Apple’s efficiency is based on a very wide and deep core that operates at a somewhat lower clock speed. Frequent branches and latency for memory operations can make it difficult to keep a wide core fully utilized. Moreover, wider cores generally cannot clock as high. That’s why Intel and AMD have chosen to pursue narrower cores that can clock near 5 GHz.
The maximum ILP that can be extracted from code can be increased with better branch prediction accuracy, larger out of order window size, and more accurate memory disambiguation: http://www.cse.uaa.alaska.edu/~afkjm/cs448/handouts/ILP-limi.... The M1 appears to have made significant advances in all three areas, in order for it to be able to keep such a wide core utilized.
What you write makes sense but it does not address why AMD and Intel could not do the same "even if they had the same process, ISA, and area to work with."
Why will Apple always out compete Intel and other non-vertically-integrated systems? Margins, future potential, customer relationship and compounding growth/virtuous cycle.
The margins logic is simple, iPhones and MacBooks make tons more money per unit compared with a CPU. Imagine if improving the performance of a CPU by 15% makes the demand increase by 1%. For Apple improving the performance of a CPU by 15% makes the demand increase by 1% for the whole iPhone or MacBook. For this reason alone, Apple can invest 2-5x more R&D into their chips than everyone else.
The future potential logic is more nuanced:
1. Intel's/whoever's 10 year vision is to build a better CPU/GPU/RAM/Screen/Camera because their customers are the companies buying CPUs/GPUs/Screens/Cameras/RAM. They are focused on the metrics the market has previously used to measure success and want to build to optimize for those metrics e.g. performance per dollar. Intel doesn't pay for the electricity in the datacenter nor through its customers' complaints about battery life. RAM manufacturers aren't looking at Apple's products and asking, "do consumers even replace still RAM?" i.e. they are focused on "micro"-trends.
2. Apple's vision is to build the best product for customers. They look at "macro"-trends into the future and apply their personal preferences at scale. For example, do people even still need replaceable RAM? Will they want 5G in the future, or can we improve the technology to replace it with direct connections to a LEO satellite cluster?
The customer relationship logic:
Lets take one such example of a macro-trend, VR and other wearables. Apple is tracking these trends and can "bet on" them because its in full control but Nvidia, Intel, etc typically don't want to "bet on" these numbers because even if they are fully invested, their partners (which sell to consumers) might back out. Apple also isn't "betting on" because it has a healthy group of early adopters that trust Apple and will buy and try it even tho a "better" product in the same market segment isn't purchased. Creating/retaining that customer relationship lets Apple over invest into keeping heat (i.e. power) low because its thinking about the whole market segment that Apple's VR headset can start to compete in and collect more revenue from.
Compounding growth/virtuous cycle logic is also relatively simple:
Improving the metrics in any of these 3 previous pillars manipulatively improves the other pillars. i.e. better customer relationship increases cashflow, increseses R&D funding, 1. improves product, improving customer relationship; or 2. reduces costs, increasing margins, and loops back to increasing cash flow.
What's that reason?