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Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

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Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#921

Post by ericpauley »

xadhominemx wrote: post #747
nercury wrote: post #736

It's quite clear how this "magic" is possible. Weather you like it or not, the future is a "product on a chip". That includes everything: CPU, GPU, RAM, SSD, and assembly instructions for vendor-specific things like NSObject. This puts everything physically close together (efficient), eliminates all the protocol compatibility overhead (efficient), removes all the standards the company can't control (efficient). The d…

Putting the CPU and RAM on the same die is absolutely not the future. Not only is it impossible to mix and match process technologies in that way, it would be extremely wasteful given the far greater numbers of metal layers on a CPU and the performance improvement would be marginal. The same is even more true with integrating CPU and NAND flash.

Pretty sure the M1 memory is not on the same die, just on the same "chip". You can see a separation in the teardowns and Apple's advertising materials don't show it on the die images.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#922

Post by grecy »

DarkmSparks wrote: post #523

One of the things I've noticed recently, and especially since the CPU space started finally moving again is how much of a divide there now is between the computer literate, and the computer illiterate. It probably creates a social divide at least that which existed when the majority of people couldn't read or write, and is just as "not OK". Example of this in the first paragraph of this article: > For everyday users…

> For everyday users who just want to take the kids to school, get to work and head out of town on the weekend, vehicles have been “perfectly fine” for the last decade.

Nobody needs to know (or cares) how a car works - EXCEPT professionals and enthusiasts.

> For everyday users who just want to take some holiday snaps, record their kids making a mess and maybe print a few small pics, point n shoot cameras have been “perfectly fine” for the last decade.

Nobody needs to know (or cares) how a SLR works or all of it's features - EXCEPT professionals and enthusiasts.

We can go on and on with this. I don't think it says anything about a divide, it says that our world is so sophisticated and complicated there are entire devices and areas of society that most of us use on a daily basis, but for which we have no care about how it works. That's perfectly fine.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#923

Post by dathinab »

dirtypersian wrote: post #471
dathinab wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot +-1 on atomic variables guarded using atomic memory operations (mainly with the Aquire/Release ordering) on memory which might be shared between threads. So low latency of the cache to system RAM can help here, at least for cases where the Rc is shared between threads. But also if the thread is not shared between threads but the thread is moved to a different CPU. Still it's probably not the main reason. G…

Just to be clear, the RAM/memory and cache are not on the same chip/die/silicon. They are part of the same packaging though. > which keeps the memory between caches and the system memory/RAM coherent Isn't this already true of every multi-core chip ever designed; the whole point of coherency is to keep the RAM/memory coherent between all the cores and their caches.

Oh, right.

> Isn't this already true of every multi-core chip ever designed;

Yes, I just added the explanation of what coherency is in this context as I'm not sure how common the knowledge about it is.

The thing is there are many ways how you can implement this (and related things) with a number of parameters involved which probably can be tuned to optimize for typical RC's usage of atomic operations. (Edit: Just to be clear there are constraints on the implementation imposed by it being ARM compatible.)

A related example (Not directly atomic fetch add/sub and not directly coherency either) would be the way LL/SC operations are implemented. Mainly on ARM you have a parameter of how large the memory region "marked for exclusive access" (by an LL-load operation) is. This can have mayor performance implications as it directly affects how likely a conditional store fails because of accidental inference.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#924

Post by lazyjones »

mlindner wrote: post #666
lazyjones wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't run on my 2015 iMac 27" with anything near even medium settings... That's with a Radeon R9 M380, 24GB memory, 3.2 GHz i5. So I find it hard to believe that it will run with max settings / 60 fps on the new MBP, despite the lower native screen resolution.

