5 ms·

Apple Silicon M1 – What to Expect, Based on A14

111 points by GeekyBear 6y ago

supernova87a 6y ago
This could probably be merged with the existing discussion about the M1 chip, to not cause over-proliferation of threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079
- modeless 6y ago
  Personally I think M1's performance is big enough news to deserve a thread devoted to more hard data. Intel has fallen from 1st to 3rd place in single core performance in less than 1 month after holding the crown uncontested for a decade or more. It's a huge shift for the industry.
- GeekyBear 6y ago
  Replace an Anandtech deep dive containing hard data with a soft and fluffy piece based on a vendor presentation?
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Where's the deep dive with hard data? This AnandTech article is a mashup of press release stenography and fiction.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - GeekyBear 6y ago
      > Where's the deep dive with hard data? >In the overall SPEC2006 chart, the A14 is performing absolutely fantastic, taking the lead in absolute performance only falling short of AMD’s recent Ryzen 5000 series. The fact that Apple is able to achieve this in a total device power consumption of 5W including the SoC, DRAM, and regulators, versus +21W (1185G7) and 49W (5950X) package power figures, without DRAM or regulation, is absolutely mind-blowing. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
      - cromwellian 6y ago
        There's not achieving that at 5W when running the benchmark though, more like 18W-20W. I question the obsession with perf/watt. It makes sense if you're running a data center, or if you need to do "light" work. But almost everyone I know with a laptop spends the majority of the time working with it docked to power, and often a monitor. If you're using a laptop for work, and you're not running out of a coffee shop, do you want a Zen3 with 32-64Gb RAM, 8-16 cores and an RDNA2 graphics APU at 50W (Rembrandt), or do you want a a device that will play video for 18 hours? Especially for gaming, Apple's GPU is still years behind AMD and NVidia. They're bragging about 22Gp/s fillrate when latest mobile discrete GPUs do 5-10x that. Certainly, they have achieved a lot and are crushing Intel integrated chips at the low end, but there's a ton of marketing fluff and special case comparisons going on, and I look forward to seeing a real head-to-head matchup, of say a Zen3 based system against a MacBook on a heavy CPU and GPU bound benchmark like a triple-AAA title. Years of synthetic benchmarks that exercise giant CPU caches leaves much to be desired.
        modeless 6y ago
        Perf/watt matters even if you don't care about power consumption at all, because heat dissipation is usually the limiting factor for sustained performance. Higher perf/watt means higher perf for any given amount of cooling.
        cromwellian 6y ago
        Sure, but people with high perf laptops have high-perf cooling solutions. I'm an engineer/developer and a high end gamer. I have an Alienware laptop (in addition to a Macbook Pro), with an RTX 2070 in it. It never overheats. I take it traveling with me. The M1 has a fillrate 10x slower, and I highly doubt it's competitive on Compute Shader performance either. Even if my RTX laptop were thermally down clocked, it's still got plenty of headroom over the M1 GPU wise. The only time I worry about heat is if I have to have the laptop in my lap. On top of all this, AMD's 6nm Rembrandt coming out next year is likely to have a model in the 20W range, which is on par with the M1's "performance" mode, but with much greater GPU performance. I think the epitaph being written for x86 is a little premature, maybe for Intel, but AMD just delivered 20% IPC improvement, and a huge gfx architecture improvement, with a scalable chiplet architecture going forward. It would be unwise to count them out.
    - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      Did you miss that the article has multiple pages?
      - dang 6y ago
        Hmm, that's easy to miss - as easy as HN's multiple pages are. Here are the links: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/5 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... Seems that only the last one was written after today's announcement though...
        trashcan 6y ago
        Have you considered adding a page selector at the top of comments when there are multiple pages as a feature of the site? Then you wouldn't have to post this on the articles with enough comments to necessitate this comment. I didn't explain that well, but this doesn't seem like something someone should have to do manually.
        dang 6y ago
        Yes, but I don't want to do anything to make a temporary workaround more comfortable. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24042165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24042165
klelatti 6y ago
From the comments: "Firestorm is the fastest perf/W general computing uarch in the world & on the latest 5nm TSMC node, what ... else do people want?"
- modeless 6y ago
  More than 16 GB RAM, more than 4 performance cores, and a discrete GPU.
  - klelatti 6y ago
    I sense a bit of a glass half empty vibe about the reaction to these machines. All this will come in time - in the meantime this is a big step forward for machines of this class.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >I sense a bit of a glass half empty vibe about the reaction to these machines. I think it's the classic tech nerd mindset ("No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."). As if everybody and their dog had lower speced Airs with 2 4K monitors and 32GB before (as opposed to a small minority for the first and none for the second), and they will miss those with the new machine...
  - sercand 6y ago
    They have only replaced lower-end Macbooks with 2 thunderbolt ports which they had also maximum of 16 GB of Ram before (I currently use 2020 model). They will absolutely increase the IO ports and RAM later but this is just a beginning of a new era. The higher-end 13” Macbook Pro with 4 thunderbolts are still available.
    - modeless 6y ago
      No doubt there will be higher end designs in the future. The question is, how far will they go? Will they build a discrete GPU, or continue their AMD partnership, or try to convince everyone that their integrated graphics are good enough? Will they build a massive multicore chip to challenge Threadripper? Will they go to higher TDP and push single core performance even more, or will they relax and just use medium TDP parts that still outperform Intel's best? I'm excited to learn the answers to these questions in the next year or two.
heisenbergs 6y ago
Apple clearly has an edge when it comes to silicon that others just won't be able to replicate anytime soon. From a cost perspective, just eliminating 4-5 chips by utilizing a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) allows them to create much simpler logic boards whilst saving hundreds of dollars. Not to mention saving the intel tax or being burdened by intel's lack of progress. The big question remaining is how is this going to scale further up the mac pro line-up? I'd imagine a chiplet like architecture similar to AMDs zen3 is the way forward. But will they go all the way to 64 CPUs and beyond? Or will they just stick to a single SoC chip? What cadence will they upgrade these chips with? I'd expect something closer to what the ipad has done with the AX chips, ie every 2 years. Questions. Very interesting times. I want one, badly, just to have more than the meagre 2-4 hours of realistic batterly life i get on my 2017 MBP.
joshstrange 6y ago
I get that this was hastily written but I'm not even halfway done and I've already hit a handful of typos/grammar mistakes. > Today’s event contained a whole ton of new official announcement, but also lacked (in typical Apple fashion) in detail. "any detail" is probably what they meant > This packaging style with DRAM embedded within the organic packaging is something that isn’t inherent new to the new M1 chip as we’ve already seen such a design featured on the A12X. s/inherent/inherently > We can see the new M1’s four Firestorm CPU cores on the left side. Notice the extremely large amount of cache – this was one of the surprises reveals of the event as the A14 still only features 8MB of L2 cache. "this was one of the surprises reveals" not sure what they were going for, probably just remove "reveals" and it works? Also they talk about the A14 in the title but then barely touch on it at all. It's like 3 sentences about it then a recap of Apple's last transition. EDIT: I now see that there are multiple pages. I really don't like it when webpages do this and I like it even less when it's not clear at all that there are multiple pages. The title for the next "section" is 20px tall and not clear that it's a link to go to the next section (No "Next", arrow, etc) and the dropdown for switching between pages (this has got to be the worst way to do pagination IMHO) is 16px tall...
- modeless 6y ago
  Note that the article has multiple pages. The really interesting stuff is on page 4, not page 1: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
S_A_P 6y ago
If this is the repeatable verifiable performance- Apple deserves kudos here. They’ve flipped over the table and created the new benchmark for performance and efficiency. I just wish the software side could keep up and start improving the developer experience.

