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Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

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Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#881

Post by dannyw »

Jtsummers wrote: post #218

Out of curiosity, how many people are actually constrained by 16GB of RAM? What applications are you using it for that 16GB vs 32GB is actually a deal breaker for you? Thinking about your average end-users, like most of my family, 8 to 16GB is about all they need for their systems (and if software were better written they'd probably need less). So is this specific work like machine learning? Video and image processin…

I run 128GB of RAM on my desktop and I will never go back.

I don't want to be forced to close my complete dev. environments to work on another project; or play with a ML project.

The cost of additional RAM is marginal, to me it's the way it should be. Your time matters, your productivity matters, why not max it out?

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#882

Post by lostlogin »

xienze wrote: post #506
satysin wrote: post #165

No 32GB options on any of the models announced today is a shame. Or not I guess as it means I won't be buying anything today M1 looks impressive, hopefully it scales as well to higher TDPs. Pretty much what I expected today with all the low power models getting updated. With no fan I expect the Air will throttle the CPU quickly when using the high performance cores. Calling it an "8-core CPU" is a little cheeky IMHO…

> Or not I guess as it means I won't be buying anything today Honestly, people who don't use their computers as Facebook machines or have very specific things they want to do with the ML engine should probably stay away from Arm Macs for a couple years. There's bound to be plenty of software that doesn't work or doesn't work well, Docker will have ~limited usefulness until more and more people publish Arm images, etc…

> Plus I'm waiting for the typical Apple move of screwing early adopters by announcing that next year's model is 3x as fast, $200 cheaper, etc.

They aren’t screwed, the early adopters adopt the new model early by definition. They get the new model and the move on to the next new model.

I know several of these bold individuals.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#883

Post by AgentOrange1234 »

Svetlitski wrote: post #868

I can't seem to find mention of the clock frequency of the chip anywhere . Am I missing something or is Apple withholding this information for the time being?

Hrmn... Does it matter? Without IPC, does clock rate tell us much? The real-world benchmarks will be very interesting to see.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#884

Post by ChuckMcM »

Corrado wrote: post #878
ChuckMcM wrote: post #489

I think Apple has done an amazing job of pulling off their own silicon. At Sun I got to be involved peripherally in the effort that created SPARC and it was way more work than I had suspected. So kudos to Apple's design, engineering, and QA teams! I am also noting that they have killed the "ARM SoC's will never match what Intel can do" story line. That always reminded me of the "Microcomputers will never be able to d…

I agree about the upgradability/repairability. However, if you look at like a cell phone maybe it makes more sense. No one has ever complained that you couldn't update the RAM or the CPU in a iPhone. In order to upgrade the hardware of your cell phone you have to purchase another one. I'm guessing Apple is looking at the Mac hardware in the same light. "Want more power? Buy a new laptop!" The more interesting questio…

I think that is a good observation, perhaps at some point the motherboard becomes the swappable part?

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#885

Post by 8ytecoder »

Aperocky wrote: post #605
myrandomcomment wrote: post #573

So there is an interesting trend here in the comments because HN is very developer focused. Everyone seems to say "well this does not work for my XXX because of RAM, etc." I would say yes, no surprises there! With this line up Apple is fine with that, because the Air and 13" are not targeted at you. This is the laptop for my wife or kids that use it for school, web, some music and video, nothing at a professional lev…

I'm a dev and I have the air as my personal, side-project computer, and I have already ordered the new one. I use vim to develop primarily in python/js. So my need for performance is super low.

I ran RubyMine and Rails on the Air for three years back in 2012-15. It was faster than the Pro at the time as measured by our unscientific execution of our entire test suite. The biggest difference came from SSD vs HDD of the Pro. For most use cases a reasonable amount of memory (8GB) and for developers (16GB) should be enough. The fact that Electron apps are gaining popularity and chromium is a memory hog is my only concern about future proofing it. I’m assuming even there the faster SSD performance might make paging seamless and unnoticeable.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#886

Post by dannyw »

chrstphrknwtn wrote: post #111
nimeshneema wrote: post #82

No mention of processor speeds, just like iOS devices. This is the new normal now for Macs.

If you use it, and it is faster, do you care what the numbers are?

I want to know what I'm buying, like I want to know and compare the screen and DPIs of displays; or how much RAM I have.

Clock speeds are another metric that would cost Apple nothing to disclose.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#887

Post by Existenceblinks »

saagarjha wrote: post #282
whynotminot wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially head scratching when you consider that a lot of folks still have 2012 Mac minis with 16GB of RAM. I think 16GB is the bare minimum for a professional machine. Apple clears the bar here, but doesn't exceed it. Maybe next year's machines? As a first product, I think it's good enough. And the performance gains elsewhere--if what Apple says is true--are actually pretty radically impressive.

It's possible to do development on 8 GB, you just can't use Electron apps.

I run a few Electron apps daily within 4GB RAM, it's (fine - 1); =~ almost fine lol.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#888

Post by WanderPanda »

vosper wrote: post #553
WanderPanda wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they needed to, MacBooks are simply no option if you want to train models. I dont expect crazy performance but would be great if MacBooks would be an option again for prototyping / model development at least

Could this also be remedied by Apple supporting Nvidia GPUs again? And then you plug in a beefy eGPU?

I think it is interesting that Apple is at Nvidias mercy again with the Nvidia ARM deal. Hopefully they get their shit together

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#889

Post by gigatexal »

Anandtech did a write-up and concluded: “ Apple claims the M1 to be the fastest CPU in the world. Given our data on the A14, beating all of Intel’s designs, and just falling short of AMD’s newest 5950X Zen3 – a higher clocked Firestorm above 3GHz, the 50% larger L2 cache, and an unleashed TDP, we can certainly believe Apple and the M1 to be able to achieve that claim.

This moment has been brewing for years now, and the new Apple Silicon is both shocking, but also very much expected. In the coming weeks we’ll be trying to get our hands on the new hardware and verify Apple’s claims.

Intel has stagnated itself out of the market, and has lost a major customer today. AMD has shown lots of progress lately, however it’ll be incredibly hard to catch up to Apple’s power efficiency. If Apple’s performance trajectory continues at this pace, the x86 performance crown might never be regained.”

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