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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

#891

Post by pantulis »

kar1181 wrote: post #553
hbbio wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also funny that Johny Srouji and probably others in his team come from the team at Intel in Israel that "saved" Intel in the early 2000s by designing the Intel Core architecture which is still used by Intel today. cf. Anandtech article from 2003: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1083/2

Did not know that, and indeed the pentium m / core / core 2 series microarches have done incredibly well. I've become something of CPU collector in recent years, and I have a nice line of p6 cpus from thePentium Pro -> Pentium 2 -> Pentium 3 -> Pentium M -> Core 2 that conveniently sidesteps those awful Netburst p4 CPUs. It feels like this (p6+) microarch has finally run out of road and needs a rethink. What 'saved'…

"I think there's still legs to x86, it's survived everything thats been thrown at it so far..."

Also, some one, some day, had to disrupt it. Maybe this is it, maybe not.

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

#892

Post by dbspin »

throwaway4good wrote: post #554
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #479

> The M1 chip, which belongs to a MacBook Air with 8GB RAM, features a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433. According to the benchmark, the M1 has a 3.2GHz base frequency. > The Mac mini with M1 chip that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1682 and a multi-core score of 7067. > Update: There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core…

The results seem a little weird but if remotely true then these machines are going to sell like cup cakes. Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are?

Professional use in creative industry - film, TV, videography, audio production, and a million other things. 16GB ram and a souped up integrated GPU won't cut it for many 'Pro' applications Mac has traditionally excelled at.

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

#893

Post by bstar77 »

ascar wrote: post #581
throwaway4good wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The results seem a little weird but if remotely true then these machines are going to sell like cup cakes. Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are?

> Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are? There are enough people who do not want to deal with MacOS and Darwin regardless the hardware specs. Also the way of least friction is usually to use whatever the rest of your team uses. There are even relevant differences in Docker for MacOS vs Docker for Linux that make cross platform diffic…

I do web development and I'm not sure how my locally compiled libs will behave on x86 based servers. We often upload our local build artifacts to the DEV envs... I'm not sure this will work on a different arc.

That said, my wife returned the macbook air she bought 3 weeks ago in favor of this new one, so I'll be able to test on that machine before I dive in.

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

#894

Post by vimy »

ubermonkey wrote: post #759
moondev wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are? - locked bootloader - no bootcamp - can't install or boot linux or windows - virtualization limited to arm64 machines - no windows x86 or linux x86 virtual machines - only 2 thunderbolt ports - limited to 16GB RAM - no external gpu support/drivers - can't use nvidia or amd cards - no AAA gamin…

"uncertain future of macos as it continues to be locked down" Citation Needed . Apple detractors LOVE to bring this idea up, but there's nothing to it in any real sense. Do Macs ship with a checkbox filled in that limits software vendors? Yes. This is a good thing. Is it trivial to change this setting? Also yes. Anyone who buys a Mac can run any software on it they like. There is no lockdown.

ARM Macs can't run unsigned software.

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

#895

Post by dbspin »

mumblemumble wrote: post #796
blunte wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not trying to compete with German PCs (which have some nice options, but yet are Windows PCs, not Macs). I'm not an Apple fanboy, and I'm still very displeased with many of their decisions (touchbar being #1 on MBPs). But if you consider the packaging (small, light, sturdy, now-decent keyboard), and consider their performance, and then consider macOS, I think they are more than competitive. Even if you match eve…

I got a new computer from work last year. I spent quite a while carefully studying my options, and what I saw came down to this: If you're only looking for computers that are comparable according to the usual hardware specs (cpu, ram, etc.), a Mac costs 25-50% more than the cheapest comparable PC. If you also throw ergonomic factors like weight and battery life into the comparison, there's no price difference. (This…

Macs are significantly cheaper in the US than in Europe.

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

#896

Post by larrywright »

Reason077 wrote: post #703
moondev wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are? - locked bootloader - no bootcamp - can't install or boot linux or windows - virtualization limited to arm64 machines - no windows x86 or linux x86 virtual machines - only 2 thunderbolt ports - limited to 16GB RAM - no external gpu support/drivers - can't use nvidia or amd cards - no AAA gamin…

> "no AAA gaming" This is, arguably, a disadvantage of any Mac. But Apple Silicon may actually improve the situation over time, as having the same GPUs and APIs on Macs and iOS devices means there is now a much bigger market for game developers to target with the same codebase.

