It's not unreasonably high for a TDP, and the idle consumption of ARM is de-facto lower than power an x86 package.
That being said, it's pretty obvious that Apple's mobile-style solution isn't really working out on the desktop side of things. The new iMac feels starkly pedestrian compared to the old ones, and the Mac Mini/Studio are both neat but not unprecedented. The M2 Ultra represents a lot of engineering effort going into flipping that status quo, but its still slipping behind by a considerable margin. Don't forget that a second "Ultra" style SOC with 4x M1 Maxes was supposedly cancelled for drawing too much power and being too hot. It's just not effective or efficient to force that much silicon that close together.
smoldesu|2 years ago
That being said, it's pretty obvious that Apple's mobile-style solution isn't really working out on the desktop side of things. The new iMac feels starkly pedestrian compared to the old ones, and the Mac Mini/Studio are both neat but not unprecedented. The M2 Ultra represents a lot of engineering effort going into flipping that status quo, but its still slipping behind by a considerable margin. Don't forget that a second "Ultra" style SOC with 4x M1 Maxes was supposedly cancelled for drawing too much power and being too hot. It's just not effective or efficient to force that much silicon that close together.