People are exaggerating a little bit, but this is the low end machine with 8GB RAM and only 7 GPU cores. So you can see it's pretty good in worst case. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQoGPLO8zBI

It drops to 25fps with not much happening on the screen, no water and no crowded area, at 1440p. This guy also mentions dropping to 30fps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ubyXiY4N2o

The comments here also say 25fps on max settings in Stormwind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIbEIhizoXY

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#925

Post by 1123581321 »

rsync wrote: post #852
derefr wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it won't help in areas that Apple just organizationally doesn't care about/doesn't have the bandwidth for because that's not a technology problem I would posit that Apple is always going to keep macOS working on some workstation-class hardware, just because that kind of machine is what Apple's software engineers will be using internally, and they need to write macOS software using macOS. Which means one of two thin…

"I would posit that Apple is always going to keep macOS working on some workstation-class hardware, just because that kind of machine is what Apple's software engineers will be using internally, and they need to write macOS software using macOS." I have always hoped that we could rely on that heuristic - that internal Apple usage of their own products would guarantee that certain workflows would be unbroken. In pract…

It sounds like you have an issue with the lack of window snapping keyboard shortcuts that are in Windows 10, as well as iPhone backups happening in iTunes until they moved to finder, and iCloud being connected to iTunes although it's managed in SysPrefs. And you have seen some regressions along with the successive improvements to display management. Is that fair?

If so, what is the connection to professional workflows on macOS?

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#926

Post by SulfurHexaFluri »

hans1729 wrote: post #682
SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was planning on getting the pro 16 but the extra cost for 32gb is obscene. Ended up going with a dell xps 15 (still in shipping) which even has an option for 64gb at a reasonable price. Can't wait to get rid of this pro 13 which constantly overheats.

Hey man, I'm using the xps with 64 Gigs. Good luck with yours. It's a great laptop, but I can't wait for my m1 air with 16 gigs, because for mobility, I'm missing the outrageous stability that macos and Apples hardware are delivering. I'll keep the xps as a daily driver for work (wsl 2 and vscode are just unmet in apples ecosystem), but for the couch, conferences, trains etc., it's going to be the mba 100% of the tim…

I had a dell xps 13 before running Linux and I really liked it but the screen was too small and I couldn't read the text while it was on my desk next to my main monitor.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#927

Post by 1123581321 »

Tepix wrote: post #647
victor106 wrote: post #109

> A task like editing 8K RAW RED video file that might have taken a $5000 machine before can now be done on a $699 Mac Mini M1 or a fan-less MacBook Air that costs $999 That’s insanely great. Maybe I am exaggerating but Apple’s M1 might be the best innovation in the tech industry in the past 5 years.

Why are we even talking about 8k video? It's something that almost noone needs and even fewer people have to edit. My guess is most people are still happy with editing their FHD videos. Something that works well on a five year old laptop.

You want to work with 6k or 8k so you can do crops and still output 4k or 6k. This means shorter productions.

8k also future-proofs the footage. In the future we'll be wanting more than 8k for this.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#928

Post by 1123581321 »

grishka wrote: post #150
sesuximo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

s/inefficient/doing more/g

Doing more of what ? As a user, I'd rather wait a month for a proper native app than get an electron pile of crap in a week.

The key issue is that you, if you are a typical customer, wouldn't pay for your share of that extra development.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#929

Post by raydev »

rsync wrote: post #852
derefr wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it won't help in areas that Apple just organizationally doesn't care about/doesn't have the bandwidth for because that's not a technology problem I would posit that Apple is always going to keep macOS working on some workstation-class hardware, just because that kind of machine is what Apple's software engineers will be using internally, and they need to write macOS software using macOS. Which means one of two thin…

"I would posit that Apple is always going to keep macOS working on some workstation-class hardware, just because that kind of machine is what Apple's software engineers will be using internally, and they need to write macOS software using macOS." I have always hoped that we could rely on that heuristic - that internal Apple usage of their own products would guarantee that certain workflows would be unbroken. In pract…

Yeah, I think it's pretty clear, based on all the bugs with multi-monitor support down to their Mac minis, everyone at Apple must be running iMac Pros, and maybe they're using Sidecar to make their iPad into an extra screen.

Re: Apple Silicon M1: Black Magic Fuckery

#930

Post by kzrdude »

wffurr wrote: post #823

I am weirdly obsessed with this. I am burning to see the next iteration of Apple Silicon devices with an M1X or M2 chip and more ports and RAM for higher-spec devices and new MacBook designs even lighter and smaller than the current Air (bring back the 11"!). I guess I'm just caught up in the hype and excited about movement in the chip design space after many years of Intel stagnation. Zen and the M1 are a breath of…

You're not the only one - there's an apple silicon story on HN every day, so that says something. And I too look out for them. Just dreaming that M1 would be available in a different reasonable linux notebook.
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