And don’t forget that all of the iPad/iPhone games will work on these laptops. That’s not quite the same thing as having major PC titles, but it’s not nothing either.

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

#897

Post by w0utert »

vimy wrote: post #894
ubermonkey wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"uncertain future of macos as it continues to be locked down" Citation Needed . Apple detractors LOVE to bring this idea up, but there's nothing to it in any real sense. Do Macs ship with a checkbox filled in that limits software vendors? Yes. This is a good thing. Is it trivial to change this setting? Also yes. Anyone who buys a Mac can run any software on it they like. There is no lockdown.

ARM Macs can't run unsigned software.

Yes, but code signing can be ad-hoc, can be done automatically at build time, and doesn't require notarization. So it's basically just a way to ensure the binary has not been tampered with. I don't really see the problem here, as the code signing itself does not prevent any kind of code from running on macOS Big Sur.

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

#898

Post by rbanffy »

pg314 wrote: post #614
rbanffy wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1 is not magic and can't break the laws of physics. SMT makes better use of silicon and will probably push speeds closer. OTOH, M1 has a fast memory that the i9 can't match. I still bet on the i9, but it'd be interesting to run a test.

What are the laws of physics that would be broken in this case?

x86 needs to use more complicated logic to deal with the instruction stream than ARM, freeing more of the silicon for things like better reordering and more execution units. OTOH, the SMT somewhat mitigates the delays caused in reordering by working on more than one instruction stream at once. I'd say the 16-thread chip will end up being overall faster than the 8-core one, if cache misses don't create a huge penalty for the slower memory bus of the x86. The i9-9980HK is also two generations behind, which doesn't help it much.

When I said there is no magic, I was warning that we shouldn't expect huge speedups or a crushing advantage, at least not for long. The edge M1 has is due to a simpler ISA (which is less demanding to run efficiently, freeing more resources for optimization and execution) and a faster memory interface (which makes an L3 miss less of a punishment). This fast memory interface also limits it to, for now, 16GB of memory. If the dataset has 17GB, it'll suffer. Another difference is that all of the i9 cores are designed to be fast, whereas only 4 cores of the M1 are. This added flexibility can be put to good use by moving CPU-bound processes to the big cores and IO-bound and low-priority ones to the little ones.

In the end, they are very different chips (in design and TDP). It'd be interesting to compare them with actual measurements, as well as newer Intel ones.

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

#899

Post by levesque »

ubermonkey wrote: post #759
moondev wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are? - locked bootloader - no bootcamp - can't install or boot linux or windows - virtualization limited to arm64 machines - no windows x86 or linux x86 virtual machines - only 2 thunderbolt ports - limited to 16GB RAM - no external gpu support/drivers - can't use nvidia or amd cards - no AAA gamin…

"uncertain future of macos as it continues to be locked down" Citation Needed . Apple detractors LOVE to bring this idea up, but there's nothing to it in any real sense. Do Macs ship with a checkbox filled in that limits software vendors? Yes. This is a good thing. Is it trivial to change this setting? Also yes. Anyone who buys a Mac can run any software on it they like. There is no lockdown.

Catalina already broke a TON of legacy software and you cannot downgrade newer Macs to Mojave (at least not without some serious hacking efforts, and I know at least one person who tried and failed).

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

#900

Post by blablabla123 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #672
coldtea wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cheapest Dell Inspiron doesn't even hold a candle to the MacBook Air. They're not competing in the same class...

That's true, for sure. But I was answering to "Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are?". The answer is simple, everyone, who does not want to spend $999 will buy an Intel/AMD laptop. And $999 is quite a lot for someone who does not need a powerful workhorse. That Insiron is extremely underpowered, yet it'll launch web browser and offi…

> Ultrabook with focus on portability and long battery life - Apple is awesome here.

Exactly that, I think that's the ultimate reason to have a laptop and if not, it might make sense to re-think the setup. Why should I buy a 1500$ Intel/AMD mobile workhorse when the battery is empty after 2 hours? It usually makes more sense to have a server at home or VPS for that. Also a lot of native Apps like Steam have first-class support for that nowadays. For the rest Parsec might work.

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