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Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

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Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#251

Post by aurareturn »

Fluorescence wrote: post #233
aurareturn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per core, Apple’s Performance cores are no bigger than AMD’s Zen cores. So it’s a myth that they’re only fast and efficient because they are big. What makes Apple silicon chips big is they bolt on a fast GPU on it. If you include the die of a discrete GPU with an x86 chip, it’d be the same or bigger than M series. You can look at Intel’s Lunar Lake as an example where it’s physically bigger than an M4 but slower in C…

> Despite being ~1.5x bigger than the M4 Pro Where are you getting M4 die sizes from? It would hardly be surprising given the Max+ 395 has more, and on average, better cores fabbed with 5nm unlike the M4's 3nm. Die size is mostly GPU though. Looking at some benchmarks: > slightly more MT. AMD's multicore passmark score is more than 40% higher. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/6345vs6403/Apple-M4-Pro... > worse ef…

  Where are you getting M4 die sizes from?
M1 Pro is ~250mm2. M4 Pro likely increased in size a bit. So I estimated 300mm2. There are no official measurements but should be directionally correct.

  AMD's multicore passmark score is more than 40% higher.
It's an out of date benchmark that not even AMD endorses and the industry does not use. Meanwhile, AMD officially endorses Cinebench 2024 and Geekbench. Let's use those.

   The AMD is an older fab process and does not have P/E cores. What are you measuring?
Efficiency. Fab process does not account for the 3.65x efficiency deficit. N4 to N3 is roughly ~20-25% more efficient at the same speed.

  The P/E design choice gives different trade-offs e.g. AMD has much higher average single core perf.
Citation needed. Further more, macOS uses P cores for all the important tasks and E cores for background tasks. I fail to see why even if AMD has a higher average ST would translate to better experience for users.

  14.8 TFLOPS vs. M4 Pro 9.2 TFLOPS.
TFLOPs are not the same between architectures.

  19% higher 3D Mark
Equal in 3DMark Wildlife, loses vs M4 Pro in Blender.

  34% higher GeekBench 6 OpenCL
OpenCL has long been deprecated on macOS. 105727 is the score for Metal, which is supported by macOS. 15% faster for M4 Pro.

The GPUs themselves are roughly equal. However, Strix Halo is still a bigger SoC.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#252

Post by averne_ »

daeken wrote: post #207
chasil wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not true that the instruction decoder is always active on x86, and is quite complex? Such a decoder is vastly less sophisticated with AArch64. That is one obvious architectural drawback for power efficiency: a legacy instruction set with variable word length, two FPUs (x87 and SSE), 16-bit compatibility with segmented memory, and hundreds of otherwise unused opcodes. How much legacy must Apple implement? Non-ke…

There's no AArch32 or Thumb support (A32/T32) on M-series chips. AArch64 (technically A64) is the only supported instruction set. Fun fact: this makes it impossible to run Mario Kart 8 via virtualization on Macs without software translation, since it's A32. How much that does for efficiency I can't say, but I imagine it helps, especially given just how damn easy it is to decode.

It actually doesn't make much difference: https://chipsandcheese.com/i/138977378/decoder-differences-a...

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#253

Post by aurareturn »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #239
aurareturn wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't "max out" the SSD, I chose an SSD to match the machine of the user. Why don't you try to match in CPU speed, GPU speed, NPU speed, noise, battery life, etc? Why match SSD only? That's why your post was disingenuous. If it helps you focus on what the actual discussion, we are comparing maximum CPU and GPU speeds for the dollar. That's it.

Evo X2, 128gb, 2000 EUR Max Studio, 128gb, 4400 EUR

Great. Here's what you're getting between an M4 Max vs an AMD AI 395+: https://imgur.com/a/yvpEpKF

And of course, the Mac Studio itself is a much more capable box with things like Thunderbolt5, more ports, quieter, etc.

I can see why some people would choose the AMD solution. It runs x86, works well with Linux, can play DirectX games natively, and is much cheaper.

Meanwhile, the M4 Max performs significantly better, more efficient, likely much more quiet, runs macOS, more ports, better build quality, Apple backing and support.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#254

Post by [deleted] »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #239
aurareturn wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't "max out" the SSD, I chose an SSD to match the machine of the user. Why don't you try to match in CPU speed, GPU speed, NPU speed, noise, battery life, etc? Why match SSD only? That's why your post was disingenuous. If it helps you focus on what the actual discussion, we are comparing maximum CPU and GPU speeds for the dollar. That's it.

Evo X2, 128gb, 2000 EUR Max Studio, 128gb, 4400 EUR

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#255

Post by KingOfCoders »

aurareturn wrote: post #253
KingOfCoders wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evo X2, 128gb, 2000 EUR Max Studio, 128gb, 4400 EUR

Great. Here's what you're getting between an M4 Max vs an AMD AI 395+: https://imgur.com/a/yvpEpKF And of course, the Mac Studio itself is a much more capable box with things like Thunderbolt5, more ports, quieter, etc. I can see why some people would choose the AMD solution. It runs x86, works well with Linux, can play DirectX games natively, and is much cheaper. Meanwhile, the M4 Max performs significantly better,…

AMD 395+/ Cachyos MT Geekbench 6 25334 - not sure where you get your Geekbench number from for the 395+

You: "If it helps you focus on what the actual discussion, we are comparing maximum CPU and GPU speeds for the dollar."

