[ben-schaaf]

> The way to manufacture more efficient compute now is do things like put DRAM closer to the chip and even closer integration between CPU and GPU. The fact that Apple can co-design their silicon such that the CPU and GPU can pull from the same pooled RAM is a major advantage over competitors.

> When you have CPU, GPU, and even DRAM sitting on the same "die

Apple has been really successful convincing people they've done something special here. Given how many people are so horribly misinformed about this I'd go so far as to call it false advertising.

No, the DRAM is not on the same die. It's on package. They're literally standard SK Hynix memory chips.

Yes technically there's a latency advantage, but comparing M1 to DDR5 desktop chips Apple actually has worse overall memory latency.

Every integrated graphics chip from Intel and AMD has had unified memory for the last 10+ years.

Compute itself is also not what makes the Apple chips get long battery life. Looking at tests under full load the M1 is significantly worse than the latest Intel or AMD, yet it still gets better battery life under normal usage. The efficiency does not come from compute but from a whole host of idle consumption optimisations Apple brought over from their phone chips.

[veqq]

Indeed, on an HP Elitebook with a Ryzen 8840U I get about 20 hours of battery life on CachyOS (but downclocking a bit, with TLP) and the speed tests claim this is like a M2-3. For like $500 (before RAM went up...)