7 ms·

You skipped the keynote parts where they say faster 2x, 4x, 8x... and they say faster than every other laptop CPU and faster than 98% of laptops/PCs in their cl

You skipped the keynote parts where they say faster 2x, 4x, 8x... and they say faster than every other laptop CPU and faster than 98% of laptops/PCs in their class sold last year? They said it several times. But I agree... let's wait for the benchmarks (btw. iPads already overturns nearly all laptop CPUs)

oblio 6y ago
Based on what Apple says. Is there an independent cross platform benchmark which is actually relevant and that says the same?
- favorited 6y ago
  No, because it hasn't shipped yet.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> You skipped the keynote parts where they say faster 2x, 4x, 8x... and they say faster than every other laptop CPU and faster than 98% of laptops/PCs in their class sold last year? They said it several times. The important part there is "in their class". I'm sure the Apple silicon will impress in the future, but there's a reason they've only switched their lowest power laptops to M1 at launch. The higher end laptops are still being sold with Intel CPUs.
- klelatti 6y ago
  The reason is almost certainly that its the lowest power laptops is where the volume is and because it makes absolute sense to go for that part of the market first. I'm really impressed by what they've done in this part of the market - which would have been impossible with Intel CPUs.
- 013a 6y ago
  That's not what they said during the keynote. They said the Macbook Air (specifically) is "3x faster than the best selling PC laptop in its class" and that its "faster than 98% of PC laptops sold in the last year". There was no "in its class" designation on the 98% figure. If they're taken at their word, its among every PC laptop sold in the past year, period. Frankly, given what we saw today, and the leaked A14x benchmarks a few days ago (which may be this M1 chip or a different, lower power chip for the upcoming iPad Pro, either way); there is almost no chance that the 16" MBPs still being sold with Intel chips will be able to match the 13". They probably could have released a 16" model today with the M1 and it would still be an upgrade. But, they're probably holding back and waiting for a better graphics solution in an upcoming M1x-like chip.
  - harrisonjackson 6y ago
    This probably says more about the volume of low end PCs being sold than about the performance of the air.
    - 013a 6y ago
      If you believe that, then you've either been accidentally ignoring Apple's chip R&D over the past three years, or intentionally spinning it against them out of some more general dislike of the company. The most powerful Macbook Pro, with a Core i9-9980HK, posts a Geekbench 5 of 1096/6869. The A12z in the iPad Pro posts a 1120/4648. This is a relatively fair comparison because both of these chips were released in ~2018-2019; Apple was winning in single-core performance at least a year ago, at a lower TDP, with no fan. The A14, released this year, posts a 1584/4181 @ 6 watts. This is, frankly, incomprehensible. The most powerful single core mark ever submitted to Geekbench is the brand-spanking-new Ryzen 9 5950X; a 1627/15427 @ 105 watts & $800. Apple is close to matching the best AMD has, on a DESKTOP, at 5% the power draw, and with passive cooling. We need to wait for M1 benchmarks, but this is an architecture that the PC market needs to be scared of. There is no evidence that they aren't capable of scaling multicore performance when provided a higher power envelope, especially given how freakin low the A14's TDP is already. What of the power envelope of the 16" Macbook Pro? If they can put 8 cores in the MBA, will they do 16 in the MBP16? God forbid, 24? Zen 3 is the only other architecture that approaches A14 performance, and it demands 10x the power to do it.
      - pja 6y ago
        The Ryzen 9 is a 16 (32 hyperthreads) core CPU, the A14 is a 2 big / 4 little core CPU. Power draw on an integer workload per thread seems roughly equivalent.
      - hajile 6y ago
        Not all geekbench scores are created equal. Comparing ARM and x86 scores is an exercise in futility as there are simply too many factors to work through. It also doesn't include all workload types. For example, I can say with 100% confidence that M1 has nowhere near 32MB of onboard cache. Once it starts hitting cache limits, it's performance will drop off a cliff as fast cores that can't be fed are just slow cores. It's also worth noting that around 30% of the AMD power budget is just Infinity Fabric (hypertransport 4.0). When things get wide and you have to manage that much wider complexity, the resulting control circuitry has a big effect on power consumption too. All that said, I do wonder how much of a part the ISA plays here.
- m_mueller 6y ago
  I think the main reason is discrete GPUs. I’m guessing they are currently working on PCI Express for M1. That or a much faster GPU on a different version of the SoC.
X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
Did they say what they meant when they said faster? I saw some graphs that looked unrealistically smooth with two unlabeled axis
StillBored 6y ago
A number of times when they said that I though, "but, that is a GPU heavy workload". Its not clear if they were comparing to existing mac's or more recent ryzen/intel xe machines. Both of which have very significant GPU uplifts with their integrated GPUs. AKA, I suspect a big part of those perf uplifts evaporate when compared with the laptops that are appearing in stores now. And the ipad benchmarks also remain a wait and see, because the perf uplifts I've seen either are either safari based, or synthetic benchmarks like geekbench. Both of which seem to heavily favor apple/arm cores when compared with more standard benchmarks. Apples perf claims have been dubious for years, particularly back when the mac was ppc. They would optimize or cherry pick some special case which allowed them to make claims like "8x" faster than the fastest PC, which never reflected overall machine perf. I want to see how fast it does with the gcc parts of spec..
- hajile 6y ago
  They are comparing to the MacBook processors which they kept as ancient 8th gen Intel quad cores.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
arvinsim 6y ago
Never rely on first party claims. Always wait for 3rd party benchmarks.
jug 6y ago
For how often they repeated "faster", I was surprised to see them announce no benchmarks with some sort of baseline or context. Fast than what at doing what?

