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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

#641

Post by klelatti »

api wrote: post #618
onli wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Top-end Ryzen chips may be as fast or faster. Are they also as low power? The impressive thing about the M1 isn't just raw performance but performance / watt. There are obviously faster high-end many-core x86 chips, but the power use difference is wider than the speed difference. The M1 destroys mid-range Intel and AMD offerings at a fraction of the power consumption. Check out this madness: https://browser.geekbench…

Feeling a bit sad now as I had to buy a 2020 MacBook Pro to get AVX512!

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

#642

Post by officeplant »

nemacol wrote: post #585
officeplant wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Late-2012 ivy bridge i5 Mac Mini here. For a dual core machine it's really not all that bad of a daily driver experience. Makes me sad that I have to spend a crazy amount of money to get 16GB of ram and 1TB of SSD in a M1 Mini to match what I currently use. (although I understand the 1TB of SSD in the M1 is vastly superior)

Just for the fun of it, I tried to play WoW classic on my late-2012 mac mini and it ran like a toaster oven, but it worked just fine. Pretty fun. After putting the SSD in it, of course.

Yeah smcfancontrol is a must. I keep the fan around ~3000rpm during moderate use and bump it up to 5000rpm or max it out if I'm going to game or render something. I've been tempted to look into TB2 to TB3 adapters and eGPU's but its a janky solution to extending the life of an 8+ year old machine.

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

#643

Post by brewdad »

hobs wrote: post #490
josho wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s intentional. It’s so that the salesperson can use messaging to guide you to whatever machine they have the best margins on.

Spoiling your customers with choice actually often has the opposite effect, they become apathetic and do nothing.

For me, the buying strategy these days is to decide on the features that are most important (screen, keyboard, RAM, battery life, etc.) Find a machine that satisfies those key elements and then pick a price point and buy. Doing anything more leads to the paralysis you mention.

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

#644

Post by api »

klelatti wrote: post #641
api wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top-end Ryzen chips may be as fast or faster. Are they also as low power? The impressive thing about the M1 isn't just raw performance but performance / watt. There are obviously faster high-end many-core x86 chips, but the power use difference is wider than the speed difference. The M1 destroys mid-range Intel and AMD offerings at a fraction of the power consumption. Check out this madness: https://browser.geekbench…

Feeling a bit sad now as I had to buy a 2020 MacBook Pro to get AVX512!

I currently use a MacBook Air with the same 10th generation Intel chip in it and it's not bad. The only difference between the Air and the Pro with this chip is that the Pro can sustain high clocks longer and has a Touch Bar.

I expected the M1 to be like a much lower power and maybe a bit faster version of this chip, and was really blown away by it being far beyond that.

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

#645

Post by maerF0x0 »

slver wrote: post #520
CivBase wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need to, they're fast enough. You had me with everything except this. Any time someone claims the current state of computing hardware is "enough" I'm reminded of that fake 640K quote. There is no indication we are running out of applications for more compute power.

I'm not saying we're running out of applications for more compute power. We're specifically running out of reasons to want faster linear (per core) general-purpose performance (in fact I'd say this happened some time ago). Everything else we get from here on in terms of smaller process etc. is just a bonus. We don't fundamentally need it to keep evolving our hardware for our ever-growing computation needs. And that's…

https://scicomp.stackexchange.com/a/1395

Explains it better than I could in a HN reply.

Assuming our desired work to be done continues to grow, faster core speed* will eventually matter.

* technically, net instructions per second after prediction/compute ahead etc

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

#646

Post by onli »

api wrote: post #631
onli wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment talked about the implications he thought this had about the architecture. Like half of the thread seemingly ignoring that a) there are x86 processors that are more than competitive and b) that the big leap he described is more likely coming from the faster storage and from comparing it with the very much older and weaker processors most people that bought an upgrade now had in their old laptops. He…

Are there any x86 processors that are competitive in performance / watt?