111 points by GeekyBear 6y ago

This could probably be merged with the existing discussion about the M1 chip, to not cause over-proliferation of threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079

modeless 6y ago
Personally I think M1's performance is big enough news to deserve a thread devoted to more hard data. Intel has fallen from 1st to 3rd place in single core performance in less than 1 month after holding the crown uncontested for a decade or more. It's a huge shift for the industry.
GeekyBear 6y ago
Replace an Anandtech deep dive containing hard data with a soft and fluffy piece based on a vendor presentation?
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Where's the deep dive with hard data? This AnandTech article is a mashup of press release stenography and fiction.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - GeekyBear 6y ago
    > Where's the deep dive with hard data? >In the overall SPEC2006 chart, the A14 is performing absolutely fantastic, taking the lead in absolute performance only falling short of AMD’s recent Ryzen 5000 series. The fact that Apple is able to achieve this in a total device power consumption of 5W including the SoC, DRAM, and regulators, versus +21W (1185G7) and 49W (5950X) package power figures, without DRAM or regulation, is absolutely mind-blowing. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
    - cromwellian 6y ago
      There's not achieving that at 5W when running the benchmark though, more like 18W-20W. I question the obsession with perf/watt. It makes sense if you're running a data center, or if you need to do "light" work. But almost everyone I know with a laptop spends the majority of the time working with it docked to power, and often a monitor. If you're using a laptop for work, and you're not running out of a coffee shop, do you want a Zen3 with 32-64Gb RAM, 8-16 cores and an RDNA2 graphics APU at 50W (Rembrandt), or do you want a a device that will play video for 18 hours? Especially for gaming, Apple's GPU is still years behind AMD and NVidia. They're bragging about 22Gp/s fillrate when latest mobile discrete GPUs do 5-10x that. Certainly, they have achieved a lot and are crushing Intel integrated chips at the low end, but there's a ton of marketing fluff and special case comparisons going on, and I look forward to seeing a real head-to-head matchup, of say a Zen3 based system against a MacBook on a heavy CPU and GPU bound benchmark like a triple-AAA title. Years of synthetic benchmarks that exercise giant CPU caches leaves much to be desired.
      - modeless 6y ago
        Perf/watt matters even if you don't care about power consumption at all, because heat dissipation is usually the limiting factor for sustained performance. Higher perf/watt means higher perf for any given amount of cooling.
        cromwellian 6y ago
        Sure, but people with high perf laptops have high-perf cooling solutions. I'm an engineer/developer and a high end gamer. I have an Alienware laptop (in addition to a Macbook Pro), with an RTX 2070 in it. It never overheats. I take it traveling with me. The M1 has a fillrate 10x slower, and I highly doubt it's competitive on Compute Shader performance either. Even if my RTX laptop were thermally down clocked, it's still got plenty of headroom over the M1 GPU wise. The only time I worry about heat is if I have to have the laptop in my lap. On top of all this, AMD's 6nm Rembrandt coming out next year is likely to have a model in the 20W range, which is on par with the M1's "performance" mode, but with much greater GPU performance. I think the epitaph being written for x86 is a little premature, maybe for Intel, but AMD just delivered 20% IPC improvement, and a huge gfx architecture improvement, with a scalable chiplet architecture going forward. It would be unwise to count them out.
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    Did you miss that the article has multiple pages?
    - dang 6y ago
      Hmm, that's easy to miss - as easy as HN's multiple pages are. Here are the links: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/5 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... Seems that only the last one was written after today's announcement though...
      - trashcan 6y ago
        Have you considered adding a page selector at the top of comments when there are multiple pages as a feature of the site? Then you wouldn't have to post this on the articles with enough comments to necessitate this comment. I didn't explain that well, but this doesn't seem like something someone should have to do manually.
        dang 6y ago
        Yes, but I don't want to do anything to make a temporary workaround more comfortable. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24042165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24042165

