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Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

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

#711

Post by kstrauser »

Macha wrote: post #483
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…

Intel CPU numbering: iX-YYZZZ[Suffix] X = 3/5/7/9 = market positioning bucket. Higher is better Y = generation, currently at 11. This is basically a numeric form of the "* Lake" naming, except for 10th gen where Ice Lake (10nm, better power efficiency) and Comet Lake (14nm, higher max perf) co-existed in laptops ZZZ = position within that generation, higher is better, more detailed than the i3/i5/i7/i9 bucketing. Suf…

Has anyone made a website that decodes the numbers like this?

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

#712

Post by manigandham »

jean_tta wrote: post #426
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.

Most people have no need to compare CPUs between mobile/non mobile or generation. They just need to know if the laptop they're looking at has the high end / middle end / low end CPU. You'd be comparing a new laptop with latest(-ish) CPUs. The i3/i5/i7 makes it plain & simple to know that. You don't need to figure out what the "middle end" CPU is called this year. It's the i5, problem solved.

That's already too low-level for most people. They care about the overall device model, not the components inside. This is why Apple has been so successful, everything has a simple model and version number or year attached, with generally more performance as numbers (storage, ram) get bigger.

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

#713

Post by slver »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #645
slver wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Honestly that's a bit too abstract to make sense of.

As a programmer to another, I'd rather ask... what's one example of a problem we have today that needs faster linear performance than our best chips (not in a nice-to-have way but in a must-have way).

I'd rule out all casual computing like home PCs, smartphones, and so on, because honestly we've been there for years already.

Also due to decades of bias we have serialized code in our programs that doesn't have to be serial, just because that's "normal" and because it's deemed easier. Also we have a huge untapped potential of better performance by being more data-oriented. None of this requires faster hardware. It doesn't even require new hardware.

But anyway, I'm open to examples.

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

#714

Post by cesarvarela »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #652
bayindirh wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use an M1 powered 16GB MacBook Air and I've never seen any freezing, even under heavy load. I don't use Google Chrome though. Also, system is writing to the SSD with the same rate of my Linux machines: 4TB/year.

Heavy load in my case is a few dozen terminal tabs, six of which are running TPU training jobs, 40 chrome tabs, a few of which are playing twitch streams and YouTube videos, a half dozen instances of pycharm, one webstorm, one clion, around 35 macvim windows, and a few dozen PDFs open in Preview. I’m not exactly representative, but I think the stddev of usage patterns is high across developers. The unfortunate part i…

And here I am, thinking that heavy load is one node instance running webpack, a sql server, vscode, Figma and a few chrome tabs.

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

#715

Post by domano »

People underestimate AMD and mix it in together with the current Intel chips when talking about the M1. Ryzen is not far behind M1 in single thread performance and beats it in multi core. If Intel had not made all kinds of deals with laptop makers for exclusivity then the narrative would be totally different in my opinion.

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

#716

Post by airstrike »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #652
bayindirh wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use an M1 powered 16GB MacBook Air and I've never seen any freezing, even under heavy load. I don't use Google Chrome though. Also, system is writing to the SSD with the same rate of my Linux machines: 4TB/year.

Heavy load in my case is a few dozen terminal tabs, six of which are running TPU training jobs, 40 chrome tabs, a few of which are playing twitch streams and YouTube videos, a half dozen instances of pycharm, one webstorm, one clion, around 35 macvim windows, and a few dozen PDFs open in Preview. I’m not exactly representative, but I think the stddev of usage patterns is high across developers. The unfortunate part i…

> 40 chrome tabs, a few of which are playing twitch streams and YouTube videos

> around 35 macvim windows

You do you, but I'd wager you could probably trim some of that low hanging fat

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

#717

Post by bayindirh »

exikyut wrote: post #700
sillysaurusx wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heavy load in my case is a few dozen terminal tabs, six of which are running TPU training jobs, 40 chrome tabs, a few of which are playing twitch streams and YouTube videos, a half dozen instances of pycharm, one webstorm, one clion, around 35 macvim windows, and a few dozen PDFs open in Preview. I’m not exactly representative, but I think the stddev of usage patterns is high across developers. The unfortunate part i…

I am genuinely curious how you keep track of all that. Presumably this is all spread out over maybe a dozen workspaces?

Possibly multiple desktops.

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

#718

Post by my123 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #703
my123 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, about Zen 3. 5800U (Zen 3 mobile) and M1 are actually very close multithread perf wise despite one being a 8 core part and the other a 4+4 part. And with more power use for Zen 3 too. What hurts Zen 3 there is while the M1 maintains the full clock with all cores busy, Zen 3 has to downclock away from its max turbo clocks.

Which benchmarks are we talking about? The 5800u is a 15w part, you might be confusing the normal part with some overclocked implementation. But the 5800u at 15w is still faster than the M1 in multicore. Yes, Zen has to downclock, but it has more cores.

It's far from being as definitive as you say.

Trying to find with one of the best 5800U scores: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/7449909?baselin...

It's for 5800H which is at 45W where Ryzen can get a tiny edge.

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

#719

Post by klelatti »

onli wrote: post #646
api wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ryze…

Single core Ryzen 7 5800U Geekbench scores are c20% lower than M1.

Multi core better but still lower but not too surprised as it's got 8 large cores vs big.LITTLE 4/4 for M1 - not clear when those cores will start throttling down.

Suspect single core performance is what drives apparent responsiveness so I'd say not too surprising that the M1 gets rave reviews from users.

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

#720

Post by [deleted] »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #475
bashinator wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because new Reddit is laden with ads and JS and crap. Try https://old.reddit.com

Or one of any third-party native iOS apps (Apollo[0] is my preference) that are both faster and feel better than the official app and mobile site. [0] https://apolloapp.io

[deleted]
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