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2020 Mac Mini – Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test
- akritrime 6y agoThe last sentence on the first page has a typo, I think. I am guessing it would be `tough competition`, not `though competition`.
- joshstrange 6y agoI never understand downvotes in this situation. Like are you mad someone is calling out typos? I mean I'm not surprised, I got downvotes for the literally the same thing [0] a few days ago when anandtech published another article full of typos... I like their reporting but the typos and the multi-page nonsense is a huge turnoff. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25052892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25052892
- MBCook 6y agoI would assume the down votes are because this doesn’t really add to the discussion at all. If you spot typos why not notify the original website instead?
- akritrime 6y agoThat's what I hoped to do with the original comment. I didn't want to send them an email for something this trivial and I was just leaving the comment in case anyone from Anandtech stumbled upon it. The typo is not really an issue and my comment was not a criticism. I was just trying to be helpful but I can see how that can appear to be when my comment is just about the typo and not the content of the post.
- akritrime 6y agoHonestly I don't mind. I was not commenting on the quality of the post, neither was the typo that much of an issue. I have seen people from Anandtech active in the hackernews and I just this is a good way of reaching them and letting them know something trivial with their posts.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI'm not surprised it's doing well. Apple has deeper pockets than anyone else on the planet, and they have considerable experience doing this kind of thing –literally, decades. Say what you will about Apple; this is a strong point for them. But I'm still waiting for the M2 before I upgrade. I'm also interested in new form factors. Right now, they are still relying on the currently-tooled production line for their shells. They now have the ability to drastically change their forms.
- dtech 6y agoI'd say Intel has the deepest pockets regarding CPU R&D, and yet they are being overtaken left and right.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoProbably right. I have family that works for Intel, and I have heard stories about the amenities and infrastructure (like "Air Intel," a fleet of corporate jets that take employees between Intel campuses).
- AgloeDreams 6y agoI also feel like Intel's depth is also limited by the breath of CPUS they must develop. With every release they are shipping tons of specific sets of cores and clock speeds to meet their market. Then you have the raw investment in Fab that has turned out to be just lighting cash on fire for Intel. They make all kinds of claims and then fail over and over, plus they are hemorrhaging key talent. I think their soul really isn't in the game. Apple has the luxury of building two or three chips total per year and simply funding TSMC fab. All of this is to fund the largest grossing annual product launch. If their chips fail at being world beaters, hundreds of billions of dollars are on the table. All in, Apple spends an incredible amount of money here, ~$1 billion. Per chip design shipped, Apple is probably spending much more but also getting their return on investment. It's such a tight integration that if TSMC were ever delayed by say, four months, I have no idea what Apple would do. AMD is playing smart, fast and loose. Best chip CEO by a wide margin. AMD's gains really are on Apple's back, their chip design is brilliant and they get to reap the leftovers when Apple turns out their latest chip. They don't have to fund Fab, they don't have to make crazy claims to appear relevant like Intel does. They just ship great bang for the buck and the fab gains and their own hard work has given them best performance title too. Going Fabless was one of the most controversial choices ever made in the industry...and wow, was it the right move.
- vbezhenar 6y agoNot very impressive considering 5nm process. But a good start. I expect impressive CPUs in the coming years with more cores and more TDP. Hopefully Mac Pro Mini rumours will be true. That will be strong candidate for my next computer.
- singemonkey 6y agoActually it's very impressive.
- HatchedLake721 6y agoNot very impressive a CPU at 7-8W power drain beats or just trails behind a desktop class $799 Ryzen 9 5950x at +49W consumption in single threaded performance?
- vbezhenar 6y agoMac mini is a plugged computer. I don't care whether it drains 7W or 700W. Electricity is cheap. And the fact that it trails behind AMD on a better node means that its design is inferior or not fully uncapped.
- nottorp 6y agoAre you the kind that can't hear their computer fan because they wear headphones? And/or the kind that keeps their laptop plugged in all the time? Some people do care about cool, quiet and long battery life.
- CapriciousCptl 6y agoFrom the article's conclusion... "The M1 undisputedly outperforms the core performance of everything Intel has to offer, and battles it with AMD’s new Zen3, winning some, losing some. And in the mobile space in particular, there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent in either ST or MT performance – at least within the same power budgets." This is the first in-depth review validating all the hype. Assuming the user experience, Rosetta2 things, first generation pains, kernel panics, are all in-check, it's amazing. At this point I'm mostly interested in the Air's performance with its missing fan.
- desireco42 6y agoYeah me too. I expect that there will be another release sometime next year with updated "package". It is cool that they put it in old Air box, but I think I can wait for better camera, overall package. By that time it will be clearer all the benefits and issues that come with it. I wouldn't mind plastic edition of MacBook /w M1. Aluminum and metal overall, not the best for everyday use. I prefer "warmer" feel of plastic, like ThinkPad for example.
- luto 6y agoI can't find that quote or even the words "undisputedly" or "Zen3" in the article. Was it changed or, if it wasn't, can you give me a pointer, please?
- pdpi 6y agoSomeone posted these results on Reddit earlier: https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/jvrck7/m1_macbook_air_13_dota_2_comparison/ https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/jvrck7/m1_macboo... As far as I know, DotA 2 is running on Rosetta.
- faitswulff 6y agoThose are some significant improvements. I'm actually really tempted to get a Macbook Air now versus my current plans to build a cheap gaming rig.
- joshstrange 6y agoEhh, if you are going to game you are going to want the Pro at a minimum but honestly the mac gaming scene is still sparse. It all really comes down to what type of game you want to play I guess but even if all the games you want are on mac then I'd still say you want the fan in the MBP.
- faitswulff 6y agoI’m still playing nearly decade old games. I just need some thing competitive in decade old gaming so that my wife and I can play together.
- nottorp 6y agoNot Apple then. They ditched 32 bit applications and in 2 years they'll ditch 64 bit x86 applications. You want your old games to run forever, you sadly have to do that on x86 Windows (or maybe Linux with more or less of a headache setting them up).
- coder543 6y agoAgree 100%. If you wouldn't buy an iPad to play your games, don't buy a Mac to play those games either. Unless by "games" you literally just mean WoW, which seems to be one of the only major cross platform games that seriously cares about Mac support. Personally, I would lean towards suggesting the purchase of a console. The new generation has some really nice consoles, and the Nintendo Switch is still really fun in other ways.
- mtgx 6y agoIt seems that Apple kept its eyes on the goal of beating Intel, while underestimating AMD (like just about everyone else). Still, now Apple has the #2 fastest CPU on the market and with different ISA. Intel....#3. Oh, how the mighty has fallen. At least AMD won't get to rest on its laurels now, as Apple will definitely try to surpass Zen 4, too, now, or at least Zen 5.
