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16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

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Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#191

I wonder how this is possible. I suspect that the i9 was designed for high-TDP usage, and thermal throttling just kills performance. That would mean that the MBP offering an i9 was mostly marketing.

My i9 16" MBP power throttles long before it thermal throttles. FWIW I find the thermals actually quite good, I've never had issues with over-temp but I have daily issues with it hitting the 100W limit and getting throttled down to 1GHz until I unplug the 3rd monitor.

https://twitter.com/thesquashSH/status/1291053844592558084

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#192

Is anyone else thinking, what the f*ck? Are we in a new era of computing? It certainly feels that way when looking at these desktop class ARM chips, where performance doubled every year or so, just like back in the 80s and 90s.

So though it's a new age in some ways, I don't think it will benefit many people. It will just increase the churn. Witnessing all the cries of "16GB of RAM isn't enough!" makes it quite apparent that software behaves like a gas rather than a liquid, and will expand to consume whatever hardware is available to developers.

I think that for consumer products, which these are targeting, software responsiveness, usability, and battery lifetime are by far the most important metrics.

These chips help with battery, and can hell with software responsiveness if there's is developer focus on it.

But what will probably happen is that development teams will buy the fastest computers they can, and then develop software that is mostly, somewhat adequately performing on this beefy hardware, then ship it to customers that are on weaker hardware.

This effect is especially pronounced for web software, where it's easier to make unresponsive interactions due to so many layers of software, especially with developer network connections usually being 10x-100x less latency than users.

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#193

Is anyone else thinking, what the f*ck? Are we in a new era of computing? It certainly feels that way when looking at these desktop class ARM chips, where performance doubled every year or so, just like back in the 80s and 90s.

I suspect HP/Lenovo/Microsoft are squirming in their chairs right now.

As they should be. Windows laptops have been embarrassingly stagnant for over a decade; they just copy Apple's innovations. This isn't an innovation that they will be able to release in their next product refresh. They're going to have to invest significant amounts of capital.

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#194

I love everything about the move to Apple Silicon with the exception of the decision to put memory on-die or in-package (not sure how it is configured). They call it 'Unified Memory'. It makes a lot of sense but I don't know if they are going to be able to pack enough memory in there. A lot of folks are fixated on CPU performance lately (which is rad) but I think that there is a tendency to ignore memory. I have 32gb…

One, this is repeating the iPhone vs Android comparisons. iPhones with 4GB RAM feel faster and get more work done than Androids running Qualcomm ARM with double that amount of RAM. The faster IO becomes the cheaper paging becomes, and macOS and iOS have a lot of work done to handle paging well. Two, this is the entry level processor, made for the Air, which is what we get for students, non-technical family members an…

I get what you're saying, I'm also looking forward for the even higher performing machines with 12 or 16 core cpus (8 or 12 performance cores + the 4 efficiency cores?), 32gb ram option, 4 thunderbolt lanes, and more powerful gpus. Wondering exactly how far apple can push it, if this is what they can do in essentially a ~20TDP design.

On the other hand it's quite funny that the title of this article is "16-inch MBP with i9 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real world Rust compile" and the comments are still saying "yeah but this is entry level not pro".

Apparently Pros are more concerned about slotting into the right market segment than getting their work done quickly :)

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#195

Is anyone else thinking, what the f*ck? Are we in a new era of computing? It certainly feels that way when looking at these desktop class ARM chips, where performance doubled every year or so, just like back in the 80s and 90s.

I’m guessing the performance improvements derive from integrating the memory onto the same chip (instead of using external memory), not from ARM (although power savings come from ARM). So we will probably see a new era of laptop SoCs, but that also means coupling RAM with CPU (or maybe you can mix and match the on-chip RAM with external RAM?).

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect HP/Lenovo/Microsoft are squirming in their chairs right now.

Lenovo and Microsoft had started to release ARM devices way before Apple.

Yeah? And how are they looking today?

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#197

I love everything about the move to Apple Silicon with the exception of the decision to put memory on-die or in-package (not sure how it is configured). They call it 'Unified Memory'. It makes a lot of sense but I don't know if they are going to be able to pack enough memory in there. A lot of folks are fixated on CPU performance lately (which is rad) but I think that there is a tendency to ignore memory. I have 32gb…

Perhaps this will encourage programmers to write true native applications again instead of wrapping web scripting languages in a browser and calling it a day.

Unless they are performance-bound, this is pretty unlikely. The productivity benefits are hard to ignore.

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#198

Is anyone else thinking, what the f*ck? Are we in a new era of computing? It certainly feels that way when looking at these desktop class ARM chips, where performance doubled every year or so, just like back in the 80s and 90s.

I suspect HP/Lenovo/Microsoft are squirming in their chairs right now.

Qualcomm chips are not that far behind Apple's, and Microsoft has Windows on ARM ready for a while now. Those performance advantage won't be there for long.

I think the bigger question is what does this spell for x86-64?

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#199

I love everything about the move to Apple Silicon with the exception of the decision to put memory on-die or in-package (not sure how it is configured). They call it 'Unified Memory'. It makes a lot of sense but I don't know if they are going to be able to pack enough memory in there. A lot of folks are fixated on CPU performance lately (which is rad) but I think that there is a tendency to ignore memory. I have 32gb…

> You can't get an M1 configuration right now larger than 16GB which is a table-stakes baseline dev requirement today. Everyone on my team has been using 15" MacBook Pros with 16GB RAM for the past 3 years. I suspect most developers run with 16GB of RAM just fine. I'm not arguing "16GB is fine for all developers everywhere!", but it's absolutely not a hard requirement. I suspect for a lot of us, the difference in per…

> Regardless, the thing which is kind of stunning about this chip is that they are getting this kind of performance out of what is basically their MacBook Air CPU.

Or to put it a different way: this is the slowest Apple Silicon system that will ever exist.

Re: 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect HP/Lenovo/Microsoft are squirming in their chairs right now.

Satya Nadella just tweeted about their new Pluton processor. I have a feeling it won't get the same hype as the M1 but they are clearly already trying to defend.

FYI - Pluton is a security chip, not a general purpose CPU.
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