You: "Mac Studio itself is a much more capable box with things like Thunderbolt5, more ports, quieter"

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#256

Post by nicolaslem »

yaro330 wrote: post #218
nicolaslem wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have a Strix Halo zbook G1A and I am quite disappointed in the idle power consumption as it hovers around 8W. Adding to that, it is very picky about which power brick it accepts (not every 140W PD compliant works) and the one that comes with the laptop is bulky and heavy. I am used to plugging my laptop into whatever USB-C PD adapter is around, down to 20W phone chargers. Having the zbook refuse to charge on t…

> Adding to that, it is very picky about which power brick it accepts (not every 140W PD compliant works) and the one that comes with the laptop is bulky and heavy. I am used to plugging my laptop into whatever USB-C PD adapter is around, down to 20W phone chargers. Having the zbook refuse to charge on them is a big downgrade for It's Dell, they are probably not actually using PD3.1 to achieve the 140w mark, instead…

It is HP, and the output of the provided adapter does 28V 5A, so in spec.

With some of the other 28V 5A adapters I have, it charges until triggering a compute heavy task and then stops. I have seen reports online of people seeing this behavior with the official adapter. My theory is that the laptop itself does not accept any ripple at all.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#257

Post by bsenftner »

Well, there is a major architectural reason why the entire M-series appears to be "so fast" and that is the unified memory, which completely eliminates the buffer-to-buffer data copying that is probably over half of what a non-unified memory architecture chip is doing at any given time. M-series chips have an architecture that completely eliminates data copying, just reference the data where it is, and you're done.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#258

Post by jarpineh »

I wonder what is the difference between efficiency of MacBook display vs Framework laptop. Whilst CPU and GPU take considerable power they aren't usually working at 100% utilization. Display however has to be using power all the time, possibly at high brightness in daytime. MacBooks have (all?) high resolution displays which should be much power hungrier than Framework 13 IPS. Pro models use mini LED, which needs even more power.

I did ask LLM for some stats about this. According to Claude Sonnet 4 through VS Code (for what that's worth), my Macbook's display can consume same or even more power than CPU does for "office work". Yet my M1 Max 16" seems to last a good while longer than whatever it was I got from work this year. I'd like to know how those stats are produced (or are they hallucinated...). There doesn't seem to be a way to get display's power usage in M series Macs. So, you'd need to devise a testing regime for display off and display on 100% brightness to get some indication of its effect on power use.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#259

Post by JJJollyjim »

BirAdam wrote: post #250

First, Apple did an excellent job optimizing their software stack for their hardware. This is something that few companies have the ability to do as they target a wide array of hardware. This is even more impressive given the scale of Apple's hardware. The same kernel runs on a Watch and a Mac Studio. Second, the x86 platform has a lot of legacy, and each operation on x86 is translated from an x86 instruction into RI…

Apple CPUs do decode instructions into micro-ops.

https://dougallj.github.io/applecpu/firestorm.html

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#260

Post by aurareturn »

atwrk wrote: post #249
aurareturn wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false, in cross platform tasks it's on par if not worse than latest X86 arches. This is Cinebench 2024, a cross platform application: https://imgur.com/a/yvpEpKF They are willing due to lower idle and low load consumption, which they achieve by integrating everything as much as possible - something that's basically impossible for AMD and Intel. Weird because LNL achieved similar idle wattage as Apple Silicon.…

This is Cinebench 2025, a cross platform application: https://imgur.com/a/yvpEpKF You sure like that table, don't you? Trying to find the source of that blender numbers, I came across many reddit posts of you with that exact same table. Sadly those also don't have a source - the are not from the notebookcheck source.

The reason why I keep reposting this table is because people post incorrect statements about AMD/Apple so often, often with zero data backing.

For Blender numbers, M4 Pro numbers came from Max Tech's review.[0] I don't remember where I got the Strix Halo numbers from. Could have been from another Youtube video or some old Notebookcheck article.

Anyway, Blender has official GPU benchmark numbers now:

M4 Pro: 2497 [1]

Strix Halo: 1304 [2]

So M4 Pro is roughly 90% faster in the latest Blender. The most likely reason for why Blender's official numbers favors M4 Pro even more is because of more recent optimizations.

Sources:

[0]https://youtu.be/0aLg_a9yrZk?si=NKcx3cl0NVdn4bwk&t=325

[1] https://opendata.blender.org/devices/Apple%20M4%20Pro%20(GPU...

[2] https://opendata.blender.org/devices/AMD%20Radeon%208060S%20...

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