- hu3 6y agoI wonder what will happen when AMD launches 5nm processors.
- ogre_codes 6y agoIt's always a slippery slope comparing future products to present day products. Apple has additional CPUs coming out over the next 2 years as well. It's going to be an interesting couple of years.
- wmf 6y agoApple will be releasing 3nm M3 processors that will probably still be faster.
- jmull 6y agoWell, Apple released the M1 as their low-end chip, putting it in the entry-level slot of their low-power Macs. They may have something with substantially more power in store soon.
- vel0city 6y agoThe cheapest MacBook Air with an M1 chip is $1,000. The cheapest Mac Pro with an M1 chip is $1,300. I don't consider a $1,000+ laptop "entry level" or "low end". These are high-end machines.
- mikey_p 6y agoYou may not consider it such, but they are the entry level Apple machines at the lowest end of their product range.
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- Thaxll 6y agoI don't think there is enough test yet, why is it only Cinebench and Geekbench? Show us real test with ffmpeg, gcc etc ...
- d3nj4l 6y agoThey state in the article: > As we’ve had very little time with the Mac mini, and the fact that this not only is a macOS system, but a new Arm64-based macOS system, our usual benchmark choices that we tend to use aren’t really available to us. I think most other benchmarks weren't compiled for MacOS on ARM yet.
- lizknope 6y agoThere are benchmarks for SPEC INT 2006 which includes a gcc benchmark.
- HatchedLake721 6y agoThere are more pages behind that first page, see at the bottom of the article.
- zachberger 6y agoThere are multiple pages in the review with more benchmarks than the ones you mentioned.
- apetrovic 6y agoWebKit compilation: https://twitter.com/panzer/status/1328700636926332928?s=21 https://twitter.com/panzer/status/1328700636926332928?s=21
- yxhuvud 6y agoDoes ffmpeg even compile on M1 yet?
- moz42 6y agoYes, seems so. Looking forward to check out how this will perform. http://www.ffmpeg-archive.org/FFmpeg-on-Apple-Silicon-Success-td4693516.html http://www.ffmpeg-archive.org/FFmpeg-on-Apple-Silicon-Succes...
- dtech 6y agoImpressive results from Apple, and another well-deserved kick in the teeth for Intel after years of stagnation. The coming decade is going to finally see some interesting developments in the CPU market again.
- taftster 6y agoRight, I think in the end, this is going to show just how bad monopolies (or near-monopolies) can be for innovation. These are super impressive results, just hoping that the rest of Apple (software, developer relations) can turn away from the draconian future they are currently heading.
- dm319 6y agoWhat do you think this means for people who don't like Apple's business model? I don't want to be left behind on outdated hardware just because I'm a Linux user.
- harpratap 6y agoApple isn't the only ARM vendor. Nuvia, Ampere and even Qualcomm will start shipping good ARM chips hopefully soon
- BillinghamJ 6y agoThere's a fair risk of this turning into new monopolies, but at least it should take a while and hopefully other companies will figure out how to meaningfully compete I guess the fact that Apple will probably never sell this stuff for non-Apple computers will allow AMD to keep competing on the PC side. Clearly when Apple come out with a desktop class chip though, it's going to be hard for anyone else to come close. Somehow that doesn't seem to be a problem for Android though!
- wishysgb 6y agoThe technology is mostly done by TSMC and ARM. Apple just modifies the cores and slaps them together.
- EmmEff 6y agoIs it safe to assume that future ASi CPUs for desktops will have just Firestorm cores and no Icestorm, which should further increase MT performance? I know Apple was trying to get to market quickly, but I fail to understand why we need Icestorm cores in a non-mobile CPU, especially with this already (really) low TDP.
- AgloeDreams 6y agoMore likely they will ship more Firestorm cores and keep the Icestorm. Their future chip designs will likely be cross desktop/mobile. Keeping Icestorm lowers the cost in whole by allowing them to ship more chips and gives about a 30% performance gain in multicore. Far more interesting to me is the idea that in heavy use, the Icestorm cores can run the OS, notifications and all that, allowing full uninterrupted use of the firestorm cores. Also when the mac is in idle it uses far less power. Basically, I fail to see a reason to not keep them :).
- the_lucifer 6y ago> Far more interesting to me is the idea that in heavy use, the Icestorm cores can run the OS, notifications and all that, allowing full uninterrupted use of the firestorm cores. Also when the mac is in idle it uses far less power. It's impressive what Apple has been able to do when they can fine tune macOS and ASi to work together.
- d3nj4l 6y agoDave2D found the air to be on par with the Pro, at least for tasks that took under ~8.5 minutes. It only really throttled after that point, according to him.
- ghaff 6y agoThat's one data point that's particularly interesting to me. As someone who (normally) travels a great deal, I'd probably go with the Air unless there were real throttling compromises, especially given that I use a different computer for multimedia editing at home.
- murukesh_s 6y agoWish they re-introduce the discontinued Macbook 12 inch with the same specs as air. It weighed only 970grams vs 1.29 kg for air. In fact air feels bulky compared to other light weight laptops like LG Gram, not to mention the design is outdated. Always wondered why Apple killed the smaller model. Perhaps they want to push the iPad pro so killed off the netbook line. The wannabe traveller inside me keep drooling at 12 inch whenever i see it in someones hands. It feels so light and compact. With new M1 silicon, it's the ideal time to bring it back. I would grab it without any thought.
- ghaff 6y agoI'm definitely part of the target market (well, depending upon my mood) for a <13" laptop for travel. I've never been able to make an iPad-based workflow work for me. If nothing else I spend too much time with my laptop on my, well, lap and nothing with a removable keyboard works for me. Based on the data I've seen so far, I'm not sure why they even did a with fan Pro variant. Even if the market for an 11-12" model is smaller I'm not sure why they didn't do that instead. I was sure that was going to be the reason they didn't refresh their 12" Intel system.
- djrogers 6y ago> Based on the data I've seen so far, I'm not sure why they even did a with fan Pro variant. The ‘pro’ variant released was the low-end 13, aka the 2 port, formerly the ‘macbook escape’. The 13” line has been bifurcated since 2016, with this one firmly lower-spec’d and powered. It’s very likely that the ‘4 port’, or high-end 13” pro will make more use of the active cooling, so it was likely worth it to develop the new laptop with it.
- itg 6y agoAnother source: https://wccftech.com/intel-and-amd-x86-mobility-cpus-destroy-apples-m1-in-cinebench-r23-benchmark-results/ https://wccftech.com/intel-and-amd-x86-mobility-cpus-destroy... At least in multicore, all of the Ryzen CPUs beat the M1.
- d3nj4l 6y agoAnandTech (TFA) found the M1 performing very well compared to even Desktop-class Ryzen in SPEC: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...
