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M1 Macs Review

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Re: M1 Macs Review

#301

Post by hart_russell »

djs55 wrote: post #168
hart_russell wrote: post #12

I received an M1 mini 2 days ago. I noticed the Steam client seems to be a bit laggy in UI responsiveness, but besides that I have no complaints. I got it for use as a server, so I was a bit dismayed to hear that M1 Docker support has hit a roadblock, but hopeful that they figure it out soon.

Don't worry, we (at Docker) have been working on Apple Silicon support for a while. The command-line tools work under Rosetta 2 but the local VM inside Desktop will take a little bit longer to port. Just in case you haven't seen it there's some further info on Docker+M1 in the blog post: https://www.docker.com/blog/apple-silicon-m1-chips-and-docke...

Thanks for the reply! I have subscribed to the newsletter and look forward to updates.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#302

Post by bartvk »

mekster wrote: post #231
rsanheim wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah so far the performance is very close to my 10 core iMac Pro I use for day to day development. This is on a MacBook Air with no fan, and so far I haven't felt the machine even get warm even when compiling _and_ also running tests or importing data in other processes. This is when running a decently sized Rails monolith w/ PostgreSQL & Redis, so a fairly typical modern Rails setup. It's seriously impressive.

Does it mean you can no longer easily tell if a process has gone crazy and takes high CPU usage without a fan and you also can't even feel the slow down.

That is true in many situations, like a remote server. That's why we have top on the commandline, or iStat Menus. But I'm not sure if iStat Menus actually works on the new machines.

https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

Re: M1 Macs Review

#303

Post by r00fus »

EricE wrote: post #265
Joeri wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder whether we need to reset expectations on memory amounts. From seeing the reviews where they launch every application installed on the 8gb air and it remains smooth I am suspecting that the unified memory and optimized storage interface means that for M1 macs 8 gb behaves like 16 gb on intel cpu’s.

Just remember that if your machine needs to swap because of low RAM you are now writing to your SSD. The permanently soldered in SSD that has a finite amount of writes. Saving $200 on RAM up front could get wiped out if you kill your SSD prematurely with constant, heavy swapping. Here I see the fast SSD speed as a negative - making it painless to do something inherently dangerous towards the lifespan of your SSD.

Have you ever actually worn out an SSD using personal workloads (ie, not on a server)? I haven't yet and I own machines/SSDs from 12 years ago - benchmarks are still roughly equivalent to what I had to start.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#304

Post by fulafel »

masklinn wrote: post #184
TillE wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a distinction between shared graphics memory (an ancient and still very common thing) and "unified memory"?

Yes, they're absolutely nothing alike. Shared memory means the CPU and the GPU share physical memory in different address space, so 512MB RAM with 64MB shared means the CPU gets 448MB and the GPU gets 64, and data has to be copied from one chunk to the other. Unified memory means both CPU and GPU not only share physical memory but share the address space , all memory is accessible to both at the same time. This means…

Memory cross addressability/accessibility works with dGPUs too (but there of course accessing memory behind PCIe is slower). IOMMUs are involved. But software/driver stack has been slow to take advantage of iGPU unified memory, operating systems are partly to blame too.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#305

Post by larkost »

fulafel wrote: post #169
coldtea wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure which those "non-desktop" systems are. If you mean "smartphones and tablets", ok. But this is a laptop, not a mobile phone, and it's new development there. If you mean "laptops" then, no, they didn't have unified memory, much less have it be "pretty normal".

Laptops with iGPUs are pretty normal, no? (And common on desktops too)

I don't know about the latest Intel integrated GPUs, but for the original ones it was not a unified memory arrangement. Rather the integrated GPU used a dedicated chunk of main memory. It was the same banks of memory, but was treated as separate. If you wanted a texture to appear on-screen, then it had to be moved from the normal pool of memory to the one reserved for the GPU.

This reserved pool of memory was even hard-set at boot time, and usually the size of it was determined based on the amount of total memory (for example at one point MacBooks with 4GiB of memory allocated 1GiB for memory, ones with 8GiB allocated 2GiB).

