Apple aims to sell Macs with its own chips starting in 2021
It&#x27;s worth pointing out how extremely far ahead Apple seems to be in terms of CPU power and efficiency. It tends to go under the radar a bit because it&#x27;s not easy to run your own software on an iPhone, and most apps on these things are not serious workhorse loads (a few specific use cases are, most are not).<p>The Apple A13 - even its implementation in the iPhone SE, in microbenchmarks achieves on par single core performance [1] with the Core i7 8086k [2] and Ryzen 9 3950X [3]. That&#x27;s the highest single core performance you can buy in PCs <i>in principle</i>.<p>I don&#x27;t have to explain how insane it is a 5-ish watts smartphone CPU delivers that kind of performance, even if it is in bursts. By sticking to Intel or even x86 in general, there is ample evidence Apple is leaving a lot of performance on the table. Not just in MacBooks - but for the <i>Mac Pro</i> too.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;browser.geekbench.com&#x2F;v5&#x2F;cpu&#x2F;search?utf8=✓&amp;q=iphone+11" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;browser.geekbench.com&#x2F;v5&#x2F;cpu&#x2F;search?utf8=✓&amp;q...</a> - the iPhone 11 with the A13 has to do as a surrogate while the SE is just out, they benchmark the same.<p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;browser.geekbench.com&#x2F;v5&#x2F;cpu&#x2F;search?utf8=✓&amp;q=8086k" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;browser.geekbench.com&#x2F;v5&#x2F;cpu&#x2F;search?utf8=✓&amp;q...</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;browser.geekbench.com&#x2F;v5&#x2F;cpu&#x2F;search?utf8=✓&amp;q=3950X" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;browser.geekbench.com&#x2F;v5&#x2F;cpu&#x2F;search?utf8=✓&amp;q...</a><p>It&#x27;s worth noting that Geekbench is a pure microbenchmark. The iPhone will not sustain performance as long as the others. The point is that Apple could solve this when moving to bigger devices.