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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

#251

Post by formerly_proven »

vlovich123 wrote: post #141
gpderetta wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Apple "just" [1] picked a very happy place in the parameter space: lower clock means that main memory (which is already lower latency than usual) is "nearer" to the cpu plus a larger L1 with a shorter latency (3 cycles). These (plus probably a larger amount of sustainable outstanding misses) imply that the cpu stalls less which means that they can sustain a larger ILP [2]. A better branch predictor (whic…

You’re right. Like I said, atomics are one space. Another as you point out is that the memory architecture is pretty unique at providing high throughout and lower latency than traditional x86 architectures. I suspect Intel and AMD will adjust their roadmaps accordingly as a result of this new competition.

Where does the low-latency claim come from? Benchmarks do not validate it, giving main memory latency of around 100 ns.

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

#252

Post by ksec »

pmontra wrote: post #159

Considering that Apple won't sell their chips to anybody else, and the M2, M3, Mn could be increasingly faster than the x86 chips, how long before we start moving along this path? 1. Amazon, Google, Microsoft start building their own chips for their own clouds. The most efficient chip could translate into the cheapest cloud, or the fastest one at the same price. Their choice. 2. There will be N somewhat compatible AR…

Amazon already has Graviton 2, and considering the rapid pace they are switching over their infrastructure suggest to me they are going All In.

Microsoft and Oracle is partnering with Ampere. And Google is all over the map as usual, OpenPOWER, ARM, RISC-V. And I would not be surprised if they roll their own just like AWS. Marvell has ARM offering as well. ( They really should consider buying Ampere ) So it does seems like Server ARM CPU are consolidating to a few players anyway. And Despite what they claim, Ampere and Graviton 2 are pretty much customised from ARM's Server SoC reference design.

Apple will have a super large M1 like design for future Mac Pro. What I am interested in is if Apple would use this, assuming rack mountable Mac Pro for their own DataCenter usage? ( i.e Installing Linux ) Or Bring back Xserve?

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

#253

Post by bhouston »

hugi wrote: post #205
pmontra wrote: post #159

Considering that Apple won't sell their chips to anybody else, and the M2, M3, Mn could be increasingly faster than the x86 chips, how long before we start moving along this path? 1. Amazon, Google, Microsoft start building their own chips for their own clouds. The most efficient chip could translate into the cheapest cloud, or the fastest one at the same price. Their choice. 2. There will be N somewhat compatible AR…

What utter nonsense. Different ARM chips aren't "somewhat compatible" anymore than Intel/AMD x86 chips. It's a standard instruction set. And even if we'd get different instruction sets, we have much better toolchains/compilers to work with multiple architectures now than we did in "the home computing landscape of the 80s / early 90s" (GCC and LLVM aren't really comparable to Sinclair Basic). The M1 has been out for a…

I thought the m1 has dedicated js instructions.

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

#254

Post by gpderetta »

formerly_proven wrote: post #251
vlovich123 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right. Like I said, atomics are one space. Another as you point out is that the memory architecture is pretty unique at providing high throughout and lower latency than traditional x86 architectures. I suspect Intel and AMD will adjust their roadmaps accordingly as a result of this new competition.

Where does the low-latency claim come from? Benchmarks do not validate it, giving main memory latency of around 100 ns.

Apparently you are right, but because of the lower clock, main memory is still closer in cycles. It would also be interesting to know the amount of outstanding main memory references.

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

#255

Post by NeverFade »

voidmain0001 wrote: post #173
NeverFade wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a Carbon X1 and it's one of my favorite laptops ever. I work exclusively on Linux, and detest Apple and the Walled Garden strategy in all their consumer products. That strategy is ridiculous for developer-related product, and I dislike that MacOS is hard to customize compared to Linux. I would still cancel and order an M1 instead. It's that impressive of an upgrade.

Yeah, I feel the same. I'm about to buy a Thinkpad T14 AMD Pro 4750U and I know that the M1 is superior, but in the end I've never been interested in Apple gear, and I don't feel like changing that viewpoint now. I'm waving the white flag, but I'm not crossing sides.

Hopefully we'll start seeing Intel / AMD chips that can compete with the M1. Otherwise, I might buy an M1 laptop and run Linux on it.

My workstation will still be Linux, however for a laptop, the new Macbook Air is the new favorite.

As much as I detest Apple's business strategies, this is a remarkable achievement for them. Never thought I'd buy another Apple laptop.

