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Apple’s first-ever virtual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) came with the usual slew of mostly predictable announcements, like upgrades to the iPhone and iPad operating systems, new features for its AirPod earbuds, and more. But its most striking news was a decision to shift from powering its Mac devices with Intel processors in favor of its own homemade chip, which it’s calling “Apple silicon.”
The Cupertino, Calif. tech giant claims the move will bring myriad benefits: it will make Macs faster, let them benefit from the company’s latest machine learning technology (for features like augmented reality, photo processing, facial recognition and more), and make it easier for developers to bring popular apps from the iPhone and the iPad to desktops and laptops. The transition to Apple silicon will take about two years; more Intel-powered Macs are yet to come.
Apple silicon differs from Intel’s processors by virtue of their architecture, which determines how a computer executes tasks. Apple is using ARM technology, which boasts faster performance with less power use compared to the architecture used by Intel (and its rival AMD). Generally, ARM processors make sense for devices like phones and tablets (because ARM chips use less battery power), while Intel and AMD’s chips have made more sense for high-performance desktops and laptops (where battery usage is less of a concern).
While the move may seem like a major blow to Intel—a longtime processor giant whose “Intel Inside” motto was once ubiquitous in computer stores—the company has already been moving away from making chips for companies like Apple, focusing instead on autonomous vehicle hardware, AI analytics, and high-margin, high-end processors for entertainment and gaming PCs.
“They recognize the challenges that are inherent in the client businesses these days and while they’re not going anywhere, they’re certainly trying to diversify themselves away from that,” says NPD Group analyst Stephen Baker. The Apple news, he says, is “not great, but in the long run I don’t think it’ll have an incredible impact on Intel.”
To be sure, Intel faces some headwinds. It still leads in market share, but it has consistently lost ground in the consumer market month after month to rival AMD (AMD’s share of the desktop market jump from 12% to 18% in the past two years, according to Mercury Research). Intel has also struggled to gain ground in the mobile world—it sold its ARM processor subsidiary in 2005, it killed off a pair of experimental augmented reality glasses in 2018, and last year stopped making 5G smartphone modems in favor of focusing on 5G infrastructure.
Perhaps Intel’s biggest struggle—and a reason it lost favor with Apple—is a never-ending battle with the laws of physics. Processors are composed of billions of transistors that perform calculations by turning on and off. The larger the transistor (measured in nanometers, or “nm”), the more power it uses. By using smaller transistors, you can fit more of them on a processor, which means more computing power, but also more energy efficiency. All told, the size of a processor’s transistors is a good indicator of how powerful that processor will be.
For most of modern computing history, chipmakers like Intel have been able to rely on “Moore’s law”—an observation that the number of transistors you can fit on a single chip doubles about every two years, thanks mostly to technological improvements. But, space being a finite thing, it’s getting harder and harder to cram transistors onto processors. As of today, Intel can make 10 nm processors, but even that achievement came after significant delays that put it behind the curve. By comparison, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which makes mobile chips designed by Apple, has released smaller, more efficient 7 nm processors for mobile devices.
Intel’s delay in introducing 10 nm processors may have contributed to Apple’s decision to go their own way. “Having their own microprocessor architecture is something they’ve wanted to do since the Jobs era, for sure, to not be beholden to an outside partner,” says Jon Stokes, author of Inside the Machine: An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture, and co-founder of technology site Ars Technica. “I think the tipping point was when ARM started to catch up to Intel in … performance, and Intel stalled in processor leadership.”
Still, Intel is doing fine when it comes to powering other companies’ laptops, along with its other projects in AI and autonomous vehicle sensors. Its PC-centric business (providing processors for consumers’ desktops and laptops) grew by 14% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2020 as people bought new devices to work from home in the COVID-19 era. But in a sign of the company’s evolution, its best performing sector has been its data center group, which boosted revenue by 23% year-over-year thanks to an increase in cloud services.