- HatchedLake721 6y agoThose are only Cinebench benchmarks. Have a look at SPEC2006 and 2017 benchmarks, M1 beating desktop class Ryzen 9 5950x, or just trailing behind (edit: in single threaded performance), keeping in mind cost of each and that: > While AMD’s Zen3 still holds the leads in several workloads, we need to remind ourselves that this comes at a great cost in power consumption in the +49W range while the Apple M1 here is using 7-8W total device active power.
- TwoNineA 6y ago> the Apple M1 here is using 7-8W total device active power. Anandtech showed almost 27W power draw under full load for the M1 Mini.
- HatchedLake721 6y agoThat's Anandtech's quote. M1 beats or trails behind Ryzen 9 5950x in single threaded performance, hence they mention 7-8W. The 27W power draw comes from multi threaded performance. Ryzen's multi threaded power drain is at ~130W (as far as I know).
- levesque 6y agoAm I reading this right? Is the new mac mini competing with a Ryzen 5950X? The whole mac mini costs the price of that processor alone. This is insane.
- fxtentacle 6y agoOnly in single threaded performance, which nobody actually uses for rendering. In multi-threaded, the Ryzen 5950X is at 28,641 while M1 is at 7,833. So no, the Mac Mini is maxing out at 27% of the Ryzen 5950X if you use it properly. And I was already friendly and used the M1 number for a native port, while in reality you'll likely need Rosetta and take a 33% performance hit.
- geerlingguy 6y agoI think the overall point is that for the average user, who doesn't need all those cores or could make good use of them, the M1 may in fact feel / be faster. For users like you or I, of course we'd see a huge difference, but not everyone is running workloads that need more than 2 or 4 cores.
- kissiel 6y agoI have a theory on why ST perf is always the most important metric for me, and some other folks. When you're waiting for something synchronously, like rendering a webpage, stuff to open, etc. you're usually running a ST load. For stuff that can benefit from multithreading it's usually planned task. So does it make a difference if it takes 4 minutes compared to 3? You will still context switch.
- sickygnar 6y agoRight now I have ~20 tabs open and a few apps, a workload which is probably similar to the average user. My machine currently has 510 processes running with 2379 threads, though most of them are background. I'd wager core count is more important than ST performance nowadays, especially considering the fact that applications seem to be multicore optimized.
- a012 6y agoFor very long time, the mac mini is attractive again with this new M1 performance. I feel like my Ryzen 2 sff build is old even though it's just less than 1 year.
- fxtentacle 6y agoI'm a bit surprised by their tagline "Integrated King, Discrete Rival". I'm using an Acer Aspire V15 Nitro Black 15" from 2016. On Aztec Ruins Normal Offscreen, I get 270fps. So my 4 year old $800 laptop is still faster than the brand new M1. It seems Anandtech chose a very Apple-friendly set of laptops to compare to.
- kissiel 6y agoSo a 60W TDP dGPU (gtx 960M) is ~35% faster than this iGPU? I think this is what they called a Rival.
- fxtentacle 6y agoAgree. But don't you think this would come off as a lot less impressive if Anandtech had included all of the old rivals from 1-4 years ago that still rank above the M1? "If you currently own a 2016 15" Acer, buying the new 2020 MacBook will be a downgrade." sounds pretty lame to me. That's why I said they had a very Apple-friendly comparison set.
- kissiel 6y agoI don't think people are considering replacing a gaming 2kg+ laptop with a fanless macbook. Authors included two popular Turing dGPUs for comparison.
- kllrnohj 6y ago> But don't you think this would come off as a lot less impressive if Anandtech had included all of the old rivals from 1-4 years ago that still rank above the M1? Not really. Why would you compare against old rivals instead of the current market? They had 1660 Ti's on the charts, too, which both obliterated the M1 & are not at all the high-end of discreet mobile GPUs. The "discreet rival" was because the M1 was competing favorably against the discreet 1650 & 560(X). As in, entry-level discreet GPUs make increasingly less sense (they already weren't making much sense with Intel's new Xe and AMD's Vega 8 & 11 integrated, but more nails in that coffin with the M1)
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- perardi 6y agoThat WebKit compile time is impressive. https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro-is-powerful-but-its-the-battery-life-that-will-blow-you-away/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro...
- w-m 6y agoWow, the M1 MBP is on par with the 12-core Mac Pro from 2019 for the WebKit compilation. And even more impressive: "After a single build of WebKit, the M1 MacBook Pro had a massive 91% of its battery left. I tried multiple tests here and I could have easily run a full build of WebKit 8-9 times on one charge of the M1 MacBook’s battery. In comparison, I could have gotten through about 3 on the 16” and the 13” 2020 model only had one go in it."
- mciancia 6y agoQuestion is whether they were compiling for the same architecture on both x86 and arm.
- alwillis 6y agoThat's a good question but I don't think it would make a huge difference. Those details should have been included. Safari is already a universal binary on my Intel Mac running Big Sur; that means WebKit runs natively on Intel and M1 processors.
- saagarjha 6y agoIt doesn’t, I’ve been compiling both for a while now and the amount of time it takes for each is almost the same.
- puranjay 6y agoThis might get me back into the Apple ecosystem. I'll still wait for the kinks to be ironed out in the first generation though.
- zf00002 6y agoI feel the same way. Very interested, but not going to go in for first gen.
- dev_tty01 6y agoThis is the 12th generation Apple Silicon processor design. A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, A9, A10, A11, A12, A13, A14, M1
- lukeramsden 6y agoFirst generation of MacOS on Apple Silicon?
- gayprogrammer 6y agoiOS has always used the same kernel as macOS.
- AsyncAwait 6y agoAnd that helps i.e. Docker how?
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoSure, it's all Darwin, but userspace matters a lot - you can do lots of things on MacOS that you can't do on iOS (JIT, arbitrary web engines, assorted emulators, pop a root shell and load arbitrary kernel modules)
- heavyset_go 6y agoiOS XNU is compiled with different features than macOS XNU.
- mattlondon 6y agoWow it must suck to be Intel right now. It wasn't so long ago that the trope was while others had better multi-core performance "...Intel still holds the lead for single core performance" Now not only do AMD have a better product, but also Apple now offer equal or better performance than the best that Intel can offer. I wonder what is next for Intel now their £1000+ CPUs are firmly in third place. Looking forward to some new innovation and competitive (inc pricing!) products from them.
- patentatt 6y agoNot long ago at all, like just a few weeks ago right before zen3 was out in the wild! A double whammy for sure for Intel, tough times ahead indeed. Apologists can hand wave AMD off by citing the huge lead in sales that Intel still enjoys, but that argument falls flat with Apple, a trillion dollar company. Maybe Intel will start to compete on price like AMD used to.
