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Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

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Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#141

Post by dagmx »

berkut wrote: post #139
dagmx wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got a few flawed basis points in your math. 1) that forest isn't near the complexity of most major feature films. It's great, but it's got a ton of instancing, it's not got very complex shaders, it's not got very complex lighting. It's a good benchmark scene, but it's not approaching the level of scenes in most feature films. 2) You're assuming a single render happens per frame. Every scene in a movie is rende…

1. Instancing doesn't reduce the complexity of rendering a scene in terms of light transport, it only reduces the memory storage and Accel structure complexity. Actually, a forest with occluding foliage geometry is a quite difficult light transport situation: it's very difficult for next event estimation to work efficiently, so therefore most of the lighting is indirect and therefore is quite noisy, as it's difficult…

I didn't mean to imply that instancing would reduce the light transport costs, but rather just reduce the overall render time cost. E.g it's complex in a way that is great for benchmarking things, but not necessarily in a way to be representative of production scenes in a feature film.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#142

Post by bredren »

grp000 wrote: post #110
bonestamp2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When these chips hit the rackmount Mac Pro, the server competition will be very interesting. It's kind of a unique package for a server, which such a powerful GPU, but that has advantages for some compute types too of course.

Would be cool if they try to decouple the GPU and CPU for server units somehow.

I think they will with a new release of the “Afterburner” card, this time powered by Apple Silicon instead of FPGAs.

https://www.gettingtechnologyright.com/apples-mac-pro-wheels...

>The second bit of design is in the optional “Afterburner” video editing card. The discussion of it starts at around the 1hr. 26 min. point in the Keynote. It is described as a custom FPGA-based HW accelerator. It is claimed to be capable of processing 6 billion pixels per second. The silicon is not Apple’s but the design is.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#143

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

ksec wrote: post #107
PostOnce wrote: post #41

One of several tradeoffs is that M1-based stuff has a RAM ceiling, which until a few days ago was 16GB, now it's 64GB. If you need more than that, then you can't use M1. Does the performance gap close if Intel starts selling similar on-package RAM to consumers? I suspect yes, and rapidly. They have it, they just apparently don't want to sell it outside of specialized high-margin goods like Xeon Phi.

>Does the performance gap close if Intel starts selling similar on-package RAM to consumers? That assumes on-package RAM is the key to M1 / Apple's SoC performance. And that isn't the case.

It partially is. The M1 max comes with integrated hbm, which is way higher bandwidth than ddr4. Modern Intel/AMD processors are memory bottlenecked in multicore workloads (hence why 3d cache for Zen is a 15% improvement). The combination of hbm and on package memory means the M1 has much higher bandwidth and similar latency to anything else on the market (at the cost of not being scalable).

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#144

Post by bparrish0 »

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #123
speed_spread wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're plugged in all the time, lower TDP is nice but not critical. And if you live in a cold country, you have to heat up the house six months per year, TDP is just heating with a computing side effect.

This winter I'm going to experiment with having a Raspberry Pi act as a thermostat that starts/stops containers running on a server in our basement. That, combined with the laptop we just got for gaming that has a 3070 in it, should do nicely to supplement our heating system.

Modern heat pumps provide a lot more than 100% efficiency. I'd stick to the heating system unless those containers are doing something profitable (mining?)

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#146

Post by zbobet2012 »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #9

>in order to give the M1 Max some real competition, one has to skip laptop chips entirely and reach for not just high end desktop chips, but for server-class workstation hardware to really beat the M1 Max this is really interesting

>this is really interesting

Sadly this is not really interesting, it's disingenuous. He benchmarked against a ten year old (03/06/2012) server CPU. My two year old intel laptop cpu (i7-9750H) also outperforms the xeon's he's comparing against by almost 40%.

The M1 is a great chip, it's sad that this got published with a "server chip" comparison at all. A real server class CPU from the modern era, at a comparable price point, is the AMD EPYC 7443P, which is 400% faster on cpu bench.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#147

Post by flyinglizard »

nextaccountic wrote: post #112
justinator wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy that I can't get a bicycle chain for the next six months, but these chipsets are shipping?

> I can't get a bicycle chain for the next six months Why?

Other than the usual supply chain stuff, there was also a huge demand for bicycles and bike parts during peak COVID.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#148

Post by robocat »

partiallypro wrote: post #55
MangoCoffee wrote: post #9

>in order to give the M1 Max some real competition, one has to skip laptop chips entirely and reach for not just high end desktop chips, but for server-class workstation hardware to really beat the M1 Max this is really interesting

Intel's Alder Lake benchmarks show that their new mobile processor is faster than the M1 Max. So, this domination doesn't seem to be a long term thing.

What is the memory bandwidth of that processor?

The geekbench benchmark is more CPU focused AFAIK, and the article we are discussing is talking about just how much the astonishing M1(.+) memory access bandwidth is improving their rendering time.

The only result I could find with the memory details for the 12900HK didn’t calculate out what the (overclocked) memory bandwidth was: https://gadgettendency.com/intel-core-i9-12900k-lights-up-wi...

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#149

Post by arcticbull »

valzam wrote: post #99
arcticbull wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the 12900HK beats the Max by 3%, even though the M1 Max is way more power efficient and likely utterly smoked it on GPU. After all it’s 8% faster than a mobile 3060. The 3060 alone is a 60W TGP. The M1 Max running Cinebench consumes 9W while the 11980HK (previous gen) consumes 45W. Perf/W Is about 3X higher for the M1 Max on CPU alone and I suspect factoring in graphics we’ve got a breakaway here. Intel will cat…

Just FYI because I've seent that a few times already: A 60W/70W 3060 is -very slow-. There are many laptops that supply much more power and conversely also get better results.

That's a very good point. Do you thing running a 3060 at a higher TGP gets you the same perf/W? I'm genuinely curious where they have them set along the curve.

Re: Rendering on the Apple M1 Max Chip

#150

Post by HatchedLake721 »

wefjioi3223O wrote: post #84
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it devours, what, 5X the power and generates far more heat and fan noise requiring a much thicker machine to house it? Also the integrated graphics will (going from Intel) be nowhere near as impressive as the M1 Max's graphics, so it's hardly competing on that front either. Not really a victory there. Also, it hasn't even been released yet, so comparing hypothetical unreleased products isn't a good comparison to…

By the way, Apple said their graphic card in M1 MAX has the same performance as mobile 3080 using much less power. But this was a lie. M1 MAX has only ~10 TFLOPS and 3080 has ~19 TFLOPS, so M1 MAX is almost twice slower than mobile 3080. So the whole superiority of M1 MAX is greatly overstated by fake numbers. and also don't forget - 3080 is almost a year old GPU.

Your comments are like an evil crusade to burn down M1.

“Nothing special” compared to an unreleased Intel chip with higher power usage.

“Overstated by fake numbers” by choosing 1 metric and ignoring 99 others it’s better at.

You’re also a 2 hour account.

Is M1 vs Intel personal to you?

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