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An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

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Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#191

Post by Forgeties79 »

opan wrote: post #184
Forgeties79 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also point people to the Mac mini line whenever they talk about price. The new M4 at ~$700 is a steal, but they have been affordable since the m1 refresh. Real “bang for your buck” computer IMO

With soldered RAM and storage it seems quite risky to get the lowest spec version of any new Mac, so I don't see much point in discussing the entry-level price point. Do they still start at 8GB? I recall hearing that negatively impacted the SSD's performance significantly and people were recommending 16GB minimum for M1 stuff.

Base model is 16gb as of the M4 release.

You also don’t have to get the base model. You can stay under $1000 while increasing to 24gb of ram.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#192

Post by bityard »

bluGill wrote: post #181
BirAdam wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not so sure. I had a Pentium4 eMachine that made it all the way to around 2012. The same kind of life for my first Athlon64 machine from the same company. In both cases, the machines ran Linux, and they still work today. They were only retired because no meaningful software could run on them any longer. My PowerBook G4 got no where near that longevity, and owners of late era Intel MacBooks are probably going to…

Those machines should have been retired long ago because modern machines use much less power. (the Pentium4 was really bad) Of course there is a difference between a machine that you turn on for an hour once a week and a machine you leave on 24x7. The later use would pay for a new computer in just a few years just from savings on the electric bill (assuming same workload, if you then load the new computer with more t…

The non-trivial environmental damage of building the new computer AND disposing of the old one should not be ignored. There are plenty of us who would rather pay a few extra bucks on our power bill rather than send e-waste to the landfill before it needs to be.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#193

Post by hylaride »

cdelsolar wrote: post #186
opan wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With soldered RAM and storage it seems quite risky to get the lowest spec version of any new Mac, so I don't see much point in discussing the entry-level price point. Do they still start at 8GB? I recall hearing that negatively impacted the SSD's performance significantly and people were recommending 16GB minimum for M1 stuff.

I have an 8GB M1 MacBook Pro and it’s the perfect computer. I always have lots of tabs and Docker open etc. It works great. I want to upgrade at some point but probably don’t need to anytime soon.

8GB is fine (on macos anyways) for what you're doing, but like it or not more and more AI is being (unnecessarily) shoved into applications and it needs memory for the GPU.

Memory (both system and GPU) is usually best thing to future proof a computer at buy time, especially as it's not user-replaceable anymore.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#194

Post by Forgeties79 »

hylaride wrote: post #193
cdelsolar wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an 8GB M1 MacBook Pro and it’s the perfect computer. I always have lots of tabs and Docker open etc. It works great. I want to upgrade at some point but probably don’t need to anytime soon.

8GB is fine (on macos anyways) for what you're doing, but like it or not more and more AI is being (unnecessarily) shoved into applications and it needs memory for the GPU. Memory (both system and GPU) is usually best thing to future proof a computer at buy time, especially as it's not user-replaceable anymore.

You can get a 512g/24gb for $1104.00 USD. Still seems pretty great to me. If you’re disciplined with your internal/external storage you could also stay at a 256gb SSD and get 32gb of ram.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#195

Post by snewman »

user_7832 wrote: post #161
david-gpu wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former insider, this is NOT remotely how I would describe reality. I have signed NDAs and don't feel comfortable going into any detail, other than saying that there is a TON going on inside GPUs that is not "basically all emulated".

Maybe a tall ask, but have you considered writing down all your experiences into a book, and release it after all NDAs expire? I’d love to read more about low level hardware and the behind the scenes stuff involved. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of good stories.

NDAs don't generally have an expiration date. (As opposed to non-competes and non-solicitation agreements, which generally do.) An NDA typically ends only if the information in question becomes public, and then only for that particular information.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#197

Post by throw88888 »

bhouston wrote: post #163
throw88888 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you replaced the T400 because it felt slow, maybe it’s just a software/OS issue. The hardware on Thinkpad T-models should last longer than just 5 years in general. My daily-driver laptop at home is a T420 from 2011 with a Core 2 Duo, SSD and 8GB RAM. Works fine still. I run Linux + OpenBox, so it is a somewhat lightweight setup to be fair.

