16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile • Hacker News Board

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#41

Post by tomaskafka » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

aequitas wrote: post #11

hinkley wrote: post #4

I'm at the point where I need a new Macbook Pro and I can't help thinking I want the last generation of the x86_64 architecture, not the first generation of something new. Those have never paid off for me. At work, Intel would clearly be better. We do a growing amount of Docker work destined for Intel machines. But at home it's fuzzier, since I've been playing with k3s on a cluster of Pi clones. It's going to come do…

> It's going to come down to games, I think. Although I haven't had much time for them lately. I've moved to consoles for games. Rarely I play a game on my Mac anymore. When you sit behind your desk all day for work. Playing games in that same environment and posture gets tiring. The console brings the games to the living room TV in a much more confortable setting.

Or you can build a pretty decent upgradeable game machine for a fraction of developer MBP :).

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#42

Post by throwaway894345 » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:49 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #18

Nearly universal praise for the M1 versus it's predecessor but I don't see how this really changes Apple's position the way he implies. Their machines are still far more expensive than Windows and can't use high-powered GPUs like AMD/Nvidia. The people who choose PC, still have the same incentives to do so. For most users, the faster performance will probably not be very noticeable. The reduced power consumption is t…

The performance per dollar has improved (for some applications, anyway) while it hasn’t for Windows. Perhaps that will drive some transition from Windows but even if it doesn’t, it will incentivize existing Mac users to upgrade. Note also that applications will probably become more bloated and sluggish as happens every time hardware improves, which will make those applications even worse on Windows and older Macs, thus incentivizing adoption of newer macs.

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#43

Post by WanderPanda » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

0xCMP wrote: post #23

aequitas wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's going to come down to games, I think. Although I haven't had much time for them lately. I've moved to consoles for games. Rarely I play a game on my Mac anymore. When you sit behind your desk all day for work. Playing games in that same environment and posture gets tiring. The console brings the games to the living room TV in a much more confortable setting.

Also with things like Paperspace and up coming game streaming services it really feels like it won't matter all that much for the times you want to play games on the Mac. Also remember that with the M1 Macs you'll be getting some access to all the games released for iOS of which many are not the IAP types and are worth playing.

Upcoming gaming streaming services? Upcoming in a sense like net positive energy fusion is upcoming? :p

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#44

Post by monocasa » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

siraben wrote: post #20

Does anyone know what the state of Linux on Mac is since the introduction of the T2 chip and now this? Do people still run Linux on Mac and how has the experience been?

Since T2, there isn't a way for Linux to access the SSD AFAIK. You have to install it on an ext external drive and boot from that.

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#45

Post by ogre_codes » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

siraben wrote: post #20

Does anyone know what the state of Linux on Mac is since the introduction of the T2 chip and now this? Do people still run Linux on Mac and how has the experience been?

These machines will not run Linux on bare metal. Linux will be hypervisor/ VM only on top of MacOS

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#46

Post by tambourine_man » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #26

Is anyone else thinking, what the f*ck? Are we in a new era of computing? It certainly feels that way when looking at these desktop class ARM chips, where performance doubled every year or so, just like back in the 80s and 90s.

Yes. Exactly. I haven't been this exited about a chip in a really long time. Decade-long, probably.

And I'm really hopping Intel manages to get its act together. Competition is great for everyone.

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#47

Post by claudeganon » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

siraben wrote: post #20

Does anyone know what the state of Linux on Mac is since the introduction of the T2 chip and now this? Do people still run Linux on Mac and how has the experience been?

Here’s a good overview compiling the work to get Linux running on these macs:

https://gist.github.com/gbrow004/096f845c8fe8d03ef9009fbb87b...

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#48

Post by whalesalad » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:50 PM UTC

I love everything about the move to Apple Silicon with the exception of the decision to put memory on-die or in-package (not sure how it is configured). They call it 'Unified Memory'. It makes a lot of sense but I don't know if they are going to be able to pack enough memory in there.

A lot of folks are fixated on CPU performance lately (which is rad) but I think that there is a tendency to ignore memory. I have 32gb of RAM on my Macbook Pro and finally feel like it has enough. You can't get an M1 configuration right now larger than 16GB which is a table-stakes baseline dev requirement today.

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#49

Post by WanderPanda » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

51Cards wrote: post #38

phkahler wrote: post #9

The real competition is no longer Intel. Its AMD. Or if you're just buying Apple because you like them then there is no competition, you buy what they offer. I like fanless systems so I'll be watching Apple closely.

Then new M1 Pro relies on its fan to prevent throttling so I don't know about their plans to go fanless yet.

MBA is fanless, 12” has been fanless for years (until it was discontinued)

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#50

Post by dschuler » Tue, Nov 17, 2020, 5:51 PM UTC

DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #3

mmastrac wrote: post #2

I'm glad to see some real-world individuals testing this. Will be interesting to see a "post-mortem" on why the M1 has done so well, and where the limits will be in the future (ie: how far can you get with DRAM-on-die?)

Someone on that thread was saying that the M1 may be using on-chip DRAM as L2/L3 cache. Not sure how true that is.

Every layer in the storage hierarchy is "just a cache" in front the layer below it, so the naming is somewhat arbitrary. L1/L2/L3 caches are transparent from the perspective of the processor - it only sees a change in access times to main memory.

Any advancement in the storage hierarchy means reducing latency at one level or increasing the amount of memory at that level.

Most caches would use SRAM instead of DRAM, but the technology used doesn't define its role. Microcontrollers often have only embedded SRAM, serving as main memory.