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Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

extremetech.com

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Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#531

Post by klelatti »

onli wrote: post #505
api wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t buy the hype until I tested an actual M1. It exceeded the hype. It feels like when I was a kid and went from a 386SX to a Pentium at 4X the speed, except the M1 was also a quarter the power consumption. It’s the first time in a over a decade I’ve felt a revolutionary step forward in a chip and the only time it has ever come with less power. Process node is a factor but I find it hard to believe it’s the only…

From what did you upgrade? Apple had no competitive product with modern processors. Where is the Zen3 macbook with which you compared that? Did the laptop you compared with had an equivalent fast SSD?

Given Apple had/has competitive products with 2020/21 Intel CPUs this is patently not true.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#532

Post by Aperocky »

gambiting wrote: post #203
sto_hristo wrote: post #153

Make it as fabulous as much as you want, $1700 for an 8 core, 8 gigs of ram machine is just one plain fabulous joke. This in the time when 16 gigs ram is the baseline if you plan to do anything more than facebook and instagram.

So my sister does professional photography, and went from a 16GB MacBook Pro(2016) to an 8GB Air, and reports no decrease of productivity - quite the opposite, in her experience all Adobe programs run much faster, and the machine is quieter and lighter to boot. So yeah, I'm not sure - maybe the ram amount isn't as a big deal as people make it out to be. On the other hand I'm a C++ programer and my workstation has 128…

But why not 16G? It's a small price increase compared to base and it would basically make it much more usable in any extended amount of time, especially given the SSD write 'bug' that were exposed.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#533

Post by KMnO4 »

kevstev wrote: post #466
hutrdvnj wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always thought Intel's marketing was a bit confused - i7 stays the same over 10+ years I think that is because the performance has been the same for the past 10+ years.

I am continually astounded that the quad core sandy bridge core-i7 I bought in January 2011 is still completely serviceable for pretty much all tasks outside of gaming. The bezel and overall form factor is clownishly large by todays standards, and the screen is starting to look a bit faded, but as a portable but mostly stationary PC it still works great alongside my main laptop I use for work. I knew back in 2011 I w…

I think that’s because 99% of regular computer tasks don’t need 24 cores operating at 5 billion cycles per second.

The differences between an i7-4xxx and i7-11xxx are more about hardware acceleration, eg HEVC and SIMD. That’s why they look so much better in benchmarks that are designed with that in mind.

My main desktop is an unRAID server that hosts multiple VMs. Only yesterday I discovered that I accidentally only gave Windows four (of my 16) cores. Literally 3/4 of the processor was unused for months, and I didn’t notice any slow performance the entire time.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#534

Post by ynik »

kevstev wrote: post #466
hutrdvnj wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've always thought Intel's marketing was a bit confused - i7 stays the same over 10+ years I think that is because the performance has been the same for the past 10+ years.

I am continually astounded that the quad core sandy bridge core-i7 I bought in January 2011 is still completely serviceable for pretty much all tasks outside of gaming. The bezel and overall form factor is clownishly large by todays standards, and the screen is starting to look a bit faded, but as a portable but mostly stationary PC it still works great alongside my main laptop I use for work. I knew back in 2011 I w…

Two years ago when I got the Lenovo e590 (Intel Core i5-8265U), I benchmarked running the unit tests of my project on it. (though I didn't really intend on using the e590 for development) I compared against my old desktop from 2010 (1st-gen Core i5-750).

Turns out that the old desktop won by a solid 10% margin! A whole decade of new Intel generations still can't make up for the disadvantage of using a mobile CPU.

P.S. The e590 barely survived 2 years and is dead now (broken USB-C charging port).

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#535

Post by robocat »

dannyw wrote: post #114
robocat wrote: post #85

Perhaps one reason for using a single model of chip for everything is because the design costs for a 5nm SoC are estimated to be ~$500 million. For comparison, revenue for Apple Mac computers in 2020 was ~$30 Billion. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263428/apples-revenue-fr...

