Live data from Hacker News

Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

apple.com

151–160 of 1001 posts

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#151
post #82

This is about the processors, not the laptops, so commenting on the chips instead. They look great, but they look like they're the M1 design, just more of it. Which is plenty for a laptop! But it'll be interesting to see what they'll do for their desktops. Most of the additional chip area went into more GPUs and special-purpose video codec hardware. It's "just" two more cores than the vanilla M1, and some of the effi…

Really curious if the memory bandwidth is entirely available to the CPU if the GPU is idle. An nvidia RTX3090 has nearly 1TB/s bandwidth, so the GPU is clearly going to use as much of the 400GB/s as possible. Other unified architectures have multiple channels or synchronization to memory, such that no one part of the system can access the full bandwidth. But if the CPU can access all 400GB/s, that is an absolute game…

I suspect the GPU is never really idle.

Even simple screen refresh blending say 5 layers and outputting it to a 4k screen is 190Gbits at 144 Hz.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#152
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the higher memory is also a huge win, with support for up to 64gb.

400GB/s available to the CPU cores in a unified memory, that is going to really help certain workloads that are very memory dominant on modern architectures. Both Intel and AMD are solving this with ever increasing L3 cache sizes but just using attached memory in a SOC has vastly higher memory bandwidth potential and probably better latency too especially on work that doesn't fit in ~32MB of L3 cache.

Good point. Especially since a lot of software these days is not all that cache friendly. Realistically this means we have 2 years or so till further abstractions eat up the performance gains.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#153

Can the M1 MacBooks be used with Linux?

It's a work in progress. See https://asahilinux.org/blog/ for the latest updates.

And marcan42 has specifically promised to start bringup work on the M1 Pro next week:

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1450163929993269249

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#154
post #143
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the higher memory is also a huge win, with support for up to 64gb.

I'm guessing that's new for the 13" or for the M1, but my 16‑inch MacBook Pro purchased last year had 64GB of memory. (Looks like it's considered a 2019 model, despite being purchased in September 2020).

I don't think this is an apples to apples comparison because of how the new unified memory works

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#157

Based on the numbers it looks like the M1 Max is in the RTX 3070-3080 performance territory. Sounds like mobile AAA gaming has potential to reach new heights :D

And in the case for the M1 Pro, apple is showing it to be faster than the Lenovo 82JW0012US - which has a RTX 3050ti. so the performance could be between RTX 3050ti - RTX 3060. All of this with insanely low power draw.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#159
Still have not solved the tinytiny inverted Tee arrow key arrangement on the keyboard. Need to improve on the former IBM's 6-key cluster below the right shift key, or arrange full sized key arrows in a crossplus pattern breaking out of the rectangle at the lower right corner.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#160
post #89

Is it possible to dual boot windows with the new m1 chips?

You can most definitely use the latest Parallels IIRC, why dual boot?

Mostly for gaming. I use bootcamp now to play MTG Arena and StarCraft 2 on windows which seems to have much better perf.

I imagine gaming doesnt work well in parallels?

Post reply on HN