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M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

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Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#371

Post by throwaway894345 »

snazz wrote: post #258
throwaway894345 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When iPhone came out in 2007, Android was still an OS for BlackBerry like devices. It didn't take long for Android to discover touch screens once Apple made it clear that they were dramatically better. Similarly, it's not like other ARM chip manufacturers are going to have to go through all of the same R&D expense to figure out how to make chips that are comparably fast--they just need to copy what Apple did without…

In my opinion, Apple "derisked" high-performance ARM chips with the A9-ish era five years ago. Other companies have had a long time to spend catching up to Apple mobile chips, and they haven't.

That's a completely reasonable challenge, and I might be wrong. My very amateur speculation is that, in the mobile space, Apple got incrementally better over time. Rank-and-file Android users didn't really notice the performance gap and thus didn't demand faster chips. M1 changed expectations for the laptop market virtually overnight, and rank-and-file users will expect M1 performance, battery life, etc. I think this represents an enormous market opportunity for PC manufacturers and thus chip suppliers that didn't really exist circa A9.

My key assumption is that there's some pareto principle at play--80% of the M1's performance gains over the next best generic ARM chip are due to a handful of key innovations while the remaining 20% come from a long tail of incremental improvements. This would mean that generic manufacturers could copy those handful of key innovations (modulo IP rights, which might be another fatal flaw in my speculation) and recoup 80% of that performance gap in just a few years. If that assumption is bad and the performance is entirely an accumulation of lots of minor innovations over time, then I suspect it will take chip manufacturers quite a lot longer to catch up.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#372

Post by altcognito »

This Gruber character is something else. No, the rules of physics and heat generation have not been repealed. You would think the fact you can’t crank out 100% performance on a Mac book air for too long before it throttles would be evidence enough that heat dissipation was still the prevailing reality, but not so for Gruber!

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#373

Post by nix23 »

cellar_door wrote: post #292
romanoderoma wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But honestly, does it matter? People buying a threadripper today don't care about it. What matters to them it's the performance, my gf is a 3d artist, she doesn't care if some cpu consumes more or less power than another (when I say she doesn't care I mean she doesn't even know that CPU have very different power requirements), she needs the fastest gear she can buy on her budget. Apple M1s are not it. There are many…

> People buying Apple for its M1 low power consumption are a niche inside a niche. Got it, watching Netflix in Chrome without the laptop getting hot is "a niche inside a niche" while GPU intensive 3d graphics workflows are mainstream.

>watching Netflix in Chrome without the laptop getting hot is "a niche inside a niche" while GPU intensive 3d graphics workflows are mainstream.

Well then i have to say Apple achieved what my 7 year old nexus 5 already could...bravo.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#374

Post by alwillis »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #328
alwillis wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can end up with superfast, supercool ARM-based Linux laptops, that'd be a huge deal :) Apple showed Debian running in a VM on an M1 prototype Mac nearly 6 months ago. I get that it won't be acceptable for some Linux diehards but the superfast, supercool ARM laptop running Linux will soon be an M1 MacBook Pro.

Apple laptops have always been among the best in terms of quality. If you can run free software on it, even better. Is it actually possible to replace macOS with Linux though?

Apple hasn’t locked down the Apple Silicon Macs to prevent a non-Apple OS from being installed, so maybe?

The main issue is driver support, since graphics, networking, etc. is all Apple proprietary hardware.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#375

Post by snazz »

altcognito wrote: post #372

This Gruber character is something else. No, the rules of physics and heat generation have not been repealed. You would think the fact you can’t crank out 100% performance on a Mac book air for too long before it throttles would be evidence enough that heat dissipation was still the prevailing reality, but not so for Gruber!

What's crazy about the M1 is that you can run the MacBook Air at 100% for a little under 10 minutes before it throttles. That's a breakthrough compared to Intel chips.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#376

Post by GekkePrutser »

my123 wrote: post #362
doggydogs94 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last I heard, Linux is not coming to M1 unless Apple opens up on technical specifications.

https://patreon.com/marcan

The question is how far he can get without Apple's documentation. On the CPU side, probably pretty far as they use the standard ARM ABI. On the GPU side? This is where things will get really hairy. Same with the machine learning cores.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#377

Post by 6d65 »

doggydogs94 wrote: post #354
6d65 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree with regards the closed platform. I switched to Linux for my development machine for a few years now. And, using something else than i3(or any other tilling window managers) seems like a step down. I like instant switching between workspaces, splits, no animations. And I'll be looking for a good laptop next year, when everything returns back to normal, and I might have to travel. And will put Linux o…

The last I heard, Linux is not coming to M1 unless Apple opens up on technical specifications.

I'm not planning to get a macbook. My main contender would be an XPS with a new ryzen cpu on 5nm, if they'll have one next year, or a thinkpad again with Ryzen 5nm. I would not accept anything less.

But thinking about it, it might be that the mobile AMD CPUs are a year behind the desktop ones. So next year the best ryzen could still be at 7nm Zen3. In that case apple will have a 2 year transistor lead. But, will see.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#378

Post by mlyle »

wmf wrote: post #252
mlyle wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They don't count in the PC space. For desktop PCs there's just the Mac mini and various hacker boards. For laptops there's the new MacBooks and the mediocre Qualcomm 8cx/SQ2 and nothing else.

No one said "in the PC space" here.

There's lots of credible ARM work in both the mobile and the server space. Generally, a lot of it would work OK in the PC space, but for the lack of software support. Apple has the ability to leapfrog that particular problem.

Still, Apple seems to have done pretty well compared to both the other mobile and server ARM vendors with their PC offering.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#379

Post by egsmi »

romanoderoma wrote: post #351
criddell wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

64 GB? From where? I just looked at Dell and an XPS desktop with 16 GB of RAM starts at $650. You aren't going to be able to add two GPUs and a monitor for $350. At HP you can get to 32 GB for $650 but again you still need to buy GPUs and a monitor.

64GB of ram cost A lot of studios sell their old GPU (as in a generation ago) for cheap If you stay out of vertical integrated supply chains you can buy the best your budget allows If you are saying that you cannot assemble a laptop of the same quality of an Apple one, I agree If you are saying that Apple laptops are what people want because they consume 20 watt full load, I disagree The market of the good enough pro…

> 64GB of ram cost Not all RAM is equivalent. If one wants 64GB of the kind of RAM M1 uses, which is very high performance, it will cost more than 300 euros.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#380

Post by sound1 »

mypalmike wrote: post #337
the_af wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can get it to run Linux not on a VM, but natively and without coexisting with macOS at all, then it'll be good enough for me!... ...except I cannot afford a macbook. The one I'm using now was paid for by my employer. More generally, I'd love to see fast ARM platforms not built by Apple.

Local compensation practices where you live must really suck if you can't afford a $1000 laptop. :(

I feel this is not a very thoughtful comment. There can be many more reasons for not being able to afford a $1000 laptop other than local compensation right? Financial constraints like kids, mortgage, lack of spare cash for a new machine etc.?
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