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Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

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Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you don't follow what majority of the market do, it's much cheaper to just ignore that tiny customer segment which requires totally alien set of technologies iOS and Macs both use Metal. You can't refuse to support Metal without missing out on a very big slice of total gaming revenue.

On mobile devices - definitely On desktop - missing what, 2% or less? Checked Steam stats - yep, about 2%

That Steam stat is probably a chicken and the egg situation. I know I don’t run Steam on my Macbook because there’s nothing I want to play — but I would if there was.

Still the Mac marketshare is not that high (~15%?) but might start looking attractive to developers looking to “get in first” when hardware that can actually run games becomes available (cough).

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#502
post #260

I hate the naming. By name alone and without looking at specs, can you tell me which is the faster chip-- the M1 Max or the M1 Pro?

Well I'm not necessarily a fan of the naming but assuming Max stands for maximum, it's pretty clearly the best one. The one you get if you want to max it out. But they should've called it Pro Max for consistency with the iPhones...

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple, the company that requires the entire panel to be replaced by design when a 6 dollar display cable malfunctions, is proud to announce its latest marketing slogan for a better environment.

Not to mention all the eWaste that comes with the AirPods.

Who's doing better to mitigate e-waste?

> "AirPods are designed with numerous materials and features to reduce their environmental impact, including the 100 percent recycled rare earth elements used in all magnets. The case also uses 100 percent recycled tin in the solder of the main logic board, and 100 percent recycled aluminum in the hinge. AirPods are also free of potentially harmful substances such as mercury, BFRs, PVC, and beryllium. For energy efficiency, AirPods meet US Department of Energy requirements for battery charger systems. Apple’s Zero Waste program helps suppliers eliminate waste sent to landfills, and all final assembly supplier sites are transitioning to 100 percent renewable energy for Apple production. In the packaging, 100 percent of the virgin wood fiber comes from responsibly managed forests."

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#504

I always thought it was strange that "integrated graphics" was, for years, was synonymous with "cheap, underperforming" compared to the power of a discrete GPU. I never could see any fundamental reason why "integrated" should mean "underpowered." Apple is turning things around, and is touting the benefits of high-performance integrated graphics.

Video game consoles have been using integrated graphics for at least 15 years now, since Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

You are mistaken. On both PS3 and Xbox 360 CPU and GPU is on different chips and made by different vendors(CPU made by IBM and GPU by Nvidia in case of PS3 and CPU by IBM and GPU by ATI for Xbox 360). Nonetheless in PS4/XOne generation they both use single die with unified memory for everything and their GPU could be called integrated.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#505
post #364
post #260

I hate the naming. By name alone and without looking at specs, can you tell me which is the faster chip-- the M1 Max or the M1 Pro?

It would be odd for me if "Max" were not the "maximum".

That's still a bad naming convention. It won't be the maximum forever.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#506
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really curious if the memory bandwidth is entirely available to the CPU if the GPU is idle. An nvidia RTX3090 has nearly 1TB/s bandwidth, so the GPU is clearly going to use as much of the 400GB/s as possible. Other unified architectures have multiple channels or synchronization to memory, such that no one part of the system can access the full bandwidth. But if the CPU can access all 400GB/s, that is an absolute game…

Not sure if it will be available, but 400GB/s is way too much for 8 cores to take up. You would need some sort of avx512 to hog up that much bandwidth. Moreover, it's not clear how much of a bandwidth/width does M1 max CPU interconnect/bus provide. -------- Edit: Add common sense about HPC workloads. There is a fundamental idea called memory-access-to-computation ratio. We can't assume a 1:0 ratio since it was doing…

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Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#507
post #105

"Apple’s Commitment to the Environment" > Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to have net-zero climate impact across the entire business, which includes manufacturing supply chains and all product life cycles. This also means that every chip Apple creates, from design to manufacturing, will be 100 percent carbon neutral. But what they won't do is put the chip in an expan…

>so that you don't have to discard and replace it every few years

Except you and I surely must know that's not true, that their machines have industry leading service lifetimes, and correspondingly high resale values as a result. Yes some pro users replace their machines regularly but those machines generally go on to have long productive lifetimes. Many of these models are also designed to be highly recyclable when the end comes. It's just not as simple as you're making out.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't prefetching data into the cache more quickly assist in execution speed here?

How do you prefetch "node->next" where "node" is in a linked list? Answer: you literally can't. And that's why this kind of coding style will forever be latency bound. EDIT: Prefetching works when the address can be predicted ahead of time. For example, when your CPU-core is reading "array", then "array+8", then "array+16", you can be pretty damn sure the next thing it wants to read is "array+24", so you prefetch tha…

I don't really know how the implementation of a tracing GC works but I was thinking they could do some smart memory ordering to land in the same cache-line as often as possible.

Thanks for the clarifications :)

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#510
post #478

Has anyone tried extremely graphically intense gaming on these yet, I actually would love to consolidate all of my computer usage to a single machine, but it would need to handle everything I need it to do. $2000 for a laptop that can replace my desktop, is not a bad deal. Although that said I’m in no rush here.

Gaming is a non-starter on MacOS since 2018. You can get certain, specific titles working if you pour your heart and soul into it, but it's nothing like the current experience on Linux/Windows unfortunately.
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