M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness • Hacker News Board

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#451

Post by klelatti » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:03 PM UTC

sushisource wrote: post #415

jakeva wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like these always make me wonder if I'm the only person in the world still delighted by Apple products. I mean I alone can not be responsible for their sales volume. And then I start to wonder if I should be more critical of Apple, so I fire up my Windows machine and think silently "No, this is still a worse experience". So I fire up my Ubuntu and have the same reaction. I just don't understand the vitriol s…

At least for me the reaction is largely emotional. I like using my linux desktop because I can set it up exactly how I want, and macOS just doesn't roll that way. Now, I'm not really the target market, so whatever, but there are a few things that upset me about it: 1. I could really, really love macOS if they had a "don't treat me like a child" checkbox I could hit somewhere that would turn off some of the more obnox…

Thanks for a really balanced comment. Just on the ability to customise point - I've always thought that the Mac strikes a good balance - most things I want to change I can (including what is shown in the Finder sidebar) but also things that I really shouldn't be spending my time on I can't. Much as I like much of the linux distros I've tried I spend too much time tinkering!

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#452

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

Gruber notes midway:

"Perversely, developers, who by nature of their profession best understand exactly what an architecture transition like this entails, might be among the few professions who can’t yet move their primary computing to an Apple Silicon device by nature of the software tools they depend upon. (Some developers can move now, and — because Xcode running on the M1 compiles code so much faster than any Intel MacBook — are rejoicing.)"

I know that HN has many more active/vocal webdevs than native software developers, and so the point may be lost on some. I suspect that Gruber doesn't understand why his point is actually so completely accurate.

Developers (native ones at least) need to compile, a lot. Compilation is an embarrassingly parallel task: if you've got N cores, you can use N cores and get a linear speedup for every expansion in N you are offered.

The M1 seems like an awfully nice system for people concerned about CPU/Watt, and an awfully nice system who want a very powerful bit of hardware to run macOS on.

What it remains is a less-than-top-of-the-line system for people who care about CPU/$ or just maxCPU. No doubt if you're used to building native code on existing MacBook Pro or even a Mini, the M1 systems will seem incredible.

But I'm building my software on a 12 core, 32GBM VM running on a threadripper, while still able to read Hacker News and listening to Soma FM in the Linux/Debian host environment, and for people like me (especially the even tinier set who also are net-zero for electrical supply thanks to solar PV), the M1 systems are just not interesting so far.

But then, as Gruber said, I'm a developer, and this mismatch is caused by the set of tools I use.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#453

Post by 6d65 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:04 PM UTC

mbreese wrote: post #414

6d65 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it will cut into their sales they might have to adapt. Also, from what I heard, while intel was on top, it was charging outrageous margins on its CPUs. AMD mobile were said to be hundreds of dollars less per cpu. The manufacturers might choose to pass on these savings. Of course, if AMD becomes the only game in town, they might jack up their prices as well. We'll see.

I didn't really think about it at the time, but Nvidia buying ARM makes even more sense now that Apple has shown what can be done with ARM CPUs. Not necessarily because Nvidia wanted a CPU, but because otherwise, they'd be stuck providing GPUs for Intel CPU systems. AMD can bundle Radeon GPUs and Apple has the M1 CPU/GPU. That means that for a system vendor (Dell), the only cost effective place to use an Nvidia GPU w…

You're right, it could be that Nvidia will push for more beefed up cortex CPUs, with the same tricks employed in m1, like larger L1/l2 caches, increasing the die size, and add more complex pipelines, put the ram on the soc, and an Nvidia gpu.

The potential problems are.

- This might take some time, if it's not already in progress. And pc manufactures might not afford lower sales for a few years while this happens.

- Windows seems to still have issues with app portability and emulation. But who knows, maybe MS will push harder

- Making their own chips and also licensing cores to vendors like Qualcomm, might spook them. It's not a good position to compete with someone who owns the IP you depend one. This might be a good thing for RISC-V

But we'll find out in a year or two what is the play. Competition is good for everyone. That's why I don't like apple having exclusive access to new nodes, be it because apple is willing to pay premium, or that other companies avoid low yield.

Anyway, seems like TSMC will have their hands full for a few cycles.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#454

Post by heavyset_go » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

hpaavola wrote: post #46

I don't care about any Apple products, but I really do hope that M1 will force all other manufacturers ship good ARM laptops. Or force Intel and AMD to pull a rabit out of their hat to match the performance/watt of ARM chips. I want long battery life, no fans and a lot of memory. Running Linux. If M1 is the catalyst to make it happen, then so be it.

More ARM SoCs means more machines that will never see Linux or *BSD support. A lot more work[1] needs to go into supporting each individual SoCs than x86 machines require.

