161–170 of 201 posts
Is there already an in-depth analysis of the M1 by someone with a low-level perspective? I want to develop an intuition on why/where the M1 is fast. E.g. is it branch prediction, reordering, memory latency. Unfortunately, most articles don’t go any deeper than “seems to be optimized for macOS”.
One more article going into it. Better out of order execution seeming to be a big one.
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> 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.
People on Hacker News are too easily impressed with the performance and the shininess of a new architecture, looking over the severe issues of Apple locking down it's platform and allowing less control over the device by the user. What good is a fast machine with long battery if I can't do what I want on it?
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?
Correct me if I am wrong, as I dont follow GPU that closely any more. ( Because I believe we have hit a point where processing node matters a lot more than uArch on GPU as their performance scales very well with transistor count. )
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> I should say this is going to be remembered just like the iPhone in 2007. I hope people will not forget about TSMC who made this all possible.
Is that really the case? Apple's design of the CPU itself seems like it's a bigger unique factor than the fab. Doesn't TSMC make competitors chips that are benchmarking much poorer than M1? Qualcomm got rid of their mobile ARM CPU designs a while back. Can the snapdragon cx / SQ2 series hope to compete using ARM reference designs, with Apple out so far ahead?
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Is that really the case? Apple's design of the CPU itself seems like it's a bigger unique factor than the fab. Doesn't TSMC make competitors chips that are benchmarking much poorer than M1? Qualcomm got rid of their mobile ARM CPU designs a while back. Can the snapdragon cx / SQ2 series hope to compete using ARM reference designs, with Apple out so far ahead?
If you compare Snapdragon scores of the same TSMC node to their Apple equivalent, they come up wanting. TSMC is a fantastic and innovative company, and they've done amazing things (in no small part to Apple's massive investment in them). But Apple chip design is superior to their competitors. Combine Apple's superior designs with first access to TSMC's premier nodes and you get some pretty special results, as we've b…
> Now you got a big problem, because neither Intel, AMD, or Nvidia are going to license their intellectual property I keep seeing this line and wonder - "did people miss the news about Nvidia buying Arm?". Sure, there are still plenty of hurdles to pass until it's official, but take a look at the initial piece written by Nvidia about the acquisition: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-arm-for... Spe…
It's also outright false - AMD licensed GPU tech to Samsung for the next generation Exynos, built custom SoC for clients in console. I don't know if AMD could license x86 cores since I don't know what their deal is on x86 IP with Intel.
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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. Tha…
People on Hacker News are too easily impressed with the performance and the shininess of a new architecture, looking over the severe issues of Apple locking down it's platform and allowing less control over the device by the user. What good is a fast machine with long battery if I can't do what I want on it?
Because the vast majority of people will be able to do exactly what they want on it.
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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…
In some of the benchmarks, the 15W Ryzen 7 4800U outperforms the Apple Silicon M1.
There, now you have seen a review where the M1 underperformed a comparable device.
(This is not to take away from the fact that the M1 is impressive, and is incredibly efficient, and much better for battery life. It's just a reminder that there are actual, real, worthwhile competitors.)