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M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

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Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#531

Post by wpietri »

p1necone wrote: post #516
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…

> Apple did something truly revolutionary This is hyperbole. Apple has released a CPU that has very good perf/watt compared to it's current competition. That's it. This isn't revolutionary, it's just another incremental step in CPU improvements. Can we please give Apple praise for competing well in the hardware market without fully drinking the kool aid and parroting their marketing.

I would like the people downvoting you to explain why they think it's truly revolutionary. I just went back to reread the Tom's Hardware article on the chip, thinking I must have missed something, and I'm not seeing it.

Full credit to Apple for incrementally improving their A-series processors over the last decade until they're good enough for laptops. But I'm not seeing that this makes anything fundamentally different. Just compare the A14 with the M1, for example: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-a...

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#532

Post by coldtea »

6d65 wrote: post #297

The author is bashing another author for not doing measurements, yet himself declares that m1 beats all the other CPUs, without providing any measurements. With regards to the M1, I'm grateful for a good competition. As this will likely push premium laptop manufactures (Razer, Dell) towards ryzen CPUs, as opposed to using them in cheaper models. Loosening the grip that intel has on them. With Zen3 on mobile, giving a…

>The author is bashing another author for not doing measurements, yet himself declares that m1 beats all the other CPUs, without providing any measurements.

That's because there are plenty of measurements published, which agree with the author, and disagree with the "another author".

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#533

Post by coldtea »

fgonzag wrote: post #468
matwood wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> John Gruber has really become a shill over the last few years. I think it's important to read Gruber and understand he's an Apple person. Not a shill, as much as his world is all Apple. Sure, he checks out an Android phone every couple of years, but for the most part he doesn't care what's going on outside the Apple ecosystem. And, that's fine. As a reader of Gruber, I read for his takes about Apple.

Agreed, shill isn't the right word to use. Fan, cultist, or zealot would be more in line (depending on the desired impact and tone of the expression)

I think "cultist" or "zealot" applies more to the FOSS/Stallman crowd.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#534

Post by coldtea »

erik wrote: post #512
shaggyfrog wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The threat was regarding emulation. Rosetta 2 isn't emulation, it's translation.

Rosetta 2 includes both ahead-of-time translation and run-time emulation. It can run x64 jit software for example.

The jit is run-time translation still - not run-time emulation.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#535

Post by sushisource »

jeffkeen wrote: post #485
sushisource wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I like using my linux desktop because I can set it up exactly how I want, and macOS just doesn't roll that way. I'm not trying to have an argument here, but I've never really understood what is the "exactly how you want" that Mac OS doesn't provide? Would you mind sharing some details? Is it just a matter of not being familiar with the places to change the defaults to something more to your liking, or is it actuall…

To some extent you're totally right. I can elaborate.

Some of it are technical choices Apple has made that make things hard. I like tiling window managers. The best (only?) one for OSX now requires you to go disable SIP to use it: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki/Disabling-System-I... -- this wouldn't be the case if Apple cared at all to support these sorts of use-cases, but they don't, so it suffers collateral damage from their attempts to improve security. (Again, totally reasonable business choice. Not a ton of people in this boat, but turns me off. Why can't I do this by clicking something in system prefs like when I open a downloaded app?)

Another one is, as a developer who once worked at a shop that shipped three-os software, their policies relating to macOS licensing are comical. It's almost like they don't want you to develop for Mac at all unless you're going to exclusively develop for Mac. We had moved everything to the cloud, but we still had a room full of stupid mac minis just to run our build farm. Ridiculous. The new news about mac minis in AWS is an ever-so-slight improvement.

Some of it is definitely the familiarity you describe. I don't want to have to get used to all the weird bsd-ish-but-not-really versions of the common CLI tools. I have no interest in learning apple script, etc. I'm being fairly obviously hypocritical because I was willing to learn a bunch about obscure config files on linux. But, my experience has often been that things I would be willing to invest to customize on macOS are simply not customizeable.

And, hey, perhaps I would've been willing to go through all that were it (reasonably) possible to run OSX on commodity hardware, but as a kid learning programming in the 90's macs were damn expensive compared to windows alternatives. So, I grew up on windows. It's still true. Today I could afford a Mac Pro, but it's a laughable value proposition (easily 3x-5x the cost for equivalent power) compared to building my own linux box (as to the 'your time is money!' counterargument people sometimes make here - it takes me about 2 hours to build a PC and my linux box hasn't panicked or booted improperly once). This used to make sense to me when the OS/hardware was more tightly integrated, but I don't really see how a macPro is any different than the equivalent PC you could build with the same CPU/GPU combos except more expensive and less flexible (admittedly, with a stunning case -- their manufacturing quality is incredible). Maybe they'll realize those benefits again with the M1, which is certainly cool.

Lastly, I'll never forgive them for starting the trend of eliminating 3.5mm jacks on phones.