The processors that come closest are the Zen 3 processors. They beat the M1 in total performance, see https://www.pcworld.com/article/3604597/apple-m1-vs-ryzen-50..., but are made for a higher watt usage. There is no direct performance/watt comparison I am aware of.

It's likely the M1 is better in that category, but it does not look like a huge difference if you factor in the higher performance you get from the Ryzen 9 5980HS.

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

#647

Post by jeswin »

baybal2 wrote: post #342
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.

> 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. Not look too bad best to say. Even if we add a one node advantage, we still have a ~15 watt chip making 20W-30W chips sweat. If you downclock Zen 3 to match 15W TDP, you may well get M1 beating it by double digit margin. M1 is simply a way more efficient chip than any X86 chip can be because…

> ...you will still get M1 having almost 3 to 4 times advantage at performance per square mm.

400%? Do you have any sources to back up this somewhat extraordinary claim?

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

#648

Post by jagger27 »

bayindirh wrote: post #626
pdimitar wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gaming PC is almost 10 years old and is with an i7 3770. Only upgrade was a GTX 980 five or six years ago. That thing flies for anything and everything I put it through. One day I'll retire it as a gaming machine and convert it to a Linux server or a casual workstation and I am sure it's going to be even faster than Win10.

My primary desktop is a 3770K running Linux. That CPU's the unexpected beast. Just churning through what you throw at it with incredible speed even for today. I process RAW photos, encode some audio and develop high performance scientific software on it (testing it lowers my heating bills, somewhat). I want to try one of the new Ryzen CPUs, but I have no reason to upgrade.

I’ve been doing big C++ builds (think gcc, LLVM-sized projects) on my Ryzen 9 5950X and I wouldn’t have it any other way. This thing saves me so much time every day. It’s so nice not to have to do remote builds to get a quick prototype.

The best part is that it was a drop in replacement for my 2700X. I already had a great Noctua air cooler so I was all set.

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

#649

Post by skohan »

zepto wrote: post #556
eertami wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used a recent Macbook? The Macbook Pro keyboard is unique in that is is the only time in my life I have ever experienced a keyboard breaking. I think people are a little too nostalgic when talking about Apple build quality. There's a 2011 MBP here that still works well. But recent releases... no better than the competition really.

> Have you used a recent Macbook? The Macbook Pro keyboard is unique in that is is the only time in my life I have ever experienced a keyboard breaking. Given that you know the keyboard has been fixed, is there a reason why you didn’t make it clear that you were talking about older machines and not current ones? You make it sound like the current machines have the flawed keyboard, which is not true as far as I am awa…

I'm typing on a current-gen macbook, and the keyboard is fine. Butterfly keyboards were flawed, but I think it's also a bit disingenuous of the parent comment to imply that this is a reflection on overall mac build quality. Those generations of macs were bad products for several reasons, but the general build quality of those machines, and everything in Apple's line is quite high comparing to competitors

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

#650

Post by onli »

klelatti wrote: post #623
onli wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment talked about the implications he thought this had about the architecture. Like half of the thread seemingly ignoring that a) there are x86 processors that are more than competitive and b) that the big leap he described is more likely coming from the faster storage and from comparing it with the very much older and weaker processors most people that bought an upgrade now had in their old laptops. He…

I know what you're trying to say is that you have to do a comparison of CPUs built on similar process nodes - and that maybe the parent has overstated the x86 vs Arm comparison. I would have some sympathy with that - but that's not the same as discounting the parent's perspective because Apple somehow weren't using "modern processors" previously - because that simply isn't true.

Similar process nodes, or at least when making general statements of the architecture to compare the best modern candidates. Otherwise you just can't make statements about the architecture based on that. And Apple just does not have Zen 3 laptops (unsurprisingly), so there is that.

And I still think it's very valid to not forget how old hardware used for subjective comparisons will be. E.g. the old Macbook air sold very well all that time.

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