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Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

macworld.com

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Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#281
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s related indirectly. A longer pipeline tends to result in shorter stages within the pipeline. (This is the whole point of pipelining.)

OK, yes there's often correlation but that's it. A longer pipeline doesn't affect max circuit frequency. The other sibling comment regarding distance isn't true. regardless of how insane your feedbacks are. Physical placement tools have always handled this in my experience (as a chip designer for 10+ years).

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Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are all different dies. However, the M1 Pro is just an M1 Max design with a chunk lopped off the bottom. Not at the manufacturing stage; at the design stage. They are otherwise identical; the device tree representation of the M1 Max is a superset of the M1 Pro, down to memory addresses and everything. Binning comes in with the lower-core-count variants of each chip.

Again yield; not sure how many people understand how big yield would be even Apple. At some yield you can’t support the demand. None of what was written above makes a lot of sense unless Apples just burning fab cycles. They might be but I kind of doubt it since it would seriously impact device cost and would take up slots in the fab leading to longer lead times. Not even Apple can dictate all their chips to be P1 at…

I'm not guessing. They are different dies. There is no need to write a hypothetical wall of text and get it wrong; you can just look up die shots or chip package shots or device trees and know they're different dies. This information is well known. There's a massive difference in size and aspect ratio between all 3 dies. It would not be cost efficient to fab M1 Max dies and sell them as M1 Pro. The M1 Max is explicitly designed as a logical and layout superset of the M1 Pro, but not for binning purposes, just because that way they don't need to do two completely different layouts.

SoC codes T8103 (M1), T6000 (M1 Pro), T6001 (M1 Max).

Yes, they do use binning and e-fuses for the lower core count versions within each die/SoC type.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#283
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The M-series GPUs are pretty great for what they are. I haven't tried a ton of games on it, but my 16" M1 Pro handles WoW about as well as a desktop with an RTX 2070 or so, and does it without the machine turning into a jet turbine. It's not destroying discrete video cards or anything, but it's universes beyond your typical integrated offering.

M-series GPUs feature a lot of ASIC and media encoder/decoders. My M1 Air absolutely DESTROYS my RTX 3090 in h265/422 video editing, which is what my camera (Sony A7S iii) shoots. My 3090 would shutter and play my 60fps footage at 11fps using 350W while my passively cooled M1 doesn't miss a frame.

That must be new with the M1s, on the exact same project my 2018 Mac struggles (<5 FPS) while my 1080 rolls through ProRes 422 without any issue

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who used to despise Apple-- the M1 chip has been such a pleasure to use. Completely silent, cold, and I haven't had any issues in my personal workflow.

I ordered an M1 Max at launch at work and use an M1 Pro, and I've been so impressed with the M1 Air that I bought... a $150 Chromebook. It's complicated. My next mobile purchase (or build, I'm into cyberdecks lately) will have a different form factor display, like 4:3 or 3:2, and I hope Apple makes it. I really thought the Framework might be it until I used one, but it felt like they're only making laptops as an expe…

yes, the M1 Air is the best laptop since... the original Air? it might be the best laptop in terms of value for price ever. I've never had a mac before, but this thing is objectively the best there is for the price.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#286
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is HN... compiling.

Compiling is IO/RAM bound. CPU has impact but not much for most cases.

Nah, I only see minimal difference when building on a ram disk (source tree copied there too) compared to a nvme SSD.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#287
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the fact is, apple hardware is not _that_ expensive relative to what you get for the money. Their supply chain is super optimized, and it's hard to beat them on price if a competitor decides to try (at the same quality that is).

What gives people the perception of apple being expensive is that other OEMs play tricks to boost numbers on a spec sheet that the common person checks while cheeping out massively on parts that don’t show on the spec sheet. I know someone who got an MSI laptop recently and it’s complete garbage. The screen casing cracked from the force of the hinge within months, the trackpad is borderline unusable, wifi is spotty,…

This is very true!

At the same time, this can be important or not.

When I do my pc builds I pick the cheapest case as well, and I'm fine with it. Similarly I took non-Apple laptops all my life (up to 5 years ago, when I started coasting on employers' hardware) without many problems. I just couldn't justify spending 3k to have a laptop which performs as well as one for 1k, just for the better quality of the materials.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes basically 95% of PC monitors are < 100 DPI.

That's just sad. Personally, I can't go back to displays with low DPI. Too much strain for my eyes.

you would if you used windows. DPI scaling is _horrible_. macos figured this out years ago. it'll take a decade to solve this problem on windows and it'll never be 100% solved, because legacy apps don't support any kind of scaling at all.

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#289
post #6

Yea the old narrative of "arm is power efficient, but doesn't actually run real desktop level stuff at that power level" is pretty dead at this point.. it now runs desktop level stuff at 3x lower power than intel's latest chips.. and the potential for apple's chips to keep improving at that same power envelope is definitely there.. so...

everybody loves the standard ARM firmware, BIOS and bootloader. right? right...?

Re: Alder Lake Core i9 processor is faster than the M1 Max

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overclocking headroom means you have timing slack, and timing slack means you have faster ~= leakier circuits than necessary, or stages which aren't filled with work which is also an inefficiency. I expect Apple has an extreme focus on power efficiency and especially idle / leakage power, much more than Intel considering the core basically the same as they use in their phones. They also have a different approach to t…

> They do nearly 2x the work per clock as AMD chips which necessitates more logic per stage Not all work is created equal. Decoders on Arm are definitely parallel (= don't have more serial logic for wider decoder) compared to the variable length decode x86 is stuck with. And your backend ports are also parallel (although maybe scheduling isn't?). The only places where wider always means more logic per stage is caches…

> Decoders on Arm are definitely parallel (= don't have more serial logic for wider decoder) compared to the variable length decode x86 is stuck with

x86 decode is parallel too

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