> My daily-driver laptop at home is a T420 from 2011 with a Core 2 Duo, SSD and 8GB RAM. Works fine still. I am not sure I would be productive with that. Any Core 2 Duo is 10x slower single core and 20x slower multi-core than a current generation laptop CPU at this point. Eg: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/8588187?baselin... I think it would mostly be good as an SSH terminal, but doing any real work loc…

Horses for courses ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I do development and DevOps on it. Sure there are some intense workloads that I probably couldn’t run, but it works just fine as my daily driver.

I also have a corporate/work laptop from Dell with 32GB RAM, 16 cores @ 4.x GHz etc. - a beast - but it runs Windows (+ antivirus, group policy crap etc.) and is slower in many aspects.

Sure I can compile a single file faster and spin up more pods/containers etc. on the Dell laptop, but I am usually not constrained on my T420.

I generally don’t spend much time waiting for my machine to finish things, compared to the time I spend e.g. writing text/code/whatever.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#198

Post by throwaway24124 »

windowsrookie wrote: post #180
attendant3446 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite experience. Apple is incredibly difficult and expensive to repair. But I have been pleasantly surprised by the longevity and repairability of ThinkPads. I like those Apple M processors, but I know where I'm spending my money.

Yes, MacBooks are generally more expensive to repair, but they also tend to not need repairs. It’s quite normal to hear from people who are using their 7+ year old MacBook without any issues and are still perfectly happy with it. I myself still use my 2018 MacBook Pro as my main device. When considering longevity, I will agree that Thinkpads are probably the only device that can compete with MacBooks. But there are t…

I still use a 2014 macbook air as my home server. It was my daily driver for 7 years. No complaints, still works perfectly. Haven't been careful with it either.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#199

Post by samus »

dtquad wrote: post #39
gigatexal wrote: post #30

Is anyone else astonished at how much is missing in the hardware and how much is emulated?

The graphics pipeline in modern GPUs are mostly a thin low-level Vulkan/Metal-like layer on top of a massively parallel CUDA-like compute architecture. It's basically all emulated. One of the reasons GPU manufacturers are unwilling to open source their drivers is because a lot of their secret sauce actually happens in software in the drivers on top of the massively parallel CUDA-like compute architecture.

A lot of it is software, but not necessarily in the driver. Nouveau folks pretty much gave up and use NVidia's firmware blob going forward. While that's mostly due to NVidia not cooperating in making crucial capabilities of the GPU available to non-signed firmware blobs, the upside is that it will hopefully significantly reduce the effort connected with wiring up new hardware components on the GPU.

Re: An Update on Apple M1/M2 GPU Drivers

#200

Post by MSFT_Edging »

windowsrookie wrote: post #180
attendant3446 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite experience. Apple is incredibly difficult and expensive to repair. But I have been pleasantly surprised by the longevity and repairability of ThinkPads. I like those Apple M processors, but I know where I'm spending my money.

Yes, MacBooks are generally more expensive to repair, but they also tend to not need repairs. It’s quite normal to hear from people who are using their 7+ year old MacBook without any issues and are still perfectly happy with it. I myself still use my 2018 MacBook Pro as my main device. When considering longevity, I will agree that Thinkpads are probably the only device that can compete with MacBooks. But there are t…

> MacBooks are going to be lighter

Not going let Macs have this one, my X1 carbon is considerably lighter than a MBA.

But generally agreeing. My last X1C lasted 8 years and still works perfectly, I just wanted an upgrade. My new one is even lighter than my old one. I opt for the FHD w/o touch screen and the second best processor to balance battery life and performance. Definitely not getting 18hrs battery life but 8-10 isn't something to laugh at.

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