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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

#61

Post by mikepurvis »

whalesalad wrote: post #9

As soon as Apple sells this chip in a 32GB package I am going to be all over it.

I wonder if the Mac Pro version of this will do a two-tiered thing, with 16GB on the chip, and then a bunch of slots for your slower, "external" memory modules— basically the Mac Fusion Drive of RAM, with an internal controller to manage moving stuff in and out of the low-latency area.

I could certainly also see them going all-in on the integrated architecture, but the possibilities are intriguing if they want a reasonable story for a workstation that goes up to 100s of GB (the current Mac Pro's top configuration is an eye-watering 1.5TB of RAM).

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#63

Post by epmaybe »

whalesalad wrote: post #50
nicoburns wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be worried about 16GB now (my current MacBook is 16GB and I don't have any problems). But I want my laptop to least a decent amount of time (at least 5 years), and I do worry about whether 16GB will be sufficient then.

This is one of the biggest reasons for me, personally. It is such an inexpensive difference in overall cost versus the benefits of having that headroom. Plus I am sitting at ~26gb used memory right now. I tend to give my VM's a nice big 8-12GB chunk of ram depending on what I am doing too, so it is almost like I have two machines in one. The disks and data pipelines on these new machines are so fast though that I do…

Maybe that’s the eventuality. I don’t run VMs much if at all for my work/day to day, but I have a desktop in the event I need to.

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#64

Post by jeffbee »

milansm wrote: post #8

I’d like to see a “benchmark” about M1’s support for real world dev setup (docker, brew, libraries and so on). And when can we expect the full support

I consider myself a "real" developer and I don't use any of that stuff. So far my observations about tool and library availability:

Node: build it from source at HEAD and it works fine. Will work out of the box in release 16.

Java: Get the Azul JRE, works fine.

Go: Has to be bootstrapped from HEAD.

c++ toolchain: works out of the box

cmake: build and install from source release, no problems.

bazel: still doesn't grok darwin_arm64, release build tries to x-compile everything.

anything that needs bazel: doesn't work due to above.

python3: comes in the box, works

R: no native package yet

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#65

Post by robin_reala »

wwright wrote: post #37
api wrote: post #24

Earlier 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.

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.

Leaving aside the fact that process size is a marketing term these days, I’m currently typing this on a previous-gen Macbook Air with a 10nm Intel CPU. They’re definitely not stuck on 14nm.

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#66

Post by cma »

wwright wrote: post #37
api wrote: post #24

Earlier 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.

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.

> I can't speak to why they have been stuck there for so long.

Semiconductor manufacturer has been able to use refractive optics (lenses) for decades and decades. The biggest change until now was to immersion lithography as we started getting into UV. Now we're into EUV (extreme UV). Lenses no longer work, everything has to be done with reflective optics (and even then the mirrors get ablated over time). It's the biggest single change in lithography we've seen and Intel still hasn't been able to pull it off in volume.

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#67

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

I mainly develop C++ targeted at x86-64 Linux.

I'm interested in hearing about others' experiences trying to develop for that target using an M1-based Mac.

For example, what's the status of VM systems with M1 Mac as host, and x86-64 Linux as guest?

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#68

Post by qz2 »

doikor wrote: post #10

> Just Buy M1 if you'd like to have a low-power, long-lasting, quiet, and performant dev machine. If your development environment/tooling/workflow does not gain any real advantage from more CPU cores. Also your data must fit in the 16GB of RAM as offloading any workload to disk will kill the performance and you cannot add more. The M1 has excellent single core performance so any task that is mainly single threaded wi…

Yep. But these days for anything else, I just fire up a cloud VM and kill it when it's done. I spent less on that than the 3900X and RAM would have cost me in 5 years.

My main daily driver machine and dev box is now the absolute ass end M1 Mac Mini and it's the best computer I have ever had.

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#69

Post by mrtksn »

I quickly looked up the AMD for price and TPD. Turns out, AMD Ryzen 3900X is a 105W TPD CPU with 420GBP price tag when on discount. The base Mac mini is 699GBP.

Is there any info on the overclock prospects for Apple M1? Is there possibility to run this beast at AMD&Intel heat output levels? How fast a water cooled M1 could be?

Re: Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

#70

Post by qz2 »

msoad wrote: post #59

Rumor is in a few months Apple will release a new chip that is made for pro computers. It will be in iMac and MacBook Pro 16in. I don't know what it is called but it had almost double the cache and core count of M1. That MacBook Pro is the one you probably want to buy for coding purposes.

When that iMac drops I'm going to grab it instantly. I am already allocating budget.
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