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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

#321

Post by zerkten »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #263
bartread wrote: post #204

I 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…

I don't think the M1 chip is a great choice for the 16" MacBook Pro. It's designed for lower power devices. It may do well on certain workloads like compilation, but may even regress (in terms of performance, not performance-per-watt) on other workloads. Their future iterations would be much better suited to a higher power device. It does create this weird short-term demand planning issue, but plenty of corporate cus…

> I don't think the M1 chip is a great choice for the 16" MacBook Pro. It's designed for lower power devices. It may do well on certain workloads like compilation, but may even regress (in terms of performance, not performance-per-watt) on other workloads.

What workloads do you think won't run better in some manner (faster, lower power consumption, etc.)? It's a general purpose CPU. Apple's own benchmarks talked about a broad range of use cases and the public experience and benchmarks are demonstrating this.

There are obvious performance considerations. With a fan, these M1 CPUs have a higher thermal range and sustained performance. This is the thing that's going to be important in the equivalent of the 16" MacBook Pro. They should have the cooling and battery capacity already in the current form factor. The question is do they have the M1 with many more cores, a new variant of the M1, or do they have some more exotic configuration? Only time will tell.

Corporates buying Macs are going to have to decide if their work can be done on these new models. There is no option but to test it. It'll suit some dev environments, but others (e.g. docker-heavy web shops) will have to stick to Intel for now. There are practicalities like needing to replace broken machines and upgrade from slower 2016/2017 models in many places that means it'd be silly to do a wholesale conversion. iOS and Mac dev shops will have much better flexibility in upgrading, but they are in the minority.

Bigger picture, the new M1 models are great for getting solid machines in the hands of the masses without being revolutionary. Devs can get to work on migrating software without the launch running on like the Mac Pro update did (that was a faux pas from Apple that they seem to have recognized.) It leaves open the possibility that next year we may see a complete form factor update across all laptop lines at Apple. It's to Apple's advantage that they delay that because it's high cost (retooling manufacturing) and high risk (the market doesn't like the product change).

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

#322

Post by pwinnski »

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…

Putting the memory into the SoC seems to be a lot of how they're getting this amazing performance: the memory bus is now twice as wide as anything else.

But yes, it means that Apple is going to have to either really start jamming more and more into there, or develop a two-tiered approach to memory where slower "external" RAM can supplement the faster "internal" RAM.

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

#323

Post by nthj »

danaris wrote: post #210
ogre_codes wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Update: Re-reading your above comment I realized I mis-read your post and though you were suggesting 32GB was table-stakes... which isn't quite right. Likewise much of below is based on that original mis-read. I'm not convinced that going from 16GB to 32GB is going to be a huge instant performance boost for a lot of developers. If I was given the choice right now between getting one of these machines with 16GB and ge…

I've seen others suggest that 32GB is table-stakes in their rush to pooh-pooh the M1. I, personally, am a developer who has gone from 16GB to 32GB just this past summer, and seen no noticeable performance gains—just a bit less worry about closing my dev work down in the evening when I want to spin up a more resource-intensive game.

I agree with this. I don't think I could argue it's table stakes, but having 32GB and being able to run 3 external monitors, Docker, Slack, Factorio, Xcode + Simulator, Photoshop, and everything else I want without -ever- thinking about resource management is really nice. Everything is ALWAYS available and ready for me to switch to.

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

#324

Post by thom »

ogre_codes wrote: post #289
whycombagator wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of development are you doing? 16gb is OK for my needs at home running linux, but on the odd occasion I wish I had more. At work I find 32Gb is barely enough.

I would turn that around. What kind of development are you doing where you feel 32GB is "Barely enough"? Right now I primarily work on a very complex react based app. I've also done Java, Ruby, Elixir, and Python development and my primary machine has never had 32GB. More RAM is definitely better, but when I hear phrases like "32GB is barely enough", I have to wonder what in the hell people are working on. Even runni…

If you do machine learning or simulations with big datasets and lots of parameters it does become an issue, but I will admit I could just as easily run these things on a server. I don’t think I’ve ever maxed out 32gb doing anything normal.

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

#325

Post by Closi »

freehunter wrote: post #117
tshaddox wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far more expensive than Windows laptops? I haven’t looked in a year or so, but last I checked, to get a Windows laptop with a good screen and build quality, you would also need to spend close to (or likely more) than 1,000 USD.

Yeah that's the reality. It's true that Apple hardware is expensive, but the reality really is that you can buy less expensive and also cheaper products than Apple sells. But if you want to buy something of the same quality as an Apple product, you're paying Apple-like prices. There are cheaper Android phones than the cheapest iPhone, but if you want iPhone-like specs and vendor support and build quality, you're payi…

> iPhone-like specs

iPhone-like performance at least - an iPhone will feel at least as snappy and performant as a flagship Android, but typically with 1/3 of the RAM (flagship androids have up to 12GB of RAM).

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

#326

Post by zerkten »

bartread wrote: post #268
leoh wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it matters. They get good margins on all their hardware. Some people will still need the pro hardware or can just switch, and then switch again when the 16" has ARM.

> Some people will still need the pro hardware or can just switch, and then switch again when the 16" has ARM. I don't know: at pro level prices I'm not sure how many people will switch and then switch again. That's a lot of money and a lot of depreciation on the flip. Granted, I'd been about to spend £5k on a laptop, which is a lot, but I'd expected it to last me 5 years or more. I'm not about to spend that money on…

I have to fight the urge myself, but that's a weaker strategy in these times. I've always invested in upgrades to lengthen the life of my laptops (I'm typing on on a 2015 rMBP 13.) It's probably better to spend £2500 now and £2500 in a few years with how things are going to change with ARM.

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

#327

Post by mixmastamyk »

whalesalad wrote: post #149
ogre_codes wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 swit…

All of this is doable in 16GB, I do it everyday with a 3.5GB Windows 10 VM running and swap disabled. There are many options as well such as closing apps and running in the cloud.

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

#328

Post by benhurmarcel »

tomp wrote: post #103
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…

> Their machines are still far more expensive than Windows Are they? I just checked now for US prices: 13‑inch MacBook Pro (Intel Core i5) 32GB = $2059 13-inch Dell XPS (Intel Core i7) 32GB = $2099 These are both the cheapest options available for my desired configuration (32GB RAM and 13-inch screen), and MacBook has far superior build quality, trackpad and OS. Probably for different specs MacBooks are comparatively…

The XPS line is the high-end of Dell, their most expensive one. So basically you're showing that the Macbooks are on par with the most expensive PCs.

That's correct, but that's also the point. They're expensive machines.

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

#329

Post by gok »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #36

My Ryzen 3900 is also so much faster than my (former dev machine) iMacPro with a Xeon and fast SSD (Rust compiles, TypeScript builds). Tech moves on. But the main thing for me is Linux, as it feels much more responsive than current OS X versions on the iMacPro. (the reason for dropping the iMacPro was no AI learning though not performance).

What do you use for AI learning?

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

#330

Post by [deleted] »

jonfw wrote: post #115
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…

Given the build quality, screen, performance, and battery life- Apple isn't really premium pricing anymore. The Dell XPS 13 starts at 999, the Lenovo X1 carbon starts at 949- at equivalent pricing- and the new Air outperforms both of those.

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