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M4 Mac mini's efficiency

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#401

Post by hollerith »

ricardobeat wrote: post #398
rwalle wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment might win you the argument on a random non tech forum but not here. much more efficient in what? mops the floor by what? which year's i7? Don't get me wrong, I 100% believe what happened, but if you mean "my macbook is faster than my i7 thinkpad" you should use those exact words, but not bring RAM into this discussion. If you want to make a point about RAM, you need to be clear about what workflow you we…

Repeating what I just commented elsewhere, but Mac uses several advanced memory management features: apps can share read-only memory for common frameworks, it will compress memory instead of paging out, better memory allocation, less fragmentation. Bandwidth for copying things into memory is also vastly faster than what you get on Intel/AMD, for example on the Max chips you get 800GB/s which is the rough equivalent o…

>apps can share read-only memory for common frameworks

How is that different from plain shared libraries?

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#402

Post by nicce »

cellwebb wrote: post #351
atonse wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that IS actually true, that if everyone used a coupon, the coupon would eventually go away or become weaker. The expected percentage of people using a coupon is often part of the calculation (however vague) when deciding the coupon.

Likewise, the expected percentage of people using the education discount is part of Apple's calculation. Even if they lose money on the device (which I personally think is unlikely), they'll make it back from subscriptions and their cut of app store purchases.

It is also an investment.

Teachers promote/showcase the device for students.

Students who buy the device earlier, might influence the choices in their future jobs.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#403

Post by ricardobeat »

hollerith wrote: post #401
ricardobeat wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Repeating what I just commented elsewhere, but Mac uses several advanced memory management features: apps can share read-only memory for common frameworks, it will compress memory instead of paging out, better memory allocation, less fragmentation. Bandwidth for copying things into memory is also vastly faster than what you get on Intel/AMD, for example on the Max chips you get 800GB/s which is the rough equivalent o…

>apps can share read-only memory for common frameworks How is that different from plain shared libraries?

System design and stability. On MacOS a lot is shared between applications compared to the average Linux app. Dynamic linking has fallen out of favor in Linux recently [1], and the fragmentation in the ecosystem means apps have to deal with different GUI libraries, system lib versions etc, whereas on Mac you can safely target a minimum OS version when using system frameworks. Apps will also rarely use third party replacements as the provides libraries cover everything [2], from audio to image manipulation and ML.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=whs8QZf3YnifdLv57+FhBi5_W...

[2] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ma...

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#404

Post by luxuryballs »

layoric wrote: post #246
nextos wrote: post #9

I use Linux, but I think the cheapest M4 Mini offers an incredible value and efficiency per €. With education discount, it's around €650, including VAT. It's pretty hard to find such a silent and powerful machine for that little. Any comparable options? A good fanless build with a i3-14100T is more expensive and 40-50% slower on Geekbench. An i5 is a bit closer. Some 2024 Ryzen CPUs can match or exceed its multicore…

Maybe for a little server or something, but with the hard to upgrade 256GB storage.. I don't get the appeal. Also 16GB of memory is extremely limited these days. Again, perfect for a little server, but not for a daily driver.

For someone who wants to develop and build apple ecosystem apps or cross-platform an existing game this is a steal.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#405

Post by kalleboo »

00deadbeef wrote: post #136
rgovostes wrote: post #22

> If only they didn't put the power button on the bottom. I can't tell if anyone is being serious about the "Powergate" issue. The thing is 5" wide and weighs 1.5 lbs, it's not exactly a burden to lift it a little. And there are highly practical workarounds: https://www.reddit.com/r/macmini/comments/1gncek7/nailed_the...

The comment in the article is in the context of rack mounting them which is a common thing to do with Mac minis. Having it on the bottom makes it hard to press as you can’t lift them up when they’re secured in a mount.

I would have thought that them being slightly higher than 1U would have precluded people from rack mounting them "flat" in the first place. It seems like it would be more efficient to rack mount them standing on their sides, and then the air gap between them would be enough to reach the power button easily.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#406

Post by eru »

RobMurray wrote: post #338
eru wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great write-up! > This equilibrium state is exactly the point aimed for by the corporations that create these open secrets. Not necessarily. You know that biological evolution is blind, but thriving in a market environment doesn't require companies to know why what they are doing is successful. So eg Photoshop (and Windows) used to be really easy to 'pirate' by individuals. And you can argue that this was good for Ad…

Microsoft products are trivial to pirate thanks to Microsoft Activation Scripts [1] which is on GitHub. It is inconceivable that they aren't aware of it with 102k stars. That can only be deliberate. [1] https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

I agree: I am sure that people at Microsoft are aware these days.

