Super impressive, but these are all single threaded workloads, right?
Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development
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Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development
#32The benchmarks look promising, but the advice at the end to "Just Buy M1 if you'd like to have a low-power, long-lasting, quiet, and performant dev machine" glosses over the issue of software compatibility; if you're buying an M1 device to use as a dev machine today, some of the tools you use may not yet work on M1.
Rapidly being fixed, from what I can tell from tables.
I don't think it is going to be any worse than upgrading to a newer version of OSX, where a couple programs here and there just never work again because the devs threw in the towel, while every other dev and studio does whatever they need to do to make it work.
Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development
#33Just waiting for the 15"/16" version. I don't use an external monitor so 13" just doesn't work for me.
Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development
#34The fact that we are even able to realistically compare a CPU in an ultralight laptop with no fan to an i9 is absolutely amazing. To me that would be an upgrade even if performance is a complete wash.
Yeah seeing a MacBook Air beat an i9 is hilarious. I think this should put arguments over X86 efficiency disadvantages to bed. The X86 is obviously a huge boat anchor. There is no other explanation for this monstrous of a performance efficiency gap... unless Apple has invented something fundamentally new that has never been done in the entire history of CPU design. I doubt that.
My intuition is that x86's wasted die space on instruction decoding, backwards compatibility, etc. can be spent on making bigger and wider cores, and this seems to be what M1 is doing.
However, there are still some other aspects to consider. One is Apple's process lead against both Intel and AMD. The next is the memory situation; it'll be interesting to see if increased latency from more conventional configurations will change the dynamics much. (I suspect no, but some people suspect yes.)
Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development
#35Those Redis results are very interesting. So interesting that it looks like something is wrong with the test.
Maybe the OS is a factor? I assume they're connecting to redis over domain sockets?
Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development
#36Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development
#37The fact that we are even able to realistically compare a CPU in an ultralight laptop with no fan to an i9 is absolutely amazing. To me that would be an upgrade even if performance is a complete wash.
Yeah seeing a MacBook Air beat an i9 is hilarious. I think this should put arguments over X86 efficiency disadvantages to bed. The X86 is obviously a huge boat anchor. There is no other explanation for this monstrous of a performance efficiency gap... unless Apple has invented something fundamentally new that has never been done in the entire history of CPU design. I doubt that.
Well, Apple has managed to move all the way down to a 5nm process while Intel still hasn't made it past 14nm. AFAIK that's the largest limiting factor for Intel. I can't speak to why they have been stuck there for so long.
Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah seeing a MacBook Air beat an i9 is hilarious. I think this should put arguments over X86 efficiency disadvantages to bed. The X86 is obviously a huge boat anchor. There is no other explanation for this monstrous of a performance efficiency gap... unless Apple has invented something fundamentally new that has never been done in the entire history of CPU design. I doubt that.
My intuition is that x86's wasted die space on instruction decoding, backwards compatibility, etc. can be spent on making bigger and wider cores, and this seems to be what M1 is doing. However, there are still some other aspects to consider. One is Apple's process lead against both Intel and AMD. The next is the memory situation; it'll be interesting to see if increased latency from more conventional configurations w…
The x86 space for decoding is tiny. The inefficiencies have to come from elsewhere and at least partially from the node difference. An architecturally big one is that x86 only implements SeqCst for atomics whereas looser memory models can allow multi-process programs to be written more efficiently (which they have been already for mobile).
In other words I think the problem has to do with the semantics of x86 more than the syntax of decoding x86.
Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development
#39Surprised SQLite was faster on Ryzen. But looks like M1 outperforms nearly everywhere else!
We should ask sqlite's developer, but I guess it's not optimized for M1.
Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development
#40The fact that we are even able to realistically compare a CPU in an ultralight laptop with no fan to an i9 is absolutely amazing. To me that would be an upgrade even if performance is a complete wash.
Yeah seeing a MacBook Air beat an i9 is hilarious. I think this should put arguments over X86 efficiency disadvantages to bed. The X86 is obviously a huge boat anchor. There is no other explanation for this monstrous of a performance efficiency gap... unless Apple has invented something fundamentally new that has never been done in the entire history of CPU design. I doubt that.
I doubt the instruction set is the only (or even the main) advantage M1 has. Apple just has been hiring some of the best talent in the field for a long time now that have been working on their phone/tablet chips and now used their talents on the M1.
There is a lot you can do to improve a CPU without changing the instruction set or manufacturing process just by doing a better job at designing the CPU itself. (look at Ryzen 5000 series with 15 to 20% IPC gain over the 3000/4000 series while staying on the same manufacturing process for example)
Basically there is a lot to gain just by doing a better design on the CPU itself. Also faster CPUs/GPUs allows one to build faster CPUs/GPUs just because as with more compute around you can run simulations faster/with more accuracy thus allowing faster development/better designs.