If we took the latest top of the line Snapdragon or Apple A series smartphone and compared it to a high end thin and light laptop like the Surface Pro or Macbook Air circa around 2016 to 2017, how would it compare? I have no doubt that the phone would be more efficient per unit compute power, but would it be able to beat the older laptop in raw performance?

I’m curious especially since both Qualcomm and Apple are now releasing ARM processors that on paper don’t seem that much more powerful than what’s in their phones, but geared toward full laptop computing, so does that mean that even a modern phone can outcompute older laptops?

  • DessalinesA
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    63 years ago

    Someone should do some benchmark comparisons. Based on how fast new phone processors have been advancing, I bet the answer will surprisingly be that phones, even with arm processors, are outperforming PCs from a few years ago.

  • Ephera
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    63 years ago

    I don’t have scientific evidence, nor are my observations terribly up-to-date, but for several years my devices had been:

    • A laptop that was mid-range in 2012 (Lenovo IdeaPad N581)
    • A phone that was top of the line in 2016 (OnePlus 3)

    So, the specs of my phone were higher on paper, but if I remember correctly, it was actually noticeably slower when running BOINC computations.

    I imagine a lot of that slowness could be eliminated when placing that CPU in a laptop, though:

    • The energy saving strategy could be made less aggressive, because bigger battery.
    • Heat can be pulled away by a fan (and even without a fan, better cooling elements can be placed in the additional space).
    • Android is a rather inefficient OS (as are Windows and macOS, so I guess this one doesn’t apply for most people).
    • @Peter1986c
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      23 years ago

      AFAIK, most BOINC projects tend contain fairly complex math for which modern X86-derivatives have a lot of extensions that ARM CPUs tend to miss.

  • @Pmfl
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    53 years ago

    I can’t prove it, but I believe so, I was watching Nexdock to use with my LG V50. Even yesterday I was looking at this topic, the performance of my phone should be compared to my PC a few years ago, the proof of that is in the video renderings, in this respect the phones are much more capable than the PC’s or Mac’s at least the previous ones to the M1’s.