Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#431

Post by dangus » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:24 AM UTC

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…

Let's make a new computing law: The likelihood of an opinion on UI changes to be an overreaction is inversely proportional to the length of time that has passed since their release.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#432

Post by klodolph » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

herpderperator wrote: post #393

klodolph wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell is going on here? Digging through someone's post history to figure out if there are contradictions in what someone says? Can we not just evaluate what people say on its own merit and instead of putting people under the lens for hypocrisy?

What is the point of putting links on your profile if you expect people won't visit them? It was on the index page. Anyway, it looks like satire. I definitely got fooled. My bad.

Even if it weren't satire, investigating someone for inconsistencies like that... well, it just kinda sucks, doesn't it? I don't think we should expect people to have a consistent viewpoint across everything they've ever posted online.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#433

Post by m15i » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:25 AM UTC

liamcardenas wrote: post #91

I know very little, so perhaps someone could enlighten me. But I am curious how Apple Silicon will be for machine learning. When Apple releases a MacBook Pro with 64GB of unified memory (assuming they will) — won’t that be amazing for machine learning? I am under the impression that GPU memory is a huge factor in performance. Also, is there any way that the neural engine can accelerate training — or is it just for ex…

I too am curious how 64 GB unified memory performs for training deep learning models. Even if speed isn't amazing, 64 GB is much greater than the 24 GB available in Nvidia's flagship consumer cards, which would allow for inputting larger images, bigger batch sizes, deeper networks etc. Also, will be interesting to see how all of the different cores are used.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#434

Post by yurishimo » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:26 AM UTC

bak3y wrote: post #239

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...

Tbf, WoW will run on just about anything... I remember playing it on an Acer (or maybe Lenovo?) netbook back in 2009/10. Checked it out from school right before Christmas break so I would have a computer at home for a month.

In the article here they show Minecraft running at native res and 60 fps. No small feat nowadays considering draw distances that are popular now.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#435

Post by lhl » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

socialdemocrat wrote: post #293

fomine3 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't understand why less RAM is enough specially in Apple Silicon rather than Intel. Is the argument proved? RAM capacity is just RAM capacity. Possibly Swift-made apps uses less RAM compared to other apps, but microarchitecture shouldn't be matter.

I don't quite see that either. But I suspect that it is just macOS itself which uses less memory than Windows in general. But the much faster SSD to RAM transfer for the M1 means that shuffling stuff in and out of RAM is much faster meaning RAM matters less.

On my almost-stock (primarily used for iOS deployment) MBP, Catalina uses 3GB RAM (active+wired) memory on boot. It's much more than my Linux laptop (~400MB). I haven't booted Win10 recently but I'd assume it'd be close to macOS.

The transfer speeds of the M1 SSDs have been benched at 2.7GB/s - about the same speed as mid-range NVMe SSDs (my ADATA SX8200 Pro and Sabrent Rocket are both faster and go for about $120/TB).

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#436

Post by yurishimo » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

peterfield wrote: post #94

I guess the good thing for those of us who can't afford a new mac right now is that the used market will be flooded with recent models at a cheap price LOL.

This is true. I think picking up a now last gen Mac Mini as a HTPC would be sweet. Upgraded RAM could make it a home server beast. I don't see Apple abandoning the Intel support until at least Q1 2023, and even then, the types of stuff I would use it for in a HTPC setup would still be compatible well past then (unless some new video codec or something comes out that isn't compatible? Idk how those work).

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#437

Post by sliken » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

dfox wrote: post #328

nottorp wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unified doesn't necessarily mean dual ported.

Due to how DRAM works the array itself cannot have more than one port and almost certainly even the DRAM chip as a whole is still some variation of single ported SDRAM (long time ago there were various pseudo-dual-ported DRAM chips, but these were only really useful for framebuffer-like applications). But given that there are multiple levels of cache in the SoC it is somewhat moot point.

LPDDR4x (the ram chips in the m1) comes in dual port flavors.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#438

Post by sliken » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:41 AM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #153

nottorp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like some form of GDDR instead of plain DDR. Not only faster, but I bet simultaneously accessible from both the CPU and GPU.

no its normal mobile ram

The M1 has 4 LPDDR4x chips inside the the CPU package running at 4266 Mhz and showing some of the best latencies I've seen.

What "normal" laptop has that?

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#439

Post by tlrobinson » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:43 AM UTC

I’m curious if/how Apple Silicon will compete in the server market.

Apple certainly isn’t known for producing cost effective servers, but if they really posses this technology that leapfrogs commodity hardware they’d be crazy not to use it in every market possible, right?

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#440

Post by ogre_codes » Wed, Nov 25, 2020, 5:44 AM UTC

yardie wrote: post #16

I'm typing this from a 2014 i7-4980HQ 15" MBP. This machine would have been replaced in 2017 but I wasn't impressed with that years model. I had planned to upgrade in 2020 but the announcement of the M1 basically quashed that. I've been on this planet long enough to know when Apple changes course like this the old architect is already obsolete. 68k -> PPC -> x86_64 -> ASi. The PPC G5 got exactly 1 OS upgrade (10.5) b…

> The PPC G5 got exactly 1 OS upgrade (10.5) before it was EOL'd.

The OS X release cycle back then was much slower. It was 4 and a half years between when Apple shipped the first Intel PCs and Snow Leppard was launched. Even then, Apple continued supporting and updating Leppard for a couple years after that. Even if you bought a PPC Mac on the last possible day, you still got 5-6 years out of the machine with security updates.

Seems to me like we'll see at least comparable support for Intel Macs going forward. Particularly since they will still be shipping Intel Macs for at least another year, possibly another 2 years.