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Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

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

#621

Post by dylan604 »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #370
bla3 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the memory was one of the more interesting bits here. My 2-year-old Intel MBP has 64 GB, and 8 GB of additional memory on the GPU. True, on the M1 Max you don't have to copy back and forth between CPU and GPU thanks to integrated memory, but the new MBP still has less total memory than my 2-year-old Intel MBP. And it seems they just barely managed to get to 64 GiB. The whole processor chip is surrounded by…

Just some genuine honest curiosity here; how many workloads actually require 64gb of ram? For instance, I'm an amateur in the music production scene, and I know that sampling heavy work flows benefit from being able to load more audio clips fully into RAM rather than streaming them from disk. But 64g seems a tad overkill even for that. I guess for me I would prefer an emphasis on speed/bandwidth rather than size, but…

On a desktop Hackintosh, I started with 32GB that would die with out of memory errors when I was processing 16bit RAW images at full resolution. Because it was Hackintosh, I was able to upgrade to 64GB so the processing could complete. That was the only thing running.

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

#622

Post by ink404 »

lisper wrote: post #105

"Apple’s Commitment to the Environment" > Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to have net-zero climate impact across the entire business, which includes manufacturing supply chains and all product life cycles. This also means that every chip Apple creates, from design to manufacturing, will be 100 percent carbon neutral. But what they won't do is put the chip in an expan…

agree with your point, but one could also look at the performance/power savings and use that in an argument for environmentally friendliness

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

#623

Post by socialdemocrat »

the_arun wrote: post #372
bla3 wrote: 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…

Could we use M1 chips on non-apple boards? If yes, I wish Apple releases these for non mac os consumption. Eg. Running linux servers in the cloud.

Not a great fit. Something like Ampere altra is better as it gives you 80 cores and much more memory which better fits a server. A server benefits more from lots of weaker cores than a few strong cores. The M1 is an awesome desktop/laptop chip and possibly great for HPC, but not for servers.

What might be more interesting is to see powerful gaming rigs built around the these chips. They could have build a kickass game console with these chips.

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

#624

Post by terafo »

enraged_camel wrote: post #255
danielovichdk wrote: post #252

I feel happy for the Apple community with these processors. But I can't stop to think my Intel machine. It feels like I am left in the dust and nothing seems to be coming that remotely looks like the M1.

Intel is years behind Apple, with no real strategy for catching up. Apple most likely already has the M2 ready, and the M3 under heavy development.

Intel was stuck on the same node for 6 years. Alder lake looks very promising, Alchemist GPUs same. They will have CPU performance crown on laptops in less than 6 months. Power usage will be much better than now. Their 3d stacking strategy is very promising, it will allow for many very interesting SKUs. I wouldn't count them out.

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

#625

Post by postalrat »

threeseed wrote: post #574
speedgoose wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a waste if you don't need it though. This money could be spent on much more useful things.

If it improves compilation speeds by 1% then it's not a waste. My time is worth so much more to me than money.

Then why are you using a laptop?

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

#626

Post by sulam »

bla3 wrote: post #118
fotta wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I thought the memory was one of the more interesting bits here. My 2-year-old Intel MBP has 64 GB, and 8 GB of additional memory on the GPU. True, on the M1 Max you don't have to copy back and forth between CPU and GPU thanks to integrated memory, but the new MBP still has less total memory than my 2-year-old Intel MBP. And it seems they just barely managed to get to 64 GiB. The whole processor chip is surrounded by…

So, M1 has been out for a while now, with HN doom and gloom about not being able to put enough memory into them. Real world usage has demonstrated far less memory usage than people expected (I don't know why, maybe someone paid attention and can say). The result is that 32G is a LOT of memory for an M1-based laptop, and 64G is only needed for very specific workloads I would expect.

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

#627

Post by socialdemocrat »

dragontamer wrote: post #471
lillecarl wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that you don't really need hyperthreading on a RISC CPU because decoding instructions is easier and doesn't have to be parallelised as with hyperthreading.

Okay, the whole RISC thing is stupid. But ignoring that aspect of the discussion... POWER9, one of those RISC CPUs, has 8-way SMT. Neoverse E1 also has SMT-2 (aka: 2-way hyperthreading). SMT / Hyperthreading has nothing to do with RISC / CISC or whatever. Its just a feature some people like or don't like. RISC CPUs (Neoverse E1 / POWER9) can perfectly do SMT if the designers wanted.

Don’t think that is entirely true. Lots of features which exist on both RISC and CISC CPUs have different natural fit. Using micro-ops e.g. on a CISC is more important than in RISC CPU even if both benefit. Likewise pipelining has a more natural fit on RISC than CISC, while micro-op cache is more important on CISC than RISC.

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

#628

Post by manquer »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #448
out_of_protocol wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple very much against games, they've even broken OpenGL just because. Don't expect any type of gaming ecosystem around Apple anytime soon.

So against games that they just became a Patron supporter of Blender [1]... [1] https://www.blender.org/press/apple-joins-blender-developmen...

Blender has strong use case in the animation and movie ecosystems. RenderMan, Pixar has some strong connections with Jobs and in turn with Blender, games may not really be in their radar for Blender sponsorship.

Besides supporting creator workflows (Final Cut Pro, best in class laptop graphics, Blender etc) doesn't mean they want to directly support gamers as buyers, just that they believe creators who produce games (or other media) are strong market for them go after.

The marketing is designed strongly towards the WFH post pandemic designer market. They either had to ship their expensive Mac desktops to their home or come in and work at office last year. This laptop's graphics performance pitch is for that market to buy/upgrade now.

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

#629

Post by threeseed »

postalrat wrote: post #625
threeseed wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it improves compilation speeds by 1% then it's not a waste. My time is worth so much more to me than money.

Then why are you using a laptop?

Why even bother with such an inane answer ?

It's because I need to use my computer whilst not physically attached to the same spot i.e. between work/home, travel.

You know the same reason as almost everyone else.

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

#630

Post by kllrnohj »

sounds wrote: post #187
Unklejoe wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The M1 still uses DDR memory at the end of the day, it's just physically closer to the core. This is in contrast to L3 which is actual SRAM on the core. The DDR being closer to the core may or may not allow the memory to run at higher speeds due to better signal integrity, but you can purchase DDR4-5333 today whereas the M1 uses 4266. The real advantage is the M1 Max uses 8 channels, which is impressive considering t…

Just to underscore this, memory physically closer to the cores has improved tRAS times measured in nanoseconds. This has the secondary effect of boosting the performance of the last-level cache since it can fill lines on a cache miss much faster. The step up from DDR4 to DDR5 will help fill cache misses that are predictable, but everybody uses a prefetcher already, the net effect of DDR5 is mostly just better efficie…

The physically shorter wiring is doing basically nothing. That's not where any of the latency bottlenecks are for RAM. If it was physically on-die, like HBM, that'd be maybe different. But we're still talking regular LPDDR5 using off the shelf dram modules. The shorter wiring would potentially improve signal quality, but ground shields do that, too. And Apple isn't exceeding any specs on this (ie, it's not overclocked), so above average signal integrity isn't translating into any performance gains anyway.
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