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Apple's M4 has reportedly adopted the ARMv9 architecture

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Re: Apple's M4 has reportedly adopted the ARMv9 architecture

#181

Post by skavi »

brigade wrote: post #152
skavi wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masked instructions primarily. But apart from that it’s just a more complete ISA vs NEON. More comparable to AVX512/AVX10. > 2x256b is only beneficial over 4x128b if you're limited by decode width This is only true if we ignore more complex instructions and focus on things like adding two vectors.

What is the percentage gain of using masked instructions on any benchmark/task of your choice? It can be negative on weird kernels that do lots of vector cmp since even ARM decided the cost of more than one write port in the predicate register file wasn't worth it, or if the masking adds lots of unnecessary and possibly false dependencies on the destination registers. > This is only true if we ignore more complex ins…

I think it's somewhat unfair to ask for real world examples when there really aren't many people writing optimized SVE code right now. Probably because there are hardly any devices with the extension.

I think the transition from AVX2 to AVX512 is comparable in that it provided not only larger vectors, but also a much nicer ISA. There were certainly a few projects that benefited significantly from that move. simdjson is probably the most famous example [0].

[0]: https://lemire.me/blog/2022/05/25/parsing-json-faster-with-i...

Re: Apple's M4 has reportedly adopted the ARMv9 architecture

#182

Post by jasomill »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #85
0_____0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These machines are great. I still use my 2015 rMBP as a secondary. It's a little slow now but a couple years ago I was still running Solidworks (in Bootcamp) on it with minimal issues.

My wife is still using her 2012 MBP. We maxed out RAM and gave it an SSD in 2016. She uses it for video editing and music production. The thing look like new. Completely ridiculous. Only downside: no OSX updates since I don’t know when.

You might find OpenCore Legacy Patcher[1] worth a look. In many cases, it allows later-that-supported Mac OS versions to be installed on older Macs.

As a data point, I still use a 2013 Mac Pro as my primary desktop, and I've been using Sonoma on it for several months, have been able to install all Sonoma patches over-the-air on release without incident, and have only experienced a single, trivial problem: the right side of the menu bar occasionally appears shaded red, in a way that doesn't affect usability; switching applications immediately resolves the problem (the problem appears to be correlated with video playback).

[1] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

Re: Apple's M4 has reportedly adopted the ARMv9 architecture

#184

Post by manquer »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #85
0_____0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These machines are great. I still use my 2015 rMBP as a secondary. It's a little slow now but a couple years ago I was still running Solidworks (in Bootcamp) on it with minimal issues.

My wife is still using her 2012 MBP. We maxed out RAM and gave it an SSD in 2016. She uses it for video editing and music production. The thing look like new. Completely ridiculous. Only downside: no OSX updates since I don’t know when.

video encoder/decoder support and performance has order of magnitude improvement in M series, I am surprised that didnt sway you.

Not just that, for high res stuff or modern codecs like AV1 or h265 is probably not supported at all in a 2012 device without updates for so long?

Even if support was possible it would be software encoding and even short clip it can take hours to render ?

I would happily use an older device for development a lot of dev work especially if not frontend or UI usually i can use any laptop just as a terminal, but UI or video editing I wouldn’t be able to.

Re: Apple's M4 has reportedly adopted the ARMv9 architecture

#185

Post by astrange »

rmccue wrote: post #156
hajile wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARMv9.0 is very similar to ARMv8.5 (9.0 supersets 8.5 with SVE2, TME, TLA, and CCA), so it's not a massive deal. SME implies v8.7 which is basically identical to v9.2 except for those couple extensions previously mentioned. I wonder if there is licensing at play though. Apple may have gotten a really great licensing deal on ARMv8 that they wouldn't be offered for ARMv9.

From what I’ve read previously, Apple has a special licensing deal already as they were part of founding Arm, although I don’t know if there’s any details on exactly how that works.

That seems like something people just made up, seeing as Apple didn't use ARM for something like a decade or two after that.

However, Apple basically commissioned ARMv8 in the first place to develop the A/M chips, so that presumably helps.

Re: Apple's M4 has reportedly adopted the ARMv9 architecture

#188

Post by pkaye »

rmccue wrote: post #156
hajile wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARMv9.0 is very similar to ARMv8.5 (9.0 supersets 8.5 with SVE2, TME, TLA, and CCA), so it's not a massive deal. SME implies v8.7 which is basically identical to v9.2 except for those couple extensions previously mentioned. I wonder if there is licensing at play though. Apple may have gotten a really great licensing deal on ARMv8 that they wouldn't be offered for ARMv9.

From what I’ve read previously, Apple has a special licensing deal already as they were part of founding Arm, although I don’t know if there’s any details on exactly how that works.

I believe its an architectural license which lets them design their own cores based on the the ARM instruction set. I think a few other companies may have this license but its not disclosed.

https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/finance/arm-...

Re: Apple's M4 has reportedly adopted the ARMv9 architecture

#189

Post by astrange »

OBFUSCATED wrote: post #21
gtirloni wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides maybe battery life (which is a huge win), anything you'd benefit from the M's? I only had a 2008 macbook so I'm curious.

Noise level, M series are completely silent in my experience.

llama.cpp somehow causes the fans to spin up pretty hard even if you just leave it at the prompt, but I assume that's performance bugs on their part.

Re: Apple's M4 has reportedly adopted the ARMv9 architecture

#190

Post by zimpenfish »

pkaye wrote: post #188
rmccue wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I’ve read previously, Apple has a special licensing deal already as they were part of founding Arm, although I don’t know if there’s any details on exactly how that works.

I believe its an architectural license which lets them design their own cores based on the the ARM instruction set. I think a few other companies may have this license but its not disclosed. https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/finance/arm-...

I believe they also don't have a per-chip license cost either (which, at Apple scale, probably adds up.)
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