[1] https://elinux.org/images/a/ad/Arm-soc-checklist.pdf

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#455

Post by usefulcat » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #434

outworlder wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes M1 is great. But it's a closed system It doesn't matter. Sure, that might mean that an Apple system is not for you. But the crux of the matter is: Apple did something truly revolutionary. How is the rest of the market going to respond? Specifically, how are Intel, AMD and Microsoft going to respond? Microsoft, at least, has Windows running on ARM, but it doesn't have Rosetta. Intel and AMD have nothing remotely…

> " Microsoft, at least, has Windows running on ARM, but it doesn't have Rosetta " I thought that Microsoft's emulation efforts were hampered by Intel making threats, e.g. " Intel recently made an unprecedented public challenge to Microsoft and Qualcomm that basically told the latter two companies: if you ship an x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) emulator, we’re coming after you. ", from https://www.forbes.com/s…

Did Intel similarly threaten Apple? If not, why not? Even if they didn't know for sure exactly what Apple was up to with the M1, they surely could have speculated, as so many others did.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#456

Post by egsmi » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

altcognito wrote: post #413

egsmi wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you be a bit more specific about what section of the article you're referring to? The claim I read is that it runs fast and cool, as perceived by touching the outside case. I didn't find any claim that no heat was generated at all and didn't read anything about throttling in this article.

Can you be a bit more specific? I didn't find any claim "no heat was generated" wasn't stated anywhere. The first paragraph talks about "fast computers should run hot." In an article titled "truth and truthiness", it should be commended for "truth in labeling" because vague usage of "hot and fast" is one way to make the truth difficult to pin down.

This is reasonable enough but I’m not sure how it relates to the parent comment which brings up the possibility of laws of physics being repealed. A more complete paraphrase of the first paragraph is, people believed fast computers should run hot. And that certainly matches my experience to date.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#457

Post by throwaway894345 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

spfzero wrote: post #431

throwaway894345 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's more to it than chip design though. There is the OS work to take advantage of the chip's new features. And designing new chip features to accommodate sw bottlenecks. Apple has very close collaboration between software and hardware engineering, while in the competitive space, those two things are not under the same roof. Makes it tougher.

True, and I don’t expect generic manufacturers to completely close the gap between them and Apple, but I do expect there will be enough to copy that we’ll still see a step change in PC performance.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#458

Post by cosmotic » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:10 PM UTC

stemc43 wrote: post #88

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…

no docker - no buy.

Docker not working sure was a deal breaker for me. That's the sort of thing I would expect to work out of the box. A huge number of developers use that daily and they seem like a pretty big chunk of Apple's target market for macbook pros.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#459

Post by Shivetya » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:11 PM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #385

The discussion seems to have settled down to "M1 is great! But you'll soon be able to get a Zen 3 CPU that's just as good." Which may or may not be true, but: - Apple has a material (and apparently perceptible) performance advantage against the majority of the laptop market - which will do wonders both for their and Arm's brand. - The M1 has killed the idea (which I've heard a lot) that you can't get performance out…

Well that big impact will only materialize if Apple can convince developers to make apps for this platform, something they have not been doing well as it is. (with intel offerings)

They need to stop ceding the desktop game market to windows/amd/intel. When Catalina dropped it remove a lot of software, productivity, utility, and games, had many examples where they no longer ran. Worse some developers just wrote off the platform.

Even Apple's M1 debut could not line up more than two or three known developers. Most of it was from developers people had to resort to google for and even then some didn't show up in search lists.

No, Apple's problem with the Windows platform is and has always been software. Apple never seemed keen on pushing the Mac as a platform with iPhone and iPad being the focus on so many levels. Now that they have a truly impressive offering we have to hope they go recruiting developers to the platform because Rosetta won't be here forever and it doesn't solve the availability issue.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#460

Post by cpgxiii » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:12 PM UTC

ianhowson wrote: post #309

cpgxiii wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have seen massive improvements in power envelope in CPUs in fairly recent generations, to say nothing of the power improvements seen in some generation->generation GPU improvements. For example, with an improvement to the 14nm process and not a die shrink, Kaby Lake->Whiskey Lake saw low power processors double in core counts (2C/4T->4C/8T) in essentially the same power/thermal envelope. Basically every thin lapto…

Well... yeah... but they also dropped clock rate from 2.5GHz-ish to 1.7GHz-ish. That could equally well explain the increase in core count at the same TDP. You're gaining about 15% IPC improvement from Kaby->Whiskey [1]. It's an overall improvement, but not as dramatic as "2x cores for 2x perf at the same power" [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/14514/examining-intels-ice-la...

"Base" clock dropped, but boost clocks remained fairly high. In practice performance gains were quite good (except, notably, for that time when Apple used old power control firmware and had 6C/12T processors underperform their 4C/8T predecessors).

The point of this is that the significant improvement from Kaby Lake to Whiskey Lake involved only small architectural refinement and updates to an existing process, so much larger performance/power improvements should absolutely be expected from an entirely new process plus architecture refinement.