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Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

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Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#231

Post by ubercow13 »

nojito wrote: post #187
gameswithgo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

first there is no sensible reason why ram bandwidth would be different by 3x, its lpddr4x either way, and you can’t replace it from an ssd that fast, the ssd would limit swap speed

What? https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... > Besides the additional cores on the part of the CPUs and GPU, one main performance factor of the M1 that differs from the A14 is the fact that’s it’s running on a 128-bit memory bus rather than the mobile 64-bit bus. Across 8x 16-bit memory channels and at LPDDR4X-4266-class memory, this means the M1 hits a peak of 68.25GB/s memory bandwidth. The…

How does memory bandwidth prevent it needing to swap to disk?

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#232

Post by smnrchrds »

jerf wrote: post #130
neilpanchal wrote: post #4

I just got one. I’m blown away by the speed as well. Chrome runs insanely fast! Alas, it’s not developer ready yet. Brew is a mess. Docker doesn’t work. PyCharm is WIP although can use x86 version. I was skeptical of the hype but this little laptop has made me realize how slow everything else is. Unfortunately, while the hardware has accelerated far beyond expectations, the software - specifically MacOS BigSur is a m…

"it’s not developer ready yet." Hey, what if we just... kept it that way? Kiss all that speed goodbye once software developers get their hands on this. And then the low end current-gen models will be even slower when running "the code that runs ok on the M1 hardware, I guess, ship it."

For cross-platform software like Chrome and Electron apps, this will never happen, as the main target and market will still be Windows and x86-64.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#233

Post by ytch »

kllrnohj wrote: post #229
ytch wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me that Xbox series X/PS5 use Unified GDDR for higher memory bandwidth, I'm curious if such design can help x86 catch up M1?

x86 has been doing unified memory for integrated GPUs since at least 2015. It's not a new thing, see for example https://bit-tech.net/news/tech/cpus/amd-huma-heterogeneous-u... The reason GDDR isn't typically used for system RAM is it's higher latency & more power hungry. Like, the GDDR6 memory on a typical discreet card uses more power than the an entire M1-powered Mac Mini power hungry.

Thanks, I haven't noticed the latency/power difference of GDDR memory.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#234

Post by mantap »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #174
raphaelj wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is most probably more linked to Java/Kotlin vs Objective-C/Swift. Want an array of 1000 objects in Java ? You'll endup with 1001 allocations and 1000 pointers.

Pretty sure you'll end up with exactly the same in an NSArray? ObjC is excellent but it's not doing anything fundamentally magic there

Theoretically Java should be more memory efficient because it makes fewer guarantees and can move memory around.

The advantage of Swift/ARC is not that it uses less memory per se but that it has a lower high water mark because memory is freed much sooner.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#235

Post by ultrarunner »

jerf wrote: post #130
neilpanchal wrote: post #4

I just got one. I’m blown away by the speed as well. Chrome runs insanely fast! Alas, it’s not developer ready yet. Brew is a mess. Docker doesn’t work. PyCharm is WIP although can use x86 version. I was skeptical of the hype but this little laptop has made me realize how slow everything else is. Unfortunately, while the hardware has accelerated far beyond expectations, the software - specifically MacOS BigSur is a m…

"it’s not developer ready yet." Hey, what if we just... kept it that way? Kiss all that speed goodbye once software developers get their hands on this. And then the low end current-gen models will be even slower when running "the code that runs ok on the M1 hardware, I guess, ship it."

It’s unclear to me how reduced availability of developer tooling will result in a faster software experience for M1 owners.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#236

Post by jrockway »

avalys wrote: post #226
jrockway wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this comment. The new M1s all have 16GB of RAM integrated with the SoC, and it can't be upgraded. If you had 32GB on your old machine and didn't need that much, that's kind of on you, right?

The M1s have 8 GB standard, 16 GB is a $200 upgrade. The parent is stating that 8 GB is actually fine and that people will be paying to upgrade to 16 GB unnecessarily.

Ah, makes sense! Thanks for clarifying.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#237

Post by ericpauley »

nojito wrote: post #187
gameswithgo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

first there is no sensible reason why ram bandwidth would be different by 3x, its lpddr4x either way, and you can’t replace it from an ssd that fast, the ssd would limit swap speed

What? https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... > Besides the additional cores on the part of the CPUs and GPU, one main performance factor of the M1 that differs from the A14 is the fact that’s it’s running on a 128-bit memory bus rather than the mobile 64-bit bus. Across 8x 16-bit memory channels and at LPDDR4X-4266-class memory, this means the M1 hits a peak of 68.25GB/s memory bandwidth. The…

> The point of the memory bandwidth is so that it never has to swap to disk in the first place.

What? How does memory bandwidth obviate the need for disk swapping?

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#238

Post by vt240 »

phillco wrote: post #210
neilpanchal wrote: post #4

I just got one. I’m blown away by the speed as well. Chrome runs insanely fast! Alas, it’s not developer ready yet. Brew is a mess. Docker doesn’t work. PyCharm is WIP although can use x86 version. I was skeptical of the hype but this little laptop has made me realize how slow everything else is. Unfortunately, while the hardware has accelerated far beyond expectations, the software - specifically MacOS BigSur is a m…

> I want macOS that has a UI of Windows 95. That would be totally insane on Apple Silicon. You don't even need to go as far as Windows. Classic Mac OS would be just fine.

Yes, can I please have System 7.1 or 7.5.3 back? I recently installed MAE on my SunBlade 2500 and it has been an amazing experience. A Classic Mac, without all the issues of HFS corruption from crashing out. Running 68k software at G4 speeds. Haha. For a lot of tasks it certainly works better than the Classic environment did under 10.1-4 since it's not targeting the System 9.2.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#239

Post by bak3y »

emadabdulrahim wrote: post #183

The only downside of the amazing new M1 MBP is that it runs WoW on max settings 60fps. And now I'm back into the world of Azeroth. Especially with the launch of Shadowlands. What the hell, Apple, I thought I was safe and immune from video games with my MacBooks.

This is the first comment that's made me actually want one...
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