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Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

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Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#621

Post by xenadu02 »

izacus wrote: post #612
ogre_codes wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, the "walled garden" is intended for the underlying hardware. I don't think that is what he was saying at all. Regardless. There is nothing preventing Linux (or Windows) from booting on Mac M1 hardware. People almost certainly will have Linux running on Mac hardware before too long. It's just a slog getting it working well. Not a walled garden in any traditional sense, just difficult to implement.

> There is nothing preventing Linux (or Windows) from booting on Mac M1 hardware. Except the iOS-like secure boot verification and complete lack of any kind of documentation or drivers for the hardware. Details!

Apple Silicon supports local signing of whatever boot blob you like from in the recovery environment (in Permissive Security mode). This ensures the system boots the bits you yourself approved without applying any other requirements.

The other policies available are a) verify at install time the boot kernel is signed by Apple and is the most currently available version (default) or b) to verify at install time the boot kernel is signed by Apple without doing an online check (allows downgrades).

In all cases it's the same underlying mechanism that records what the system should be allowed to boot (according to whatever policy is in effect) and verifies at boot time it hasn't been tampered with. Big Sur takes that further and cryptographically verifies the entire system volume hasn't been tampered with (even offline).

You are correct that Apple does not provide drivers for other operating systems for M1 Macs.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#622

Post by lispm »

pritovido wrote: post #116
berkut wrote: post #15

I don't quite understand how 'retain' and 'release' can be more memory efficient on Apple Silicon than x86.... I can understand how they can be more efficient from a performance standpoint in terms of more efficient reference counting, but I don't understand how that translates to less memory usage which is apparently what's being argued... ? Unless on x86 some of the 'free's when the ref counts hit 0 were being batc…

It is a simple process, everything that you do in a language needs to be mapped into lower level instructions. If the lower level hardware instruction does not exist, you use multiple of other instructions to emulate that. If you add a low level instruction that maps a very common high level operation in hardware, you don't need to call 5 to 10 software functions(extremely expensive),each calling lots of opcodes but…

> each calling lots of opcodes but just can execute a single opcode and works by hardware beings extremely faster.

Typically these language oriented instructions need to be implemented by microcode in the CPU. Often this does not create a fast system, but it helps to keep the compiler simple. Examples are typical Lisp Machines, you've mentioned. With RISC CPUs OTOH the idea is to make the CPU instructions more primitive and put more effort into optimizing compilers instead. There were a few attempts to combine (high) language supporting architecture and the RISC principle, but I personally have never seen such a machine.

> in the hundreds of thousands of dollars

Usually in the 'tens of thousands of dollars'.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#623

Post by thinbeige »

cjgk wrote: post #608
thinbeige wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I never run docker on my local machine (I develop on a remote machine), benefits: remote machine os + setup is very close to production and GBit bandwidth up and down at my hoster is so much nicer when working with Docker images.

> If I wasn't freelance, I could probably get away with some cloud instance to run all my docker stuff, but I'm dealing with too many different environments, for clients with various different legal requirements making this simply 'not an option'. While not the exact same reasons as GP, I also need to be able to do this locally.

Even with legal restrictions: just put an Ubuntu server at home and ssh to it. Then you wouldn't have the GBit connection but still better than using Docker on a non-production OS.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#624

Post by audunw »

fomine3 wrote: post #230
brundolf wrote: post #25

This is fascinating: > Retain and release are tiny actions that almost all software, on all Apple platforms, does all the time. ….. The Apple Silicon system architecture is designed to make these operations as fast as possible. It’s not so much that Intel’s x86 architecture is a bad fit for Apple’s software frameworks, as that Apple Silicon is designed to be a bespoke fit for it …. retaining and releasing NSObjects i…

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.

> RAM capacity is just RAM capacity. Possibly Swift-made apps uses less RAM compared to other apps, but microarchitecture shouldn't be matter.

My guess it's mostly faster swapping.

Microarchitecture could help, perhaps by making context switches faster.

But it could also be custom peripheral/DMA logic for handling swapping between RAM and NVM.

I think it makes sense.. NVM should be fast enough that RAM only needs to act as more of a cache. But existing architectures have a lot of legacy of treating NVM like just a hard drive. Intel is also working on this with its Optane related architecture work.

You could also do on-the-fly compression of some kinds of data to/from RAM. But I havent heard any clues that M1 is doing that, and you'd need applications to give hints about what data is compressible.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#625

Post by kolinko »

vermilingua wrote: post #613

For those of us who are picking up M1 MacBooks as first time Mac users, is there some kind of Mac crash course for devs? What apps are useful, what familiar tools from Linux can we use, etc? I'm aware of Dash, which makes me suspect there are a bunch of other Mac-exclusive tools which will be useful.

Most linux terminal stuff works easily on mac - all the vims, emacs and so on.

For FTP, there is Transmit by Panic, which is quite neat. For web browsing, Big Sur's Safari finally works well (it's the first time I managed to do a switch from Chrome, after multiple tries).

Time Machine backup is also awesome - I couldn't find anything working just as well for other OSs.

There are also some neat system-wide tricks you may like:

- you can set up a hot-corner in preferences to show the desktop. I have mine in bottom-right, that way if I want to move sth in and out of desktop, I grab it, do the hot-corner, and drop.

