The laws of physics apply to everyone
That is obviously true, but a ridiculous argument, there are plenty examples of systems performing better and using less power than the competition.
For years Intel chips used twice the power for similar performance compared to AMD Ryzen. And in the Buldozer days it was the same except the other way around.
Arm has designed chips for efficiency for a decade before the first smartphones came out, and they’ve kept their eye on the ball the entire time since.
It’s no wonder Arm is way more energy efficient than X86, and Apple made by far the best Arm CPU when M1 arrived.
The great advantage of Apple is that they are usually a node ahead
Yes that is an advantage, but so it is for the new Intel Arrow Lake compared to current Ryzen, yet Arrow Lake use more power for similar performance. Despite Arrow Lake is designed for efficiency.
It’s notable that Intel was unable to match Arm on power efficiency for an entire decade, even when Intel had the better production node. So it’s not just a matter of physics, it is also very much a matter of design. And Intel has never been able to match Arm on that. Arm still has the superior design for energy efficiency over X86, and AMD has the superior design over Intel.
The new Intel Arrow Lake is supposed to max out at 150W, but it doesn’t. And that’s still almost 40% better than previous gen Intel!
So hovering around 80-90W max is pretty modest by today’s standards.