We know how Apple's hardware performs on native workloads. We know how it performs emulating x86 workloads (and why). Surely "... and this is how this hardware measures up against the other guys trying to achieve the exact same thing" is a relevant comparison? I can't be the only person who reads "reaching desktop performance" and wonders "you mean comparable to the M1, or to the M3 Ultra?"
You're not. IMHO it's a fairly obvious, narrow and uncontroversial observation (and hence why its the top comment). That said, I personally still enjoyed the back and forth as many others one could imagine. There can be value in the counterarguments from multiple other usernames, as this facilitates sharpening reasoning for the conclusion from readers. (even when the original premise stays in tact)
The lack of others agreeing could be the result of many reasons. IMHO, a not insignificant one could be the incentive structure skews heavily towards lurking as HN rightfully disincentives "me too" type replies and not everyone always has something interesting to add
2c not an epistemologist ymmv
The cores, yes, but you can get an AmpereOne with 192 ARM cores (or rent out beefier machines from AWS and Azure). If you need to run macOS, then you are tied to Apple, but if all you want is ARM (for, say, emulated embedded hardware development), you have other options in the ARM ecosystem. I'm actually surprised Ampere maxes out at 192 cores when Intel Xeon 6+ has parts with 288 cores on a single socket (and that can go up to 4 sockets).
I wonder how many cores you'd need to make htop crash.
If your metric is single thread performance yes but on just about anything else Graviton 4 wins.
Individual benchmarks tell the bigger picture. These two are optimized for different use cases, with Apple heavily leaning towards low latency single thread throughput with low sustained power usage.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/16833358?baseli...
EDIT: The M4 Max compares much more closely https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/16834801?baseli...
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/16839304?baseli...
The M3 Ultra sacrifices a bunch of single-thread performance for not that much of a multithreaded gain:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/16839654?baseli...
I am looking for a CPU.
I don't want to confront my users with "Please enter your Apple ID" or any other unexpected messages that I have no control over.
Is Apple M series an option for me?
For better or worse if you make a (high end) consumer CPU it will be judged against the M-series, just like if you make a high end phone it will be judged against the iPhone.
All he is saying: We currently have products in a similar product category (arm based desktop computers) that are widely used and have known benchmark scores (and general reviews) and it would make sense if I publish a new cpu for the same product category ("Reaching Desktop Performance" implies that) that I'd compare it to the known alternatives.
In the end you can just run Asahi on your macbook, the OS is not that relevant here. A comparison to macbooks running Asahi Linux would be fine.
amelius, if anyone had specific requirements, it was you with your "systems for in-flight entertainment".
OP asked a very reasonable question for a very generic comparison to the 800-pound gorilla in the consumer CPU world in general, and ARM CPU world in particular.
If the article can reference AMD's Zen 5 cores and Intel's Lion/Sunny Cove, they could have made at least a brief reference to M-series CPUs. As a reader and potential buyer of any of them, I find it would have been a very useful comparison.
This is not possible with Apple parts.
That's what my example was about. It was only specific because I wanted to have a concrete example.
Talk about specifics, eh? Didn't you just argue against an article addressing "_their_" specific usecase?
In a store people will ask "is this better than an Apple?".
And I'll tell you one more thing, when I was in the industry and taking computing parts to build products with them I did not form an opinion by reading internet reviews. I haven't met anyone who did.