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Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

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Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#631

Post by tokamak-teapot »

rimliu wrote: post #537
gameswithgo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it makes objective c and swift memory management faster but it doesn’t reduce ram usage at all. (maybe a weee bit less bandwidth used)

If memory is released as soon as possible instead of waiting for the next GC cycle, does not it make it more efficient?

Yes!

Hopefully I can clear up the discussion a little:

Q: Does reference counting 'use' less RAM than GC?

A: Yes (caveats etc. go here, but your question is a good explanation)

Q: Does the M1 in and of itself require less RAM than x86 processors?

A: No

Q: So why are people talking about the M1 and its RAM usage as if it's better than with x86?

A: It's really just around the faster reference counting. MacOS was already pretty efficient with RAM.

I'd like to propose tokamak-teapot's formula for hardware purchase:

Minimum RAM believed to be required = actual amount of RAM required * 2

N.B. I am aware that a sum that's greater than 16GB doesn't magically become less than 16GB, but it is somewhat surprising how well MacOS performs when it feels like RAM should be tight, so I'd suggest borrowing a Mac or making a Hackintosh to experience this if you're anxious about hitting the ceiling.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#632

Post by donmcronald »

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."

Give the executives slow ass old computers imo. Problem solved. Or just tell the devs the ceo has a core 2 duo.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#634

Post by bschwindHN »

codercotton wrote: post #310
peteretep wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter point: I only just noticed my iPhone animates things after I read this comment and went to find some.

Animations used to be ~2x slower, /that/ was painful. It's much better now, though I could go with another 2x speedup personally.

Wasn't it the case that they used to prevent touch interactions until the animation finished? I remember moving to iOS from android in 2017 and being really annoyed at that, but they fixed it in like iOS 11 or 12.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#635

Post by oblio »

skohan wrote: post #617
oblio wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it doesn't seem to happen in practice so it's either hard or there are no incentives to do it, or both. But that's the reality we live in.

Yeah fine, you're not wrong, but it's still worthwhile to understand why it's the reality we live in verses just taking a defeatist attitude. If it's just a matter of one engineer taking a couple weekends to change the situation, that's surely worth interrogating.

I highly doubt this. Another example would be Nvidia, where after 20 years open source drivers are still worse than closed source ones.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#636

Post by headmelted »

xoa wrote: post #57

Not to speak for anyone else, but one thing I gently disagree with: > Given that Hackintoshers are a particular bunch who don’t take kindly to the Apple-tax[...] I have zero issues with an Apple premium or paying a lot for hardware. I think a major generator of interest in hackintoshes has been that there are significant segments of computing that Apple has simply completely (or nearly completely) given up on, includ…

Agree completely.

I don’t know that the “Apple tax” moniker is really fair anymore, either.

The machines have always commanded a premium for things that enthusiasts don’t see value in (I.e. anything beyond numeric spec sheet values), so most critics completely miss the point of them.

There’s a valid argument to be made that they’re also marked up to higher margins than rivals even beyond the above, but I’m not sure if any end user has really ever eaten that cost - If you buy a MacBook, there has always been someone (students) to buy it back again 3/5/10 years down the road for a significant chunk of it’s original outlay. That doesn’t happen with any other laptop - they’re essentially scrap (or worth next to nothing) within 5 years. After 10 years I might actually expect the value to be static or even increase for its collector value (e.g. clamshell iBook G3s)

The total cost of ownership for Apple products is actually lower over three years than any rival products I’m aware of.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#637

Post by donmcronald »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #268
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 don't mind an upgrade to better looking UIs on regular intervals, but functionality and ease of use should come first. And here there is pandering to the iOS crowd when a touch based interface makes no sense for an OS operated with a mouse and a keyboard. But I suspect it is a consequence of the incessant screaming by all the hipsters and clueless morons that think iOS and macOS should be merged for no other reason…

Imagine 2-in-1 where iOS and OSX lived alongside each other and you could switch between them like tablet mode on a surface pro. Just let them be independent of each other imo.

I’d be up for that since I currently use an iPad and a win10 laptop.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#638

Post by skohan »

oblio wrote: post #635
skohan wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah fine, you're not wrong, but it's still worthwhile to understand why it's the reality we live in verses just taking a defeatist attitude. If it's just a matter of one engineer taking a couple weekends to change the situation, that's surely worth interrogating.

I highly doubt this. Another example would be Nvidia, where after 20 years open source drivers are still worse than closed source ones.

A video card is many orders of magnitude more complex than a touch pad

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#639

Post by xenadu02 »

uncomputation wrote: post #122
darren_ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This quote doesn’t really cover why M1 macs are more efficient with less ram than intel macs? You’ve got a memory budget, it’s likely broadly the same on both platforms, the speed at which your retains/releases happen isn’t going to be the issue. it’s not like intel macs use GC where m1 uses RC. (It explains why iOS does better with less ram than android, but the quote is specifically claiming this as a reason for 8G…

Someone please correct me for the sake of all of us if I’m wrong, but it sounds like Apple is using specialized hardware for “NSObject” retain-and-release operations, which may bypass/reduce the impact on general RAM.

On recent Apple Silicon CPUs uncontended most atomic operations are essentially free - almost identical in speed to the non-atomic version of the same operation. Reference counting must be atomic safe whether using ARC or MRR. On x86 systems those atomic operations impose a performance cost. On Apple Silicon they do not. It does not change how much memory is used but it does mean you can stop worrying about the cost of atomic operations. It has nothing to do with the ARMv8 instruction set, it has to do with how the underlying hardware implements those operations and coordinates among cores.

Separately from that x86's TSO-ish memory model also imposes a performance cost whether your algorithm needs those guarantees or not. Code sometimes relies on those guarantees without knowing it. Absent hardware support you would need to insert ARM atomics in translated code to preserve those guarantees which on most ARM CPUs would impose a lot of overhead. The M1 allows Rosetta to put the CPU into a memory ordering mode that preserves the expected memory model very efficiently (as well as using 4K page size for translated processes).

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#640

Post by donmcronald »

musicale wrote: post #316
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…

> Docker doesn’t work "Docker" on macOS runs in a Linux VM under Xhyve iirc. I imagine they will make an ARM version but your x86 images are probably toast unless you can emulate them somehow.

Apple should buy Docker. Only a partial /s on that one. I’m shocked Microsoft hasn’t bought Docker yet. Docker has so much mindshare it’s crazy. They’re the most valuable company that isn’t worth anything in the whole tech sector imo.
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