How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS • Hacker News Board

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#251

Post by therockhead » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

josephg wrote: post #106

kryps wrote: post #75

It does not just feel faster, in many cases it is faster. E.g. compiling Rust code is so much faster that it is not even funny. cargo install -f ripgrep takes 22 seconds on a Mac Book Air with M1, same on a hexacore 2020 Dell XPS 17 with 64GB RAM takes 34 seconds.

I did a side-by-side comparing with my friends' M1 macbook and my (more expensive, nearly brand new) ryzen 5800x workstation compiling rust. The ryzen was faster - but it was really close. And the macbook beats my ryzen chip in single threaded performance. For reference, the ryzen compiles ripgrep in 19.7 seconds. The comparison is way too close given the ryzen workstation guzzles power, and the macbook is cheaper, p…

I'm seeing a big different when compiling our project, with the M1 Macbook Pro beating the iMac Pro when building our projects (23min vs 38 mins).

Is it all CPU though, or is building ARM artefacts less resource intensive than bulding ones for Intel ?

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#252

Post by bombcar » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #141

coldtea wrote: post #9

Well, they don't just "feel" faster. They also complete lots of real-world tasks in shorter times, often significantly shorter than the last Intel Macbook Pro.

The author’s analysis sounds less like an explanation of how the M1 is faster, and more like an explanation of how it gets such amazing battery life. If someone could figure out a way to get all MacOS apps —including the system — to use the performance cores, perhaps the battery life would be back down to Intel levels?

I'm sure someone has run the battery dead using benchmarks that exercise the performance cores - I suspect that Apple designed a fast chip and an efficient chip and then married them together - that an M1Max with only performance cores wouldn't be that interesting power-budget-wise (though likely still an improvement).

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#253

Post by bombcar » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #224

defaultname wrote: post #188

Interesting, enjoyable read. The conclusions seem a bit off though -Low QoS tasks are limited to certain cores. This doesn't necessitate efficiency cores (though it makes sense if you want power efficiency in a mobile configuration) and they could as easily be performance cores. The core facet is that the OS has core affinity for low priority tasks and quarantines them to a subset of cores. And it has properly config…

If it has nothing to do with ARM, why doesn't Mac do it at similar speed on Intel?

There's no point in shuffling background processes to a subset of cores if it doesn't provide power-savings.

It sounds like upcoming Intel chips will have the ability to run efficiency-mode on some cores, at which case OS-level code to do shuffling makes sense.

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#254

Post by bombcar » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: post #215

smoldesu wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, for a lot of engineers, the M1 is the better choice over Intels. I don't know which engineers you hang out with, but the only "engineer" I know who uses an M1 Mac does web design. Besides that, the M1 doesn't support most of the software that most engineers are using (unless you're working in a field already focused on ARM), and the fragility of a Macbook isn't really suited for a workshop environment. Among th…

This is a lot of really well expressed information that completely fails to grapple with the fact that most developers write code for the web and apple computers are extremely popular among web developers. All of the things you mentioned are also true of intel macs, which again are wildly popular among web devs of all kinds. If you can't explain the popularity of those machines in spite of those limitations, I don't…

And developers will often be willing to take a grab at a new thing - and even if you're not doing web dev lots of your code likely runs on build farms anyway - the chance to play around with a workable ARM machine might be attractive.

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#255

Post by sizzle » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

Will M1 silicon make the jump to iPhone/iPad in the future?

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#256

Post by eyesee » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

sizzle wrote: post #255

Will M1 silicon make the jump to iPhone/iPad in the future?

The latest iPad Pro does use M1.

It's more accurate to say that M1 made the jump from the A14 chips already in iPhones, as it's an enhanced variation of that design.

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#257

Post by api » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

It's much faster even if you max out all cores. This may be part of it but the chip is objectively faster.

Lots of Intel damage control these days. AMD is kicking their butt from one side and ARM from the other.

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#258

Post by bombcar » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

jmull wrote: post #228

dboreham wrote: post #171

All this reminds me of when the HP PA machines were first introduced. Loads of posts about how compilation was now so fast that the screen turned red due to time dilation, etc. Of course now nobody remembers PA.

You're talking about the HP's old precision architecture, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PA-RISC That's an interesting comparison because it's another case where a big player created their own chips for a competitive advantage. There are surely some lessons in there for Apple silicon, but I don't there there's any particular reason to think it will follow the same path as HP PA. PA started in the '80s. It was a…

The real key for Apple is they already had a huge customer for their new chip - the iPhones and iPads have been using it for years.

This means they do not have to be dependent on Mac sales to support M1 development - they can amortize it over the largest phone manufacturer in the world.

And every time they do a successful architecture switch they make it easier to do it again in the future. If the IntAMD386 becomes the best chip of 2030 they can just start using it.

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#259

Post by bombcar » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

kllrnohj wrote: post #221

SigmundA wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the Anand article you linked further up: "The first Apple-built GPU for a Mac is significantly faster than any integrated GPU we’ve been able to get our hands on, and will no doubt set a new high bar for GPU performance in a laptop. Based on Apple’s own die shots, it’s clear that they spent a sizable portion of the M1’s die on the GPU and associated hardware, and the payoff is a GPU that can rival even low-end d…

None of those games were designed for UMA nor do they benefit as the API design for graphics forces copies to happen anyway. The M1's GPU is good (for integrated), but UMA isn't the reason why. I don't know why people seem so determined to reduce Apple's substantial engineering in this space to a mostly inconsequential minor architecture tweak that happen a decade ago.

As SigmundA points out a huge advantage Apple has is control of the APIs (Metal, etc) and the ability to structure them years ago so that the API can simply skip entire things (even when ordered to do them) as it's known it's not needed. An analogy would be a copy-on-write filesystem (or RAM!) that doesn't actually do a copy when asked to, it returns immediately with a pointer, and only copies if asked to write to it.

Re: How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS

#260

Post by ben-schaaf » Mon, May 17, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

therockhead wrote: post #251

josephg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a side-by-side comparing with my friends' M1 macbook and my (more expensive, nearly brand new) ryzen 5800x workstation compiling rust. The ryzen was faster - but it was really close. And the macbook beats my ryzen chip in single threaded performance. For reference, the ryzen compiles ripgrep in 19.7 seconds. The comparison is way too close given the ryzen workstation guzzles power, and the macbook is cheaper, p…

I'm seeing a big different when compiling our project, with the M1 Macbook Pro beating the iMac Pro when building our projects (23min vs 38 mins). Is it all CPU though, or is building ARM artefacts less resource intensive than bulding ones for Intel ?

iMac Pro has a large variety of performance, going from 8 to 18 cores and it uses a 4+ year old Xeon CPU. Unsurprisingly the 18 core handily beats the M1 in multi-core benchmarks:

18 core iMac Pro 13339: https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/imac-pro-late-2017-intel-...

M1 Mac mini 7408: https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/mac-mini-late-2020