klelatti 6y ago

From the comments: "Firestorm is the fastest perf/W general computing uarch in the world & on the latest 5nm TSMC node, what ... else do people want?"

modeless 6y ago
More than 16 GB RAM, more than 4 performance cores, and a discrete GPU.
- klelatti 6y ago
  I sense a bit of a glass half empty vibe about the reaction to these machines. All this will come in time - in the meantime this is a big step forward for machines of this class.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >I sense a bit of a glass half empty vibe about the reaction to these machines. I think it's the classic tech nerd mindset ("No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."). As if everybody and their dog had lower speced Airs with 2 4K monitors and 32GB before (as opposed to a small minority for the first and none for the second), and they will miss those with the new machine...
- sercand 6y ago
  They have only replaced lower-end Macbooks with 2 thunderbolt ports which they had also maximum of 16 GB of Ram before (I currently use 2020 model). They will absolutely increase the IO ports and RAM later but this is just a beginning of a new era. The higher-end 13” Macbook Pro with 4 thunderbolts are still available.
  - modeless 6y ago
    No doubt there will be higher end designs in the future. The question is, how far will they go? Will they build a discrete GPU, or continue their AMD partnership, or try to convince everyone that their integrated graphics are good enough? Will they build a massive multicore chip to challenge Threadripper? Will they go to higher TDP and push single core performance even more, or will they relax and just use medium TDP parts that still outperform Intel's best? I'm excited to learn the answers to these questions in the next year or two.

heisenbergs 6y ago

Apple clearly has an edge when it comes to silicon that others just won't be able to replicate anytime soon. From a cost perspective, just eliminating 4-5 chips by utilizing a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) allows them to create much simpler logic boards whilst saving hundreds of dollars. Not to mention saving the intel tax or being burdened by intel's lack of progress. The big question remaining is how is this going to scale further up the mac pro line-up? I'd imagine a chiplet like architecture similar to AMDs zen3 is the way forward. But will they go all the way to 64 CPUs and beyond? Or will they just stick to a single SoC chip? What cadence will they upgrade these chips with? I'd expect something closer to what the ipad has done with the AX chips, ie every 2 years. Questions. Very interesting times. I want one, badly, just to have more than the meagre 2-4 hours of realistic batterly life i get on my 2017 MBP.

joshstrange 6y ago

I get that this was hastily written but I'm not even halfway done and I've already hit a handful of typos/grammar mistakes. > Today’s event contained a whole ton of new official announcement, but also lacked (in typical Apple fashion) in detail. "any detail" is probably what they meant > This packaging style with DRAM embedded within the organic packaging is something that isn’t inherent new to the new M1 chip as we’ve already seen such a design featured on the A12X. s/inherent/inherently > We can see the new M1’s four Firestorm CPU cores on the left side. Notice the extremely large amount of cache – this was one of the surprises reveals of the event as the A14 still only features 8MB of L2 cache. "this was one of the surprises reveals" not sure what they were going for, probably just remove "reveals" and it works? Also they talk about the A14 in the title but then barely touch on it at all. It's like 3 sentences about it then a recap of Apple's last transition. EDIT: I now see that there are multiple pages. I really don't like it when webpages do this and I like it even less when it's not clear at all that there are multiple pages. The title for the next "section" is 20px tall and not clear that it's a link to go to the next section (No "Next", arrow, etc) and the dropdown for switching between pages (this has got to be the worst way to do pagination IMHO) is 16px tall...

modeless 6y ago
Note that the article has multiple pages. The really interesting stuff is on page 4, not page 1: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...

S_A_P 6y ago

If this is the repeatable verifiable performance- Apple deserves kudos here. They’ve flipped over the table and created the new benchmark for performance and efficiency. I just wish the software side could keep up and start improving the developer experience.