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M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

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Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#741

Post by 6d65 »

azangru wrote: post #514
6d65 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. -…

> And pc manufactures might not afford lower sales for a few years while this happens. What do you mean? What other options do they have?

The other option is to use the best available x86 mobile CPUs, and these at the moment seem to be from AMD.

From what I've seen even current AMD CPUs are competitive with M1. Ryzen 4900HS has a fair lead in multicore performance and close single threaded. Of course, all this at a higher power and fans running as a jet engine.

But AMD is one process node behind, and one architectural node behind their desktops (Zen 2 on 7nm).

So, OEMs can use the perf gains from both the advancements to lower the TDP a bit,(ex 10%), put a larger battery. And this can result in a competitive product, even with the rumored M1X, since Ryzens already have the multicore lead.

That being said, from I read, the next mobile Ryzens will be 5000 series, released in a month, at 7nm. So only a ~20% IPC uplift is expected. Also probably TSMC's 7nm improved a bit. Nothing to scoff at, but not as exciting as a new process node.

Anyway, we'll see soon enough.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#742

Post by asveikau »

innagadadavida wrote: post #739
asveikau wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm typing this on FreeBSD. If the most interesting part of a Mac to you is the BSD layer ... Well, I doubt that. People like Mac for the UI and Cocoa stuff, plus hardware and integration thereof. The way you've substituted "BSD" for macOS really doesn't make sense. Yes, there is BSD code in MacOS, quite a bit of it in fact. But they're not the same thing.

You are right that people that buy a Mac don’t get it for the FreeBSD kernel. However, most people that complain about not being able to run Linux on a M1 can be just as productive with the alternatives on macOS. For 99% of other things that run in a terminal, you can get it to work in FreeBSD/macOS. Also, for Python folks, there is anaconda distribution that is agnostic to the underlying OS. Ditto for node or ruby d…

Again as a frequent FreeBSD user, "FreeBSD/macOS" is not really a thing. There is historical shared code but they are different beasts. Sometimes there is substantial porting involved to get things from one to the other and they are not really the same entity. Additionally, the BSD pieces of macOS are frequently out of date and a hodgepodge of components.

Personally, I have very frequently had the experience that Unixy stuff that "just works" on *BSD or Linux does not work on Mac straight away, or breaks with a new OS release, etc. It takes effort for the homebrew folks or the macports folks or whatever to keep stuff working.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#743

Post by atq2119 »

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…

Nvidia isn't stuck on Intel, they're selling AMD CPUs as part of their DGX A-100.

That said, it's clear that they're hoping for more vertical integration in the same way that AMD already has.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#744

Post by throwaway894345 »

stouset wrote: post #715
thayne wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM is already pretty viable for servers. At least viable enough that most of the major cloud providers have arm64 based instances available.

I think there’s a qualitative difference here between viable (which is where we’re currently at) and utterly dominant (which is where I suspect we’ll be in five or so years).

I agree, but even still how does that affect Intel’s business model? Are they incapable of building ARM chips and selling them the same way as their x86 chips? Seems like the business model is fine but the product will need to change, no?

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#745

Post by alwillis »

saagarjha wrote: post #366
alwillis wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise, we already knew that "emulation" doesn't imply that performance will be unbearably slow. Apple’s Rosetta 2 doesn't do emulation ; it translates the x86 code into ARM code on the fly and runs it, which is why most apps run faster on M1 Macs than they do on Intel Macs--and comparably priced PCs. Now that it has happened, we will likely see more from the PC industry. Probably not. If Intel and AMD were capable…

> Apple’s Rosetta 2 doesn't do emulation; it translates the x86 code into ARM code on the fly and runs it That’s…emulation.

Nope.

First line from Wikipedia[1]:

Rosetta is a dynamic binary translator developed by Apple Inc. for macOS…

Follow the link for Dynamic Binary Translator[2]:

Dynamic binary translation (DBT) looks at a short sequence of code—typically on the order of a single basic block—then translates it and caches the resulting sequence. Code is only translated as it is discovered and when possible, and branch instructions are made to point to already translated and saved code (memoization).

Dynamic binary translation differs from simple emulation (eliminating the emulator's main read-decode-execute loop—a major performance bottleneck), paying for this by large overhead during translation time. This overhead is hopefully amortized as translated code sequences are executed multiple times.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_translation#Dynamic_bin...

