some time on. Nowadays most PCs feel like a random terminal where I open the browser and do some basic work(except for gaming ofcourse). I really hate the UX of win 11 , even 10 isn't much better compared to XP. I really hope we go back to that old era.
  • ddtaylor 1 hour ago
    Can't zoom any of the content on mobile so most of the charts are unreadable.
    • GaggiX 51 minutes ago
      Browsers usually have an accessibility option to force the ability to zoom on all websites.