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2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

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Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#691

Post by wyattpeak »

This is a slight aside, but could someone more familiar with the field than me explain what the Neural Engine is for? Does any software currently use it, or is it something that Apple are trying to push? Is it designed to build ML models, or to apply them to data?

And perhaps more basically, what for? How much machine learning is done on user machines, as opposed to renting some cloud time? What are they anticipating will be done?

I ask these questions in genuine curiousity, I assume I'm missing something but this just seems like a rather wild divergence from what (very little) I knew of the ML field.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#692

Post by ChuckMcM »

For people to young to remember or know, the original "Benchmark Wars" were between Intel and Motorola with NEC, Oki, and Hitachi occasionally getting a punch in there.

I worked at Intel at the time and the 80286 (x86) architecture was going head to head against the 68000 (68k) architecture. The marketing was intense with Motorola consistently using benchmarks that benefited from linear memory access and Intel using benchmarks that benefited from branching and floating point. This was when Intel made a compiler that recognized it was compiling the 'Dhrystone' benchmark and substituted custom hand assembled code for the output of the compiler.

Watching Intel and AMD compete was entertaining because Intel was competing against its own ISA. It added new instructions, AMD created a 64 bit extension, both worked some interesting improvements in memory handling an cache handling.

Adding Apple's take on ARM to the mix is a lot of fun for me. It is like reading a new novel in the Asimov Foundation series or maybe a fourth volume in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I am really glad they are pushing the edge of the envelope here, it is the kind of technology that made me get into computers in the first place.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#693

Post by marta_morena_28 »

wyattpeak wrote: post #691

This is a slight aside, but could someone more familiar with the field than me explain what the Neural Engine is for? Does any software currently use it, or is it something that Apple are trying to push? Is it designed to build ML models, or to apply them to data? And perhaps more basically, what for? How much machine learning is done on user machines, as opposed to renting some cloud time? What are they anticipating…

"Core ML optimizes on-device performance by leveraging the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine while minimizing its memory footprint and power consumption."

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreml

Apple has always been good at running ML on device, as opposed to Google's approach of sending everything to the cloud, then mining all your data, selling it, tracking it, etc. One example is iPhotos, which implements feature detection on-device, while Google implements it in the cloud.

https://www.imore.com/no-apples-machine-learning-engine-cant...

Or for Google: https://www.theringer.com/2017/5/25/16043842/google-photos-d...

(Reading this makes me wanna puke)

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#694

Post by headeffects »

nomel wrote: post #665
mthoms wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Apple (theoretically at least) should start increasing their market share. Don't assume that they only downside for Intel is losing Apple as a customer... That could end up being the least of their worries.

> Because Apple (theoretically at least) should start increasing their market share. Should that be a serious goal for Apple though? Is there that much more money for them if they jump into the race-to-the-bottom budget market, where I assume much of the remaining share is? It seems there is some added value in being a luxury product.

They could gain more of the premium market. Or they could just stick an” year old a14 and make a slightly lower end 799 macbook in search of more market. They don’t necessarily need to start making 299 cheapo laptops to gain market share.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#695

Post by CountSessine »

wyattpeak wrote: post #691

This is a slight aside, but could someone more familiar with the field than me explain what the Neural Engine is for? Does any software currently use it, or is it something that Apple are trying to push? Is it designed to build ML models, or to apply them to data? And perhaps more basically, what for? How much machine learning is done on user machines, as opposed to renting some cloud time? What are they anticipating…

It’s accessible through the CoreML framework. I know nothing about this and very little about ML in general, but I found an interesting GitHub page written by a consultant who seems to know a fair amount about it.

https://github.com/hollance/neural-engine

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#696

Post by SulfurHexaFluri »

Aperocky wrote: post #683
SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My school had a policy of no chargers at school due to safety regulations (Fires/tripping) so the macbook air made an excellent choice.

no charger at school but you're expected to use a computer to learn.. That's kind of weird.

Well they provided us with macbook airs which easily last an entire day of usage unplugged.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#697

Post by headeffects »

KoftaBob wrote: post #152
mattlondon wrote: post #33

Wow it must suck to be Intel right now. It wasn't so long ago that the trope was while others had better multi-core performance "...Intel still holds the lead for single core performance" Now not only do AMD have a better product, but also Apple now offer equal or better performance than the best that Intel can offer. I wonder what is next for Intel now their £1000+ CPUs are firmly in third place. Looking forward to…

That's the consequence of resting on your laurels and getting complacent. They relied too much on being the large incumbent, and they reap what they sow.

Their biggest problems came from their foundry, which they definitely weren’t resting on.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#698

Post by bch »

car wrote: post #617
paulpan wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsung hero here is TSMC and their industry-leading 5nm fabrication node. Apple deserves praise for its SOC architecture on the M1 and putting it together, but the manufacturing advantage is worth noting. Apple is essentially combining the tick (die/node shrink) and tock (microarchitecture) cadences together each year, at least the past 2-3 years. The question, perhaps a moot one, is how much the performance gains ca…

Worth mentioning is the insane and disruptive technology making TSMC's 5nm possible. ASML and it's suppliers have built a machine[1] that has a sci-fi feel to it. It took decades to get it all right, from the continous laser source to the projection optics for the extreme ultraviolet light[2]. This allowed photolithography to jump from 193nm light to 13.5nm, very close to x-rays. The CO2 laser powering the EUV light…

That’s amazing - now I have questions.

They say “decades in the making” - when did it first become viable, and then how long to master the process and become confident enough to mass produce consumer goods from it? I’d love to see a timeline w milestones.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#699

Post by fomine3 »

js2 wrote: post #339
tinus_hn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have already stated they won’t: “We’re not direct booting an alternate operating system,” says Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering. “Purely virtualization is the route. [...]” https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21302213/apple-silicon-ma...

I realize Federighi's reply seems to rule out Linux, but the context of the question seemed to be with respect to Boot Camp and Windows. My take is that Apple doesn't want to continue to invest in Boot Camp, especially since Microsoft apparently isn't willing to license ARM Windows for this use case. It's not clear to me that the new Macs won't allow booting Linux if the Linux community can figure out how to do it. T…

Proprietary original GPU must be a problem.

Re: 2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test

#700

Post by astkaasa »

jorl17 wrote: post #656
aculver wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Yes, it does. I use AdBlock Pro. 2. Yes, it does. I've been using Safari as my primary browser as a Rails developer for at least the past decade and have always found the developer tools at least adequate. I don't use the developer tools on other browsers heavily, so I don't know if I might be missing something.

I used to run Safari on my mac and it was the best thing in the world: - It integrated perfectly with the OS - It saved battery like heeeeell - It integrated natively with Airpods and media keys - It clearly had worse performance than Chrome and a couple of incompatibilities, but it was perfectly acceptable - I could run most of my extensions, namely uBlock Origin, HTTPS Everywhere and Reddit Enhancement Suite - The…

try adguard pls, it also has an iOS version which has almost the same experience on safari
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