[sharikous]

It's not clear if the ISA difference is so meaningful, perhaps it's only a small part of the performance boost. Don't forget that Apple moved from PPC to x86 to get better perf/watt and the PPC ISA is closer to ARM than x86.

Intel or AMD back on their feet can probably match Apple in perf/watt. And I guess they are the closest competitors in the PC market.

[genewitch]

i thought apple switched to x86 because two console companies were buying most of the PPC fab output? I distinctly remember that being the reasoning. Until Ryzen hit with the 3000 series x86 didn't have a better perf/watt than PPC, at a glance.

In the 10 years between my 40 core HP server's release and the Ryzen 5950x's 16 cores, performance increased ~10%, but the TDP of the 5950x is 10% of the quad xeons in the HP. This is ignoring the fact that a single 5950x cost less in any market than a single xeon in that HP upon release.

Does anyone else remember the Cavium ThunderX processors? Whatever happened to those? the perf/watt on those was supposed to be outstanding...