Do you think we will see devices with multiple M1 chips? I’m not familiar with the barriers to that sort of computing model
No, they will make larger chips. Multi-chip SMP is going away over time.
16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile
241–250 of 529 posts
Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Qualcomm chips are not that far behind Apple's, and Microsoft has Windows on ARM ready for a while now. Those performance advantage won't be there for long. I think the bigger question is what does this spell for x86-64?
Uh, unless there's some new Qualcomm chip I haven't heard of, the Qualcomm chips are all being utterly crushed by Apple's offerings in geek bench and specperf.
Qualcomm chips don't have on-chip DRAM at the highest clock rate possible. If they did the same things Apple is doing in that way, the performance advantage of M1 shrinks. There's no real "magic" in the M1 or Apple, it's a reality distortion field that is hitting everyone right now. It's entirely possible to outperform the M1, there just hasn't been a need to do that until now - no major OS would have benefitted from an ARM on steroids before now so there wasn't even a need for it.
Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile
#243I 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…
Keep in mind that so far Apple has only started offering M1 on what are essentially entry-level computers. I think it's likely there will be a 32GB Unified Memory version for the 16" MBP (which maybe will become available on the 13" or Mac Mini too). I think M1 would not be able to achieve the performance and efficiency improvements if the RAM were not integrated, so they'll stick with Unified Memory for the time bei…
Seems to me, off chip RAM becomes a new sort of cache.
If Apple sizes the on chip RAM large enough for most tasks to fly, bigger system RAM can get paged in and performance overall would be great, until a user requires concurrent performance exceeding on chip RAM.
Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile
#244Earlier 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…
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.
Yes, ARM is one piece of many. (Commented about this above)
Though I suspect if Qualcomm were able to source a TSMC 5nm chip, it would be more competitive with Apple than Intel is at this point though. Apple has a lot of other things going for it where Qualcomm lags (the Secure Enclave, graphics performance, audio and photo processing, the neural engine etc etc)
Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile
#245I think Apple have screwed themselves over a bit here by sticking ARM-based Apple silicon in their lower-end/entry level devices first. I mean what's the point in spending £5k on a fully tricked out 16-inch MBP, as I'd been considering, when an entry level Macbook Air or Mac Mini is going to run rings around it? The reason I'm not going to buy one of these lower end Macs (the Mini would be the best fit) is that I can…
> Apple have screwed themselves over a bit here by sticking ARM-based Apple silicon in their lower-end/entry level devices first
This is the Innovator's Dilemma [1] Apple built its success on avoiding.
> if they'd started at the high end
They'd have to R&D through the M1 to something more advanced. It would go to market later to be bought in smaller volumes by pickier customers.
Usually, this is a good strategy. Scaling is expensive. Starting small at the highest unit volumes subsidises scaling. But Apple is uniquely unconstrained here. Starting with the most technically forgiving makes sense.
You may not buy an Apple product now. But you will wonder "what will Apple's high end product be" when weighing a competitor's offerings.
Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile
#246I think Apple have screwed themselves over a bit here by sticking ARM-based Apple silicon in their lower-end/entry level devices first. I mean what's the point in spending £5k on a fully tricked out 16-inch MBP, as I'd been considering, when an entry level Macbook Air or Mac Mini is going to run rings around it? The reason I'm not going to buy one of these lower end Macs (the Mini would be the best fit) is that I can…
Post-1996 Apple has never shied away from cannibalizing their own products. https://hbr.org/2016/07/the-best-companies-arent-afraid-to-r...
Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile
#247Does anyone know if there is a video encode benchmark available yet? These can be tricky to perform because you need to take into account the quality and size of the output. I assume x264/x265 are not optimized (yet) for M1. I wonder if M1 is designed for that workload at all (encode, not decode).
I mean, I haven't heard anything one way or another, but I would be willing to bet that Apple, who a) knows that their computers are heavily used by the video industry, and b) has been making iPhone chips with hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding for several years now—the chips upon which the M1 is based—has included that capability in the M1.
Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile
#248Is 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.
So though it's a new age in some ways, I don't think it will benefit many people. It will just increase the churn. Witnessing all the cries of "16GB of RAM isn't enough!" makes it quite apparent that software behaves like a gas rather than a liquid, and will expand to consume whatever hardware is available to developers. I think that for consumer products, which these are targeting, software responsiveness, usability…
I do not agree. Look at the AnandTech Speedometer 2.0 metric. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...
The 8GB Macbook Air at $899 educational is faster, and will feel faster, than any laptop that anyone has owned or thought of owning at that price point.
Millions of buyers who need laptops for *-at-home activities will sing its performance praises on Sheets and Salesforce.
The "I need 16GB crowd" of content creators need more RAM and GPU but they are a tiny fraction of the market for laptops.
Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile
#249I think Apple have screwed themselves over a bit here by sticking ARM-based Apple silicon in their lower-end/entry level devices first. I mean what's the point in spending £5k on a fully tricked out 16-inch MBP, as I'd been considering, when an entry level Macbook Air or Mac Mini is going to run rings around it? The reason I'm not going to buy one of these lower end Macs (the Mini would be the best fit) is that I can…
16GB is enough memory
I literally have an application I cannot compile in 16 GB.
Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile
#250I think Apple have screwed themselves over a bit here by sticking ARM-based Apple silicon in their lower-end/entry level devices first. I mean what's the point in spending £5k on a fully tricked out 16-inch MBP, as I'd been considering, when an entry level Macbook Air or Mac Mini is going to run rings around it? The reason I'm not going to buy one of these lower end Macs (the Mini would be the best fit) is that I can…
No they didn't.
There is simply too much complex, professional software that will take time to be ported to ARM versus the relative straightforward needs of entry-level users e.g. Go, Photoshop, Docker.
And they need a large install base to push developers to invest the necessary resources.