It's not linear. Doing a M1 variant with say 6+6 wouldn't cost another 500 mil.

Sure. But does Apple's CPU engineering team have the capacity to work on variants?

Perhaps they instead prioritise working on a faster M2, and M1 becomes the low end CPU, similar to what they have done with the A series processors?

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#536

Post by k1t »

klelatti wrote: post #497
earthboundkid wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this point is so obvious, I feel like I've got to be missing something. I am a professional programmer. I am vaguely aware that Intel chips have X-Lake based codenames. I have no idea how to compare the chip in my current laptop to a new laptop based on Intel's marketing names. To convince myself to upgrade, I just go to Geekbench, because nothing else in the marketing tells me the new chip is better. Seems like…

I think Intel's marketing may have fallen down because: - At one point everyone upgraded their PC every few years anyway. - Just having Intel on the box was sufficiently impressive to make the sale. Now they really need to push their latest CPUs as the latest and greatest. I like the Lake names but I've never understood from a marketing perspective (what have chips got to do with lakes - were they designed near these…

They are code names.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_codenames

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#537

Post by afavour »

theshrike79 wrote: post #360
afavour wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP is saying that it could be a mistake to focus on the processor so much when it might turn out that worthy competition is just around the corner. Apple have ever focused on processor like this before, instead opting to focus on the whole product, fit and finish, etc. Which arguably still very few rival them on even today.

Yes competitors may have worthy opponents to the M1 "just around the corner". But do you think that Apple stopped innovating after releasing the M1 last year? Don't you think the M2 (or M1X whatever it's called) is well into design and prototyping at this point?

The broader point, I think, is that Apple has never really competed on specs before. Not meaningfully, anyway. They’ve competed on whole product. Competing on specs opens them up to new challenges.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#538

Post by randomopining »

api wrote: post #377
the_duke wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the marketing effort is immense, and it's really surprising to me how many eagerly lap up the angle Apple is pushing without much reflection, even on HN. Like the good old Apple hype days. Now to be fair, the M1 is an impressive iteration on the A* chip line. But the Ryzen 5000 mobile chips really don't look bad at all in comparison, and a 5nm version of those would level the field.

I didn’t buy the hype until I tested an actual M1. It exceeded the hype. It feels like when I was a kid and went from a 386SX to a Pentium at 4X the speed, except the M1 was also a quarter the power consumption. It’s the first time in a over a decade I’ve felt a revolutionary step forward in a chip and the only time it has ever come with less power. Process node is a factor but I find it hard to believe it’s the only…

What about it is so amazing? Did you test the 8gb or the 16gb version?

Is it really a gamechanger for surfing, coding, videos, etc?

Curious because I might grab the base mac mini 8gb for music production, surfing, Java coding etc.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#539

Post by CoolGuySteve »

ianai wrote: post #244
the_duke wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't contain any comparison graphs relevant to my question, and couldn't, because it's from November. The Ryzen 5000 mobile chips came out this year.

Here’s the AMD benchmark and it’s using up to 3x the power of the M1. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16446/amd-ryzen-9-5980hs-ceza...

That’s not the right part, the 5800U is the low power Ryzen competitor.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#540

Post by masklinn »

Toutouxc wrote: post #413
masklinn wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AFAIK those new iMacs ALL feature just 8GB of RAM? No. But people are confused because the RAM is (annoyingly though not entirely nonsensically) tied to the SSD.

I don't think it is. They usually offer a couple of configurations at different prices, but you can get a BTO machine with just the upgrades you want. The SSD+RAM are tied together in the new M1 iPad.

Ah you're right, i'm the one who confused the two and remembered the weird setup of the iPad, the iMac's Tech Specs page does just state "8GB (configurable to 16GB)" for the entire range (whereas it's quite clear that the "low end" iMac with only 7 GPU cores can only be BTO'd to 1TB SSD, versus 2 for the 8-cores).
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