ARM’s new cortex-X4 big core boasts some very decent improvements in ST performance (~20%) over the previous X3 in the likes of the Snapdragon 8G2. However, power consumption has also increased accordingly, so ST efficiency isn’t noticeably improved.
It’s actually considerably worse efficiency.
+17.5% ST perf for +40% power in SPEC2017Int
About as expected going from 6-wide to 10-wide decode and increasing clock speed…
Using +40% power for +17.5% performance doesn’t necessarily mean it’s less efficient.
I highly doubt the previous gen can get that level of performance even with +60% power.
Comparing efficiency requires the comparison to be done on performance at the same power usage, or alternatively, power usage at the same performance level.
This argument only applies in “race to sleep”, but that also doesn’t look very good. Taking +17% longer, but using -40% power still means that the slower processor is using less energy overall.
You’d have a point if user interactions lagged because of the performance difference, but typical user interactions wouldn’t even be noticeably different going from an X1 to an X4 let alone an X3 to X4.
It’s actually considerably worse efficiency.
+17.5% ST perf for +40% power in SPEC2017Int
About as expected going from 6-wide to 10-wide decode and increasing clock speed…
Using +40% power for +17.5% performance doesn’t necessarily mean it’s less efficient.
I highly doubt the previous gen can get that level of performance even with +60% power.
Comparing efficiency requires the comparison to be done on performance at the same power usage, or alternatively, power usage at the same performance level.
It’s actually very simple.
If power increases faster than performance, it is absolutely less efficient.
This argument only applies in “race to sleep”, but that also doesn’t look very good. Taking +17% longer, but using -40% power still means that the slower processor is using less energy overall.
You’d have a point if user interactions lagged because of the performance difference, but typical user interactions wouldn’t even be noticeably different going from an X1 to an X4 let alone an X3 to X4.