- whizzter 6y agoI think they announced a short while back that they're "looking at trying to outsource manufacturing of some high end parts", ie they've known that they were falling behind in too many areas due to their shrinkage problems so they're taking in help from the outside to not become irrelevant. M1 is running on "5nm", looking at specs Intel 10NM is 100Mtr/mm2 vs TSMC's Apple 5nm chips being 173Mtr/mm2 (So even if Intel nomenclature seems more conservative they still lag by a lot in manufacturing capacity)
- the_lucifer 6y agoYes, even if Intel moves to 7nm, it's at ~202Mtr/mm2. Current TSMC 5nm is between Intel's 10 and 7nm density wise.
- arvinsim 6y agoAs someone who owns both Mac and PC, I am excited on what Ryzen can offer on 5nm. If Apple has these gains, I am sure Ryzen will have great performance leaps too.
- robotnikman 6y agoIts starting to look like ARM is the way forward in terms of performance and battery life, and I feel PC's will soon follow in the next few years. My only hope is this doesn't mean things get further locked down (such as being able to install linux distributions or dual boot) but I have a bad feeling they will.
- Deukhoofd 6y agoInteresting that it is not able to outperform the Zen3 CPUs. I had expected it to do somewhat better, especially it being a 5nm processor, and with all the hype around ARM processors. I don't know how well it will hold up to its x86 competitors like this, especially once they launch their 5nm CPUs next year.
- fxtentacle 6y agoIn multi-threaded mode - which is what Zen3 are optimized for - the M1 barely reaches 30% of the Zen's performance. I mean that's kind of expected if you compare a low-power CPU with fewer cores against an unlimited-cooling desktop monster with much more cores. The M1 will likely be an amazing laptop chip, but still unusable for demanding desktop work, e.g. CGI.
- d3nj4l 6y agoI've posted this elsewhere in this thread, but the M1 on SPEC reaches Desktop-tier performance, going toe to toe with the 5950X: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...
- Deukhoofd 6y agoIn single core performance, yes, but as the next page on the article shows, it's more comparable to the 4900HS, AMDs mobile CPU in multithreaded performance. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/5 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...
- GiorgioG 6y agoI'm not buying into Apple's eventually-closed desktop computer systems - I don't care what the performance is. They've been slowly marching towards iOS's closed ecosystem model on the Mac and with an in-house CPU, they can effectively lock users out of alternate OS choices on their hardware. Buyer beware.
- Findeton 6y agoExactly, I don't care whatever they do, I'm not buying into their closed garden of eden. I've already replaced Spotify with Funkwhale, and I'm using Linux, I'm not their target and I'll never be.
- singemonkey 6y agoAppreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to let us know that.
- millzlane 6y agoThank you, for letting us know you appreciate his opinion.
- matvore 6y agoI get why this idea of becoming iOS-like is uncomfortable for a lot of people, but will they take away the POSIX-ness of the OS? What about all the people that spend all their time in Vim, TMUX, Emacs, and/or zsh? I think these people will continue to be pretty happy on macOS if they already are. In my experience, installing alternate OS's on Mac hardware has never been frictionless or satisfying anyway.
- aero-glide 6y ago>In my experience, installing alternate OS's on Mac hardware has never been frictionless or satisfying anyway. It would be if they take some effort to support it.
- snazz 6y ago> The MacBook Air and MacBook Pro get chips with all 8 GPU cores enabled. Meanwhile for the Mac Mini, it depends on the SKU: the entry-level model gets a 7 core configuration, while the higher-tier model gets 8 cores. This appears to be wrong. From what I can see on apple.com, the Air offers the choice of a 7 or 8 core GPU, while the Pro and mini start with the full chip.
- wincy 6y agoThey mixed up the GPU configurations in the article, currently it says the Mac Mini has 7 and 8 core configurations, but that's actually the MacBook Air that has the lower gpu option.
- Technically 6y agoIt makes me very annoyed they aren't selling a minimal laptop version. I really don't get why they're doubling down on forcing the touch strip onto their laptops when nobody is demanding this and, thankfully, no competitor wants to acknowledge such a feature or the software burden requiring that hardware implies.
- mciancia 6y agoIt's funny to see Intel falling from 1st place in essentially 2 player game around two-three years ago to the 3rd place now
- samgranieri 6y agoThis is really impressive for (what I perceive to be) an entry-level computer. I always enjoy reading the technical rigor of AnandTech's deep dives, and seeing Apple's first chip go head to head with Intel and AMD's chips indicates the future is bright. I can't wait to see how the 16 inch MacBook Pro, the iMac replacement, and the Mac Pro replacement test out.
- akritrime 6y agoI am confused about one thing, in multithreaded scenarios, can an application use 8 threads or 4? Also how does the scheduling work, can I pin a task that I know will be demanding on the firestorm cores?
- goatinaboat 6y ago1) Can I run VirtualBox on M1 (yet)? 2) What is the overhead of doing so with Rosetta2 vs native on Intel? 3) What is the situation with VT-X?
- HatchedLake721 6y agoBenchmarks show M1 with Rosetta2 beats previous Mac iterations in Cinebench benchmark. See page 2 here https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... >> What’s notable is the performance of the Rosetta2 run of the benchmark when in x86 mode, which is not only able to keep up with past Mac iterations but still also beat them.
- my123 6y ago1) VirtualBox is strictly x86_64 only, everywhere. 3) Arm virtual machines only. For now, Parallels has a preview that you can enroll to at https://www.parallels.com/blogs/parallels-desktop-apple-silicon-mac/ https://www.parallels.com/blogs/parallels-desktop-apple-sili... or you might use https://github.com/kendfinger/virtual https://github.com/kendfinger/virtual which uses the high level Virtualization.framework, for Linux VMs.
- tomku 6y agoThe answer to all three of your questions is "If you are worried about this, absolutely do not buy an M1 Mac." Rosetta 2 cannot magically turn VirtualBox from a virtualization management system into a high-performance x64 emulator. The long-term solution is probably going to be running ARM Windows or Linux in a VM and leaning on Rosetta-style compatibility/translation in the client OS to run x64 programs. Edit: Since this is attracting downvotes, maybe it needs some clarification. The things OP asked about fundamentally cannot work. Rosetta 2 is designed exclusively for user-mode programs and cannot cooperate with virtualization software to run arbitrary OSes in VMs. VirtualBox has no plans to port to ARM and will not work in Rosetta. None of this is negativity or cynicism towards M1 Macs - it's just the reality of how switching architectures affects virtualization. If your use case for Mac hardware is to run arbitrary x64 code at high speed in VMs, you should not buy an M1 Mac because that capability does not currently exist.
