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Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

macrumors.com

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Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#691

Post by Reason077 »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #479

> The M1 chip, which belongs to a MacBook Air with 8GB RAM, features a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433. According to the benchmark, the M1 has a 3.2GHz base frequency. > The Mac mini with M1 chip that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1682 and a multi-core score of 7067. > Update: There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core…

> “the A14 iPad Air outperforms all iPad Pro devices?”

iPad Pro is still on an older generation of SoC (A12Z), while the iPad Air just got the new A14.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#692

Post by spockz »

moondev wrote: post #682
throwaway4good wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The results seem a little weird but if remotely true then these machines are going to sell like cup cakes. Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are?

> Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are? - locked bootloader - no bootcamp - can't install or boot linux or windows - virtualization limited to arm64 machines - no windows x86 or linux x86 virtual machines - only 2 thunderbolt ports - limited to 16GB RAM - no external gpu support/drivers - can't use nvidia or amd cards - no AAA gamin…

But these “features” are not highlighted on the product page. (Aside from memory) The core count and battery performance are listed. I think many people will buy these. And arm64 containers will come in time with adoption.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#693

Post by whizzter »

vbezhenar wrote: post #609
baybal2 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet it still makes it very clear: a properly implemented ARM core can easily bury an X86 of equivalent size because of inherent advantage of not having to pay interest on 40 years of technical debt in the ISA.

Because 5 nm better than 7 nm. That's about it. AMD Zen will be on par with Apple Silicone when they'll use 5 nm process.

Actually i'd bet that you're both wrong. What M1 does well isn't that "ARM-is-better" or that they're using a smaller process (even if both factors probably plays into helping the M1 chips edge a few %).

Rather i suspect that the main benefit that M1 has in many real world benchmarks is that it has on-chip memory, cache-miss latency is a huge cost in the real world (why games has drifted towards DoD internals), so sidestepping that issue to a large extent by integrating memory on-die gives it a great boost.

I'm betting once they've reverse engineered the M1 perf, we will see multi-GB caches on AMD/Intel chips within 4 years.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#694

Post by Shivetya »

saagarjha wrote: post #209
userbinator wrote: post #158

I wonder what Linus thinks of Geekbench's accuracy now: https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=136526&curpost... https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=185109&curpost... Personally I'm not convinced, until I see something like SPECint/SPECfp results.

> We've seen this before: cellphones tend to have simpler libraries that are statically linked, and at least iOS uses a page size that would not be relevant or realistic on a general purpose desktop setup. This is an interesting thing to say considering that 1. most apps on iOS use large dynamic libraries and 2. Apple silicon Macs run on 16K pages, just like iOS.

we don't know Big Sur's optimizations, it is possible they used a number of iOS techniques within it.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#695

Post by akrymski »

A matter of time until Apple releases a ChromeBook competitor - a cheap plastic laptop for schools/students, similar in spirit to the iPhone SE, perhaps running on A14 instead of M1, and a 12" screen. This would be great for marketshare gains and to get more young people into the Apple ecosystem. Perhaps something that looks like the polycarbonate MacBook introduced in 2006?

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#696

Post by marcan_42 »

throwaway4good wrote: post #554
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #479

> The M1 chip, which belongs to a MacBook Air with 8GB RAM, features a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433. According to the benchmark, the M1 has a 3.2GHz base frequency. > The Mac mini with M1 chip that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1682 and a multi-core score of 7067. > Update: There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core…

The results seem a little weird but if remotely true then these machines are going to sell like cup cakes. Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are?

Until all software is ported to ARM, it will run in emulation, which is going to be slower in most cases. People invested in plug-in ecosystems, like DAWs or video editing, will likely have an endless long tail of plug-ins that aren't getting ported, or that require a re-purchase to get an ARM version. And due to Rosetta's architecture, you can't mix ARM and x86 plug-ins (in-process, like VSTs - Apple wants you to use AUv3 which is out of process but nobody does that), so you will be running your entire workflow under emulation until you can make the switch hard and all at once. And some of your software will never make it.

Mark my words, this is going to be a massive shit show for people using those ecosystems, for 5 years if not 10. It already happened with the PPC transition.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#697

Post by eb0la »

eru wrote: post #661
graycrow wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

€1665 in Czechia, and we have much lower purchasing power.

To be honest, you'd expect widely traded good to trade at the same prices, regardless of local purchasing power.

Before Brexit sometimes the you could buy apple stuff for less on amazon.co.uk than in the rest of Europe because the price was fixed in GBP.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#698

Post by blunte »

wffurr wrote: post #685
moondev wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are? - locked bootloader - no bootcamp - can't install or boot linux or windows - virtualization limited to arm64 machines - no windows x86 or linux x86 virtual machines - only 2 thunderbolt ports - limited to 16GB RAM - no external gpu support/drivers - can't use nvidia or amd cards - no AAA gamin…

- Starts at $999 for the base laptop version. You can get much cheaper still good Windows laptops.

You lost me at "good Windows laptops".

macOS has plenty of warts, but my experience with high quality equipment (Thinkpad, XPS, Alienware) has left me ultimately disappointed with Windows in many day to day situations compared to Mac.

Windows is still clunky, despite many improvements. And aside from a Thinkpad Carbon X1, I haven't used any laptop with the performance and build quality (for the size/money) as a Macbook Air.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#699

Post by ekr »

There were talks of splitting Google and other huge companies due to their size (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/house-amazon-fac...).

Wouldn't it be awesome if Apple's CPU/IC design segment became a separate company and sold these CPUs and maybe SoC by themselves?

I think that would make a big dent into AMD/Intel market shares. Since Apple's part/die should be quite a bit smaller than most of the x86 dies, the fab costs should also be smaller and so should the final price.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

#700

Post by soneil »

ekianjo wrote: post #329
faitswulff wrote: post #255

This really flips the argument that Mac hardware is overpriced and underpowered on its head. Now Apple computers are a premium product from a performance perspective, as well.

So we trust Geekbench over actual user testing now?

I think it's more that we want information today and we don't have actual user testing today. And we're all guilty of this - why else did we click when the machines are still pre-order.
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