Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

macrumors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 473 posts

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#431

Post by alwillis »

yunnpp wrote: post #275
alwillis wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And oh yes, the modern Mac shares those 8GB with the video RAM... The Unified Memory Architecture is why these Macs are so fast—no wasted cycles moving data between RAM and GPU. And the data is compressed in real-time so less data has to be transferred and there's less ware and tear on the SSD, which is directly to SoC [1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47354705

UMAs aren't made for speed, but for power savings. You are ignoring the fact that a discrete GPU accesses VRAM and caches at much higher bandwidths (and power) than an iGPU does RAM. Shared mem also comes at the cost of keeping it coherent between CPU/GPU. So you can't just look at one part of the system and then claim that UMAs must be faster because there are no data transfers. And by the way, even on UMAs, the iGP…

In the case of the A18 Pro in the Neo, the memory is integrated directly into the package which is shared between the CPU, GPU and Neural Engine.

Naturally it's faster to have all of this in the same package, with memory bandwidth up to 400 GB/s.

Intel and AMD are heading in the same direction.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#432

Post by spacedcowboy »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #418
spacedcowboy wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac SSDs are expected to last 8-10 years, even with high use. though Apple don't publish these values specifically, it's possible to start to extrapolate from the SMART data when it starts showing errors. A good SSD ought to be able to cope with ~600TBW. My ~4.5-year-old MBP gives the following: smartctl --all /dev/disk0 ... Data Units Read: 1,134,526,088 [580.8 TB] Data Units Written: 154,244,108 [78.7 TB] ... Media…

> I'm sure an 8GB RAM machine would use more swap than my 16GB one, but probably not much more It's non-linear. If you have a 17GB working set size, a 16GB machine is actively using 1GB of swap, but the 8GB machine is using 9GB. If you have a 14GB working set size, the 16GB machine doesn't need to thrash at all, but the 8GB machine is still doing 6GB. Meanwhile "SSDs are fast" is the thing that screws you here. Once…

Most people using these things aren't going to be using more than 8GB on an ongoing basis, and if they do, they'll not be swapping it like mad as you suggest, because it's only on application-switch that it will matter.

As for 600TB in just over 3 days, I want some of what you're smoking.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#433

Post by alwillis »

labcomputer wrote: post #317
alwillis wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is actually the reason the Neo has 8 GB of RAM (non-upgradable). It’s their anti-cannibalization strategy. It has 8 GB of RAM because they wouldn’t be able to hit the price point of $599 with more; their target audience doesn't need more. It's also why the SSD is slower than a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air; it's the only device in the lineup other than the entry-level iPad with a sRGB display; the other d…

> It's also why the SSD is slower than a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air; It's actually not that much slower, at least if you compare machines with the same amount of storage. The M2 and M3 MacBook Air with 256GB comes in at 1700 MB/s[1], while the Neo with 256GB is... drumroll... 1700 MB/s[2]. Yes, Air and Pro machines with more storage are faster. I have not seen any benchmark of the Neo with 512GB, so maybe it lags beh…

I should clarify that I was referring to the memory bandwidth. Compared to the 100 GB/s of a M3 MacBook Air, the 60 GB/s of the Neo is 40% slower. My M1 Pro MacBook Pro's memory bandwidth is 200 GB/s; that's 3.33x faster than the Neo.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#434

Post by AnthonyMouse »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #432
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure an 8GB RAM machine would use more swap than my 16GB one, but probably not much more It's non-linear. If you have a 17GB working set size, a 16GB machine is actively using 1GB of swap, but the 8GB machine is using 9GB. If you have a 14GB working set size, the 16GB machine doesn't need to thrash at all, but the 8GB machine is still doing 6GB. Meanwhile "SSDs are fast" is the thing that screws you here. Once…

Most people using these things aren't going to be using more than 8GB on an ongoing basis, and if they do, they'll not be swapping it like mad as you suggest, because it's only on application-switch that it will matter. As for 600TB in just over 3 days, I want some of what you're smoking.

> Most people using these things aren't going to be using more than 8GB on an ongoing basis, and if they do, they'll not be swapping it like mad as you suggest, because it's only on application-switch that it will matter.

To begin with, a single application can pretty easily use more than 8GB by itself these days.

But suppose you are using multiple applications at once. If one of them actually has a large working set size -- rendering, AI, code compiling, etc. -- and then you run it in the background because it takes a long time (and especially takes a long time when you're swapping), its working set size is stuck in physical memory because it's actively using it even in the background and if it got swapped out it would just have to be swapped right back in again. If that takes 6GB, you now only have 2GB for your OS and whatever application you're running in the foreground. And if it takes 10GB then it doesn't matter if you're even running anything else.

Now, does that mean that everybody is doing this? Of course not. But if that is what you're doing, it's not great that you may not even notice that it's happening and then you end up with a worn out drive which is soldered on for no legitimate reason.

> As for 600TB in just over 3 days, I want some of what you're smoking.

2GB/s is 8200GB/hour is 172.8TB/day. It's the worst case scenario if you max out the drive.

In practice it might get hot and start thermally limiting before then, or be doing both reads and writes and then not be able to sustain that level of write performance, but "about a week" is hardly much better.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#435

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #382
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash has finite write endurance. NVMe swap can burn through it pretty quick. Which is isn't that bad because if it wears out you can replace it... unless the drive is soldered.