- CitizenKane 6y agoIt's certainly an impressive achievement and makes it pretty clear why Apple is transitioning away from Intel. I'm a bit surprised that the fact that this is on the TSMC 5nm process seems to be glossed over in the comments. Apple is benefitting from some what seem like on the surface to be significant process improvements. Will be interesting to see how other players take advantage of it as well.
- phire 6y agoNo, the gains from Apple's A13 (TSMC 7nm) to Apple's A14 (TSMC 5nm and same cores as the M1) really aren't that large. About average for a node jump. This is mostly about architecture, not silicon process. From A13 to A14, Apple managed to increase the clockspeed by about 15% and increase IPC by 5% all while keeping power consumption the same.
- CitizenKane 6y agoI believe that remains to be seen. I'm not sure if they were able to effectively take advantage of the new process right away, perhaps not. It looks impressive, but it's hard to say until we have some kind of more direct comparison.
- aero-glide 6y agoI hope Apple allows us to install the OS of our choice. The battery life is impressive but I refuse to not use Linux.
- sabana 6y agoWhy?
- bstar77 6y agoAnd that's your choice. I would start looking at AMD's Ryzen offerings because supporting Linux is not going to be high on Apple's list going forward.
- jdlyga 6y agoI wouldn't pay for Apple hardware unless I wanted to use MacOS.
- OJFord 6y agoWhy? The hardware's the nice bit.
- Aperocky 6y agoYeah this. Imagine if we had the same hardware but designed for linux, I'd pay a premium for that. Although hardware specific software from Apple is probably a big part of that draw too. I don't think we're ever going to see Linux prioritize a certain hardware and put in the effort to make it integrate as well as macs does.
- xuki 6y agoPerformance per watt of this thing is INSANE, take a look at the battery left after compiling WebKit, compared to older Mac: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/WebKit-Compile-Battery-Remaining.png https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/WebKit-Com... https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro-is-powerful-but-its-the-battery-life-that-will-blow-you-away/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro... IMO the all day battery will be THE killer feature of the new laptops.
- interestica 6y agoThese gains are just through improvements in processors. Now, combine that with parallel leaps for battery tech... It's also good that battery tech hasn't jumped too far ahead already - the constraint has helped in the development in these mobile chips. The display panel is still the biggest energy draw on my laptop. There's a lot of chance for improvement there too. A 2 day battery in 5 years isn't that crazy.
- xuki 6y agoApple is the kind of company that will choose to slim down the laptop instead of making it 2 day battery life.
- Brendinooo 6y agoDo you think that's still true in 2020? Seems like thinness hasn't been a major consideration for a couple of years now.
- xuki 6y agoThey're doing it again with the new iPhone. All of this year iPhone have a smaller battery.
- reaperducer 6y agoAnd they all added hardware features to fill that space. Look at the iFixit teardowns and you'll see it wasn't to make the phones thinner. It was to make room for wireless charging, LIDAR, and other features.
- davidhyde 6y ago> "Whilst the software doesn’t offer the best the hardware can offer, with time, as developers migrate their applications to native Apple Silicon support, the ecosystem will flourish." I think that more developers would be excited about migrating their apps to support native apple silicon if Apple wasn't so developer hostile at the moment. I am referring to stuff like Apple's Online Certificate Status Protocol (https://blog.jacopo.io/en/post/apple-ocsp/ https://blog.jacopo.io/en/post/apple-ocsp/) and their Apple Tax war. They need customers but they also need developers.
- rimliu 6y agoYou should quit HN for a day or two. The stuff echo-chamber of HN repeats often has very little to do with reality. Apple has many thousands of developers. It is not hostile to them in any way, shape or form. For some reason this cliche is most often repeated by the people who never wrote a single line of code for iOS or MacOS
- qz2 6y agoWrong. Apple's iOS/macOS development footprint is far far far smaller than the footprint of generic software development using macOS. I have seen a lot of developers shitting the bed this week over the state of macOS both in person and in various other places. We already have a couple of people who have got so fucked off with macOS their macs are running Ubuntu 24/7 and they're buying Dell/Lenovo next time. Hell I sold my Apple kit earlier this year because I was completely fed up of dealing with broken shit all the time. It's just a horrible experience.
- millzlane 6y ago>It is not hostile to them in any way, shape or form. For some reason this cliche is most often repeated by the people who never wrote a single line of code for iOS or MacOS. Maybe the word "hostile" is the wrong word. But I have apps on windows that ran on 95 that still work to this day without having to be "rewritten". It's no surprise it's often repeated by people who never wrote a single line code for an OS that they have come to expect will change things so dramatically that they will have to spend more time and effort supporting those OS changes and not creating software.
- x87678r 6y agoIs there a media ban? I thought we'd get a bunch of macbook reviews today. I guess wont be long, they'll be in the shops soon.
- MBCook 6y agoToday is the day the embargo drops it seems. So all the normal sites are posting their reviews.
- kzrdude 6y agoWhat kind of graphics APIs will it support? OpenGL?
- maeln 6y agoGraphics API support is a OS/Driver thing. OpenGL has been deprecated on MacOS for a long while now, being stuck on a old version (4.1). Apple refuse to support Vulkan also so the only officially supported Graphical API on MacOS is Apple Metal.
- galad87 6y agoMetal. Then there are OpenGL and Vulkan wrappers that run on Metal.
- oblio 6y agoThe proprietary Metal API: https://developer.apple.com/metal/ https://developer.apple.com/metal/ I think they might support OpenGL but I think everyone considers their support second rate.
- blunte 6y agoThis may be a bit of a stretch, but would the power savings (value of which, Earth aside, could be measured in local electricity costs) of an M1 Mac be significant enough in a year to justify upgrading an otherwise functioning Intel Mac?
- MagnumOpus 6y agoNope. Say the differential under heavy CPU load is 10W, say you run it under full load for 2,000 hours per year (which nobody does on a laptop), then you saved about 20 kWh, or roughly $3.
- k__ 6y agoSo, it's like AMD, but different? I am whelmed.
- cwxm 6y agonot exactly, the performance per watt is what's impressive here.
- obblekk 6y agoI’m really curious what Xcode and IntelliJ compile times look like for real world repos. It’s a single use case, but by far the most common one for me where I genuinely feel productivity slowed by my computer. Hopefully good news there as well.
