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

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

#71

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.

I agree, and posted something similar on another M1 thread, though it got downvoted and I'm not sure why :D

I lot of people are having a hard time grasping or accepting.

“But this benchmark has these issues”, “but this is hardware accelerated, so it's not a fair comparison”, etc. I think when enough benchmarks and real world usage have been run, it will sink in.

What did people expect? They've been killing it with 5W fan-less chips for years. Have you seen how confident Apple is in those videos?

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

#72
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.

Huh? Apple is quite the opposite of fanless... They have literally the most devoted fanbase among computer vendors.

Cooling fans.

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

#73
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…

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

#74

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.

I suspect HP/Lenovo/Microsoft are squirming in their chairs right now.

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

#75
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…

Same here! If you don’t have a working Mac, buy a refurbished Mac, save money, and wait a couple cycles for the next Mac.

I plan on waiting a little bit to let the chips and MacOS’s arm ecosystem mature.

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

#76

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…

It's a radical decision yes, but also so very Apple-like. And I wonder how much of this wild architecture change is also behind the improved performance here.

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

#77
post #53
post #29

Is this cross compilation to x86 or a native compile to Arm? That could be playing an important role if it's easier to optimize and emit code for one architecture versus the other.

I was wondering that also. Based on Twitter comments it seems that he was compiling to arm, so there's a bit of comparing apple and pears there.

depends how you're looking at it:

if what you care is your edit-compile-run cycle, what matters is how long does it take to compile it to the architecture where you'll actually run the app, which for interactive builds where speed matters most is supposedly your local machine.

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

#78

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.

The CPU gains on ARM have been increasing consistently year over year for the past decade. People have posted benchmarks of the A11/ A12/ A13 versus Intel for a while so this has been pretty obvious. It's just surfacing because suddenly we have a desktop CPU with desktop software like compilers and other things where it's more obvious outside of benchmark tools.

Apple is just jumping onto their existing ARM track, once they migrate their product line, which has surpassed Intel. Once they've migrated all their lines to ARM, the performance gains will be more like they have been on the iPhone/ iPad over the past few years. Mostly 20-30%/ year.

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

#79

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…

My guess is that they are releasing the M1 right now because it's the smallest SoC they're going to make and its yields are just barely enough to be viable. Once they get better yields on the 5nm process, they will start making the larger, more yield-sensitive SoCs with more RAM in them.

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

#80
post #29

Is this cross compilation to x86 or a native compile to Arm? That could be playing an important role if it's easier to optimize and emit code for one architecture versus the other.

I don't know about Rust, but when compiling some Swift + ObjC code on a DTK, the target architecture made very little difference.
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