TLDR; You're probably right. Macs aren't a great choice if you're a power user (read: control freak) with your PC.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#536

Post by egsmi »

buran77 wrote: post #300
throwaway894345 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know very little about this space, but presumably that will change if/when a significant portion of the laptop space (and probably the server space as well) moves from x86 to ARM? It might be painful for early adopters for a few years, but I would expect this stuff to get ironed out in time, no?

No, that ship has sailed. Anything new that comes now can be built according to the expectations smartphones have set over the past decade and a half. Closed systems that are treated like disposable items. Even PCs in their mobile incarnation are now far less open and flexible than they used to be. The reason PCs are still open is historical, they started like this and people can't really see PCs any other way but th…

We've basically got one foot though that door already.

> We'll have some niche manufacturer building something more open for the small segment of enthusiasts.

I would argue that's exactly what Raspberry Pi and Arduino is.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#537

Post by leoc »

usefulcat wrote: post #455
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " 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.

FWIW, the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the x86-64 specification was apparently August of this year (https://web.archive.org/web/20120308025559/http://www.amd.co... , via WP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#History ), while MS announced x86-64 emulation support for ARM W10 at the end of September https://uk.pcmag.com/migrated-3765-windows-10/128922/microso... https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2020/09/30/now-m... .

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#538

Post by nwienert »

fgonzag wrote: post #476
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…

What is revolutionary about it? We still haven't seen Zen in the same node as the M1. Zen still scores higher in absolute terms (albeit at higher power). It's evolutionary. The power efficiency is great, and the core design is great (wouldn't expect less from those who were Intel's and Qualcomms most talented staff), but calling it revolutionary is an overstatement.

Using an M1 Air, coming from a 16" Pro, here's the diff:

- Cost: $1400 vs $4000 (nearly 1/3)

- Speed: Air feels significantly faster, and more apps move to native, will be even moreso

- Battery: At least double, if not 3x

- Size: Less than 1/2 the weight

The revolutionary thing is doing all of those at once. Nearly tripling battery life while making a huge leap in performance, at 1/3 the cost and half the weight is simply incredible.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#539

Post by coldtea »

wpietri wrote: post #531
p1necone wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple did something truly revolutionary This is hyperbole. Apple has released a CPU that has very good perf/watt compared to it's current competition. That's it. This isn't revolutionary, it's just another incremental step in CPU improvements. Can we please give Apple praise for competing well in the hardware market without fully drinking the kool aid and parroting their marketing.

I would like the people downvoting you to explain why they think it's truly revolutionary. I just went back to reread the Tom's Hardware article on the chip, thinking I must have missed something, and I'm not seeing it. Full credit to Apple for incrementally improving their A-series processors over the last decade until they're good enough for laptops. But I'm not seeing that this makes anything fundamentally differe…

>I would like the people downvoting you to explain why they think it's truly revolutionary.

For one, it's the first PC chip with these kind of thermals and power combo.

Second, it brings many new design decisions, from unified memory, to the SoC design, various coprocessors, etc, that have not been available in the form of laptop/desktop PCs. The last of this kind in the mass market would be something like the Amiga, which is still a very different design.

Third, it's hella fast and many different things, both given its power draw, but also irrespective of it.

Fourth, it makes ARM for PC computing mainstream suddenly, after decades where it was relegated to the mobile and hobbyist/specialist (rapsberry, etc) space.

If that's not a revolutionary change, I don't know what you expected. A CPU made from flour with alien technology that's 1000 times faster and uses quantum bits?

Yeah, they didn't make that.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#540

Post by ianhowson »

alwillis wrote: post #501
ianhowson wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1 is using standard LPDDRx. It's not "very high performance". It uses a different interconnect -- that's it. I guarantee that 64GB does not cost anything near EUR300. You might be thinking of HBM[2] which has a wider I/O path and costs more.

>M1 is using standard LPDDRx. >It's not "very high performance". AnandTech disagrees with you: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... Besides the additional cores on the part of the CPUs and GPU, one main performance factor of the M1 that differs from the A14 is the fact that’s it’s running on a 128-bit memory bus rather than the mobile 64-bit bus. Across 8x 16-bit memory channels and at LPDD…

Anandtech is comparing M1 vs A14. It's high performance for a cellphone part.

Dual channel DDR3L or DDR4L also has a 128 bit bus. 4200MHz DDR4 is clocked on the high side for most laptops, sure, but it's hardly unusual.

Run the numbers and you get the exact same throughput figure as for M1, which isn't surprising, because we're just taking width * rate = throughput.

So I'll repeat my assertion, downvotes be damned: the memory on the M1 is not special. The packaging and interconnect is interesting. It might reduce latency a little; it probably reduces power consumption a lot. But there's nothing special about it. The computer you're on right now probably has the same memory subsystem with different packaging.

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