- stu2b50 6y agoDave2D had xcode benchmarks and it seems like... It's faster than the iMac Pro, and even faster than his friends hackintosh. Might be the fastest, or almost the fastest, out of Apples entire lineup. https://youtu.be/XQ6vX6nmboU https://youtu.be/XQ6vX6nmboU at minute 3
- alfonsodev 6y agoI'm looking this repo[1] for reference, something must be off, because a mid 2015 has half the time in incremental build, of course the project matters, but Dave doesn't reveal the name of the app they are compiling or I missed it. [1] https://github.com/ashfurrow/xcode-hardware-performance https://github.com/ashfurrow/xcode-hardware-performance
- arvinsim 6y agoAs someone using Jetbrains products, I would get no less than 32GB for my machine :)
- mekkkkkk 6y agoI'm not a big fan of Apple, but this makes me genuinely happy. Seeing discussions and benchmarks of CPUs where Intel isn't even a contender is fantastic. What a lovely day!
- jeswin 6y agoThis is as much a ringing endorsement of AMD Ryzen as it is of the M1. The 15W 4800U is just as impressive as the M1, and the performance per watt gap seems small enough to bridge with AMDs upcoming 5nm switch.
- matteopey 6y agoNot only that, but also the 4800U is Zen 2. The Zen 3 mobile processor (series 5000) are not here yet.
- andy_ppp 6y agoYes, will Zen 3 give these mobile parts a 19% boost? That would be incredible if so...
- bfgoodrich 6y agoAMD definitely is the best of the rest, but it doesn't seem quite as close as it may be held to. In single core tests the 4800u is running that core at 4.2Ghz. Yet it gets soundly bested by the M1 @ 3 - 3.2Ghz (running at a 50%+ advantage, 65%+ clock per clock). The M1 has an enormous IPC advantage. In a multicore test the 4800u has 8 performance cores with HT. It only marginally beats an M1 with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores (by the scaling the efficiency cores look like they're 1/4 performance or worse -- these are very lightweight cores). Again, it's the best of the rest, but Apple clearly holds an enormous lead here. Somehow everyone is focused on 5nm, but the A13 on 7nm was still in a substantial lead. The 4800u on 5nm is only going to be marginally better. Apple clearly sandbagged this first entrant because they're packing it into their "entry level" devices. In six months or whatever they'll unveil the 6+2 core device in the mid range, the 12+2 in the high range, etc, and we'll be back at these discussions. (Speaking generally) - This whole discussion about Apple Silicon is fascinating because the goal posts have moved so much. Looking back to HN discussions a year ago and everyone was talking about some pathetically weak entrant that would be a joke, etc. Now people are celebrating that it doesn't beat a 24-core, 300W Threadripper. Now the narrative is that it isn't impressive because the v1 didn't overwhelming destroy everything else in the market.
- HJain13 6y agoThis is bitter sweet moment for me, I hate Apple's walled garden approach so much, but they have the hardware (CPU, speakers, screens, etc) side of the things down (mostly)...
- HJain13 6y agoInterestingly Anandtech is feeding into the well deserved hype, by comparing 5950x to M1; Intel being 2 node generation behind still gives a good competition to M1 while still being a laptop chip.
- formerly_proven 6y agoThe Cinebench R23 results seem kinda weird to me. The 5950X would have almost a 40 % clock speed advantage over the M1 (~5 GHz 1C vs 3.2 GHz 1C), yet the M1 is only about 8 % slower in an entirely ALU-limited SIMD benchmark? This suggests the M1 core has like 50 % more EUs and achieves much higher throughput than Zen 3. The SPEC results are... decisive to say the least. Without Zen 3, x86 CPUs would look, well... like shit. All Intel offerings, including the Sunny Cove part (so not a 7 year old uarch), look uniformly bad across all workloads.
- phire 6y agoYou overestimate how ALU limited Cinebench is. I managed to find an AVX vs AVX off benchmark run for Cinebench r20 [1]. Going from 128bit SSE to 256bit AVX and doubling the ALUs only results in a 10-12% increase in performance. I assume this has to do with how each SIMD lane of calculation might need to branch independently, limiting the performance speedup from just throwing wider SIMD ALUs at it. [1] https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/post-your-cinebench-r23-score.213237/page-39#post-4007045 https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/post-your-cineben...
- diimdeep 6y agoELI5 please, how this change things for M1
- vdfs 6y agoELI5: Some things that ARM can do in one instruction, can be done with multiple instructions on x86
- CyberDildonics 6y agoThat's absolutely not the conclusion here. One person thought that benchmarks were saying that the M1 had strong SIMD performance, but the reality is that cinebench (and in fact most renderers) doesn't use SIMD very effectively when looking at the whole process, and the assumption that it demonstrates SIMD performance is not correct.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoMacbook air: $999 (2 ports, no hdmi) vs $699 mac mini (2 ports + hdmi) + ipad $329 = $1029 Thinking of upgraing, my current macbook 2013 sits in a drawer 99% of the time connected to a monitor and keyboard. That 1% of the time when I travel, the macbook is too large to use comfortably on an airplane seat. The ipad would work better for this use. macbook air also only has two ports, so one would be used for external monitor, the other for power. No place left to connect external drives. Which I need to use for video editing, and sometimes need to connect two drives to transfer files between them. Seems like this would only be doable on macbook air running on battery.
- amwelles 6y agoI switched from a MBP to a Mac Mini and iPad Pro last winter for my personal setup. I absolutely love it. I spend roughly equal time on both, but I’m not doing a ton of programming these days outside of work. Taking the iPad traveling is way easier than taking a laptop.
- arvinsim 6y agoAre you using the Magic Keyboard? Just asking if that is a big part of your good experience with the iPad.
- amwelles 6y agoNope, I’m using the Smart Keyboard folio, since it came with the iPad. (Bought secondhand from a friend.)
- spike021 6y agoNot who you replied to, but I have one of those non-numpad small Apple BT keyboards and it has worked really well for me when traveling with only my iPad. It fits in the same carry sleeve I use for the iPad, holds a long charge, and is usable when I ssh to a host for IRC or if I really want to code in VIM.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
- paulus_magnus2 6y agoThis means there is (probably) plenty of opportunity for seasoned engineers to make serious money at Intel. But only for ones with thick skin who can deliver despite rotten company culture.
- jeffbee 6y agoIntrigued by the single-thread main memory bandwidth being a multiple of what you get from a single SKX. We also see this with Graviton 2. The latency is not terrible, either. How would this much available bandwidth change your choices when optimizing your algorithms?
- jillesvangurp 6y agoI think this will get interesting if/when MS, Nvidia and others start using ARM cpus more widely as well. Nvidia just bought ARM so that would help them get rid of Intel as a middle man for gaming hardware. MS already has windows running on ARM but that seems to be a budget laptops only kind of thing so far. Also they are shipping AMD on x-box, which is interesting. But you could see Nvidia building an SOC graphics + cpu running windows potentially. Most game engines already target IOS and Android so there should be no issues porting to ARM on that front either. AMD ought to be paying attention. Risc V could be an alternative at this point if they want to push the market in a different direction. Having to license ARM from Nvidia would not be their dream scenario, I imagine.
