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Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

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Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#181

What's actually more interesting to me than Intel vs ARM is how much further ahead Apple is vs the competition. The snapdragon 8cx is about 1/3rd the speed in both Single and Multicore performance of the M1. How is Apple so far ahead even with the same instruction set?

Probably has something to do with the 5nm process.

Qualcomm and Samsung have access to 5nm.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#183

I wonder what Linus thinks of Geekbench's accuracy now: https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=136526&curpost... https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=185109&curpost... Personally I'm not convinced, until I see something like SPECint/SPECfp results.

anandtech has specint numbers for the A14, which should serve as the floor for M1 performance. M1 will (likely) clock higher, has more cores and sustain thermals longer.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...

I’m also interested in seeing what M1 can do once people get their hands on real hardware running on Mac OS where so many more details can’t be hidden like in iOS, but all signs point to it being an absolute monster.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#184

I am really looking forward to where this goes. That said, I am definitely waiting for at least one generation to pass before I jump on the train. I’ve been through this before. It will be great, but Apple is a master at smoke & mirrors. Things will not go as smoothly as the sizzle reels make it seem.

I'm hoping that at least the basics will be here (posix shell, vim, browser, etc), I won't need anything else for a long long time.

Like the grandparent comment, I would avoid this M1 Macbook since the developer ecosystem is still unsupported by it. Take this for example: https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/4733

Docker still doesn't run on Apple Silicon Macs, so the migration path is already disrupted here.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#185

Dell Inc. XPS 15 9575 vs MacBookAir10,1 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4654605?baselin... Opinion: Pretty and impressive story

A better comparison would be the new XPS 13 which beats it at single core but only has 4 cores to MacBookAir10's 8 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/4309589?baselin...

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#186

This idea of “actual professionals” that always comes up in response to apple’s “Pro” moniker amuses me to no end. Everybody throws the term around and no two people have the same definition! What in the world is an actual professional? There are professional journalists that just need a browser and text editor. There are professional programmers working on huge code bases in compiled languages that do need a beefy m…

> What in the world is an actual professional?

Well, that is an easy question - actual professionals are people involved in making, marketing and distributing porno

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#187

This idea of “actual professionals” that always comes up in response to apple’s “Pro” moniker amuses me to no end. Everybody throws the term around and no two people have the same definition! What in the world is an actual professional? There are professional journalists that just need a browser and text editor. There are professional programmers working on huge code bases in compiled languages that do need a beefy m…

I’ll take a stab at the problem: an “actual professional” in this context is someone who makes their money by using the computer.

That does include practically every white collar occupation at this point.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#188

ARM is the future, at least in laptops. Apple lead the fray again, it's incredible.

I have a burning question: Can I use gcc, python, etc. on the new M1-based Macbooks? I am thinking about getting one but not sure if I can use it as a development machine. How does rosetta translation layer work with brew apps and other binaries?

I don’t have an M1 yet, but the things you mentioned work perfectly fine on my Developer Preview hardware, so I don’t see any reason they wouldn’t on the production hardware.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#189

This idea of “actual professionals” that always comes up in response to apple’s “Pro” moniker amuses me to no end. Everybody throws the term around and no two people have the same definition! What in the world is an actual professional? There are professional journalists that just need a browser and text editor. There are professional programmers working on huge code bases in compiled languages that do need a beefy m…

Pretty sure content creators are the core of the Pro series. It's not uncommon to have multiple design apps open at the same time, along with team apps, multiple browsers each running multiple apps, and multiple monitors.

And that's just web design.

Now open your eyes and look around your room. Everything you see was designed by someone, most likely on a Pro.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#190
post #172
post #48

This is pretty crazy to see, even if the full story isn't clear yet. A base level MacBook Air is taking the crown of the best MacBook Pro. Wow. SVP Johny Srouji and all of the Apple hardware + silicon team have been smashing it for the past many years. For what it's worth, I have a fully specced out 16 inch MacBook Pro with the AMD Radeon Pro 5600m and even with that I'm regularly hitting 100% usage of the card, and…

It's not just outperforming the MacBook Pro. It's also blowing away the current 2020 top-end iMac, which has a 10-core Intel i9. And it's doing this while using more than an order of magnitude less power (10W vs. a TDP of 125W for that Intel part). That's stunning.

It’s also outperforming the 5950X in single core. Incredible!
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