Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model • Hacker News Board

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

#831

Post by foobiekr » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 12:27 AM UTC

thehnguy wrote: post #780

bredren wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had wondered what their first Apple Silicon powered data center would be. I thought the company would wait and deploy a later gen chip. Though with the standardization of M1 across such a wide array of products makes me think it is going to be the M1.

I was bit surprised to see M1 in the iMacs. I thought the M1 was going to be a very capable proof of concept. But now we've got it in iMacs, iPads, and Macbooks. So I wouldn't be shocked if they spread it far and wide.

Same. With only 16GB of RAM, many of the tasks that upper-end iMac users perform are rather hindered.

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

#832

Post by apatheticonion » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 12:46 AM UTC

qshaman wrote: post #815

apatheticonion wrote: post #154

Can't wait for an iPhone Pro with an M1 processor that I can plug into a thunderbolt/usbc dock, run monitors, a keyboard, ethernet, and have it running MacOS when in desktop mode. EDIT: A little context; when I am in the office, I use vscode over ssh to connect to my desktop PC at home. My desktop takes care of my language server, syntax highlighting, compilation and vscode forwards my ports and spins up terminals. A…

I hope that browser you want to run on a “low power” computer is not Chrome

Sure, can be whatever browser. Seems like Chromium, Safari, Firefox all run perfectly fine on a MacBook Air so I have high hopes that an M1 powered "iPhone Pro" wouldn't have too much trouble running MacOS with a browser and vscode.

It's more that Apple wouldn't create a device that would remove the incentive for customer to buy other products.

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

#833

Post by ngcc_hk » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 12:51 AM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #150

One thing which I don't think has been commented on is the marketing effort behind the M1. It's getting a lot of prominence and its use across lots of computers means that there can be a consistent message that "M1 is great - get a new Mac and get an M1". It also provides an opportunity to distinguish between M1 and the next generation M2 (presumably). I've always thought Intel's marketing was a bit confused - i7 sta…

Words of mouth is not just marketing. Whilst I still wait for the 32GB version :-) I may still jump in after having holding those hot macbook, MacBook Air and not to mention i9 MacBook Pro with turbo off already. Even MACmini is hot air. Only the decade old Mac Pro is hotter (but other than noise, it is not on my hand, my lap etc. And hence it is fine for a decade old mac).

It is not just “advertisement”. Btw I still confuse marketing meant segmentation, target selling, ... may be they are as so far only on low end. As said by a YouTuber it is so much better if they do Color on macbook aid or macbook 12”.

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

#834

Post by watersb » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 1:25 AM UTC

canadianfella wrote: post #390

baybal2 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Not look too bad best to say. What does this mean?

This sounds like a Chinese proverb; there's a whole tradition of pithy groupings of four words.

"Didn't look, too bad" might be a mode of "buyer beware" -- if you are not careful at the market, nyou might come home with trash.

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

#835

Post by watersb » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #732

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.

> Apple have ever focused on processor like this before Eh, I'm not sure that's true. They did with the original PPC, and also the G3 and G5.

PowerPC was also IBM and Motorola.

It's difficult to compare the Apple Silicon versus PowerPC, because the new Apple hardware is far more ambitious, the whole platform. I would expect that the memory SSD controllers are to some degree licensed from other industry players. The CPU architecture is something else again. Issues eight instructions per clock -- per core. The M1 core design has more in common with IBM mainframe POWER9 than with a typical x86 core. It's remarkable to see this design ina low end consumer device. A mobile.

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

#836

Post by pxc » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 2:19 AM UTC

dgemm wrote: post #689

jodrellblank wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " Apple didn’t do black magic. [...] Other ARM manufacturers could equal or exceed the M1 if they wanted. " I see lots of people saying "If only $company had an ARM device", and I don't understand it. My experience of ARM device is slow laggy janky products - from competing smartphones, tablets, router and network device management interfaces, year on year, the pairing is always (arm + fucking slow). It's only Appl…

Apple is pretty uniquely positioned to make the architecture change as smooth as it has been. If you look at competing smartphone SOCs it's not hard to believe that a technical M1 competitor could be put together, but getting it adopted would be much, much more difficult.

It seems so obvious to me that Apple's chief strategic strength here is that they can essentially force adoption that it's very strange to me that your comment is the only one I've seen on this whole post mentioning it.

One of the ways we already know that beefy ARM processors can work well (and with better power efficiency than Intel CPUs) for heavier workloads/at higher scale than mobile or embedded devices is that it's already being done in the server space. Is scaling ARM processors up for the desktop radically different? (If so, I'd love to learn a bit about how )

The problem that remains for anyone who wants to sell PCs with something other than x86 is that desktop users want their apps, and for Windows users those apps are distributed as x86 binaries, and users aren't in control of that (especially for unmaintained or legacy software). Software publishers won't build or optimize for a new architecture if they suspect it's just going to be a flash in the pan, and this creates a chicken-and-egg problem.

But Apple can just declare that their new architecture is the only option for you if you're buying a new Mac, and a ton of their users will come with them no matter what. App publishers will just deal with it, knowing that they have to play along if they want their application to have a first-class experience on Mac. This is a huge deal, and not a position any particular PC manufacturer could hope to be in!

I'm sure Apple has done lots of technically impressive stuff that I'm not even competent to really appreciate in order to make this architecture change happen. But other vendors are more capable of technically impressive stuff than they are of forcing adoption for enough users to reach critical mass to get people who sell/distribute proprietary software to come along with them.

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

#837

Post by brailsafe » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

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…

Which computer are you referring to?

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

#838

Post by brailsafe » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 2:26 AM UTC

choeger wrote: post #332

dmos62 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a C++ programer and my workstation has 128GB of ram and I wouldn't accept any less What on earth are you programming?

He won't know until all the templates are instantiated...

Absolute madlad

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

#839

Post by tomcam » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 2:34 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #810

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)

11-inch 2011 MacBook Air here. It's my main machine. I'll turn it into a media server once Apple comes out with an Mx machine with a screen of at least 15 inches.

Those things are beasts and have incredible ergonomic profile. I just bought one last year, with an i7 and 1tb ssd. Love it almost as much (for other reasons obviously) as my $23,000 Mac pro music rig purchased about the same time.

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

#840

Post by sudosysgen » Sat, Apr 24, 2021, 3:08 AM UTC

my123 wrote: post #786

sudosysgen wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the 5800U@15W. On Cinebench, the 5800U gets much more than the M1 in multicore and slightly more in single core. It even edges out the M1 on Geekbench, though Gb is a poor benchmark.

Cinebench is a rendering load that isn’t that much optimised. (Doesn’t even use the newer AVX levels when available, and isn’t properly optimised for Arm either). Cinema 4D, the program that Cinebench benchmarks, normally does the renders on NVIDIA GPUs, not CPUs. As such, it’s a very poor benchmark. And those 5800U results are at probably much higher than 15W. (Because that’s the base config, OEMs are free to ship w…

The examples I took were 15W. The M1 is also ran at much more than 15W in some models.

Geekbench in general has very heavily biased for ARM as it does not run the same code on both. Cinebench doesn't have this issue. And while yes nowadays a lot of rendering is done on GPUs for C4D the class of programs is path-tracers and they are often ran on CPUs for many scenes.