- Tsarbomb 6y agoAMD already licenses ARM. Ryzen CPUs have an on die ARM CPU for handling part of their platform security.
- jonplackett 6y agoI find it amusing people thought that apple silicon was going to be crap. Or that they would lie about it being good. They are not insane! They wouldn’t jump ship and go through all that expense and possibility of failure if they don’t know they had something amazing at the end of the rainbow.
- Shivetya 6y agoInteresting for many gamers, Blizzard announced native support for World of Warcraft[0] on Apple Silicon. This give hope to other games from Blizzard coming to the platform as well and may encourage other developers to join in. The M1 has been shown to run Civ6 and Rise to Tomb Raider through Rosetta faster than previous integrated GPU mac hardware[1] [0]https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/mac-support-update-november-16/722775 https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/mac-support-update-n... [1]https://www.macworld.com/article/3597198/13-inch-macbook-pro-m1-review-amazing-breakthroughs-in-processing-and-battery-performance.html https://www.macworld.com/article/3597198/13-inch-macbook-pro...
- hyperrail 6y agoIn reviews of the new M1 Macs as a whole, I'd like to see a comparison with Qualcomm's best: meaning the fastest current Windows ARM laptops. Up to now, their performance has at best only kept up with comparably priced x86 models, despite pressure on Qualcomm by Microsoft and the device makers. Maybe some new competition will shake Qualcomm out of its complacency...
- alwillis 6y agoIn reviews of the new M1 Macs as a whole, I'd like to see a comparison with Qualcomm's best: meaning the fastest current Windows ARM laptops. You may recall that Apple already embarrassed Qualcomm years ago when they shipped 64-bit ARM-based chips at least a year before Qualcomm could do it. When the new iPhone ships, the next fastest phone is the iPhone being replaced by the new flagship phone. The Android phones based on Qualcomm’s best processors are way behind Apple's mid-level and entry-level phones. The A series chips used in Apple's phones and tablets are way faster than anything Qualcomm is shipping for laptops, never mind the M series.
- hyperrail 6y agoFrom what I've heard myself in the past, I don't think Qualcomm is as far behind as you say, but I would not be surprised if it was. This puts me in mind of one time that I was ranting to a Microsoft colleague over lunch about how MS shouldn't be exclusive with Qualcomm for ARM chips given the very low rewards over the years. They said to me that when Windows Phone 7 first was under development in 2008-2010, choosing Qualcomm exclusivity seemed best because Qualcomm was the only one willing to make decent BSPs for us at Microsoft. Upon reflection, I realized that this was still the case as of our conversation years later. The Mediateks, Samsungs, and Nvidias of the world either did not work with Microsoft at all, or got spurned by Microsoft themselves, or gave up after 1 or 2 high-profile failures (such as Surface RT). Texas Instruments was a notable exception as they gave up on ARM SoCs altogether, thus killing what would have become a TI-based Windows RT tablet platform. Now neither me nor my coworker was in a position to actually know what was going on here, but I think this anecdote illustrates the value of a trustworthy business partner even when their products look mediocre.
- andy_ppp 6y agoI think I'm nearly ready to buy one of these... does anyone know of any benchmarks showing a Javascript test suite running? Be interesting to compare to to my current machine... the performance of node being good (and the sort of stop start choppy test suite stuff) would probably make me go for it.
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- vermaden 6y agoWe will have to wait for AMD ZEN4 based CPUs which will also like M1 be based on 5nm TSMC process. Currently its apples (have to :>) versus oranges: 5nm M1 vs 7nm ZEN3
- klelatti 6y agoIt's interesting what this will do for the positioning of Mac Mini. If you want a desktop with decent performance in a compact package the Mini might just be first choice having languished with underpowered Intel CPUs for so long.
- CivBase 6y agoI wouldn't care if their laptops have 10x the performance and power efficiency. Apple's closed ecosystem and "big brother knows best" mindset are bad enough on their own - but together, they are downright intolerable.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoThe best option seems to be a hybrid. Use the M1 Air to remote into a real non virtualized computer running linux.
- bartread 6y agoThese are impressive performance stats and, given that I'm working from home all the time nowadays and with much less of a need for a laptop, the Mac Mini is actually a fairly attractive option. Except for one thing: it's maxxed out at 16GB of unified RAM. 16GB. In 2020 (nearly 2021). FFS. Come on Apple: get your act together. The 16GB limit was frustrating as hell when I bought my last MBP in 2015: now it's absolutely unforgiveable. (The iMac obviously goes way beyond 16GB but isn't yet available with Apple silicon, and obviously the attraction with the Mini is the relatively ludicrous performance of that Apple silicon.)
- anoncow 6y agoCan AMD/Intel pivot to ARM and provide the efficiency benefits to the non-Apole ecosystem? Can Apple's M1X/M2 outperform desktop CPUs? Qualcomm tried their hand at desktop CPUs with Microsoft a few years back. Is it time they tried again? How comparable is a Surface Go with the performance/efficiency of M1?
- AgloeDreams 6y agoAMD has tried a bit, Intel probably won't. You can still get great numbers on desktop x86 with better cores and processes. Zen 4 is perfectly good so far. Apple's M1 already outperforms most desktop CPUs, it goes to reason that a model with more cores and bigger L1 could outperform the whole industry. Surface Go is nowhere close, half as fast in single core, 1/5th as fast in multicore. The 5W TDP is really a generic number with no real meaning as Intel doesn't really abide by it, I would say it probably uses about the same power as the M1, possibly much more under turbo while also having a much higher power floor (IE: When at idle the Surface go uses much more power) Keep in mind that the Surface Go is very low-cost and the CPU is at a 14nm build.
- anoncow 6y agoWould the M1 with more cores be able to beat the threadripper at the same wattage? Right now the M1 stands at a score of 8000 Vs Threadripper's 25000. The comparison I am sure is not just about comparing benchmark scores, but is there a prediction possible given that the M1 is at a 24W TDP whereas the threadripper has a 280W TDP (A 3x change in the benchmarks alongside a 10x change in TDP) Does Qualcomm or Samsung have a M1 beater in their kitty?
- hajile 6y agoIt costs more to move 2 bytes into the CPU than to actually add them. As you go bigger, you spend an increasingly larger amount of time and energy moving data as opposed to actually calculating things. Anandtech numbers showed 50-89% of total power consumption for the 7601 being used for Infinity Fabric. With 89w remaining spread among 32 cores, that's a mere 2.78w per core or 1.39w per thread at an all-core turbo of 2.7GHz. Oh, I'd note that the 7601 is a 14nm Zen 1 part. https://www.anandtech.com/show/13124/the-amd-threadripper-2990wx-and-2950x-review/4#:~:text=At%20low%20loading%2C%20out%20of,%2C%20or%20a%20staggering%2089%25%20 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13124/the-amd-threadripper-29...!