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#746

Post by simonh »

fomine3 wrote: post #641
simonh wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's talking about the vast majority of PC chips sold today, who's power consumption / performance / thermal ratios just got marmalised. You're quite right, your machine and in fact everyone else's are still just as good as they were a few weeks ago. I got an Intel 5K iMac in the summer and I'm still very happy with it. I need to be able to run windows and Linux in VMs so M1 isn't for me right now. It's no for you ei…

I wonder does Apple really make real "Pro" line Apple Silicon for Mac Pro that competitive to 32-64 core Threadripper. Is it profitable?

Before the M1 I worried about that. Now I don’t. The M1 is the lowest performance, lowest end Mac chip Apple will ever make, and it’s already knocking on the door of premium Intel and AMD chips. Not the super-premium, highly multicore stuff like threadripper, buts it’s a lot closer than anyone expected in single core.

To me, this means that when Apple consciously goes after the high end desktop market, they are likely to overshoot in exactly the same way M1 overshot the mid range mobile space. That could put Apple’s high end iMac chips in Mac Pro territory anyway.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#747

Post by dagw »

valuearb wrote: post #194
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…

Complaining about incompatibilities in software used by less than 5% of Mac users and ignoring the strong compatibility of software used by 95% of Mac users seems misleading.

Equally, talking only about the stuff that works great and completely ignoring the incompatibilities that do exist is also misleading.

Every other review out there covered the strong compatibility and how amazing the M1 is. I for one am glad that there exist a least a couple of reviews that focus on everything that doesn't work. Let's be honest, no one these days makes a purchasing decision based off of just reading the first review they find.

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#748

Post by notreallytrue »

egsmi wrote: post #511
notreallytrue wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't do what you do on a desktop on a laptop, not even a good one Who cares if an M1 consumes less energy than a candle if I can buy 64GB of DDR4 3600 for 250 bucks and render the VFX for a 2 hours movie in 4k? Another 300 bucks buy me a second GPU When I deliver the job I put aside another 300 bucks and buy a third GPU Or a better CPU vertical products are an absolute waste of money when you chase the last bit…

> You can't do what you do on a desktop on a laptop, not even a good one Ummm... ok. But my comment was not all RAM is equivalent.

Not all cars are equivalent

I guess you don't drive a Ferrari or a Murciélago

And does it really matter to have a faster car if you can't use it to go camping with your family because space is limited?

That's what an Apple gives you, but it's not even a Ferrari, it's more like an Alfa Duetto

It's not expensive if you compare it to similar offers in the same category with the same constraints (which are artificially imposed on Macs like there's no other way to use a computer...)

But if you compare it to the vast amount of better configurations that the same money can buy, it is not

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#749

Post by notreallytrue »

alwillis wrote: post #561
notreallytrue wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't do what you do on a desktop on a laptop, not even a good one Who cares if an M1 consumes less energy than a candle if I can buy 64GB of DDR4 3600 for 250 bucks and render the VFX for a 2 hours movie in 4k? Another 300 bucks buy me a second GPU When I deliver the job I put aside another 300 bucks and buy a third GPU Or a better CPU vertical products are an absolute waste of money when you chase the last bit…

>You can't do what you do on a desktop on a laptop, not even a good one Yeah… no, those days are over. The reviews clearly show the M1 Macs, including the MacBook Pro outperform most "desktops" at graphics-intensive tasks. >So no, M1 is not comparable to a Threadripper, it's not even close, even if it consumes a lot more energy Um… nobody is comparing an M1 Mac to a processor that often costs more than either the M1…

> The reviews clearly show the M1 Macs, including the MacBook Pro outperform most "desktops" at graphics-intensive tasks.

They don't!

Cut the BS

> Here's a video of 4k, 6k and 8k RED RAW files being rendered on an M1 Mac

Blablablabla

That's not rendering

Re: M1 Macs: Truth and Truthiness

#750

Post by bayindirh »

Zancarius wrote: post #447
bayindirh wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live a double life: Apple for laptops and Linux for desktops (and I'm mostly a Desktop user who manages a lot of Linux servers). Both platforms have their pluses and minuses. I like to carry ideas between them for my development and environments. Found this extremely fruitful for me over the years. We ordered a bunch of M1 airs for portability and power efficiency. Will see how it goes. I personally love both Linux…

> when a flawlessly running driver degrades after an update (cough, intel e1000e, cough), it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Hah! I see I'm not alone. For me it was the iwlwifi drivers. In one kernel revision, they worked fine; in another, they'd randomly panic and bring down the interface. Downgrading the firmware packages didn't do anything. Kernel upgrades have worked as of late. Though, it may be hardware-relate…

Intel went through a phase where they managed to break their graphics and network drivers at the same time.

I thought whether my hardware was failing but, when they broke three different NICs with the same update, I understood what happened.

Hope they don't do it again. I'm not going to use their processors in my next build but, I tend to like their NICs.

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