- most file-editing apps have an icon next to a file-name in the window bar. you can drag&drop that icon to copy file etc. if you command-click the icon, the whole path to the file get revealed

- you can drag & drop files to every open file dialog in the system. super-handy

- home/end/pgup/pgdown keys are missing on the keyboard, but Emacs shortcuts work throught the whole system, e.g. Ctrl+A, Ctrl+E = home/end in every text dialog

- command+option+shift+v = paste without style, if you want to paste something into a wysiwyg text editor as a plain text

- command+shift+4 - screenshot of a part of the screen. also can serve as a pixel ruler, since it shows how many pixels you are grabbing

- Cmd+Up/Cmd+Down - navigate within the filesystem

In general, for me as a dev - the best thing about MacOS is how much of the stuff is built-in, and a ton of system features that are consistent through all the apps. That, and a linux-style console/filesystem :)

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#626

Post by tolien »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #603
hrktb wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the parent comment is just completely ignoring the argument of the post they reply to. Just looking at the first sentences: GP: > I have zero issues with an Apple premium or paying a lot for hardware. parent: > the hackintosh/enthusiast market [...] are the most price conscious segment

Then buy the new Mac Pro? I don't understand why that's not an option for GP.

Because as the sibling comments point out, the price of a Mac Pro isn't just an "Apple Tax^WPremium" over a desktop machine but is an order of magnitude more expensive (assuming you don't care about workstation-class components, i.e. Xeon Ws, Radeon Pro GPUs and ECC RAM).

There's an enormous price gap between a Mac Mini and the Mac Pro (especially when the Mini now has higher single-threaded performance than the base Pro...) which Apple has widened in the last decade or two.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#627

Post by nly »

azangru wrote: post #28
jrm4 wrote: post #6

At the risk of being that (Linux) guy -- What is gained here if we're just still applying faster cycles to Apple-esque wasteful (and perhaps harmful, as we're apparently learning re: their telemetry) software? If people really dig their Apple stuff, great. But I think its worth thinking about the likelihood that a "slower" computer running Linux could probably serve the actual user better in terms of "getting stuff d…

Another linux guy here, on the market for a new linux laptop. After reading the article, which linux-compatible laptops, would you say, come the closest to compete with the new generation of Apple products? Long battery life, plenty of power, good screen, good speakers? Is it the inevitable Dell XPS 13 and Thinkpad X1 Carbon, or are there any other darlings among the linux community?

I'm struggling with the same dilemma at the moment but at the 15" size point.

I just bought the XPS 15 (2020 model) in the i7-10750H / 16 GB / 1 TB / 4K touchscreen configuration, with 4 years of extended warranty, and it set me back $3000 USD here in the UK. This was with 16% Dell Advantage discount. For comparison in the US a slightly better package with 32GB of RAM is currently up for less ($2,750, so more like $2,900 after sales tax I guess). Retail.

I've also bought the exact same configuration and package, refurbished from the Dell Outlet, in the standard HD resolution for $1,900. This one has yet to arrive.

So how does the 4K XPS fair in Linux?

I booted in to Ubuntu 20.10 using a USB stick and... the keyboard didn't work. For some reason Ubuntu brings up the on-screen keyboard when I use the touchscreen, but the physical keyboard is completely non-functional.

Fedora 33 live? No wifi.

Manjaro XFCE worked great. I was pleasantly surprised (once all the 4K related scaling settings were fixed) how good it looked and how well everything just worked.

Paying $1,100 for a 4K touchscreen upgrade that causes nothing but problems on Linux is a hard thing to justify and, unfortunately for Dell, the screen on the XPS is probably its biggest selling point right now. Now M1 is a known quantity they really need to discount these laptops imho.

On the XPS you only get 3 USB-C ports, and one is constantly in use for me because I rarely unplug. I will be needing a stupidly expensive dock, so I have no idea how anyone can cope with just the 2 on the XPS 13. The keyboard is better than average but still pretty harsh, the touchpad has borderline build quality (springboardy) and is too large for my tastes (and I miss physical buttons), and the although the screen is gorgeously sharp and bright the fact that it's glossy still causes reflections in my home office.

I do not think I will be keeping either laptop, and instead I'm looking toward the X1 Extreme Gen3, with its better port options, keyboard and build quality.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#628

Post by kissiel »

yurishimo wrote: post #434
bak3y wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

40fps in Stormwind on 2080Ti @1440p with highest settings.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#629

Post by Nursie »

piokoch wrote: post #598
michaelmrose wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A machine that wont outperform the new mini $6000 16 cores 32GB of ram least powerful gpu on the list 2GB of storage $8,799.00 28 cores 48GB of ram same gpu 4GB of storage $14,699 MSRP on a 2020 Toyota Corolla $19,600 AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X 32-Core 3.7 GHz Socket sTRX4 $2,629.90 Cost of the same basic GPU about $219 Cost of complete system equivalent to the almost car priced mac about 4200. 9k-15k isn't "a lot"…

Yes and no. 15k hardware is for people who are using it professionally. By "professionally" I mean that they can throw such purchase into their cost and just pay less tax. From my perspective it does not matter if I pay ~15k to tax office or to Apple. In Europe the incentives to buy expensive goods as a company (like cars, fancy office furniture, etc.) is even bigger because of VAT tax (much bigger than US sales tax)…

You can get the VAT off, sure, but on the rest you just get to pay out of pre-tax profit. In the UK that means 20%.

So a machine that's £5k retail becomes £4167 without VAT, effectively £3333 if you take into account tax savings, which only apply if your company is in profit. A £15K machine effectively would still cost you £10k.

It's a big saving, sure, but it's still a very expensive machine.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#630

Post by pulse7 »

momokoko wrote: post #426
chongli wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does not want to offer to the hackintosh/enthusiast market because they are the most price conscious segment. Targeting that segment means putting out extremely performant, low-margin commodity machines. Doing so then cannibalizes the market for their ultra-high-end stuff. Not only that, though. Enthusiasts are also extremely fickle and quick to jump ship to a cheaper hardware offering. If you look at all of Ap…

I would be extraordinarily grateful for some insight into why this comment was downvoted.

There are many readers who don't want to see Apple being criticized so they are downvoting it...
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