What it sounds like Apple has done here is heavily blur those lines. One example would be to load a texture into a memory location, make a change with the CPU, then let the GPU do some modifications, check something with the CPU, then apply it to some shape and display it. On current systems that would mean multiple copy operations of that texture back and forth between segments of memory (across the PCI bus on a dedicated card). Here that might all be done with no copies at all (just handoffs).

Re: M1 Macs Review

#306

Post by greedo »

ActorNightly wrote: post #227
kzrdude wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What hope do we have that M1-like chips are available soon in regular non-apple notebooks? I guess the chance is zero.

M1 isn't groundbreaking. RISK has been around for a while, and stuff like SoC with unified memory isn't new. Id say chances are pretty good. While Apple will always have the edge in terms of optimization since they have to only design for specific hardware, the difference won't be massive, and you won't be locked into the ecosystem.

Look at the ARM chips in Android phones. Compared to Apple Silicon the suck in both performance and power usage. That's what you'll get if vendors try to use similar chips in desktops and laptops. Vendors will instead continue to use AMD and Intel chips and fall further behind.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#307

Post by gumby »

BooneJS wrote: post #79

“New Intel chips were often delayed and offered only small improvements over previous generations.” As noted on HN and elsewhere, Intel’s struggle has been in manufacturing. They minimized risk (“got lazy”) when Moore’s Law reigned and their fabs were 1-2 generations ahead of everyone else, but have since squeezed every last architectural drop out of 14nm. Put Tiger Lake on TSMC 5nm and a lot of M1’s lead goes away.…

> Put Tiger Lake on TSMC 5nm and a lot of M1’s lead goes away.

> It’s not because [...] Apple has found tricks no one else in the world knows about.

I don't think anyone would disagree with either statement. The point is Intel can't get TL on a small node, and not for lack of trying. They eventually will, of course, but there is an organizational sickness at Intel that has crippled them.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#308

Post by fulafel »

chungus_khan wrote: post #230
jakeva wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example outside the M1 Macbooks?

Intel iGPUs since gen7, AMD iGPUs since Kaveri. Most laptops have one of these.

Yep. AMD called it hUMA from 2013 or so when they started marketing it (eg https://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-HSA-hUMA-APU,22324.htm...)

Re: M1 Macs Review

#309

Post by shmoogy »

jordache wrote: post #207
shmoogy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really want the air for when I work outside in the summer. I worked from an iPad quite often with the magic keyboard, and it started throttling and sometimes overheated to the point of failure while outside in the sun. It's too cold in Chicago to test, but I would love to see if the MacBook Air can work while outside in direct hot sun - it's the only reason I'm considering the MBP.

why would you want to work under direct sunlight? you can barely see the screen in that condition

I sit at my patio table and move twice during the day if I am out long enough. I face the sun, to tan, and my screen is away from it (behind it). When the sun is directly above I move under the shade.

It helps increase my mood, and productivity.

Re: M1 Macs Review

#310

Post by proverbialbunny »

Joeri wrote: post #293
neogodless wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I appreciate the experience differential between macOS, Windows and Linux. I've enjoyed each, and have no major complaints about any. With the right hardware, I've really enjoyed installing and using Linux, while I struggle when drivers for networking have to be procured - I'm not experienced enough in that area to figure it out (or rather, I'm not motivated enough.) For me, Windows and macOS alike just work a…

What was likely meant by experience is things like the display (P3 retina 3K in the macbook air), the trackpad (still unmatched in any other device), the metal housing that is very refined and doesn’t flex at all, ... In my experience if you want the level of physical build quality of a macbook, you end up in the price range of a macbook. Windows vs macos vs linux, that is personal preference. I use all three and the…

Some linux distros have gotten so polished these days that I find they require less maintenance than OSX on my MBP does. Though, most people who use linux want power not it-just-works, so I think there is going to be a preference towards the higher maintenance distros.
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