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Apple Silicon M1 Disruption

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Re: Apple Silicon M1 Disruption

#151

Post by jeffbee »

alwillis wrote: post #144
jeffbee wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you are just regurgitating some blog post you found. I don't have any workloads that are decode starved on x86 so it wouldn't make any difference if Intel had 50 decoders. I do have tons of workloads that spend a lot of time on TLB misses. I have several that are cache fill limited.

It’s not about being starved for anything; it’s that Intel and AMD have legacy issues they can’t get around. They’ve pretty much out of bullets: more cores, higher clock frequencies, better manufacturing, etc. The point they can’t process as many instructions per clock cycle and there’s nothing they can do about it. They can’t match the M1’s performance per watt. And certainly there’s no Intel/AMD laptop processor wi…

Intel's current generation CPUs have the same dual-channel LPDDR4X memory that Apple uses. Memory is not "on the same die" for either company because you don't make DRAM on the same process where you make CPUs.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Disruption

#152

Post by gamblor956 »

jryle70 wrote: post #102
gamblor956 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, compared to your prior Macbook I'm sure it was a revelation. A programmer friend loves his new M1, but he's also been an Apple user for decades. As a Windows user, testing out my friend's Macbook Air M1 was an underwhelming experience. I've had bigger performance boosts from adding more RAM or switching out HDs to SSDs, and a large part of the M1's performance "gains" can be attributed to the increased RAM on th…

How did you compare a Windows system with a Mac to conclude it was "an underwhelming experience"? were they similarly configured and running similar software? > a large part of the M1's performance "gains" can be attributed to the increased RAM on the systems currently featuring the M1. Not sure I understand your point. M1 systems have 8 or 16 GB RAM. There are no increased RAM compared to non-M1 Mac.

I'll try to find the review in the morning if I remember/care enough, but at least one of the reviews noted that the tested system had more RAM than the slightly older Mac it was being compared to, and that the performance gains between the two systems generally mirrored those found in PCs with differing amounts of RAM.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Disruption

#153

Post by saati »

ksec wrote: post #146

Sigh. >Later, with the A11, previously licensed PowerVR GPUs were also replaced with in-house designs. They are, as of A14, and likely in A15 and A16, still licensed from IMG / PowerVR. [1] [2] Arguing the GPU is not from PowerVR because they have their own variation of design is like arguing Apple doesn't use ARM because they design their own CPU. They are still using tile based rendering, patented by IMG. And for m…

Everyone (nvidia, amd, intel) switched to tile based rendering in their latest gpus, so are they all PowerVR?

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Disruption

#154

Post by gamblor956 »

alwillis wrote: post #129
gamblor956 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Benchmarks show that the M1 has better performance in only a few areas, and underperforms in others, and that's with Apple controlling literally every aspect of the hardware and software stack. It's great for an ARM system for a vertically oriented company, but it isn't sufficiently performative to be a significant threat to the competition. And that's before you consider all the non-technical crap Apple has thrown a…

Benchmarks show that the M1 has better performance in only a few areas, and underperforms in others, and that's with Apple controlling literally every aspect of the hardware and software stack. I haven't seen a review where it has underperformed any other comparable device. I've seen a lot of talk about how the Threadripper from AMD is faster… duh. Of course a 32- or 64-core processor that costs 2x-3x than a Mac mini…

Depends on what business you're in. If you're in the content creation business, you're good to go [1].

I am definitely going to differ on that. My last job (until this summer) was in Hollywood for a content creation company (live broadcast + streaming) and I worked very heavily with the content creation guys and the digital production team (as a result of working on them for R&D tax credit documentation purposes. That means I not only saw every expense, I also documented the reasons for all of those expenses based on discussions with the teams). We switched off Apple software 4 years ago. They began the transition off Apple hardware 2 years ago. Apple was great for content creation a long time ago, but these days content creators use *nix based systems if they need performance and Windows-based systems if they care about costs. If you suggest using Apple to the content creation guys these days, they'll laugh your ass out of the room and tell you to go back to film school.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Disruption

#155

Post by dingaling »

colinmhayes wrote: post #28
gizmodo59 wrote: post #3

I have seen so many articles on HN in front page about M1 over the past few weeks. Like a curious child I read all of them because somewhere in me I want to believe there exists a possibility of a giant leap for Desktop/Laptop. Having tried it myself, I should say this is going to be remembered just like the iPhone in 2007.

