Analyzing Intel Core M Performance: How 5Y10 can beat 5Y71 & the OEMs’ Dilemma

A processor architect can battle between two major opposing principles. The one most of us seem to enjoy is performance, which when taken to the extreme exhibits an all-or-nothing approach. At the other end is low-power operation which has become the main focus of the laptop and notebook market where battery capacity and density is at a premium. The position in the middle of this is efficiency, trying to extract the best of performance and power consumption and provide a product at the end of the day which attempts to satisfy both.

Of course processor architects only have control up to the point where the chips leave the fab, at which point the final product design is in the hands of OEMs, who for various reasons will have their own product design goals. It's this latter point that has resulted in an interesting situation developing around the Core M ecosystem, where due to OEM design goals we've seen the relative performance of Core M devices vary much more than usual. In our tests of some of the Core M notebooks since the beginning of the year, depending on the complexity of the test, the length of time it is running and the device it is in, we have seen cases where devices equipped with the lowest speed grades of the Core M processor are outperforming the highest speed grade processors in similar types of devices, an at-times surprising outcome to say the least.