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AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

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91–100 of 328 posts

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#91

From the perspective of a consumer, my MacBook Pro is basically the perfect laptop, at least in theory. I love the battery life and performance of the hardware, not to mention the unrivaled build quality of the MacBook (screen, trackpad, keyboard). In practice, however, MacOS limits the capabilities of the hardware such that I cannot daily drive my MacBook Pro as a work or personal computer (poor containerization sup…

In the same situation. I’ve unfortunately realised that “worse is better” applies to hardware too if it supports the software you need.

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#92

From the perspective of a consumer, my MacBook Pro is basically the perfect laptop, at least in theory. I love the battery life and performance of the hardware, not to mention the unrivaled build quality of the MacBook (screen, trackpad, keyboard). In practice, however, MacOS limits the capabilities of the hardware such that I cannot daily drive my MacBook Pro as a work or personal computer (poor containerization sup…

Millions of people use macs for work successfully.

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#93

From the perspective of a consumer, my MacBook Pro is basically the perfect laptop, at least in theory. I love the battery life and performance of the hardware, not to mention the unrivaled build quality of the MacBook (screen, trackpad, keyboard). In practice, however, MacOS limits the capabilities of the hardware such that I cannot daily drive my MacBook Pro as a work or personal computer (poor containerization sup…

From my experience developing C++ on it, as long as you don't use anything exotic, everything is portable (i.e. just recompile).

On the other hand, for the missing apps and other stuff, I'm running a Linux VM via VMWare Fusion Pro. It works efficiently, and interoperability is good. Just add another internal network card to the VM, and keep an always on SSH/SFTP connection. Then everything works seamlessly.

Never had any problems for 7 or so years when developing that application and writing my Ph.D. in the process.

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#94
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience talking to semiconductors folks, ARM is just not a concern anymore. The future is RISC-V, and ARM is already being seen as legacy tech. ARM's progress in the server space has stalled, the ARM Windows ecosystem is dead, Android has laid the groundwork for a move to RISC-V, and ARM has never and will never touch the desktop market.

>The future is RISC-V I hope this never comes to pass, because a RISC-V future is a Chinese future. A Chinese future will not be kind to western ideals that most of us hold dear.

Huh? China has licenses for both the x86_64 and ARM ISAs. WhT about RISC-V makes it an advantage for Chinese companies?

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#95
post #87

From the perspective of a consumer, my MacBook Pro is basically the perfect laptop, at least in theory. I love the battery life and performance of the hardware, not to mention the unrivaled build quality of the MacBook (screen, trackpad, keyboard). In practice, however, MacOS limits the capabilities of the hardware such that I cannot daily drive my MacBook Pro as a work or personal computer (poor containerization sup…

i've used a mac for development for various projects which have been globally impactful for over a decade. it's literally unix, man. docker on mac can be improved, but if i'm developing for other architectures it's much easier to just test natively. toolchain for all the languages i use is exactly the same as any other *nix. gaming i'll give you a point, but that's why i have windows dual boot at home. /shrug

It’s Unix but it’s not Linux. When Linux is your target it makes sense to use it on your development stack entirely. The irony being that Microsoft seem to make the best Linux OS for development for my use cases of docker / server side / cloud operations.

And it runs Office better than Linux or Mac.

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#96
post #92

From the perspective of a consumer, my MacBook Pro is basically the perfect laptop, at least in theory. I love the battery life and performance of the hardware, not to mention the unrivaled build quality of the MacBook (screen, trackpad, keyboard). In practice, however, MacOS limits the capabilities of the hardware such that I cannot daily drive my MacBook Pro as a work or personal computer (poor containerization sup…

Millions of people use macs for work successfully.

I did for ages. But there’s an impedance mismatch for a lot of people. Sometimes it’s a square peg for a round hole.

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#98
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put another way: if AMD (and especially Intel) don't do something about this they're going to get completely eaten alive by ARM. AMD’s latest parts are actually quite close to M1/M2 in computing efficiency when clocked down to more conservative power targets. They crank the power consumption of their desktop CPUs deep into the diminishing returns region because benchmarks sell desktop chips. You can go into the BIO…

People keep repeating that Zen4 and M1 are close in efficiency but what is the source with actual benchmarks and power measurements? At any rate, using single points to compare energy efficiency isn't a good comparison, unless either the performance or power consumption of the data points comparable. Like, the M1's little cores are 3-5x even more efficient when operating in an incomparable power class, and Apple's ow…

> but what is the source with actual benchmarks and power measurements?

Every notebookcheck.net review. For example https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-7-6800U-Efficiency-R...

They also do the same to a lot more laptops they test.

Look at the multi-core results, Zen3+ comes pretty close.

Also the single thread result shows what GP said: AMD CPU drains too much power at idle.

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#99
post #95
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've used a mac for development for various projects which have been globally impactful for over a decade. it's literally unix, man. docker on mac can be improved, but if i'm developing for other architectures it's much easier to just test natively. toolchain for all the languages i use is exactly the same as any other *nix. gaming i'll give you a point, but that's why i have windows dual boot at home. /shrug

It’s Unix but it’s not Linux. When Linux is your target it makes sense to use it on your development stack entirely. The irony being that Microsoft seem to make the best Linux OS for development for my use cases of docker / server side / cloud operations. And it runs Office better than Linux or Mac.

> The irony being that Microsoft seem to make the best Linux OS for development

WSL?

Re: AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency

#100
post #90

From the perspective of a consumer, my MacBook Pro is basically the perfect laptop, at least in theory. I love the battery life and performance of the hardware, not to mention the unrivaled build quality of the MacBook (screen, trackpad, keyboard). In practice, however, MacOS limits the capabilities of the hardware such that I cannot daily drive my MacBook Pro as a work or personal computer (poor containerization sup…

> poor containerization support, an annoying development toolchain Just run an always-on (headless!) Linux VM in the background, and don't use the host macOS for anything besides desktop apps (Slack, VSCode, Browser, mpv, terminal emulator but always ssh into the VM, etc). The same way you deal with a Windows machine. This works good enough unless you work on hypervisors or other bare metal only tech. But hey, that's…

The Windows machine (X86) has WSL2 though, which seamlessly integrates with VSCode. Add Windows Terminal and for me it made Windows the better dev platform. I still prefer Linux though.

Sometimes working local is just the easiest/fastest most convenient.

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