oblio 6y ago

Based on what Apple says. Is there an independent cross platform benchmark which is actually relevant and that says the same?

favorited 6y ago
No, because it hasn't shipped yet.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> You skipped the keynote parts where they say faster 2x, 4x, 8x... and they say faster than every other laptop CPU and faster than 98% of laptops/PCs in their class sold last year? They said it several times. The important part there is "in their class". I'm sure the Apple silicon will impress in the future, but there's a reason they've only switched their lowest power laptops to M1 at launch. The higher end laptops are still being sold with Intel CPUs.

klelatti 6y ago
The reason is almost certainly that its the lowest power laptops is where the volume is and because it makes absolute sense to go for that part of the market first. I'm really impressed by what they've done in this part of the market - which would have been impossible with Intel CPUs.
013a 6y ago
That's not what they said during the keynote. They said the Macbook Air (specifically) is "3x faster than the best selling PC laptop in its class" and that its "faster than 98% of PC laptops sold in the last year". There was no "in its class" designation on the 98% figure. If they're taken at their word, its among every PC laptop sold in the past year, period. Frankly, given what we saw today, and the leaked A14x benchmarks a few days ago (which may be this M1 chip or a different, lower power chip for the upcoming iPad Pro, either way); there is almost no chance that the 16" MBPs still being sold with Intel chips will be able to match the 13". They probably could have released a 16" model today with the M1 and it would still be an upgrade. But, they're probably holding back and waiting for a better graphics solution in an upcoming M1x-like chip.
- harrisonjackson 6y ago
  This probably says more about the volume of low end PCs being sold than about the performance of the air.
  - 013a 6y ago
    If you believe that, then you've either been accidentally ignoring Apple's chip R&D over the past three years, or intentionally spinning it against them out of some more general dislike of the company. The most powerful Macbook Pro, with a Core i9-9980HK, posts a Geekbench 5 of 1096/6869. The A12z in the iPad Pro posts a 1120/4648. This is a relatively fair comparison because both of these chips were released in ~2018-2019; Apple was winning in single-core performance at least a year ago, at a lower TDP, with no fan. The A14, released this year, posts a 1584/4181 @ 6 watts. This is, frankly, incomprehensible. The most powerful single core mark ever submitted to Geekbench is the brand-spanking-new Ryzen 9 5950X; a 1627/15427 @ 105 watts & $800. Apple is close to matching the best AMD has, on a DESKTOP, at 5% the power draw, and with passive cooling. We need to wait for M1 benchmarks, but this is an architecture that the PC market needs to be scared of. There is no evidence that they aren't capable of scaling multicore performance when provided a higher power envelope, especially given how freakin low the A14's TDP is already. What of the power envelope of the 16" Macbook Pro? If they can put 8 cores in the MBA, will they do 16 in the MBP16? God forbid, 24? Zen 3 is the only other architecture that approaches A14 performance, and it demands 10x the power to do it.
    - pja 6y ago
      The Ryzen 9 is a 16 (32 hyperthreads) core CPU, the A14 is a 2 big / 4 little core CPU. Power draw on an integer workload per thread seems roughly equivalent.
    - hajile 6y ago
      Not all geekbench scores are created equal. Comparing ARM and x86 scores is an exercise in futility as there are simply too many factors to work through. It also doesn't include all workload types. For example, I can say with 100% confidence that M1 has nowhere near 32MB of onboard cache. Once it starts hitting cache limits, it's performance will drop off a cliff as fast cores that can't be fed are just slow cores. It's also worth noting that around 30% of the AMD power budget is just Infinity Fabric (hypertransport 4.0). When things get wide and you have to manage that much wider complexity, the resulting control circuitry has a big effect on power consumption too. All that said, I do wonder how much of a part the ISA plays here.
m_mueller 6y ago
I think the main reason is discrete GPUs. I’m guessing they are currently working on PCI Express for M1. That or a much faster GPU on a different version of the SoC.

X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago

Did they say what they meant when they said faster? I saw some graphs that looked unrealistically smooth with two unlabeled axis

StillBored 6y ago

A number of times when they said that I though, "but, that is a GPU heavy workload". Its not clear if they were comparing to existing mac's or more recent ryzen/intel xe machines. Both of which have very significant GPU uplifts with their integrated GPUs. AKA, I suspect a big part of those perf uplifts evaporate when compared with the laptops that are appearing in stores now. And the ipad benchmarks also remain a wait and see, because the perf uplifts I've seen either are either safari based, or synthetic benchmarks like geekbench. Both of which seem to heavily favor apple/arm cores when compared with more standard benchmarks. Apples perf claims have been dubious for years, particularly back when the mac was ppc. They would optimize or cherry pick some special case which allowed them to make claims like "8x" faster than the fastest PC, which never reflected overall machine perf. I want to see how fast it does with the gcc parts of spec..

hajile 6y ago
They are comparing to the MacBook processors which they kept as ancient 8th gen Intel quad cores.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

arvinsim 6y ago

Never rely on first party claims. Always wait for 3rd party benchmarks.

jug 6y ago

For how often they repeated "faster", I was surprised to see them announce no benchmarks with some sort of baseline or context. Fast than what at doing what?