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M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

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Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#201

Post by formerly_proven »

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…

It's actually really impressive how well Intel desktop CPUs still do considering they're still made on a (continuously improved) five year old process.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#202

Post by balls187 »

faitswulff wrote: post #14
ghaff wrote: post #12

I'm not sure I see most of the disagreement here. As Gruber says, Moorhead is mostly complaining about software incompatibilities. But that's part of the total package--especially with Apple which is about selling the total experience. Personally I'll probably switch sooner rather than later especially given that I don't run a lot of native apps on my laptop. But it seems pretty reasonable to critique a new architect…

I had a suspicion upon reading Moorhead's review that he was trying to use familiar enterprise Windows software on the M1 instead of trying to use native apps: > So far, I have experienced application crashes in Microsoft Edge, Outlook, WinZip and Logitech Camera Control. I got installation errors with Adobe Reader XI, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, a Samsung SSD backup application, and Xbox 360 Controller for Mac. What Ma…

Macbook Pro user since 2007.

I use Chromium Edge. Runs great on my Intel 16" MBP.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#203

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

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 think it's a bit unfair to lump Linux in there since it's been running on ARM and other embedded, low-power devices basically forever, but it is true that few of us run our Linux desktop on an ARM board.

We aren't running ARM on our desktops because there aren't ARM desktops for us to use. The market jumps from low-end boards like the Pi and Pine's lineups - which are excellent for what they are, but suffer from poor performance and I/O - to the high end where ex. https://www.asacomputers.com/Cavium-ThunderX-ARM.html looks like a nice system but $2,820 is a bit of a barrier to entry.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#204

Post by colinmhayes »

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).

Probably because there's basically no competition in the ARM space, especially in non-mobile. I'd like to see what amd and intel can do with ARM before saying apple will continue to be king.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#205

Post by wk_end »

ChrisLTD wrote: post #200
zepto wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers say otherwise.

The numbers show that the other chips are slower, but they don't show that they are "unusable".

x86 chips aren’t “unusable” either, and if these other ARM chips wanted to compete in the desktop space they’d be just as - or more - “hot and/or slow, clunky, noisy”. ISA just doesn’t matter half as much as microarchitecture.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#206

Post by hajile »

valuearb wrote: post #193
nix23 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wait for an 8-core (or the rumored 12 core) variants. Those will embarrass your threadripper. It will not, my TR has 64 cores 128 Thread and you know whats the best thing? 128GB Ram...and imagine that..they aren't even soldered...and i even can exchange my GPU..or slap in 2 others. And if apple ever brings out a M1 Workstation, i can probably buy 3 other Server/Workstations with that money.

Your TR is what, 280 watts TDP? nearly 20 times more than a M1. And is 30% slower in single core. Firestorm Cores use less than 4 watts each. A 16 firestorm core Mx will produce roughly the same multicore performance as your TR, with a less than 70 watt TDP. And a $65 M1 dusts a 4800h that costs over 4x as much and using 1/3 the power. Top end ThreadRippers cost $2,000 to $3,000 each. You can bet an Apple Mx ThreadRi…

At scale, cores are only a small part of the equation.

https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13124/IF%20Power%20EPYC.pn...

Given that scaling, you're looking at 140w between 64 cores which is right at 2w per core. The all-core turbo for TR is 3GHz. If we assume linear scaling on M1 cores, if you dropped them in to replace the x86 cores and the had to reduce from 3.2GHz at 4w down to 2w per core, the all-core turbo would be a mere 1.6GHz AND about a third less cache per core.

TSMC claims 30% less power going from 7nm to 5nm. That means those x86 cores power usage drops from 2w to 1.4w. With the same linear scaling and 4w at 3.2GHz, the M1 design is now operating at 1.1GHz competing with a part that is still 3GHz and the M1 still has only 3mb of cache per core instead of 4.5mb.

Now, I'm betting that actual power usage is 3w which bumps frequency up to 1.5GHz. Still half the frequency, but possibly close enough in performance to Zen 3 at that frequency.

EDIT: It's apparently 3.45w during cinebench according to these benchmarks.

https://twitter.com/panzer/status/1328715510100344833

I'm betting that if they didn't bottleneck on the IO that the M1 would perhaps be faster, but at that scale, interconnects are a much, much larger issue than the cores themselves.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#207

Post by unsigner »

ChrisLTD wrote: post #200
zepto wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers say otherwise.

The numbers show that the other chips are slower, but they don't show that they are "unusable".

Put it this way: if the new Macs had the performance of the fastest Qualcomm ARM cores available today, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#208

Post by ekianjo »

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…

> But I think the overarching point is true: now desktop and laptop makers can't just pretend that having a hot and/or slow, clunky, noisy x86-based architecture is just a fact of life. I hope and expect that it'll help create a new generation of ARM-based laptops and maybe even desktops that will run cool and smooth.

Be careful what you wish for. X86 is the most open architecture right now. ARM, on the other hand, has locked bootloaders, messy device trees and so on. You can see that virtually every Linux distro running on an ARM SOC needs some specific tweaks.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#209

Post by formerly_proven »

zionic wrote: post #126
nix23 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. Not sure what shitty machine hes talking about, but my threadripper's are not impressed with some 4 core M1.

Wait for an 8-core (or the rumored 12 core) variants. Those will embarrass your threadripper.

The M1 core is roughly on par with the Zen 3 core, so how exactly would an 8 core part manage to embarrass a 64 core Zen 2 part?

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#210

Post by mlyle »

colinmhayes wrote: post #204
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).

Probably because there's basically no competition in the ARM space, especially in non-mobile. I'd like to see what amd and intel can do with ARM before saying apple will continue to be king.

Qualcomm, Samsung, Cavium/Marvell, and nVidia don't count? Not to mention ARM's own cores...
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