The first commit in the Microsoft Activation Scripts repository is from 2020. For Microsoft the dynamic I describe goes back all the way to the 1980s (and perhaps even earlier.)

Back in the 1970s and 1980s people at Microsoft might or might not have been aware. (I don't know for sure either way.) But it already worked in their favour.

My point is that the dynamic works whether or not anyone is aware of it.

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#407

Post by Rohansi »

kamranjon wrote: post #394
Rohansi wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With what kind of workload? If you need 32GB of RAM then the computer that actually has that much RAM should be almost guaranteed to be quicker.

Video Editing. Backend and Frontend development utilizing docker containers. Just browsing the web with tons of tabs. Streaming video while doing other stuff in the background. Honestly most things I'd rather do on my M1.

So probably nothing that actually needs more than 16GB of RAM then. And realistically comparing M1 to an i7 several years older than it.

Having more RAM doesn't increase memory bandwidth and having more memory bandwidth doesn't necessarily mean better performance. You aren't even able to make use of all of the bandwidth your M1 is capable of in the real world [1].

Apple Silicon has good perf/watt but the gap probably isn't as big as you're thinking.

[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#408

Post by WuxiFingerHold »

edude03 wrote: post #85
nextos wrote: post #9

I use Linux, but I think the cheapest M4 Mini offers an incredible value and efficiency per €. With education discount, it's around €650, including VAT. It's pretty hard to find such a silent and powerful machine for that little. Any comparable options? A good fanless build with a i3-14100T is more expensive and 40-50% slower on Geekbench. An i5 is a bit closer. Some 2024 Ryzen CPUs can match or exceed its multicore…

Daily nix user across Mac and Linux, though I use Mac for actual development. No problems here moving between the two with my dev env defined on GitHub [0] [0]: https://github.com/edude03/dotfiles

How do you handle the different keyboard layouts (cmd and ctrl on Mac, ctrl and superkey on Linux)?

I'm using a Mac at work and Linux at home with a programmable keyboard but I didn't find a solution to "merge" cmd and ctrl on Mac, so I still need to use both on Mac (not a big drama, but slightly annoying).

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#409

Post by Rohansi »

ricardobeat wrote: post #398
rwalle wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment might win you the argument on a random non tech forum but not here. much more efficient in what? mops the floor by what? which year's i7? Don't get me wrong, I 100% believe what happened, but if you mean "my macbook is faster than my i7 thinkpad" you should use those exact words, but not bring RAM into this discussion. If you want to make a point about RAM, you need to be clear about what workflow you we…

Repeating what I just commented elsewhere, but Mac uses several advanced memory management features: apps can share read-only memory for common frameworks, it will compress memory instead of paging out, better memory allocation, less fragmentation. Bandwidth for copying things into memory is also vastly faster than what you get on Intel/AMD, for example on the Max chips you get 800GB/s which is the rough equivalent o…

Sharing read-only/executable memory and compressed memory are also done on Windows 10+ and modern Linux distributions. No idea what "better memory allocation" and "less fragmentation" are.

800GB/s is a theoretical maximum but you wouldn't be able to use all of it from the CPU or even the GPU.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...

Re: M4 Mac mini's efficiency

#410

Post by nicce »

RobMurray wrote: post #338
eru wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great write-up! > This equilibrium state is exactly the point aimed for by the corporations that create these open secrets. Not necessarily. You know that biological evolution is blind, but thriving in a market environment doesn't require companies to know why what they are doing is successful. So eg Photoshop (and Windows) used to be really easy to 'pirate' by individuals. And you can argue that this was good for Ad…

Microsoft products are trivial to pirate thanks to Microsoft Activation Scripts [1] which is on GitHub. It is inconceivable that they aren't aware of it with 102k stars. That can only be deliberate. [1] https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts

> It is inconceivable that they aren't aware of it with 102k stars. That can only be deliberate.

Or it is one of the reasons why Microsoft is pushing hard to require cloud account for everything, including local Windows.

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