The iPhone literally changed everyone's life. History books will differentiae between the pre and post smartphone eras. This is nowhere close to a lifechanging product, although it's definitely a big leap.

> The iPhone literally changed everyone's life.

I thought about this for a moment and realised it is probably correct, but not in a good way

Previously we used durable, work-orientated smartphones with productive keyboard input. Then the iPhone arrived and popularised a flashy but fragile and less efficient form factor that became dominant.

Every time I type in a touchscreen phone I regret that change. It was a triumph of a consumption mindset over usability.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Disruption

#157

Post by oblio »

RantyDave wrote: post #38
oblio wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the true cost of x86 is finally exposed They've reinvented x86 at least twice: microcode and then x86_64. I wouldn't bury x86 yet. Plus a good chunk of the M1 computing prowess is not even the CPU, it's the additional hardware such as the neural engine cores and such. This is something you could put next to a Sparc core, it's not ARM specific.

Nah, this is it for x86. The only relevant piece of x86 binary software is the Windows ecosystem ... and that runs on arm now. Everything else is either interpreted (Python, Ruby), JIT'ed (Java, C#) or can be compiled natively to arm anyway. All Apple have done is prove that it's possible.

Could be.

However I'm doubtful that the PC market will move to a closed system similar to Apple's. So whoever comes in with ARM better be prepared for lots of competitions and low margins in a cutthroat environment. That's not a very attractive market proposition, especially since the x86 makers won't just take this lying down.

I think we'll be in a weird place soon.

Apple will be doing Apple things and increasing its market share but never taking over (maybe it will reach 20-25%? who knows).

Many server environments will switch to ARM, especially the big cloud providers that can make their own chips.

Qualcomm will push some more desktop class SOCs but I doubt they'll reach Apple's performance levels so they risk having their lunch eaten, especially by AMD.

So it's possible that the PC desktop/laptop market might be "stuck" with x86 for many more decades.

There is also a scenario where Intel or AMD come up with some brilliant designs and catch up completely or well enough to Apple in which case this will all have been a tempest in a teacup.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Disruption

#158

Post by dingaling »

spideymans wrote: post #77
jaimex2 wrote: post #59

Its only disruption if it disrupts. No one cares other than existing Apple users so I guess the only disruption will be the year of really fast and efficient teething issues they will be dealing with. We have one at work, I'd highly recommend waiting another year before getting one if you want to be productive.

> No one cares other than existing Apple users Anyone in the market for an ultrabook will care.

> Anyone in the market for an ultrabook will care.

My current ultrabook is 12 years old and falling apart, but the new Apple designs aren't even in the picture as replacements because they're simply not general-purpose computers. They are appliances.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Disruption

#159

Post by saagarjha »

alblue wrote: post #24
mhh__ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If everyone gives up and just builds everything on the web then it's an indirect boon for Linux, but M1 will probably never ever properly support Linux. Unless Apple have a complete change of heart, if it ever does it will be as a result of far too much work done for free

Early days, but Hypervisor.framework patches are being built that allow QEMU to run an Arm build of Linux (and Windows) at native speed. https://twitter.com/jonmasters/status/1333555759737663489 The reality is that some of the drivers for the M1 chip will never arrive, but that if you want to run Linux (or Windows) Arm code then you can do so soon.

Wouldn't these be QEMU patches to let it support Apple silicon Hypervisor.framework?

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Disruption

#160

Post by saagarjha »

doggydogs94 wrote: post #137

I am looking at two compatibility points regarding M1-macOS. First, will VMWare (and Parallels and virtualBox) run x86 Windows VMs on M1 and second, will Linux run natively on M1 (even though I don’t do much Linux). Until these two things are taken care of, M1-MacOS will just be (an important) niche system.

No, maybe.
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