Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 640 posts

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

#61

Post by crinkly »

al_borland wrote: post #18

I’ve been thinking a lot about getting something from Framework, as I like their ethos around relatability. However, I currently have an M1 Pro which works just fine, so I’ve been kicking the can down the road while worrying that it just won’t be up to par in terms of what I’m used to from Apple. Not just the processor, but everything. Even in the Intel Mac days, I ended up buying a Asus Zephyrus G14, which had nothi…

I suspect the majority of people who recommend particular x86 laptops have only had x86 laptops. There’s a lot of disparity in quality between brands and models.

Apple is just off the side somewhere else.

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

#62

Post by koiueo »

threatripper wrote: post #48
bigmadshoe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 hours seems a lot worse than the ~10 hours I get on my M4 Air.

I get like 3 hours on my MBP when I use it. MacBooks have better runtime only when they are mostly idle, not when you fully load them.

I concur.

The only portable M device I heavily used on the go was my iPad Pro.

That thing could survive for over a week if not or lightly used. But as soon as you open Lightroom to process photos, the battery would melt away in an hour or two.

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

#63

Post by spankibalt »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #12

I considered getting a personal MBP (I have an M3 from work), but picked up a Framework 13 with the AMD 7 7840U. I have Pop!_OS on it, and while it isn't quite as impressive as the MBP, it is radically better than other Windows / Linux laptops I have used lately, battery life is quite good, ~5hr or so, not quite on par with the MBP but still good enough that I don't really have any complaints (and being able to up up…

> "[...] battery life is quite good, ~5hr or so [...]"

You call five hours good?! Damn... For productivity use, I'd never buy anything below shift-endurance (eight hours or more).

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

#65

Post by Tuna-Fish »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #60

I tend to think its putting the memory on the package. Putting the memory on the package has given the M1 over 400GB/s which is a good 4x that on a usual dual channel x64 CPU and the latency is half that of going out to a DRAM slot. That is drastic and I remember when the northbrige was first folded into the CPU by AMD with the Athlon and it had a similarly big improvements in performance. It also reduces power consu…

> and the latency is half that of going out to a DRAM slot.

No, it's not. DRAM latency on Apple Silicon is significantly higher than on the desktop, mainly because they use LPDDR which has higher latencies.

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

#66

Post by mirekrusin »

altairprime wrote: post #23

M1’s efficiency/thermals performance comes from having hardware-accelerated core system libraries. Imagine that you made an FPGA do x86 work, and then you wanted to optimize libopenssl, or libgl, or libc. Would you restrict yourself to only modifying the source code of the libraries but not the FPGA, or would you modify the processor to take advantage of new capabilities? For made-up example, when the iPhone 27 comes…

macOS releases still work fine on intel based macs.

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

#67

Post by userbinator »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #60

I tend to think its putting the memory on the package. Putting the memory on the package has given the M1 over 400GB/s which is a good 4x that on a usual dual channel x64 CPU and the latency is half that of going out to a DRAM slot. That is drastic and I remember when the northbrige was first folded into the CPU by AMD with the Athlon and it had a similarly big improvements in performance. It also reduces power consu…

this slow transition likely saves a lot of power at a cost of absolute responsiveness.

Not necessarily. Running longer at a slower speed may consume more energy overall, which is why "race to sleep" is a thing. Ideally the clock would be completely stopped most of the time. I suspect it's just because Apple are more familiar with their own SoC design and have optimised the frequency control to work with their software.

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

#69

Post by ManBeardPc »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #55
bigmadshoe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 hours seems a lot worse than the ~10 hours I get on my M4 Air.

At a certain point it's not like it matters. If you're working for 5 hours, let alone 10, you will almost certainly be able to plug in during that time.

It’s true for me. I need a portable workstation more than a mobile laptop, as long as it survives train travels (most have power outlets now), moving between buildings/rooms or the occasional meeting with a customer +presentation it is enough for me.

But I can imagine some people have different needs and may not have access to (enough) power outlets. Some meeting/conference rooms had only a handful outlets for dozens of people. Definitely nice to survive light office work for a full working day.

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

#70

Post by pjerem »

hnaccountme wrote: post #68

Apple tailors their software to run optimally on their hardware. Other OSs have to work on a variety of platforms. Therefore limiting the amount of hardware specific optimizations.

Well I don’t think so.

First, op is talking about Chrome which is not an Apple software. And I can testify that I observed the same behavior with other software which are really not optimized for macOS or even at all. Jetbrains IDEs are fast on M*.

Also, processor manufacturers are contributors of the Linux kernel and have economical interest in having Linux behave as fast as they can on their platforms if they want to sell them to datacenters.

I think it’s something else. Probably unified the memory ?

Post reply on HN