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Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

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Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#161

Post by other_herbert »

astrange wrote: post #137
cambalache wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want a return to the status-quo when for 80% (it could be even less but let's not dwell in the number) of the price of an Apple laptop I could get a windows/linux machine matching or surpassing its specs(including stuff like battery life,energy consumption, screen dpi, noise, etc). This is not true now and I am not seeing an option in the short term.

That was never really possible, or certainly wasn't ever since the laptops went to HiDPI displays. There were just a lot of teenagers showing off their ability to make gamer PC parts lists and claim that it's better than a Mac, but the value of the display/trackpad/integration have been good for a long time. It's just now the quality of the SoC is that good.

I’ve had my m1 air for a few weeks now and going back to the trackpad on my Dell XP’s 15 feels like the stone ages... it’s amazing... and safari on the Mac even makes Jenkins and Jira fast...

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#162

Post by caseyavila »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #148
conradev wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a world of difference in free time between "having a 9-5 job" and "being in high school", though. In high school, I was lucky enough to not have to do laundry, feed myself, or a variety of other tasks and chores that come along with adulthood. I also could sleep like crap and make it up during school the next day. Not to mention that the time I spent at school wasn't spent programming, so when I got home it…

When I was in high school in 2004, I would fantasize about getting done with my work early and then catching the teacher on a good day where she let me get on the class computer so I could go to online forums and read more about programming. I sometimes wonder how far I would have been ahead had I had a smartphone in my pocket when I was in school like kids have today. It doesn't surprise me that some kids capitalize…

Yes, as a high school student who just fools around with their computer during online class (Linux, Gentoo, compiling and all that), it cannot be understated how many of my classmates play video games, watch YouTube, and watch Twitch. Those really are the big 3. I personally had to overcome a YouTube and video game addiction to get to a point where I was spending my free time in a mindful way, so I definitely can relate to everyone else.

YouTube hadn't really taken off until we were in middle school to early high school, so I couldn't imagine what internet addictions may be like in the future, seeing as quite a few toddlers of today grow up watching it. I suppose it's not too different to Television however.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#163

Post by erosenbe0 »

gonehome wrote: post #149
erosenbe0 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much this. Intel is not that stupid. They went in the lab, built and simulated everything to find that the penalty of extra decoding has an upper bound of a few percent perf/Watt max once you are out of the embedded space. OTOH, apple is doing some interesting things optimizing their software stack to the store [without release] reordering that ARM does. These sorts of things are where long term advantage lies.…

I'm confused - I thought the reason that it's hard for Intel to add more decoders is because x86 ISA doesn't have fixed length instructions. As a result you can't trivially scale things up. From that linked article: -- Why can’t Intel and AMD add more instruction decoders? This is where we finally see the revenge of RISC, and where the fact that the M1 Firestorm core has an ARM RISC architecture begins to matter. You…

People are rehashing the same myths about ISA written 25 years ago.

Variable length instructions are not a significant impediment in high wattage cpus (>5W?). The first byte of an instruction is enough to indicate how long an instruction is and hardware can look at the stream in parallel. Minor penalty with arguably a couple of benefits. The larger issue for CISC is that more instructions access memory in more ways so decoding requires breaking those down into micro-ops that are more RISC like, in order that the dependencies can get worked out.

RISC already won where ISA matters -- like AVR and ARM thumb. You have a handful of them in a typical laptop plus like a hundred throughout your house and car, with some PIC thrown in for good measure. So it won. CISC is inferior. Where ISA matters it loses. Nobody actually advocates for CISC design because you're going to have to decode it into smaller ops anyway.

Also variable length instruction is not really a RISC vs CISC thing as much as also a pre vs post 1980 thing. Memory was so scarce in the 70s that wasting a few bits for simplicity sake was anathema and would not be allowed.

System performance is a lot more than ISA as computers have become very complicated with many many I/Os. Think about why American automakers lost market share at the end of last century. Was it because their engineering was that bad? Maybe a bit. But really it was total system performance and cost of ownership that they got killed on, not any particular commitment to a solely inferior technical framework.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#164

Post by erosenbe0 »

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.

It is commendable work for someone of any age.

