151–160 of 253 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, Intel's latest chip has better performance than M1 despite being two process nodes behind. So not sure what you're going on about
1 process node behind. Intel 10nm has similar or better transistor density as TSMC 7nm.
But even being one behind, it outperforms M1, with lower efficiency. Thus reasonable to speculate that a process node advancement would at least put Intel's chip on par with M1 on both perf and efficiency
Personally I don't really see a point in having a hybrid architecture like this unless it'll lead to massively increased core counts, and so far it doesn't look like it does. AMD still beats Intel in both core counts and power efficiency, and they're only using P cores so... what's the point of having E cores? But maybe that's just because it's a first generation technology for Intel? I hope things improve in the fut…
Single core performance is so much more important for most workloads (and harder to achieve) than higher core count.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth making it explicit that many home computing tasks are highly parrallelizable because the work is actually completely separate programs. If you watch a video while writing a document in word, that's trivially parrallelizable.
I should not like to have to read that document.
I have ADHD and I'm capable of doing work while focussing entirely on two tasks, often I'm looking at one screen where I'm writing code while reading an article on another screen.
Sometimes I feel like "reality" is too slow and I've already figured out the code for the unit test (or whatever I'm working on) in my head and I'm impatiently waiting for my hands to catch up while filling in a boilerplate template. I often focus on two things at once because the main work I'm doing isn't stimulating enough.
A lot of people question how I'm able to do this without making constant mistakes, but before I started on my medication my brain and the world around me was so incredibly noisy. Not necessarily sound, it's just that everything around me was a distraction. When I'm taking my medication, the distractions don't exist and there's almost so little happening that I find it unsettling.
I don't really know how to describe it properly so this probably made little sense. Just imagine you have a really angry baby screaming at you 24/7, it would probably effect your work? Now the baby is suddenly being quiet and you're able to work really effectively, but you got so good at coping with the baby distracting you that now you have all this spare CPU time in your brain which used to be devoted to denoising.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The top Alder Lake desktop CPU has 16-cores, 8P+8E, compared to 8P in the 11-th gen. The E cores get around half the performance of the P cores, so the 8P+8E is get roughly the performance of a hypothetical 12P+0E CPU. The very high core parts are reserved for Xeon (a 56 core Alder Lake Xeon has been leaked, but I think the P/E split is still unknown). What people need to realize is that a P cores takes around 4 time…
It's worth making it explicit that many home computing tasks are highly parrallelizable because the work is actually completely separate programs. If you watch a video while writing a document in word, that's trivially parrallelizable.
That's a great point. At any point in time there are already dozens of processes running, of which only a fraction are tied to a GUI. Even GUI apps are currently resorting to launching multiple processes. For example, Firefox announced last year their new site isolation security architecture where they load each site as an independent process.
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2021/05/introducing-firefox-new-si...
Also, here's a link to a recent HN discussion on Firefox's recent announcement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agner Fog's analysis and guidance is gold to anyone trying to optimise software for a specific microarchitecture.
I see. Yet, this particular entry only contains tiny amounts of well known information. I feel like this product line has been well covered for months now. Oh well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple optimises for performance per watt. That the biggest Mac Studio is almost silent when fully loaded is remarkable when compared to my Intel desktops that start screaming the moment I start video conferencing.
Endless series of comments that don't understand the manufacturing side of processor development...
I find the different balances of performance and efficiency cores interesting. I’d love to have a lot more Icestorm cores on a Mac to play with background tasks that don’t need the firestorm ones.
On the Intel side, I’m also disappointed by not having the option to implement the missing instructions in software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
AMD beats them because they are a process node ahead. Dunno why every comment implies there's some design gap that leads to M1 or AMD being more powerful or efficient. It's 90% the process node. There is no magic design sauce that makes those chips better. The big/little design change did seem to improve performance quite a bit for Intel, even using the same manufacturing node as before
They're not actually a process node ahead. Intel 10nm has slightly better density than TSMC 7nm.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth making it explicit that many home computing tasks are highly parrallelizable because the work is actually completely separate programs. If you watch a video while writing a document in word, that's trivially parrallelizable.
It’s also not very intensive, especially since video decode usually runs on the GPU. (Or it should - browsers are not always very good about this but the tools are there, they just don’t want to pay licensing fees to use them.) I always cringe a bit when people insist they need 6 cores “so they can have discord and Spotify open while they game”. People don’t generally have a very good intuitive sense of just how litt…
I mean, they're not wrong. I have Discord sitting open at the login screen and it's burning 10% of a core. Run a few Electron apps and your core2duo suddenly becomes a core1uno.
> Playing a video and writing a document
Using what? VLC + notepad, or Chrome + YouTube + Google Docs? There's a huge difference.
Discord gets a core, Spotify gets a core, Chrome with a few webapps open gets a few cores. That leaves 1 or 2 for a game if you're lucky. God forbid you also try to stream to Twitch. I'll cut the rant short here. You're right though; you should cringe if they insist on 6 cores, instead of 8 or more.
Bloated software is the problem. The worst part is that efficient alternatives exist (Discord -> Ripcord, Spotify -> spotify-tui) but they're against ToS and can get you banned from both services. From what I hear Discord is a lot more likely to ban you. I've not heard of any Spotify bans. But as a user, even if you know the problem, your only choices are to risk an account ban, or buy an "overpowered" CPU to run your chat client.
EDIT: Am I wrong? If you're skeptical, go find a Core 2 Duo and try watching a YouTube video while you're in a Discord call, and let me know how it goes. Those are the kinds of apps people use these days, like it or not. Don't shoot the messenger.
I don't have an idea on CPU design. Can this lead to M1 like performance?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
AMD beats them because they are a process node ahead. Dunno why every comment implies there's some design gap that leads to M1 or AMD being more powerful or efficient. It's 90% the process node. There is no magic design sauce that makes those chips better. The big/little design change did seem to improve performance quite a bit for Intel, even using the same manufacturing node as before
I don’t completely agree. A MacBook Air M1 is 25% faster than a 10th generation Intel 10700K, running the same code full of floating point instructions and matrices. It’s not a simple matter of process node. The same MacBook Air can do hour long Skype video calls with ~9% charge consumption, with no discernible heat difference on the body too. M1 is a different beast.
Why is everyone insistent on comparing Apple’s latest CPUs to Intel’s parts from multiple generations back?
Intel is on 12xxx series now. AMD also has new generation laptop CPUs that perform very well. Let’s compare to those.
The M1 is power efficient but much of that is due to the TSMC process they used. I really don’t understand this desire to make arbitrary comparisons to old Intel CPUs.