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M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

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Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#171

Post by simias »

s3cur3 wrote: post #133
simias wrote: post #100

I've never owned a Mac and don't intend to own one but I'm very happy with this M1 move, mainly for the reasons highlighted in the introduction to the article: >M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux. Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. I think it's…

It's not just "ARM is fast," though—Apple's ARM chips in particular beat the pants off their ARM competitors. (See benchmarks of any iPhone compared to flagship Android devices.) I don't think you should expect similar levels of performance from a run-of-the-mill ARM chip on the desktop (though I'm happy to be shown benchmarks to the contrary).

Apple's ARM SoCs are definitely ahead, but it's not like the competition is hugely far behind. Top of the line Android phones and tablets perform well enough for most desktop tasks IMO. It's mostly the software and I/O that makes them unusable as such.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#172

Post by soneil »

simias wrote: post #90
IndySun wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a timing infographic? Or luck chart, for that matter?

I think the trick is to post when west-coast America wakes up, more or less.

That's my impression too. The previous post currently says 11 hours ago, so by my count that's midnight NYC, 5am London. I know Australia exists, but overall that just gives it most the night to slide down the page before the majority wake up.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#173

Post by whywhywhywhy »

username3 wrote: post #105

There are no honest 8GB reviews. Gruber is selling 8GB Macs based on 16GB review units. This is the iPad 1 with 256MB all over again.

The justification that 16GB is "enough" from the Apple blogger clique like Gruber is ridiculous. Even if it is "enough" it's still what my MacBook Pro I bought 6 years ago shipped with for several hundred dollars less than this one.

Why are we giving Apple a pass on RAM being stuck at 8GB and SSD being stuck at 128GB (only very recently bumping to 256) for almost a decade. Not to mention some of us get stuck on 8GB 128GB machines because our workplaces only buy the base "Pro" machines, refusing the drop the extra few hundred to make it what Gruber considers the base level.

SSDs are no longer expensive, go on Amazon and see how much 1TB M2s cost these days.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#174

Post by Jonnax »

cpgxiii wrote: post #166
Jonnax wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article makes no sense whatsoever. And whoever wrote it doesn't not understand what they're talking about. SMT is designed to boost performance in multitreaded workloads. It can be thought as multitasking for a CPU core. Using two threads for one benchmark and use one thread for another, it is not comparing single core performance. Because why wouldn't that CPU schedule the load on other cores?

Of course, the scheduler can easily be told to run both benchmark threads on the two hyperthreads of a given core. The argument to be made is that because of the resources dedicated to SMT, single thread on AMD/Intel versus single thread on Apple is not measuring the true potential performance of the whole core. In principle, some multithreaded workload over all available threads could be a better metric for whole-pr…

Fair enough. But if you're comparing single threaded performance, there isn't a reason to split the workload into two threads for AMD/Intel and have it as a single thread for Apple.

If I had a single threaded application or a single threaded critical path of a multithreaded application.

I don't see a scenario where SMT will help

AnandTech have done a comparison here: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16261/investigating-performan...

You can see it's all within 1% with it on and off for single threaded.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#175

Post by ficklepickle »

the_af wrote: post #120
simias wrote: post #100

I've never owned a Mac and don't intend to own one but I'm very happy with this M1 move, mainly for the reasons highlighted in the introduction to the article: >M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux. Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. I think it's…

> I want to believe. If we can end up with superfast, supercool ARM-based Linux laptops, that'd be a huge deal :)

This is it. I'm excited because Apple just showed what is possible. Other companies are going to have to try to match it.

I have wanted a powerful "enough" fanless laptop for many years. I got excited about 4 years ago with Intel's short-lived M line and I bought an Asus ux305. It served me well for front end web dev (had to use a cooler stand under sustained high load though). Great Linux support and battery life (after installing tlp). I remember feeling a bit of awe that it was reasonably snappy with no fan, but it was not quite there. I can only imagine the feeling is an order of magnitude greater with the M1.

I don't own any Apple products, but I still hope that raising the bar will benefit me later on. I'll be pretty pumped when this level of hardware can run a mainline kernel.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#176

Post by zepto »

piokoch wrote: post #154
simias wrote: post #100

I've never owned a Mac and don't intend to own one but I'm very happy with this M1 move, mainly for the reasons highlighted in the introduction to the article: >M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux. Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. I think it's…

I am not sure if the derogatory tone is fair. This is just example how progress works. Not that long time ago Apple had to be saved by some pennies thrown by Microsoft. Not that long time ago Apple was moving from Motorola processors to Intel ones. There is nothing bad that someone stayed behind. Someone has to stay behind if we want progress. No reason to insult predecessors. Planc and Dirac weren't making fun of Ne…

The point about being able to upgrade ram or upgrade to whatever you want doesn’t make sense.

A ram upgrade will never compensate for a less efficient memory architecture.

There is no CPU architecture other than Apple’s that will make your laptop faster because AMD and Intel are thermally limited, so there is nothing to upgrade to.

The only situation in which you are right, is if you are talking about a high end desktop tower.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#177

Post by zepto »

simias wrote: post #171
s3cur3 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just "ARM is fast," though—Apple's ARM chips in particular beat the pants off their ARM competitors. (See benchmarks of any iPhone compared to flagship Android devices.) I don't think you should expect similar levels of performance from a run-of-the-mill ARM chip on the desktop (though I'm happy to be shown benchmarks to the contrary).

Apple's ARM SoCs are definitely ahead, but it's not like the competition is hugely far behind. Top of the line Android phones and tablets perform well enough for most desktop tasks IMO. It's mostly the software and I/O that makes them unusable as such.

The numbers say otherwise.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#178

Post by mox1 »

msla wrote: post #161
alwillis wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but my threadripper's are not impressed with some 4 core M1 The M1 has 8 CPU cores, 8 GPU cores and 16 Neural Engine cores. It also runs at 10 watts and maxes out at 24 watts. A Threadripper starts at over 100 watts…

So are we going to have "Core Wars" to replace the "MHz Wars" of previous decades?

No probably not. More of a "Benchmark vs. Power Consumption" war I think.

Power users understand today that max MHZ doesn't even matter anymore, for various reasons.

I think power consumption (even in desktops, servers) will be a large factor / marketing number.

I think the big tech sites will continue to hammer home some type of "CPU work / watt" type metric, which is roughly like "time to complete some standardized workload vs. power used to do it"

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#179

Post by reallydontask »

tambourine_man wrote: post #45

I submitted the same exact link 8 hours earlier. This HN behavior is very frustrating. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285489

Whenever I've tried to submit an already submitted link, it takes me to that discussion on HN, so I wonder what people do to circumvent this

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#180

Post by StillBored »

I want a "hot" M1, one that runs at 5Ghz and burns 120W (or whatever) at load because it will be even faster. That is how this works, the reason your seeing "fast and cool" is because the target is 15W. If that becomes 25W then there is budget for more cores, or faster clocks (or whatever) and the the result is a faster machine. Which is why a lot of people are holding out for the M2 (again or whatever) the next version they put in the bigger machines because it should be even more impressive if apple can scale it.
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