But I think we undersell the abilities of college-aged adults in modern times. Watch some top violinists or gymnasts at that age, or just someone who had a couple of kids as a teen and held it together.

The young have unbounded ability; it is only wisdom and experience that they may lack.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#165

Post by wsc981 »

spideymans wrote: post #156
conradev wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a world of difference in free time between "having a 9-5 job" and "being in high school", though. In high school, I was lucky enough to not have to do laundry, feed myself, or a variety of other tasks and chores that come along with adulthood. I also could sleep like crap and make it up during school the next day. Not to mention that the time I spent at school wasn't spent programming, so when I got home it…

>There is a world of difference in free time between "having a 9-5 job" and "being in high school", though. Funny how this works. In high school I had a ton of free time. In college, not a lot of free time and very stressed. Entering the workforce, again a lot of free time and very stress free. I expect free time will disappear if children ever come into play

> I expect free time will disappear if children ever come into play

That would very much depend on how you choose to live.

As for me, living in Thailand and being a father of one daughter, I need to earn about 1.500 USD per month for our monthly needs. Which is easily achievable for me with less than a week of work. All extra money I earn above basic needs, I invest.

My current client sometimes has work for me 40 hours a week, sometimes only 40 hours a months. As such, I have plenty of time to dedicate to my own hobbies.

But this is only achievable because I left The Netherlands and decided to work remotely. And I do understand these kinds of choices are not possible for everyone (some people would find it very hard to live in another country, far away from family and friends, for example).

In our field and by making suitable choices it should be possible to have plenty of time for your own hobbies and projects.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#166

Post by zhte415 »

conradev wrote: post #113
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is a world of difference in free time between "having a 9-5 job" and "being in high school", though. In high school, I was lucky enough to not have to do laundry, feed myself, or a variety of other tasks and chores that come along with adulthood. I also could sleep like crap and make it up during school the next day. Not to mention that the time I spent at school wasn't spent programming, so when I got home it…

Is doing laundry hard? I put it in the washing machine, turn that on to wash twice a week, put washed clothes on the line then take in when dry. I like to cook, have done since teens and before I can remember was tasked with food prep and washing dishes after a meal. Clean the house once per week engaging passion in various areas in this. And not viewing these as chores but simple things. For sixth-form and university, get to bed by 11, get to school by 8; not a super fan but appreciative of classes so sat in the school /uni library with books.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#167

Post by bonzini »

pjmlp wrote: post #116
shawnz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, perhaps, and at that time it was also a much simpler proposition to do that. I would imagine at that time there were also many fewer kids at a high-school level doing that kind of hacking, so it might not be totally wrong to say they were all prodigies.

I guess, C64, Amiga, Atari didn't had programmable graphics hardware after all.

Amiga to some extent did, you could upload programs to the Copper.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#168

Post by nsm »

zhte415 wrote: post #166
conradev wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a world of difference in free time between "having a 9-5 job" and "being in high school", though. In high school, I was lucky enough to not have to do laundry, feed myself, or a variety of other tasks and chores that come along with adulthood. I also could sleep like crap and make it up during school the next day. Not to mention that the time I spent at school wasn't spent programming, so when I got home it…

Is doing laundry hard? I put it in the washing machine, turn that on to wash twice a week, put washed clothes on the line then take in when dry. I like to cook, have done since teens and before I can remember was tasked with food prep and washing dishes after a meal. Clean the house once per week engaging passion in various areas in this. And not viewing these as chores but simple things. For sixth-form and universit…

It isn't that it is hard, it's that it is a thing that has to be done, and so your brain cycles + interruptions are dedicated to these things.

Cooking is generally taken care of by parents, which means ancillary things like grocery shopping are too. You don't even have to dedicate brainwidth to "what groceries do we need to buy". There are so many tiny interruptions and bureaucratic overhead that keeps the brain slightly stressed as an adult that simply don't exist as a child, it is marvelous.

Re: Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, Part II

#170

Post by pjmlp »

bonzini wrote: post #167
pjmlp wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess, C64, Amiga, Atari didn't had programmable graphics hardware after all.

Amiga to some extent did, you could upload programs to the Copper.

I know that was being sarcastic, following the same tone of previous answers. :)
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