Really would like to know more about the GPU and Ram. At 128 gpu cores vs the 8 in the M1 you talking 16 times the potential GPU power which could put it up there near the top of discrete GPU's.
Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps
141–150 of 351 posts
Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps
#142Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems obvious once you look at it - the "efficiency" mode is almost a quasi-sleep and so it makes sense to only dedicate a certain number of processors to it (as every efficiency core could in theory have been a performance core).
Perhaps. It wasn't obvious to me. I thought things like non-active browser tabs and various background daemons would easily occupy more than 4 efficiency cores. Though I suppose that has a lot to do with how they are implemented.
I assume they optimize Safari for this, and I'd think they'd be much more likely to quiesce a background tab (and let it swap out) than to keep it running at a slower speed.
At some point it's more efficient to have a single performance core going than a number of efficiency ones.
They do up to 8 on the big CPU according to rumor, so there's obviously some room there.
Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, devoting some cores to background tasks and reserving the others for higher-priority stuff also makes the system feel more responsive. See, for example, this article from yesterday: https://eclecticlight.co/2021/05/17/how-m1-macs-feel-faster-... Long story short, segregating background work from foreground work means that Spotlight indexing won't cause the UI to become sluggish. I'm g…
But separating the background work doesn't actually require efficiency cores. With 40 performance cores, you could still dedicate 4 or 8 of them to "background" processes only. As that article you linked shows, the background processes would simply complete more quickly without affecting interactive work on the machine.
performance cores are physically larger than the efficiency ones, by about 3-4x. I'm sure there are other tradeoffs cache size like too. So would you rather have 32 performance cores and 8 efficiency or 34 performance?
Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, devoting some cores to background tasks and reserving the others for higher-priority stuff also makes the system feel more responsive. See, for example, this article from yesterday: https://eclecticlight.co/2021/05/17/how-m1-macs-feel-faster-... Long story short, segregating background work from foreground work means that Spotlight indexing won't cause the UI to become sluggish. I'm g…
But separating the background work doesn't actually require efficiency cores. With 40 performance cores, you could still dedicate 4 or 8 of them to "background" processes only. As that article you linked shows, the background processes would simply complete more quickly without affecting interactive work on the machine.
Consuming 1/10 as much power would also have thermal advantages for the die overall, and segregating them onto a separate L2 cache from the performance cores would help with that cache friendliness situation, different allocations of logic units means you can tailor them toward different kinds of workloads. . . I'm no CPU designer, so I really can't speak with authority here, but I can at least see several possible reasons why it would make sense even when you aren't worried about battery life.
Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems obvious once you look at it - the "efficiency" mode is almost a quasi-sleep and so it makes sense to only dedicate a certain number of processors to it (as every efficiency core could in theory have been a performance core).
The OS appears to partition the processors, like linux cpuset stuff, with low priority threads getting given to the efficiency cores, so you basically keep the low priority background stuff off the performant cores. How many is optimum is an interesting question, I would assume the apple peeps have a good idea and are on the money with this design.
it's not clear to me why the optimal number of efficiency cores wouldn't be zero on a desktop. why not just use the die area for additional performance cores? one or two full cores shouldn't have much effect on the thermal/power budget if they're just working on background tasks.
Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps
#147My current Late 2019 MacBook Pro heats up like crazy and goes into thermal throttling whenever I'm doing wfh meeting with lots of video participants for a couple of hours. I really hope they dedicate some hardware for this type of use-case with plenty of sustained thermal headroom.
Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps
#148This is effectively https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27193922
The other article was speculation about a new MacBook Pro (laptop, possibly this year). This is speculation about a new Mac Pro (desktop, possibly next year).
Ignore the headlines. This is rehashed blogspam citing the same report as the one I linked that just swaps the lede.
Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it helps gets more views on YouTube which is the only thing he is after. Him patronizing the thermal design of Apple computers that way is pretty funny, ngl.
It's really funny because he is correct, that fan does nothing. There is no heat pipe connecting CPU and fan.
Only if the input and the output of the fan are piped together.
Apple was designing stuff that considered the airflow THROUGH THE CASE back with the first Macintosh, the 128K. You could even get a silly looking chimney that used convection to pull even more air through the case with no other modifications.
All Macs with air cooling, not just the laptops, are designed with internal airflow in mind and always have been. You do not have a little fan blowing directly on the CPU (from where? to where?) and expect it to do anything.
I don't know who this fellow is, but next he can take the top off his cylinder head and then be upset the engine doesn't work. From first appearances he is an absolute bozo.
Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps
#150It says the split for performance versus efficiency cores will be: - 20 total, 16 high performance, 4 efficiency - 40 total, 32 high performance, 8 efficiency Which is kind of interesting given that the 8 core M1 is split half/half at 4 high performance, 4 efficiency. Sounds like perhaps MacOS doesn't typically have more than 4 cores worth of low-priority work, regardless of the system size/workload?
A performance-focused workstation would have more performance cores because it’s being used for more CPU-intensive work. If you don’t actually need that many performance cores, you’d buy a Mac Mini instead.