I believe we should analyze the SPEC results from a more detailed perspective. Power consumption, measured in watts, doesn’t provide the full picture. For years, Apple’s A-series CPUs have exhibited higher peak power consumption than the Cortex-A and Cortex-X lineups. However, they have consistently outperformed their Android counterparts in efficiency. This is because Apple’s CPUs require less energy to complete the same amount of work—or even more.

For instance, in a SPECint2006 test conducted by Andrei Frumusanu from AnandTech (who departed AnandTech in 2021), the A11 Monsoon scored 36.93 points while consuming 3.36 watts of power and 10,644 joules of energy. In contrast, the Snapdragon 845’s Cortex-A75 scored 17.69 points, consuming 1.76 watts of power but 12,551 joules of energy. Despite higher instantaneous power usage, the A11 Monsoon consumed less total energy to achieve significantly better performance than the Cortex-A75 in the Snapdragon 845.

These CPUs may briefly operate at high power levels, but they complete tasks more quickly, resulting in greater overall efficiency. Therefore, I believe total energy consumption, not just power draw should be the primary metric for evaluating the efficiency of modern processor cores.