I have a ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED UX3405 and it's the same here - thermals are shit. I can't watch a yt video without the fan spinning up. I can in mplayer though, so there must be something in the desktop tech stack that prevents the cores from sleeping. Maybe it's Wayland which I've noticed is sluggy sometimes or maybe Linux tcp/ip handling of video streams isn't optimized for energy-efficiency. The stack is so deep that finding the culprit is probably impossible.
Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
551–560 of 640 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
If any 32 bit app is launched the shared libraries will be loaded. It’s not a big deal on Macs. But it is a big deal on iPhones. I’m not sure how it works in the modern era. But back in the day there was also a performance cost when you had a mix of 16 bit code and 32 bit code in memory. I don’t know how it would be in 32 bit vs 64 bit. And being able to get away with less RAM also improves battery life because keepi…
> If any 32 bit app is launched the shared libraries will be loaded. Like I said, if the 32-bit stuff is getting used, that's an argument not remove the support. > And being able to get away with less RAM also improves battery life because keeping RAM refreshed uses energy - again a bigger factor on mobile. Memory allocation exists purely at the software level. The hardware doesn't understand whether a particular reg…
That’s what I’m saying - iPhones have traditionally come with less memory than Android phones of the Dane generation. Apple has been able to get away with it.
So should Apple have also kept the PPC emulator around for Macs?
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
#553The M series chips are optimized at both the assembly language and silicon (hardware) levels for mobile use. X86 is much more generalized.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If any 32 bit app is launched the shared libraries will be loaded. Like I said, if the 32-bit stuff is getting used, that's an argument not remove the support. > And being able to get away with less RAM also improves battery life because keeping RAM refreshed uses energy - again a bigger factor on mobile. Memory allocation exists purely at the software level. The hardware doesn't understand whether a particular reg…
That’s what I’m saying - iPhones have traditionally come with less memory than Android phones of the Dane generation. Apple has been able to get away with it. So should Apple have also kept the PPC emulator around for Macs?
>That’s what I’m saying - iPhones have traditionally come with less memory than Android phones of the Dane generation. Apple has been able to get away with it.
There's no such thing as "how little RAM you can get away with". A user is always better served by having more RAM. The limiting factor is the monetary budget, not the power budget. If a manufacturer puts less RAM on a computer it's only to cut costs, not as a power optimization. Compared to the CPU, RAM is free, power-wise. In fact, since optimizing for space is often in opposition to optimizing for time, having more RAM can save power by saving time spent computing things.
>So should Apple have also kept the PPC emulator around for Macs?
I'm not really interested in discussing what compatibility support should be included in any given OS. It's not the topic of discussion. The topic of discussion is whether cutting x86 support from x86-64 processors would result in significant power savings, and I maintain that it wouldn't. It would result in at best marginal power savings at the cost of a useful feature.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing about Apple having a “special license” due to being a partial founder of Arm is an urban legend. They have an architectural license, just like several other companies making custom Arm CPUs do.
Yeah, why would ARM prevent other companies from paying more for the better license? All they care about is that companies buy an ARM license, not that they use the boilerplate ARM CPU design. Those designs are there to make it easier for companies to make ARM-based chips who would otherwise never be able to design their own.
Then why are they so shy about granting Qualcomm a license?
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
Easiest way is to use Chrome or a Chrome based browser since they bundle codecs with the browser. If you're using Firefox, need to make sure you have the codecs. I know nothing about Mint specifically though to know if they'd automatically install codecs or not.
You specifically don't want to use the bundled codecs since those would be CPU decode only.
Straight up false. I have both Chrome and Vivaldi installed on Linux, both have hardware video decoding on OOTB...
You check it by putting chrome://gpu in the address bar.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apple is vertically integrated and can optimize > Compare that to how many cooks are in the kitchen in Wintel land. Perfect example is trying to get to the bottom of why your windows laptop won't go to sleep and cooks itself in your backpack So, I was thinking like this as well, and after I lost my Carbon X1 I felt adventurous, but not too adventurous, and wanted a laptop that "could just work". The thinking was "I…
Apple has been vertically integrate for 50 years. Microsoft has been horizontally integrated for 50 years. That's why Apple is good at making a whole single system that works by itself, and Microsoft is good at making a system that works with almost everything almost everyone has made almost ever.
Microsoft has been vertically integrated for nearly 25 years with the Xbox. I wonder if their internally-siloed nature doesn't allow them to learn from individual teams' success.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
#558I can build myself a new amd64 box for just under €200. Under €100 with used parts. Some older Dell and Lenovo laptops even work with coreboot. An Airbook sets me back €1000, enough to buy a used car, and AFAICT is much more difficult to get fully working Linux on than my €200 amd64 build. Why hasn't apple caught up?
> I can build myself a new amd64 box for just under €200.
pcpartpicker link?
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple has been vertically integrate for 50 years. Microsoft has been horizontally integrated for 50 years. That's why Apple is good at making a whole single system that works by itself, and Microsoft is good at making a system that works with almost everything almost everyone has made almost ever.
Microsoft has been vertically integrated for nearly 25 years with the Xbox. I wonder if their internally-siloed nature doesn't allow them to learn from individual teams' success.
Once very decade or so, they build a thinly disguised low-end PC, and then spend another 8 years shipping a thinly disguised obsolete low-end PC.
I don't think that really counts as vertical integration.
Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
#560Earlier quoted context omitted.
My CPU is at over 5GHz, 1% load and 70C at the moment. That's in a "power-saving mode". If nothing would be wrong, it'd be at something like 1.5GHz with most of the cores unpowered.
Something is wrong with power governor then. I have an opposite experience, was able to tune Linux on a Core Ultra 155H laptop so it works longer than Windows one. Needed to use kernel 6.11+ and TLP [0] with pretty aggressive energy saving settings. Also played a bit with Intel LPMD [1] but did not notice much improvement. [0] https://github.com/linrunner/TLP [1] https://github.com/intel/intel-lpmd
I also own a 155H laptop using Linux Mint! Would you share your settings with TLP and LPMD? I am not getting not much longer battery life than Windows 11 on it after some tinkering, so seeing somebody else's setup may help a lot. Thanks!