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

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

#351

Post by EricE »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #306
EricE wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? Other than to prove an utterly useless point - why would you want to even remotely do that?!? If my time machine backup takes four times as long but my battery lasts longer still why would I care? The overall experience is a HUGE net improvement. T…

curiosity? proving the thesis? knowledge that could improve competing laptops? yah never mind I don't care why these computers are impressive let’s just play macos chess and browse facebook jfc if you’re not interested why did you even join this conversation

I don't care? "That's the point being glossed over by the majority of commenters and the point the original author is making - benchmarks are interesting, but nothing beats real world experience and in real world experience there are a suite of factors contributing to the M1 and Apples SOC approach spanking the crap out of their competitors."

I don't know what point would be proved by maxing out the cores other than confirming what seems to be pretty obvious - a hybrid approach has multiple benefits - not just in power efficiency but the user experience as well.

It's not just one aspect of the design choices - but all of them in concert.

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

#352

Post by josephg »

cbsmith wrote: post #179
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 dunnoh... the Ryzen 5800x laptops seem to be able to stay ahead of the M1's for most tasks.

Huh? 5800x laptop? The 5800x is a desktop chip.

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

#353

Post by [deleted] »

monocasa wrote: post #344
vetinari wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still don't know how good is the FTL in the Apple controller; all the devices are still too new and haven't been dragged through the coal as all the other controllers. It is still in the "easy job" part of it's lifecycle, with brand new flash cells. However, to quote @Dylan16807 from similar discussion few weeks ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26118415 ): > The analog parts are the slow parts.

They've been using custom controllers for over a decade. And the Annobit IP includes the analog parts as a large piece of their value add.

[deleted]

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

#354

Post by simonh »

yaktubi wrote: post #161
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 think these performance metrics are somewhat limited in their usefulness. A Ryzen workstation might not have the same single-core performance or energy efficiency—however, a ryzen workstation can have gobs of memory for massive data-intensive workloads for the same cost as a baseline M1 device. In addition: let’s talk upgradability or repairability. Oh wait, Apple doesn’t play that game. You’ll get more mileage on…

> The only win for those those chips

I suspect the number of people, even developers, for whom 16GB memory is plenty probably greatly exceeds the number who need a beast mode Ryzen. But even then, a large proportion of the devs who might need a Build farm on the back end would be doing that anyway so they might as well have an M1 Mac laptop regardless.

Anyway Mac Pro models will come.

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

#355

Post by josephg »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #266
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…

Are you sure Rust compilation can use multiple cores to the fullest? I don't use Rust, but a quick search returned for example this issue: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/64913

My cpu usage graph shows all cores at 100% for most of the compilation. But near the end it uses fewer and fewer cores. Then linking is a single core affair. It seems like a reasonable all-round benchmark because it leans on both single- and multi- core performance.

And I really care about rust compile times because I spend a lot of small moments waiting for the compiler to run.

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

#356

Post by simonh »

davidy123 wrote: post #201
apexalpha wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I feel other laptops at the same price point as Apple Macbooks do this too, sometimes even better. I bought a HP 8530w in 2009 or so and it still works. Replacing the DVD drive for a SSD required just a common Philips screwdriver and battery replacements are sold by HP themselves or many others.

Exactly. Too many people compare a $400 cheap Windows laptop to a $1200 Macbook. Compare like for like, and the thing is likely to last until it's absolutely obsolete. And, while I don't really support this, some might find it an advantage to replace the computer three times for the same price. But people should be comparing to a well built, upgradable laptop (especially those that support not just RAM and disk but a…

I’d love to see an actual serious comparison between an M1 Mac and a $400 laptop. That would be hilarious. Since there are so many of them, can you direct me to one, or even a few?

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

#357

Post by davrosthedalek »

emteycz wrote: post #308
davidy123 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Too many people compare a $400 cheap Windows laptop to a $1200 Macbook. Compare like for like, and the thing is likely to last until it's absolutely obsolete. And, while I don't really support this, some might find it an advantage to replace the computer three times for the same price. But people should be comparing to a well built, upgradable laptop (especially those that support not just RAM and disk but a…

Lenovo or Dell displays are much worse than Apple displays even though the machine costs the same.

Sure, but my macbook pro has cooked it's display /twice/ now. Didn't go to sleep properly, and it overheated in my laptop bag.

No good way to check for it, because no LEDs on the outside. Only way to check is to see if the fans switched on after five minutes in the bag.

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

#358

Post by vetinari »

monocasa wrote: post #344
vetinari wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still don't know how good is the FTL in the Apple controller; all the devices are still too new and haven't been dragged through the coal as all the other controllers. It is still in the "easy job" part of it's lifecycle, with brand new flash cells. However, to quote @Dylan16807 from similar discussion few weeks ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26118415 ): > The analog parts are the slow parts.

They've been using custom controllers for over a decade. And the Annobit IP includes the analog parts as a large piece of their value add.

We are getting too deep into irrelevant things. We don't know how much of Anobit IP was used in M1 macs; they may own it, but they might not use it all. They purchase their NAND and it may be not compatible with the current gen, just like when it was not compatible with Samsung's V-NAND/3D TLC.

In practice, the I/O performance of M1-based Macs is comparable to random PCIE 3.0 NVMe drive. (I'm typing this comment on M1 MBP, I'm well aware how it performs).

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

#359

Post by jrockway »

omegabravo wrote: post #327
omegabravo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done a side by side with my Ryzen 3700x compiling a Go project. 6 seconds on the Ryzen, vs 9 seconds on the M1 air. `time go build -a`, so not very scientific. Could be attributed to the multicore performance of the Ryzen. Starting applications on the M1 seems to have significant delays too, but I'm not sure if that's a Mac OSX thing. Overall it's very impressive, I just don't see the same lunch eating performan…

update: time GOARCH=amd GOOS=linux go build -a 6s for the M1 too!

Do keep in mind that go heavily caches for "go build":

https://golang.org/cmd/go/#hdr-Build_and_test_caching

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

#360

Post by outworlder »

bombcar wrote: post #249
atq2119 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did both machines compile to the same target architecture? If you did native compiles, then perhaps LLVM's ARM backend is simply faster than its x86 backend...

I think this is potentially a huge part of it - I'd do the benchmark by doing a native compile and a cross compile of each, and also do the same on a RAM disk instead of SSD (a large compile can end up just being a disk speed test if the CPU is waiting around for the disk to find files).

Maybe that would have been the case if only compilation times were reported to be good. But no, this is across many different kinds of workloads. Even Blender running in Rosetta can beat native x86 processors, which is bonkers.
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