I’ve never had an SSD crap out because of read/write cycle exhaustion, and I’ve been using SSD almost exclusively, for over a dozen years. I’ve had plenty of spinning rust ones croak, though. You don’t solder those in, so it’s not really a fair comparison. I did have one of those dodgy Sandisks, but that was a manufacturing defect.

But how much RAM did you have?

If you have 24GB of RAM and a 12GB working set then it's fine. Likewise if you have 8GB of RAM and a 4GB working set. But 8GB of RAM and a 12GB working set, not the same thing.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#436

Post by spacedcowboy »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #434
spacedcowboy wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people using these things aren't going to be using more than 8GB on an ongoing basis, and if they do, they'll not be swapping it like mad as you suggest, because it's only on application-switch that it will matter. As for 600TB in just over 3 days, I want some of what you're smoking.

> Most people using these things aren't going to be using more than 8GB on an ongoing basis, and if they do, they'll not be swapping it like mad as you suggest, because it's only on application-switch that it will matter. To begin with, a single application can pretty easily use more than 8GB by itself these days. But suppose you are using multiple applications at once. If one of them actually has a large working set…

Yeah dude, "Rendering, AI, code compiling,..." is not the target market for this device. It's just not.

> 2GB/s is 8200GB/hour is 172.8TB/day. It's the worst case scenario if you max out the drive.

Right, which is completely and utterly unrealistic. As I said, I want what you're smoking.

I have an 8GB M1 mini lying around somewhere (I just moved country) which was my kids computer for several years before he got an MBP this Xmas. He had the sort of load that would be more typical - web-browsing, playing games, writing the occasional thing in Pages, streaming video, etc. etc. If I can find it (I was planning on making it the machine to manage my CNC) I'll look at the SMART output from that. I'm willing to bet it's not going to look much different from the above...

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#437

Post by alwillis »

wolvoleo wrote: post #247
alwillis wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And oh yes, the modern Mac shares those 8GB with the video RAM... The Unified Memory Architecture is why these Macs are so fast—no wasted cycles moving data between RAM and GPU. And the data is compressed in real-time so less data has to be transferred and there's less ware and tear on the SSD, which is directly to SoC [1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47354705

Well yes it's still only 8GB shared between macos, the VM and the graphics buffers. On a mobile chip.

> On a mobile chip

That's not really a thing with Apple Silicon. The A series chips and the M series have the same CPU and GPU core designs.

Because you don't need to support Thunderbolt 4/5 controllers, PCIe lanes for NVMe storage, ProRes encode/decode engines (on Pro/Max/Ultra tiers) and multiple external displays in a device like a phone, Apple TV, or a HomePod these features are absent from A series chips.

The A17 Pro corresponds to the M3, the A18/A18 Pro corresponds to the M4 and the A19/A19 Pro corresponds to the M5. Same core design, different implementations.

It's not like Intel where there are many server processors, desktop processors and mobile processors. Apple uses the same core design they scale up or down as needed, for example the S series chips in the Apple Watch. The S9 is a scaled down A13 or A15.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#438

Post by spacedcowboy »

dangus wrote: post #408
spacedcowboy wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasons for the MacBook: - It has ~1.5x the screen real-estate (2408x1506 vs 1920x1200) - The CPU is (3566,8646) compared to the AMD (2366,9243) on geek bench. Single core (the most important) is ~1.5x faster - PC's battery life is 8-10 hours real-world (rather than quoted "up to 13"), Toms Hardware benchmarked the Neo at 13.5 - Neo is slightly lighter at 2.7 vs ~3.1 lbs. There are other reasons to go with the AMD ve…

- I don't think you're correct about the gulf in single core performance. On battery, the Cinebench 2024 scores (single core) of the Ryzen 7 AI 350 are 97% of the score you get from an M4 MacBook Air. (Cinebench is a lot better than GeekBench, IMO). (source: https://youtu.be/3ZTe5kUYt9k?t=702 ) - Screen real estate does not equal resolution. Nobody is going to scale their MacBook Neo's smaller 13" screen down to take…

You might prefer a different benchmark, but I am correct in the gulf on geekbench. I just looked at their benchmark results. For what it's worth, Geekbench is a lot better than Cinebench IMO, because it's more "real world".

> IMO, macOS has weird resolutions like this because it sucks at scaling That is not my experience. I have run MacOS on monitors ranging from 43" down to 23", in various resolutions. MacOS looks great to me.

> 2.7 vs 3.1 pounds is insignificant

Well, it's 15% heavier. Whether that's significant is up to the carrier.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#439

Post by LoganDark »

spullara wrote: post #336
spullara wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fair

I have Intent working on it. Maybe AI can make progress on this, but we will see.

Intent looks interesting but the fact that they have their own credits system turns me off of it. I pay $200/mo for Claude Code and that's enough for me; I wish I could use Intent with that.

Re: Parallels confirms MacBook Neo can run Windows in a virtual machine

#440

Post by spullara »

LoganDark wrote: post #439
spullara wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have Intent working on it. Maybe AI can make progress on this, but we will see.

Intent looks interesting but the fact that they have their own credits system turns me off of it. I pay $200/mo for Claude Code and that's enough for me; I wish I could use Intent with that.

Have you actually tried it? In addition to Augment, you can use it Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and more are coming.
Post reply on HN