CPUs are designed to hit a certain clock rate. The target frequency influences the design of literally every circuit in the CPU. Downclocking a CPU is not the same as designing it for a lower frequency. An x86 CPU is designed to run at ~5GHz in its highest turbo mode. Simply reducing the frequency in the BIOS does not undo all the tradeoffs the architects made that deliberately sacrificed IPC for frequency.
You could make a very wide CPU indeed if you decided to run it at 100MHz. That would be obviously stupid, though, because it is the product of IPC and frequency that matters.
It certainly looks like Apple has made the better tradeoff. However, you can only tell that from the benchmarks. Either going wider or going faster are valid approaches.
You could make a very wide CPU indeed if you decided to run it at 100MHz. That would be obviously stupid, though, because it is the product of IPC and frequency that matters.
It certainly looks like Apple has made the better tradeoff. However, you can only tell that from the benchmarks. Either going wider or going faster are valid approaches.