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I'm curious if there is some architectural limit that prevents Apple from doing something similar on Intel Macs, at least ones with 8+ cores. The scheduler could arbitrarily nominate 4 cores as "efficiency" cores and keep them for background tasks, leaving the rest free for "performance".
People say that Ryzen is faster - but if it has a fan, then this is a deal breaker. I have become so annoyed by fans I often just stop work when they start whirling, go make a coffee etc. It seems like M1 is now the only laptop that can let you work in silence and be productive.
Although I imagine given how slow the response was on the butterfly keyboard issue it might be a few years out.
So, like nice[1], except the developer sets the level of importance ahead of time? Makes sense, as long as I can reprioritize if needed. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_(Unix)
It's nice but with additional limitations - on a normal Unix system even if you nice everything to the lowest level possible they'll still take over all cores. This limits things below a certain nice level to the efficiency cores, meaning that the performance cores are always available for foreground action.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was an unbeliever, but we got some M1 Mac Mini's and this is the result. They even beat the dedicated workstation many of our people have set up. I get when people say it won't quite match a new ryzen for compute power, but in all of our tests, the M1 beat out all our workstations.
What workloads do you run? I’ve got a 16GiB M1 mbp and a 2019 maxed intel and when compiling Java/sbt projects the intel is significantly quicker, albeit also much loader and power hungry.
This certainly makes a lot of sense, and it's a brilliant strategy to improve overall performance. But it doesn't account for the full picture either. My M1 Macbook Pro feels about as responsive as my desktop system with an AMD Ryzen 3900X, which is impressive to say the least. It doesn't quite have the raw computing power of the 3900X, but given that it's a portable device that's something else.
Try a low latency kernel on your desktop if you use Linux, that should improve responsiveness some more. Apparently the increase in power consumption is minimal - I use (K)Ubuntu's low-latency kernel even on laptops these days.
EDIT: I searched a bit and, although I haven't found instructions anywhere, I did find people saying that the low-latency kernel decreases throughput as a tradeoff to lower latency. Have you found this to be the case?
Also, another source says that the preempt kernel might be better for some workloads: https://itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-choose-a-low-latency-kerne...
Can anyone comment on these?
So, like nice[1], except the developer sets the level of importance ahead of time? Makes sense, as long as I can reprioritize if needed. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_(Unix)
It's nice but with additional limitations - on a normal Unix system even if you nice everything to the lowest level possible they'll still take over all cores. This limits things below a certain nice level to the efficiency cores, meaning that the performance cores are always available for foreground action.
This is a pretty smart strategy. I'd say the majority of the time when something is slow on my machine, it's because there's a resource intensive background process (that I don't really need to complete quickly) eating up all my system resources. It seems like the same strategy would also make sense on Intel processors, although it probably requires at least 4 cores to make sense?
You also want them to be low-power even when saturated, otherwise you gain responsiveness from the "performance" cores but your "efficiency" cores aren't actually efficient.
It seems at least Linux's x86_energy_perf_policy tool lets you set multiplier ranges and some performance-vs-power values per-core, which means such a setup doesn't seem impossible on current Intel hardware.
What I can't stand are all the people saying the M1 is capable of replacing high end x86 computers. It's like owning a Tempo and mistakenly thinking your highly specialized transmission means you can walk up and challenge a 6.7L Dodge Challenger to a race. It's completely ridiculous and demonstrates a stunning lack of self awareness.
People say that Ryzen is faster - but if it has a fan, then this is a deal breaker. I have become so annoyed by fans I often just stop work when they start whirling, go make a coffee etc. It seems like M1 is now the only laptop that can let you work in silence and be productive.
M1 will soon have a fan due to the overheating issue. Although I imagine given how slow the response was on the butterfly keyboard issue it might be a few years out.
There isn't one in M1.