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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

#181

Post by bhouston »

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #69
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.

Normally this wouldn't feel so ground breaking, but the stars are in alignment and all these improvements are hitting at the same time. We're seeing years of work and investment paying off (AMD, Apple, ARM, Nvidia, Amazon), new process nodes (TSMC), and new tech (Ray Tracing, DLSS, machine learning) all hitting at the same time. And that's the big stuff! There's also the steady incremental improvements such as batter…

Intel in 2020 is IBM in 1980.

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

#182

Post by aunetx »

sudhirj wrote: post #162
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…

One, this is repeating the iPhone vs Android comparisons. iPhones with 4GB RAM feel faster and get more work done than Androids running Qualcomm ARM with double that amount of RAM. The faster IO becomes the cheaper paging becomes, and macOS and iOS have a lot of work done to handle paging well. Two, this is the entry level processor, made for the Air, which is what we get for students, non-technical family members an…

I may be wrong, but the ecosystem does not really change here right? I mean, memory management should be roughly the same between x86_64 and arm regarding the amount of ram used, so I guess 16gb of ram under old macbooks is the same as 16gb under the new ones

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

#183

Post by bryanlarsen »

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…

IMO, this has little to do with it being ARM. 30 years ago ARM had a significant micro architectural advantage in performance per watt, but in this era of 10 billion transistor chips, that advantage has disappeared. x86_64 rationalized the x86 architecture and decode is such a small fraction of the power budget that it really doesn't matter anyways.

What does matter, IMO:

- assembling a killer team

- 5nm process

- high speed, low latency DRAM

- big-little

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

#184

Post by gumby »

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…

> memory on-die or in-package (not sure how it is configured). They call it 'Unified Memory'

It’s in the package; RAM on the die is called “cache”.

“Unified memory” has nothing to do with packaging. It’s the default for how computer memory has worked since, well, the 1950s: all the parts talk to the same pool of memory (and you can DMA data for any device).

That’s why the term of art for, say, GPUs having their own memory, is called NUMA (“Non-Uniform Memory Access”): unified is the default.) *

M1 is a remarkable chip and Apple doesn’t claim that UFA is some invention: they just used the technical term, just as they say their chips use doped silicon gates. It has become unusual these days and worth their mentioning, but it’s simply ignorance by the reporters that elevated it to seem like some brand name.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-uniform_memory_access

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

#185

Post by rsynnott »

akavi wrote: post #67

So are we going to see this chip in MBPs at some point, or is there a reason that's a bad idea? Furthermore, is there any reason to think there's a less throttle-happy version that might be available for the Pros?

The 16" MBP will presumably get a bigger version of the same thing; this one is 10W vs the 45W TDP Intel chips that those currently use, so they could just double it (or more).

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

#186

Post by rorykoehler »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #74
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.

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

Satya Nadella just tweeted about their new Pluton processor. I have a feeling it won't get the same hype as the M1 but they are clearly already trying to defend.

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

#187

Post by reaperducer »

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #69
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.

Normally this wouldn't feel so ground breaking, but the stars are in alignment and all these improvements are hitting at the same time. We're seeing years of work and investment paying off (AMD, Apple, ARM, Nvidia, Amazon), new process nodes (TSMC), and new tech (Ray Tracing, DLSS, machine learning) all hitting at the same time. And that's the big stuff! There's also the steady incremental improvements such as batter…

Ray Tracing

I'm not someone into the inner-working of chips much, but is "ray tracing" a new term used for something in microprocessors now? Or is this the same graphic "ray tracing" we were doing back in the 80's on Amigas and Atari STs?

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

#188

Post by redisman »

timw4mail wrote: post #121
schultzer wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people seam to forget is, that SOC is the future, and an upgrade should be as simple as switching one chip. This also comes with a lot of benefit with locality and performance.

There's no way the SOC will be upgradable.

No - but for desktop maybe that's the future? I could imagine AMD and Intel offering multiple tiers of SoCs instead of CPUs.

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

#189

Post by ogre_codes »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #183
ogre_codes wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IMO, this has little to do with it being ARM. 30 years ago ARM had a significant micro architectural advantage in performance per watt, but in this era of 10 billion transistor chips, that advantage has disappeared. x86_64 rationalized the x86 architecture and decode is such a small fraction of the power budget that it really doesn't matter anyways. What does matter, IMO: - assembling a killer team - 5nm process - hi…

Yes, a combination of things around Apple's A series CPUs.

ARM has been improving much faster than Intel.

Apple has been executing ARM much better than anyone else.

Apple's auxiliary processors and integration have been top notch.

TSMC has been crushing Intel in getting to 5nm.

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