As with all things, it depends on the workload. Intel (and to a lesser extent AMD) have to focus a lot of their CPU improvements on the AVX side. That is, massively parallel computational workloads the likes of which seen in supercomputers and scientific simulation software.

Those likely will not run as fast on M1 (probably at a fraction of the speed). But MacBooks don't really run those types of workloads (most of the time). Its users do a fairly limited set of things:

1. Compile code (often in Swift using XCode).
2. Browse complex websites (if you think this is a trivial task, look at how much memory Safari/Chrome eats up and how much it heats up your laptop; today's websites are computationally heavy).
3. Work with media/video/3D rendering.
4. Fast and response GUI to facilitate all of this.

M1's CPU's are optimized for #1, #2 and #4 above. And they've thrown a huge amount of resources (literally) on-die to do those well. At the expense of large SIMD pipelines like Intel and AMD do (again, because they need to satisfy their supercomputer customers too).

#3 above, Apple has chosen to offload to accelerators and the GPU. Which, since they control the whole software stack, they can get most apps to do as well within months of release.

That's how they get such wild IPC (for workloads of #1 and 2) increases. And yes, if you even look at the Spec2k, Chrome Octane, PCMark or any other standard PC benchmark that is able to run on iPads, they do have a significantly higher IPC than their x86 counterparts.

If you look at when those 100W+ i9's actually consume 100W. It's usually in very compute-heavy scientific computation workloads or rendering workloads where the work is done on the CPU. That takes heavy use of the massive AVX pipelines in all of the cores, which pushes power usage to 100W+.

But that's not the type of workload that laptop users typically do. And media workloads (like re-encoding video, editing images) for chips like the M1 are done on specialized accelerators whereas on an Intel chip, they'd be done on the CPU cores. So that's how M1 keeps up on those kind of tasks.

Normally, a chip released that relies on accelerators (and not the CPU) to do workloads would mean it'd have to wait years to never for software to take advantage of those accelerators. That is, unless you're Apple and control the entire software framework. And have slowly taught Swift developers over decades to use Apple-specific API's (MLKit, IOKit, *Kits, etc.) that aren't so much coding as it is calling some Apple-made library function to do your heavy lifting.

Why then, using a hardware accelerator on the chip is as simple as loading a different implementation of that library function. Which you've developed alongside your chip architecture internally.

You'd be surprised at how little extra perf you get from an order of magnitude more power consumption. For example, compare the 15W TDP AMD or Intel chips vs the 100+W versions. Yes the 100+W versions are faster, but not 8x faster.

Hell, Intel's Atom line has processors in the ~5W TDP range. And the best of the best 100+W i9's don't perform *that* much better.

There are some very specific tasks (highly parallel scientific processing) that do benefit from that extra 90+W of power headroom. But that's not what most people use laptops for.

I don't know if they'll gain as much as they think they will (other than symbolically).

DC is currently a desirable place to be because people there can suck off the teet of the public funds funneled through there. If the surrounding areas were to gain statehood, they may not get the funding that they currently receive for public spending.

It might end up being another poor, impoverished State. Which is definitely not what the residents want.

Then again. This whole country started with the idea that taxation without representation is wrong.

Seconded. This guy has no idea what he's talking about...

It's an ugly thing all right. But I'm buying one. To quote Han Solo: "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid".

Tesla's factory sizes tend to be pretty elastic. Gigafactory in Nevada, for example, grew over time as needed. Same with Fremont (they're assembling in a tent lol).

One thing about Tesla vs Ford or Mercedes is that they do have that "let's change plans today" type of behavior. So a small factory today can become a large one tomorrow and they'll find some way to jerry-rig it to make it happen.

It depends on what makes business sense at the time. And likely also depends on how local governments behave.

I don't know how familiar you are with large factories but they're pretty hard to move...

And employees generally don't like being transplanted either.

Because it'd be the Chinese arresting Americans for breaking *Chinese law*. Only the USA considered trading with Iran "illegal" and arrested Ms Meng for such.

Imagine if China arrested Tim Cook for "saying Winnie the Pooh looks cute".

One country imposing its version of "right" on another and then demanding diplomatic considerations is exactly what mobs do. Not that I'm opposed to that; just don't make it so obvious.

We don't pump up the pay for individuals but there are a ton of government subsidies for industries such as lumber, agriculture and fishing for the specific reasons you point out. It's important but not an area that the market rewards handsomely for their societal utility.

In a way, it's the perfect scientific experiment. This virus doesn't bias against anything, poor, rich or race. I guess when it comes to fatality rates, it's biased against males and old people. But in terms of infection rates, it's pretty uniform.

So you have counties that have stricter rules and counties that are more relaxed. You have places where people adhere more to caution (bay area, dallas) and you have areas where people are selfish assholes (orange county, florida).

So let's see how the data plays out for those areas.

You know, 9/11 killed only 0.00% of the world population too. And if you happen to not work in a major global trade center, it's likely not a very serious threat to you.

I imagine you're also not ok with TSA screenings at the airport?

Ya I'm not the biggest fan of Musks's actions here. Alameda had already approved re-opening on 5/18, which is just a week after the date Musk decided to open the factory.

My personal guess is: all this is marketing. Musk's next big sell is trucks. You know who buys a lotta trucks? Anti-government, "live free or die (while I kill someone else)" types.

It has literally never been the case that the "tech elite" were engineers.

This particular Tesla factory was bought at bargain basement prices when the GM/Toyota collaboration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... folded. So that's why it's there instead of out in the middle of nowhere (like all the other Tesla factories).

Also, that area of Fremont wasn't always a high-tech area. Up until just a decade ago, it was mostly a industrial area.

Also, historically, these things are near the Bay because that's where the ports are to ship supplies and finished products in/out.