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Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

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Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#121

Post by viraptor »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #55

Everyone, remember that in 2019 Alyssa was in _High School_. Where do people get this knowledge? It's astounding. She was literally reverse-engineering Mali for Panfrost starting in her Sophomore year.

High school can be time when you have lots of spare time for learning what you want. I remember spending one year, and almost all of the summer break reverse engineering and writing binary patches for the sl45i phone. There was a huge community around it at the time so you just joined a forum and started asking questions.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#122

Post by gonehome »

The_Colonel wrote: post #119
gonehome wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "That's a completely unjustified comparison. iPhone brought a new way to interact with your phone." People don't really remember, but a lot of people were really dismissive of the iPhone (and iPod) on launch. For the iPhone, the complaints were about cost, about lack of hardware keyboard, about fingerprints on the screen. People complained that it was less usable than existing phones for email, etc. The M1 brings m…

> People don't really remember, but a lot of people were really dismissive of the iPhone (and iPod) on launch. I do remember that. iPhone had its growing pains in the first year, and there was a fair criticism back then. But it was also clear that iPhone brings a completely new vision to the concept of a mobile phone. M1 brings a nice performance at fairly low power, but that's just a quantitative difference. No new…

> "Why? Somehow Apple's chips will get better, but competition will stand still?"

Arguably this has been the case for the last ten years (comparing chips on iPhones to others).

I think x86 can't compete, CISC can't compete with RISC because of problems inherent to CISC (https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-32...)

It won't be for lack of trying - x86 will hold them back.

I suppose in theory they could recognize this e-risk, and throw themselves at coming up with a competitive RISC chip design while also somehow overcoming the integration disadvantages they face.

If they were smart enough to do this, they would have done it already.

I'd bet against them (and I am).

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#123

Post by spideymans »

The_Colonel wrote: post #119
gonehome wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "That's a completely unjustified comparison. iPhone brought a new way to interact with your phone." People don't really remember, but a lot of people were really dismissive of the iPhone (and iPod) on launch. For the iPhone, the complaints were about cost, about lack of hardware keyboard, about fingerprints on the screen. People complained that it was less usable than existing phones for email, etc. The M1 brings m…

> People don't really remember, but a lot of people were really dismissive of the iPhone (and iPod) on launch. I do remember that. iPhone had its growing pains in the first year, and there was a fair criticism back then. But it was also clear that iPhone brings a completely new vision to the concept of a mobile phone. M1 brings a nice performance at fairly low power, but that's just a quantitative difference. No new…

>M1 brings a nice performance at fairly low power, but that's just a quantitative difference. No new vision. Perf/watt improvements have been happening every single year since the first chips were manufactured.

I'd say the M1's improvements are a lot more than performance per watt. It has enabled a level of UI fluidity and general "snappiness" that I just haven't seen out of any Mac or PC before. The Mac Pro is clearly faster than any M1 Mac, but the browsing the UI on the Mac Pro just feels slow and clunky in comparison to the M1.

I can only chalk that up to optimization between the silicon and the software, and I'm not sure that Apple's competitors will be able to replicate that.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#124

Post by criddell »

monkmartinez wrote: post #30
tambourine_man wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I am pretty sure my chances of getting a mac in the future are zero Why?

I cannot speak for OP, but software is the reason for me. I can not run Solidworks on MacOS without bootcamp or other tricks, for example. Photogrammetry apps? GIS apps? CNC CAM apps? I mean, compare the Mac[1] compatible apps to the catalog of Apps Autodesk has. The fact of the matter is GPU support on MacOS is just not there in the same way it is with windows. It is really hard to justify the price of Apple when yo…

I'm always surprised when I see discussions about somebody dumping one operating system for another. Isn't your operating system choice dictated by the applications you want to run?

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#125

Post by wtallis »

floatboth wrote: post #77
unix_fan wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has never provided drivers for other operating systems, including windows. The drivers used for BootCamp aren’t even developed by them.

Well, they clearly at least commissioned them from someone else, since they are the ones distributing them.

Intel Macs are literally PCs. The Windows drivers that Apple bundled up for Boot Camp were the same drivers that the respective component manufacturers provide for other PC OEMs to redistribute. In the entire history of Intel Macs, there have been very few components used by Apple for which there wasn't already an off-the-shelf Windows driver written by someone other than Apple for the sake of their non-Apple customers.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#126

Post by floatboth »

wtallis wrote: post #125
floatboth wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they clearly at least commissioned them from someone else, since they are the ones distributing them.

Intel Macs are literally PCs. The Windows drivers that Apple bundled up for Boot Camp were the same drivers that the respective component manufacturers provide for other PC OEMs to redistribute. In the entire history of Intel Macs, there have been very few components used by Apple for which there wasn't already an off-the-shelf Windows driver written by someone other than Apple for the sake of their non-Apple custome…

They do include these too, but I'm mostly talking about stuff like the trackpads (before SPI, the protocol they ran over USB was also custom, not HID)

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#127

Post by nine_k »

wg0 wrote: post #37
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they're announcing a "platform". Smacks of managerial bottom-covering. Almost like forming a committee to investigate the problem. - where was this 1/2/10 years ago? - how would this address the fundamental CPU performance gap? - Intel has no competitive GPU offering, yet another glaring failure on their part - why would OEMs go along with this when Ryzen is a better CPU, GPU, aside from getting Intel bribes and t…

"I get Intel doesn't own the stack/vertical integration, but Intel could have devoted 1% of its revenue to a kickass Linux OS to keep Microsoft honest a long time ago and demonstrate its full hardware." Interesting point.. makes one wonder why didn't they do it while having a mountain of cash.

They had Intel Clear Linux, a server-oriented distro. Quite good at what it targeted.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#128

Post by PurpleFoxy »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #88
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #55

Everyone, remember that in 2019 Alyssa was in _High School_. Where do people get this knowledge? It's astounding. She was literally reverse-engineering Mali for Panfrost starting in her Sophomore year.

Truly impressive work. > Where do people get this knowledge? Time, hands-on experimentation, and focus. Anecdotally, reverse engineering and low-level hacking felt more popular back in the 90s and early 2000s. Back then, there were fewer distractions to soak up the free time of young tech enthusiasts. Old IRC chatrooms feel like a trickle of distraction relative to the firehose of Twitter, Reddit, 24/7 news cycles, a…

For me, I have more than enough time, especially when working from home. It’s just that after work I feel like a brain dead zombie and programming is the last thing I want to do after work.

In the time before I started work and after finishing school I used to do so much open source stuff in the time that I now spend working.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#130

Post by Fnoord »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #32
banana_giraffe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The response from Intel seems to be betting on the Evo platform [1], with third parties announcing laptops like the XPG Xenia XE 1 https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/evo.ht...

So they're announcing a "platform". Smacks of managerial bottom-covering. Almost like forming a committee to investigate the problem. - where was this 1/2/10 years ago? - how would this address the fundamental CPU performance gap? - Intel has no competitive GPU offering, yet another glaring failure on their part - why would OEMs go along with this when Ryzen is a better CPU, GPU, aside from getting Intel bribes and t…

> I get Intel doesn't own the stack/vertical integration, but Intel could have devoted 1% of its revenue to a kickass Linux OS to keep Microsoft honest a long time ago and demonstrate its full hardware.

Moblin, MeeGo.

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