

Now here's where the x86 dominated industry part comes in. The "single-core" option in Cinebench (and pretty much all other benchmarks) is more accurately a "single thread" configuration. A friendly architect who wishes to not be named. This is why dispatching multiple threads is required to maximize the performance of a single core (in x86). RISC load/store architectures simply have less front-end decoding complexity, versus decoupled CISC, and thus are able to obtain better Instruction per Thread, per clock. The decode to uOP, and subsequent optimizations for scheduling through retirement (including intermediate issues instruction dependencies, pipe-line bubbles and flushing, etc.), are a large part of why x86 embraced SMT. It is worth noting that SMT philosophy is embedded in the design. This is why each core is actually assigned two threads from which they receive their workload.
#BENCHMARKS FROM GEEKBENCH OVER CHEATING WINDOWS#
You see, modern x86 cores are very wide and a single thread in Windows is usually not enough to saturate the core and utilize all of its resources. Enthusiasts would know this feature by HyperThreading (in Intel processors) although AMD has their own SMT implementation as well.

Almost all x86 processors on the market today (with the exception of some old families that have the feature deliberately disabled) would utilize an SMT implementation in their architecture. Our story begins with an industry dominated by x86 processors. Why x86 "single-core" benchmarks do not indicate actual single-core performance when comparing with a non-SMT architecture like the Apple M1 What if I told you that pretty much all of the single-core benchmark comparisons between the Apple M1 and modern x86 processors you see online are fundamentally flawed (assuming the intent is to see which core is the fastest)? Because you see, most single "core" benchmarks out there do not fully saturate a modern x86 core - but they likely do saturate the M1. I have something pretty exciting for our readers today something that almost everyone appears to have missed in the clamor for Apple M1 benchmark comparisons.
