This smells somewhat legitimate and somewhat BS. The architecture itself looks impressive — TSMC 3nm, a 4+ GHz prime core, tons of cache, and a very wide execution engine. And the claimed Geekbench numbers — around *3,945 single-core and 15,221 multi-core* — are especially impressive, if not a little suspicious. But it’s sorta like, let’s throw everything against the wall and get the biggest number we can. Do they show sustained performance over ten minutes? What’s the power draw when it’s doing 15K? What happens when you put it in an actual phone? This was done in a cold room. It seems more like a proof of concept for what they could do than something that could actually ship in a phone and sustain those numbers.
bip-bop-robot
RIP Mediatek, RIP Qualcomm
ajaimk
Apple's * Last Year* CPUs. We're literally about to get a new chip in 2-3 weeks from them.
jeffbee
Is raw perf considered Apple's moat? I think it's their software. I would buy a MacOS laptop even if the performance is ghastly ... in fact, I did: the MacBook Neo.
pmkary
Sad thing is that it'll still be running the damn Android and so JVM not C or Swift on the machine.
ksec
This is still an ARM C1-Ultra. Same one used in Mediatek dimensity 9500, which also got more than 4000 points in GB6 lab test. But actual results inside phone with smartphone cooling and wattage requirement became close to 3300. But perhaps the most important thing, Xiaomi is now able to make chip similar to Mediatek. They are the third largest Smartphone manufacturer by shipment volume. And they are still growing. This is bad news for Mediatek and Qualcomm.
hn_submit
Yeah but they can't use TSMC to make it so they'll have to make due with older or more expensive lithography processes. That probably explains why there's so few of these CPUs around: the yields of the domestic Chinese lithography processes (non-EUV) are awful.
dfedbeef
Yay free markets China makes a fast chip Yay national security
trvz
"matches" could've also been written as "this year's product falls short of the competitor's last year one". And multithreaded is 10 cores vs 6 cores. I appreciate Apple being kept on their feet, but they're not dethroned yet.
gok
"Arm-designed CPU core matches Apple-designed CPU core from a year ago"
throwaw12
I love this, really, competition on a global scale is good for us, bad for greedy US corporations. For example, I consider Meta as bigger threat to society, than Xiaomi, DeepSeek, z.ai and other top Chinese companies (haven't used Chinese social media, so can't comment about its content)
strictnein
Missing the most important metric: processing power per watt. I have some server CPUs laying around that can also beat Apple CPUs. But putting them in a compact, densely packed, sealed box (aka a phone) would result in a fireball and almost no battery life.
waazy
44mb of cache really highlights the bottleneck of how raw compute is cheap, but the real limit is memory latency.
comboy
This is nothing. China is about to start doing their own 5nm. When they roll out their own silicon at scale, I don't think there's catching up, nobody can match their manufacturing capabilities. Not even close.
ur-whale
2020's US geopolitical doctrine: 1) Pick a historically extremely innovative and disciplined culture which also happens to have massive human capital 2) Please arbitrary artificial ill-thought-out economic constraints on them 3) wait a while 4) get a bunch of magnificent spanking in return (AI, chips, etc...)
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Discussion Highlights (20 comments)
jackb4040
https://xcancel.com/lemire/status/2091894299289874926
fishfasell
I can feel the scores of messages being sent to the federal government from lobbyists saying what a threat Chinese hardware is to national security.
khalic
LPDDR6... that's not enough for speedy inference
otterley
I'm curious as to the performance per watt. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
nerdsniper
M5 (iPad) AnTuTu: 3.5 million XRing O3 AnTuTu: 5.5 million --- M5 iPad Geekbench Single-Core: 3,556 M5 Max Geekbench Single-Core: 4,300 XRing O3 Geekbench Single-Core: 3,945 --- M5 iPad Geekbench Multi-Core: 15,285 M5 Max Geekbench Multi-Core: 29,200 XRing O3 Geekbench Multi-Core: 15,221
thefourthchime
This smells somewhat legitimate and somewhat BS. The architecture itself looks impressive — TSMC 3nm, a 4+ GHz prime core, tons of cache, and a very wide execution engine. And the claimed Geekbench numbers — around *3,945 single-core and 15,221 multi-core* — are especially impressive, if not a little suspicious. But it’s sorta like, let’s throw everything against the wall and get the biggest number we can. Do they show sustained performance over ten minutes? What’s the power draw when it’s doing 15K? What happens when you put it in an actual phone? This was done in a cold room. It seems more like a proof of concept for what they could do than something that could actually ship in a phone and sustain those numbers.
bip-bop-robot
RIP Mediatek, RIP Qualcomm
ajaimk
Apple's * Last Year* CPUs. We're literally about to get a new chip in 2-3 weeks from them.
jeffbee
Is raw perf considered Apple's moat? I think it's their software. I would buy a MacOS laptop even if the performance is ghastly ... in fact, I did: the MacBook Neo.
pmkary
Sad thing is that it'll still be running the damn Android and so JVM not C or Swift on the machine.
ksec
This is still an ARM C1-Ultra. Same one used in Mediatek dimensity 9500, which also got more than 4000 points in GB6 lab test. But actual results inside phone with smartphone cooling and wattage requirement became close to 3300. But perhaps the most important thing, Xiaomi is now able to make chip similar to Mediatek. They are the third largest Smartphone manufacturer by shipment volume. And they are still growing. This is bad news for Mediatek and Qualcomm.
hn_submit
Yeah but they can't use TSMC to make it so they'll have to make due with older or more expensive lithography processes. That probably explains why there's so few of these CPUs around: the yields of the domestic Chinese lithography processes (non-EUV) are awful.
dfedbeef
Yay free markets China makes a fast chip Yay national security
trvz
"matches" could've also been written as "this year's product falls short of the competitor's last year one". And multithreaded is 10 cores vs 6 cores. I appreciate Apple being kept on their feet, but they're not dethroned yet.
gok
"Arm-designed CPU core matches Apple-designed CPU core from a year ago"
throwaw12
I love this, really, competition on a global scale is good for us, bad for greedy US corporations. For example, I consider Meta as bigger threat to society, than Xiaomi, DeepSeek, z.ai and other top Chinese companies (haven't used Chinese social media, so can't comment about its content)
strictnein
Missing the most important metric: processing power per watt. I have some server CPUs laying around that can also beat Apple CPUs. But putting them in a compact, densely packed, sealed box (aka a phone) would result in a fireball and almost no battery life.
waazy
44mb of cache really highlights the bottleneck of how raw compute is cheap, but the real limit is memory latency.
comboy
This is nothing. China is about to start doing their own 5nm. When they roll out their own silicon at scale, I don't think there's catching up, nobody can match their manufacturing capabilities. Not even close.
ur-whale
2020's US geopolitical doctrine: 1) Pick a historically extremely innovative and disciplined culture which also happens to have massive human capital 2) Please arbitrary artificial ill-thought-out economic constraints on them 3) wait a while 4) get a bunch of magnificent spanking in return (AI, chips, etc...)