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

#256

Post by rayiner »

FredFS456 wrote: post #243
GeekyBear wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There will be N somewhat compatible ARM chips, that is to say they are somewhat incompatible. This isn't how ARM's architecture license works. All ARM implementations are required to pass the same standard test suite. >Architectural licensees get a set of specs and a testing suite that they have to pass, the rest is up to them. If they want to make a processor that is faster, slower, more efficient, smaller, or anyt…

Sure, for the instruction set all the CPUs are required to be compatible. However, Apple seems to be going in the direction of having many many hardware accelerators builtin to their SoC and integrated into their software ecosystem. I assume that if Google and Amazon were to build their own chips, they'd do the same. Those accelerators will not be intercompatible, and we'll have a dozen different vendored drivers, li…

> However, Apple seems to be going in the direction of having many many hardware accelerators builtin to their SoC and integrated into their software ecosystem.

I think this is overstated. There are quite a few differences between Intel and AMD extensions these days and they don’t create much of a problem. Apple’s architecture isn’t reliant on accelerators or special instructions to get good performance on general purpose code.

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

#257

Post by GeekyBear »

FredFS456 wrote: post #243
GeekyBear wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There will be N somewhat compatible ARM chips, that is to say they are somewhat incompatible. This isn't how ARM's architecture license works. All ARM implementations are required to pass the same standard test suite. >Architectural licensees get a set of specs and a testing suite that they have to pass, the rest is up to them. If they want to make a processor that is faster, slower, more efficient, smaller, or anyt…

Sure, for the instruction set all the CPUs are required to be compatible. However, Apple seems to be going in the direction of having many many hardware accelerators builtin to their SoC and integrated into their software ecosystem. I assume that if Google and Amazon were to build their own chips, they'd do the same. Those accelerators will not be intercompatible, and we'll have a dozen different vendored drivers, li…

>Sure, for the instruction set all the CPUs are required to be compatible.

Isn't that the only thing we care about?

Anything else is a lot like saying that Intel based PCs aren't really compatible with each other because they can use different implementations of things like graphics chips, sound chips, and NICs.

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

#258

Post by cr3ative »

janmo wrote: post #224
pmontra wrote: post #159

Considering that Apple won't sell their chips to anybody else, and the M2, M3, Mn could be increasingly faster than the x86 chips, how long before we start moving along this path? 1. Amazon, Google, Microsoft start building their own chips for their own clouds. The most efficient chip could translate into the cheapest cloud, or the fastest one at the same price. Their choice. 2. There will be N somewhat compatible AR…

It has nothing to do with their architecture. Here are the facts: The M1 is a 5nm chip, while the i9 is a 14nm chip! The M1 has about 16b transistor, the i9 has only about half of that amount. No surprise the M1 is faster. Most credit should go to TSMC for being able to manufacture 5nm chips.

This... isn't a fact. It's the opposite from what I've read - the architecture is just as important as the smaller nm process.

This post is good reading on the matter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25257932

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

#259

Post by cesarb »

sdflhasjd wrote: post #71

I'm still extremely suspicious of all these benchmarks, because they don't seem to correlate with my real-world experience. All these benchmarks claim to be comparing real-world applications, but I don't trust them because of what they always show with regards to mobile i9 and desktop Ryzen. I've got a Intel Macbook Pro, and a Ryzen desktop. When I'm using them for development, my Ryzen is absolutely wiping the floor…

Are your real-world applications running on the same operating system?

According to a thread on RWT (https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=197081&curpost...), macOS is much slower than Linux on the same hardware for some tasks like building software. If your Ryzen desktop is running Linux and your Macbook Pro is running macOS, that would be enough to explain at least part of the speed difference.

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

#260

Post by tambourine_man »

adamcstephens wrote: post #208
tambourine_man wrote: post #13

Can't wait to see the Mac Pro. The argument is over for best laptop processor. I want to see if Apple is as eager to beat the competition in the Workstation/HPC space as they were in the mobile/laptop. I think they are, Srouji looks like he's got a knife in his teeth and can't wait to claim fastest personal computer ever period. But we'll have to see, it's a tiny, tiny market to justify the effort.

The probability that Apple will target HPC is practically zero. They don’t care about low margin offerings, and HPC runs Linux which they don’t support.

Yeah, I meant workstation, I edited the comment but it was too late already.
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