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Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

blog.yiningkarlli.com

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Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#321

Post by dijit »

smoldesu wrote: post #246
threeseed wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's using DDR4 versus DDR5 in the Mac and a fraction of the memory bandwidth so will be interesting to see its performance on heavier tasks. Also looks like it has at least half the battery life if not far less when put under heavy load. I do love this review though: "It is a nice laptop but extremely noisy. Even when idle the fans are on all the time."

Memory bandwidth is nothing for most workloads. Besides a scant few Geekbench figures, I have genuinely never encountered a workload that was bottlenecked by my ability to transfer assets to the GPU. Is 100gbps of PCIe bandwidth not enough for your needs?

That's not true if you're actually using the ram though.

I remember memory bandwidth being the bottleneck when running large(ish) datasets for game worlds. It was so much that we put a lot of pressure on google cloud because we worried they wouldn't be able to compete with bare metal (since it's not usually measured, reported and can be non-guaranteed when you have neighbours).

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#322

Post by tim-- »

stemc43 wrote: post #269
tim-- wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, the going price for a W-3245 is more than $2,000. That's just the CPU, no memory, motherboard or anything else. A 16" MacBook with 16GB of RAM is $2,499. The MacBook comes with a free display, input devices and a UPS :)

Apple managed to book entire TSMC 5nm production or close to all last year - that's the main reason for this performance. and by managed - its passed on consumer ofc. ill just wait for amd 5nm offering that will also be in ram/cpu upgreadeable form factors and Linux compatible out of the box for half the price.

Sure, it's a reason for the performance. But it's still not a reason for the performance to price comparison that I was making.

Surely a CPU that is on an older, more tested node (albeit an Intel node, take that as you will) should have amortized the costs of producing silicon products on that node.

The cost of an Apple CPU is cheaper than a worse-performing older CPU. The economics here are surely poor? You can't tell me that Apple of all companies are taking a hit on their new CPUs? I mean, they could be for all I know, but that would be very un-Apple like.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#323

Post by lowbloodsugar »

moron4hire wrote: post #114
floatingatoll wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’ve correctly identified one reason Apple’s hardware is so effective: they have a hardware-accelerated standard library, something that requires cooperation between their software and silicon developers. The nearest comparison is if Dell released a line of servers that, when paired with Ubuntu LTS, provided a hardware-accelerated glibc. They could do this at any time, but it’s not easy; the capital cost is incredi…

A lot of good it does them. MacOS is an incredibly poor performing OS. For years, Windows and especially Linux have been more responsive and load faster than macOS on similar hardware, despite not being in a vertically-integrated hardware/software system. It's difficult to imagine how anyone can think that M1 is "competing" with Intel or AMD because of this. You won't be getting macOS on any new x86 processor, and yo…

Counter anecdote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29018935

"But the Linux desktop experience has been ... frustrating to say the least. And I say this as someone who has used linux in the terminal at my job every day for 5+ years now. It's ridiculous that the software experience still cannot match my 9 year old laptop running macOS Sierra on a 2.5GHz Core i5 and 8GB of DDR3 RAM!"

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#324

Post by zeusk »

mlyle wrote: post #301
zeusk wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep your eyes peeled tomorrow, desktop skus should ship early November. https://wccftech.com/intel-officially-launches-12th-gen-alde...

OK, so then that's not meaningful at all for the discussion which was about comparative strength of mobile SKUs.

at 95W max power, m1 max is not much of a "mobile" SKU either. Lines are blurry where these chips are positioned.

As for your power consumption figures, Apple has a supply agreement over 5nm so don't think you can compare architecture apples to apples yet.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#325

Post by zbobet2012 »

ykl wrote: post #172
zbobet2012 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this is really interesting Sadly this is not really interesting, it's disingenuous. He benchmarked against a ten year old (03/06/2012) server CPU. My two year old intel laptop cpu (i7-9750H) also outperforms the xeon's he's comparing against by almost 40%. The M1 is a great chip, it's sad that this got published with a "server chip" comparison at all. A real server class CPU from the modern era, at a comparable pric…

Hello, author here! I'm aware that that the Xeon E5-2680 is ancient, which is why I also included comparisons with the Xeon W-3245 that is in the current 2019 Mac Pro, and with the Threadripper 3990X, which came out in February 2020. Unfortunately I don't exactly have access to piles of fancy server chips sitting around, so I had to make do with just testing against what I have access to, and that's all I had access…

Yeah, but you don't need to "reach for not just high end desktop chips, but for server-class workstation hardware to really beat the M1 Max". Low-market CPU's for desktop will like the Ryzen 5 3600 (newegg for 240$) surpass it on CPU bench. Likely they also surpass it on on raytracing as well. And chips like the AMD Ryzen 7 4800H, which is a "big laptop" CPU, also beat it. The M1 Pro 10 manages to best that, but not by a huge margin on passmark.

None of them beat an actual, modern, mid-market desktop CPU. And none of those compare to the likes of the threadripper.

The test results are amazing, the exposition here is simply inaccurate. Again, you don't need a "server-class highend workstation" CPU to best the M1 in raw performance. Nothing on the planet beats the m1 in tpd/performance. That's amazing enough on its own.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#326

Post by zbobet2012 »

coldtea wrote: post #190
zbobet2012 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this is really interesting Sadly this is not really interesting, it's disingenuous. He benchmarked against a ten year old (03/06/2012) server CPU. My two year old intel laptop cpu (i7-9750H) also outperforms the xeon's he's comparing against by almost 40%. The M1 is a great chip, it's sad that this got published with a "server chip" comparison at all. A real server class CPU from the modern era, at a comparable pric…

This comment comes off as idingenuous itself. What about the 3245 or the Threadpiper, also mentioned?

The test results are great. But you don't need a highend server CPU to best the m1 inraw performance. Most mid-level (around 300$) desktop cpus will do that just fine. The exposition here is simply... wrong.

The remarkable thing about the m1 is the tpd/performance it gets.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#327

Post by authorityofnil »

new_realist wrote: post #253
authorityofnil wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Except it is still direct electrical heating which is atrociously inefficient. Electric heating converts practically all energy into heat, making it ~100% efficient. You can make statements about cost-effectiveness compared to burning things, but not all houses can. CHP configurations are more common in colder climates with district heating, so their "waste" heat during generation often isn't wasted at all.

But a heat pump is more than 100% efficient.

I feel this is a bit disingenuous, because using the same logic burning wood is thousands of % effective, or even ∞% if the system only uses convection, making heat pumps seem like a poor choice even when they're perfectly valid.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#328

Post by authorityofnil »

yxhuvud wrote: post #265
authorityofnil wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Except it is still direct electrical heating which is atrociously inefficient. Electric heating converts practically all energy into heat, making it ~100% efficient. You can make statements about cost-effectiveness compared to burning things, but not all houses can. CHP configurations are more common in colder climates with district heating, so their "waste" heat during generation often isn't wasted at all.

> Electric heating converts practically all energy into heat No, not even close. There are huge losses in electricity production and transmission.

Which is why I covered them in my comment about CHP, which recoups a large portion of those "losses". Either way other power sources also require logistic challenges and/or big equipment installs to use, so it isn't exactly 1:1 comparison.
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