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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

#141

Post by heisenbergs »

whalesalad wrote: post #48

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…

According to anandtech the memory throughput is off the charts at 68.25GB/s [1]. That's twice as fast as high speed ddr4 memory (DDR4-4000 at 32GB/s).

In other words: they totally trounced and took it to the next level with regards to memory, because they can. If anything, memory control is their biggest advantage. Scaling the amount of ram won't be an issue. Increasing the bandwidth perhaps, but it'll still be way quicker than what Intel or AMD offer. This seems like something their next gen M2 version could tackle as a somewhat low hanging fruit.

[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...

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

#142

Post by acdha »

quonn wrote: post #51
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…

For Apple, it‘s not about attracting new customers but about reducing costs (on the software side and also in licensing costs for the CPU) to increase profits.

Profits are a factor but Apple has always thought more long term: Intel has been preventing them from shipping things on-time (sometimes year+ delays) and they’re limited to what Intel implements in many areas. It’s not as bad but similar to the way that the Android watch market dried up when Qualcomm chose to keep shipping 2014 chips which ruled out most of what designers might want to build.

This gives Apple complete control of their product direction and especially the ability to build unique features which aren’t easy to match - Dell’s design is limited to the combinations which Intel offers unless they pony up a large amount of R&D and get Microsoft on-board but Apple can customize their integrated chips for the exact thermal/size/power characteristics they need.

That’s a big commitment but it’s something they’ve been very successful at in the mobile space so I wouldn’t bet against them.

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

#143

Post by spijdar »

djsumdog wrote: post #108
whalesalad wrote: post #48

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…

Not to mention the e-waste and the inability for users to upgrade their own devices. I wonder what the performance cost was of having standard memory modules. I suspect it wasn't significant and this is more of a move to prevent upgrade and increase consumption and waste. This is another reason I really don't ever want to own another Apple device. They want more and more control over the system and they keep moving t…

Standard memory modules which were soldered onto the mainboard?

Given how Macbooks have had soldered memory packages for ... 8 years now, I don't think moving the memory onto the SoC was to lock out upgrade potential. It doesn't make upgrading any less possible than "completely impossible", and probably (slightly) reduces the overall cost/complexity of the board, slightly reducing the material cost/impact.

FWIW, in the future I imagine most processors will look like the M1, with additional memory available over a serial bus like OMI, used in POWER10. The "unified memory" will effectively serve as a giant cache for the CPU/GPU with slower peripheral memory used as a backing store.

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

#146

Post by dangus »

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…

As far as price competitiveness, the MacBook Air is now so far ahead that the “high” price is almost irrelevant.

There is no such thing as a fanless PC laptop with anything close to the same performance or battery life. It literally doesn’t exist at any price.

I mean, people are going to be buying this thing on the education store for $899. This isn’t a $2000 machine we are talking about here. This is college student territory.

“I don’t see how this changes Apple’s position,” I’m having a good laugh at that!

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

#147

Post by DarmokJalad1701 »

zepto wrote: post #129
bird_monster wrote: post #64

The next laptop I purchase for home use will be a linux laptop. Hopefully linux on a laptop has gotten a lot better than my last couple experiences with it. Apple products have just taken such a steep turn for the worse over the years, I can't justify paying that amount of money for such poor quality.

Sadly Linux on laptops isn’t that much better than it used to be. I’m using both. However if you dislike Apple, Linux is a perfectly good choice unless you are a developer who needs to write code for Apple products.

As someone who loves the trackpad on MBPs, is there any linux laptop with a comparable one?

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

#148

Post by sudhirj »

ogre_codes wrote: post #78
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.

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, on…

Chalking it down to ARM doesn’t cut it... other companies make ARM chips too, including Qualcomm. Most Android phones run ARM, and given they outnumber iPhones heavily you’d expect massive improvements. But this is better than putting Qualcomm’s best chip into the Mac.

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

#149

Post by whalesalad »

ogre_codes wrote: post #131
whalesalad wrote: post #48

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…

> You can't get an M1 configuration right now larger than 16GB which is a table-stakes baseline dev requirement today. Everyone on my team has been using 15" MacBook Pros with 16GB RAM for the past 3 years. I suspect most developers run with 16GB of RAM just fine. I'm not arguing "16GB is fine for all developers everywhere!", but it's absolutely not a hard requirement. I suspect for a lot of us, the difference in per…

I think if you have a very specific role where your workload is constant it makes sense. I am an independent contractor and work across a lot of different projects. Some of my client projects require running a full Rails/Worker/DB/Elasticsearch/Redis stack. Then add in my dev tools, browser windows, music, Slack, etc... it adds up. If I want to run a migration for one client in a stack like that and then want to switch gears to a different project to continue making progress elsewhere I can do that without shutting things down. Running a VM for instance ... I can boot a VM with a dedicated 8GB of ram for itself without compromising the rest of my experience.

That is why I think 16GB is table stakes. It is the absolute minimum anyone in this field should demand in their systems.

Honestly the cost of more RAM is pretty much negligible. If I am buying laptops for a handful of my engineers I am surely going to spend $200x5 or whatever the cost is once to give them all an immediate boost. Cost/benefit is strong for this.

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

#150

Post by kilburn »

peteradio wrote: post #120
whalesalad wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can never have enough ram!

Haha! I somehow became sated with 16GB on my laptop. Now any of my workloads which require more would simultaneously want higher cpu, so those loads get pushed to a different machine entirely. So I'm curious what is the use case for 16GB+ with a laptop cpu.

For some people the main advantage of a laptop is the posssibility to move to spots where there's no or very bad connection. In those cases it becomes really useful to be able to run all your workloads on it, even if much slower.
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