Precisely. ARM has traditionally had issues scaling it's clock speed even when given ample cooling and power, history suggests that the only way they'll significantly improve performance is with new fab technology, engineering a better design, or expanding horizontally (eg. adding more cores).
Apple has an architectural license, which is why they are so insistent on calling them "Apple Silicon" in branding instead of ARM.
The only thing the Apple M1 has in common with ARM is the instruction set. The actual core design? Completely Apple. No Cortex X1s or A73s in there. Apple does use the stock ARM M3 in a few places IIRC but that's a very-low-power ~100mhz part for managing some internals.
Also, as for who can push the limits of ARM, Apple appears to know ARM better than ARM knows themselves. Both based on Apple's higher-performing core designs than ARM stock, and also because Apple cofounded ARM with VLSI and Acorn, and an Apple VP was the first CEO.
Edit: On that note, it's kind of ironic how every Android phone has the DNA of a company Apple cofounded and initially led.
> Edit: On that note, it's kind of ironic how every Android phone has the DNA of a company Apple cofounded and initially led.
You do realize that the ARM architecture existed for almost a decade before Apple was involved, right? From 1981-1990.
Apple was involved with ARM Ltd, the company that was formed when the chip division was rolled out of Acorn; not in the design of the original chips. Apple wasn’t significantly involved until the ARM6. Considering Microsoft was as involved with the StrongARM project, most of which has long since been integrated into the mainline ARM architecture, you could argue their DNA is just as integrated. By your logic, at least.
> Both based on Apple's higher-performing core designs than ARM stock
ARM’s vanilla cores aren’t intended to be high performance cores. They never sought that out until the recently started X-series, which even still isn’t designed to operate in the same envelope as Apple Silicon.
Their designs have always been primarily focused on power efficiency with a secondary focus on drop-in generality.
Also, for every Android commentator talking about ARM, consider that Apple even named the company "Advanced RISC Machines," because they opposed having the name of a former competitor in there (because it was originally going to be "Acorn RISC Machine"). Apple also provided almost all the funding and initial leadership for the venture, while Acorn supplied most of the engineers and VLSI the silicon tooling.
That's making it sound like Apple had significant design expertise that went into arm. But it was because they didn't have this test they cofounded Arm, because they wanted a processor for the Newton and Acorn had the expertise. Moreover when Steve Jobs came back he sold off all investment in Arm, apple hasnt owned part of arm for a long time.
It's touching that you reduce me to "Android commentator", but my point is that Apple has a lot of history to spite with their second-gen chips. Whether or not they're engineering their own cores or decided the name of ARM is irrelevant, they simply haven't proven that they can increase their desktop chip performance without packing more cores onto a die and calling it a day. If they manage to make significant single-core gains with their next-generation chips, I'd be impressed. The odds are against them, and their competitors are starting to wake up.
No. They have in fact increased the performance of their cores with every single generation since the A4.
I think the point about Android commentators is that they may not have been following Apple’s silicon development closely enough to know this, especially if they think that the M1 is the first in the line.
> may not have been following Apple’s silicon development closely enough to know this, especially if they think that the M1 is the first in the line.
It's not just Android commentators. A surprising amount of people have the view that Qualcomm/Google/<whoever> will surely come up with better CPUs in a couple of years. Apple has been doing this for more than 10 years. They probably spent 4 or 5 years designing A4 before it came out. And A4 came out in 2010
Apple does not just have that history, but also has the benefit of scale that others lack. The M1? It was literally just the A14X, the sequel to the A12X used in their iPad Pros, but Apple rebranded it.
Qualcomm is not going to make a better ARM Windows processor anytime soon. They had five years of exclusivity on Windows on ARM. Every single device they released was massively overpriced, had crappy performance, and until very recently, could not run 64-bit x86 programs at all (only 32-bit was translatable).
Someone is of course going to remind me that they bought Nuvia, and so Nuvia will change the boat around. I'm a skeptic. Judging by previous pricing, I believe that Qualcomm's chips and royalties result in disproportionately expensive hardware (every Windows on ARM machine to date, the cost of devices with Snapdragon 888+), and may not be competitive cost-wise as much as some would hope.
Also, Nuvia was designed for server processors, and is being retooled into a mobile processor. I'm going to bet that it's better than Qualcomm's current lot, but I doubt the single-core performance will be very strong compared to Apple. Qualcomm claims it will be "competitive with M-series," which considering M2 is going to be coming out before Nuvia isn't good news. Also, Qualcomm famously claimed that their Windows on ARM Snapdragon device was "competitive" with a mobile Core i5, but that was quickly laughed off the table when it went to reviews.
Apple has sold more than two billion devices using custom ARM-based silicone in just the last decade. There's a world of difference between the first ARM-based A4 and the current M1 line of products, which is no less impressive than what Intel or AMD is accomplished in the same period.
My understanding is that Apple isn't using ARM IP cores (i.e. ARM Cortex) but just implement the ARM instruction set architecture using their own proprietary CPU core design.
Edit: Since the A6-era for CPU cores and and A10/11 for the GPU cores.