What should the everyday Apple user make of the switch from Intel? It may end up being something to celebrate: Apple has a good track record of designing chips; the processor in the iPhone has outperformed Intel-powered laptops at certain tasks. Furthermore, the company is bringing popular third-party developers like Adobe on board early in the process, which should ensure that Apple silicon-powered Macs have plenty of useful software from jump (avoiding a critical misstep Microsoft made when releasing an ARM-powered Surface). That Macs armed with ARM will be instantly compatible with millions of existing iPhone and iPad apps is another nice bonus. And if Apple’s making Macs with iPhone-like internals, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine features like integrated LTE or 5G wireless connectivity, Face ID, and other mobile-only goodies come to its desktops and laptops. All told, Apple betting on itself might be the best decision the company has made since, well, betting on Intel.
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Development Team
- Windows*: Joe Olivas, Timo Kleimola, Mark Price, Timothy McKay
- MacOS*: Patrick Konsor
Previous Contributors
- Windows*: Seung-Woo Kim, Karthik Krishnan, Vardhan Dugar, Joseph Jin-Sung Lee, Jun De Vega
Introduction
Intel® Power Gadget is a software-based power usage monitoring tool enabled for Intel® Core™ processors (from 2nd Generation up to 10th Generation Intel® Core™ processors). Intel® Atom™ processors are not supported. It is supported on Windows* and macOS* and includes an application, driver, and libraries to monitor and estimate real-time processor package power information in watts using the energy counters in the processor. With this release, we are providing functionality to evaluate power information on various platforms including notebooks, desktops and servers. Windows 7* and 32-bit versions of the Intel® Power Gadget for Windows* has ceased development from 3.0.7. Starting with version 3.5 and going forward, only the 64-bit version and Windows 8* will be supported.
Background
Traditional methods to estimate power/energy usage of the processor has always been a cumbersome task that included special purpose tools or instrumentation on the platform along with third party equipment. The motivation for the tool was to assist end-users, ISV’s, OEM’s, developers, and others interested in a more precise estimation of power from a software level without any H/W instrumentation.
New Features
In version 3.0 there are additional features that include estimation of power on multi-socket systems as well as externally callable APIs to extract power information within sections of code. The multi-socket support essentially evaluates the Energy MSR on a per-socket basis and provides an estimate of power draw per socket. The API layer is a set of libraries and dlls that can be called and offers the flexibility to build the tool within code sections of an application. Latest release also includes support for Windows 10*.
Brief Description (Windows*)
Intel® Power Gadget 3.5 consists of the following components. Set of driver and libraries which access and post process the processor energy counter to calculate the power usage in Watts, temperate in Celsius and frequency in GHz (default install directory will be ~Program FilesIntelPower Gadget 3.5). A command line version of the tool (PowerLog3.0.exe) is also included
System Requirements (Windows*)
- Windows 8*
- Windows 10*
- Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2012
- Microsoft .NET* Framework 4
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable package
- 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ Processor or later, older processors not supported
- Single socket
- Multi-socket
System Requirements (MacOS*)
- macOS* 10.11 or later
- 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor or later
Known Limitations / Issues
- Graphs will not appear if your processor does not have the appropriate hardware counters
- Discrete graphics cards are not supported and GPU graphs will not appear unless Intel graphics is in use
- Windows 7* supported builds are below in the Archive section
Installation / Setup (Windows*)
- Run the msi package as an administrator. Accept the UAC, if one appears
- Follow the installer prompt instructions to complete installation
- .Net Framework 4 (will automatically be downloaded from Microsoft* site if not yet installed in your system) needs Internet connection
- Microsoft* Visual C++ 2017 Redistributable Package (will automatically get installed if not yet installed)
Installation / Setup (macOS*)
- Double click the downloaded DMG (Intel Power Gadget.dmg)
- Double click the package (Install Intel Power Gadget.pkg)
- Follow the installer prompt instructions to complete installation
On recent macOS versions, after installation users need to explicitly allow the Power Gadget driver to load:
- Open System Preferences, and click on 'Security and Privacy'
- Click the lock at the bottom of the page to unlock changes
- Click 'Allow' to allow system software from Intel Corporation:
- Restart your computer to apply the changes
On macOS Catalina (10.15), users may need to perform additional steps to enable the Power Gadget driver to automatically load (this is due to a bug in macOS).
- Open the Terminal application
- Enter the following command, and press Enter (requires a password to complete):
- Restart your computer to apply the changes
Usages (Windows*)
Common use of Intel® Power Gadget is to monitor energy usage of the processor
- Provides processor power (Watts), temperature (Celsius) and frequency (MHz) in real-time via graph displayed in the GUI
- Let you log the power and frequency measurements and save it in a csv format.
- Double click on the desktop shortcut and the GUI will launch
- Drag to move the GUI.
- Right click the GUI and a pop-up menu will show up allowing you to choose options or close the application. Options have the following parameters. Click “Start Log” button in the GUI to start logging. Press the same button “Stop Log” to stop logging. While it’s logging, red label “REC” will blink in the power chart area.
- You can choose to add time-stamp to the log file name or not.
- You can choose the log file name.
- You can choose to resize the GUI from 100% to 300% by dragging the slider and testing the new size with the “Apply Size” button and accept the changes by pressing “Ok”.
- Screen Update Resolution lets you change how often the GUI is updated at runtime. This may range from 50 ms to 1000 ms. (Default set to 1000 ms)
- Log Sampling Resolution lets you change the logging sampling resolution ranging from 1 ms to 1000 ms. (Default set to 100 ms)
- In a multi-socket system, you can choose which package information to display in the GUI. The log will record all package information in a csv file.
- Click 'Start Log' button in the GUI to start logging. Press the same button 'Stop Log' to stop logging. While it's logging, red label 'REC' will blink in the power chart area
Using Intel® Power Gadget 3.0 in a script
In order to start and stop the logging in a script, first launch the GUI as usual.
- At the beginning of the script, call 'IntelPowerGadget.exe -start' and it will trigger the logging in the GUI.
- At the end of the script, call “IntelPowerGadget.exe -stop” and it will stop the logging.
The parameters for the log are based on the options set in the GUI.
PowerLog3.0
PowerLog3.0.exe is the command line version of Intel® Power Gadget in logging power usage
Usage:
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- Log power data to logfile for a period of time:
- Start a command a log power data to logfile until the command finish:
Logfile data
Logfile will include the elapsed timed, package power limit, processor frequency, GT frequency, processor temperature, average and cumulative power of the processor
- Processor Energy (Total energy of the processor) = IA Energy + GT Energy (if applicable) + Others (not measured)
- IA Energy (Energy of the CPU/processor cores)
- GT Energy (Energy of the processor graphics) – If applicable , some processors for desktops and servers don’t have it or may have use discrete graphics
Only works on 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor family or newer. Atom processors not yet supported.
Use only 32-bit installer for 32-bit OS and 64-bit installer for 64-bit OS
Application may hang after running for a long period of time (just close and restart application)
Contact your local Intel sales office or your distributor to obtain the latest specifications and before placing your product order.
This document contains information on products in the design phase of development.
All products, platforms, dates, and figures specified are preliminary based on current expectations, and are subject to change without notice. All dates specified are target dates, are provided for planning purposes only and are subject to change.
This document contains information on products in the design phase of development. Do not finalize a design with this information. Revised information will be published when the product is available. Verify with your local sales office that you have the latest datasheet before finalizing a design.
Code names featured are used internally within Intel to identify products that are in development and not yet publicly announced for release. Customers, licensees and other third parties are not authorized by Intel to use code names in advertising, promotion or marketing of any product or services and any such use of Intel's internal code names is at the sole risk of the user.
Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.
*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
Copyright © 2019, Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.
Intel® Power Gadget also provides a C/C++ Application Programming Interface (API) for accessing this power and frequency data in your program; the API is supported on Windows and Mac OS X. For more information on the API's, see:
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For Mac Using the Intel® Power Gadget API on Mac OS X
For Windows Using the Intel® Power Gadget API on Windows
End User License Agreement included in Windows* download
Notices
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Intel may make changes to specifications and product descriptions at any time, without notice. Designers must not rely on the absence or characteristics of any features or instructions marked 'reserved' or 'undefined.' Intel reserves these for future definition and shall have no responsibility whatsoever for conflicts or incompatibilities arising from future changes to them. The information here is subject to change without notice. Do not finalize a design with this information.
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The products described in this document may contain design defects or errors known as errata which may cause the product to deviate from published specifications. Current characterized errata are available on request.