- fithisux 6y agoGood incentive to warm to Risc-V ecosystem.
- fareesh 6y agoI feel like if one can hold out another year or two for the second iteration that will probably be a better long-term bet. My current macbook is about 6 years old.
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- michaelmrose 6y agoWhy did the single threaded cinebench single threaded measure against the Ryzen 5950x a high end desktop processor then the multithreaded version of the same benchmark only list the 4900HS a high end laptop part with a fraction of the thermal budget and half the cores? Other sites had the Ryzen 5950x pegged at 28,641 in the multithreaded version vs 7833 for the m1 mac mini. Its not really surprising that something with 4x as many high performance cores as the m1 with a much higher thermal budget is almost 4x faster than the m1.
- ksec 6y ago1. This is roughly a 20-25W SoC. Apple could easily scale this to 50W, or a M1"X" with Double of everything, ( likely not with the Neural Processing Unit and the Image Signal Processing ). 2. That would give you double the performance in MultiCore Benchmarks, and Double the Graphics. 3. They will need to double the memory transfer as well, so it will either be a Quad Channel LPDDR4X or may be going with LPDDR5. 4. This hypothetical chip could be coming to MacBook 16" next year. 5. It is the nature of Chip and Devices that we are fundamentally limited by Heat Dissipation. I call this TDP Computing. 6. That is why in many, if not literally every explanation under every graph they will note the TDP difference and you should get the correct perspective or what is being measured. 7. That means you should not expect a 10W / 25W chip to out perform a 32 Core 250W Chip in MultiCore Benchmarks. You are basically comparing Apple to orange. And I dont know why there are many comments in this thread doing it. 8. The M1, and SPEC scores ( no longer are we relying on Geekbench ) are to showcase what Apple is capable of. Edit: I just deleted a massive Rant specific to HN comments on Hardware.
- egsmi 6y ago> I dont know why there are many comments in this thread doing it. (Points at AnandTech) But he started it! :)
- kowlo 6y agoShould I be annoyed about buying a 2020 iMac 27" i7 5700XT 32 days ago?
- jakeva 6y agoI wouldn't be, the M1 isn't available in that form factor yet and even if it was it would be first gen, and in the meantime you still have a really great computer.
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- dm319 6y agoHow did apple do this? And what does it mean for linux users?
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoHere is the most important question - how well it will run Linux? I do not like MacOS at all.
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- The_rationalist 6y agowhile the M1 is impressive, everybody avoid the Elephant in the room which is: they dropped Windows bootcamp support which make it DOA for me. (and no a VM is not a replacement) Zero media report it but there is a BIG performance issue with the M1: Compilers and JIT have had decades of optimization both for ARM and x86. But actually no, code that targeted ARM historically only really was either C, C++, swift, js and Java. All other mainstream languages such as C#, python, php, ruby, fortran, Perl, R, etc do have (I hope) ARM support but there have been almost zero human resources dedicated to optimizing the ARM codegen, and it will take years for a catch up. Where are such benchmarcks ?? This is a huge fundamental unaddressed topic! I even expect such languages to run faster on Rosetta than on ARM native, ironically!
- thirdsun 6y ago> While the M1 is impressive, everybody avoid the Elephant in the room which is: they dropped Windows bootcamp support which make it DOA for me. (and no a VM is not a replacement). I'm not quite sure if it's even a mouse in the room. While it certainly is a problem for you and a niche group of like-minded users, the vast majority of Mac users, including me, simply don't care about Windows support. Plus, there is good hardware to be found on the Windows side as well, so it isn't the end of the world in my opinion.
- kepler1 6y agoIt takes a lot of money, people, and investment to bring a chip to market, years ahead of other competitors' technologies. Maybe locking it down (to the disappointment of the "everything open" crowd) is Apple's reward for advancing the state of the industry and offering high performing chip beyond anyone's expectations. Maybe for companies to survive in such a business, they need to take advantage of the technologies they're able to bring to fruition, and fund the 9/10 ideas that don't make it.
- WanderPanda 6y agoDo we already know if it has native AV1 decoding capabilities?
- wyattpeak 6y agoThis is a slight aside, but could someone more familiar with the field than me explain what the Neural Engine is for? Does any software currently use it, or is it something that Apple are trying to push? Is it designed to build ML models, or to apply them to data? And perhaps more basically, what for? How much machine learning is done on user machines, as opposed to renting some cloud time? What are they anticipating will be done? I ask these questions in genuine curiousity, I assume I'm missing something but this just seems like a rather wild divergence from what (very little) I knew of the ML field.
- marta_morena_28 6y ago"Core ML optimizes on-device performance by leveraging the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine while minimizing its memory footprint and power consumption." https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreml https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreml Apple has always been good at running ML on device, as opposed to Google's approach of sending everything to the cloud, then mining all your data, selling it, tracking it, etc. One example is iPhotos, which implements feature detection on-device, while Google implements it in the cloud. https://www.imore.com/no-apples-machine-learning-engine-cant-surface-your-iphones-secrets https://www.imore.com/no-apples-machine-learning-engine-cant... Or for Google: https://www.theringer.com/2017/5/25/16043842/google-photos-data-collection-e8578b3256e0 https://www.theringer.com/2017/5/25/16043842/google-photos-d... (Reading this makes me wanna puke)
- CountSessine 6y agoIt’s accessible through the CoreML framework. I know nothing about this and very little about ML in general, but I found an interesting GitHub page written by a consultant who seems to know a fair amount about it. https://github.com/hollance/neural-engine https://github.com/hollance/neural-engine
- saagarjha 6y agoIt does matrix multiplication and stuff that is useful for neural networks.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoFor people to young to remember or know, the original "Benchmark Wars" were between Intel and Motorola with NEC, Oki, and Hitachi occasionally getting a punch in there. I worked at Intel at the time and the 80286 (x86) architecture was going head to head against the 68000 (68k) architecture. The marketing was intense with Motorola consistently using benchmarks that benefited from linear memory access and Intel using benchmarks that benefited from branching and floating point. This was when Intel made a compiler that recognized it was compiling the 'Dhrystone' benchmark and substituted custom hand assembled code for the output of the compiler. Watching Intel and AMD compete was entertaining because Intel was competing against its own ISA. It added new instructions, AMD created a 64 bit extension, both worked some interesting improvements in memory handling an cache handling. Adding Apple's take on ARM to the mix is a lot of fun for me. It is like reading a new novel in the Asimov Foundation series or maybe a fourth volume in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I am really glad they are pushing the edge of the envelope here, it is the kind of technology that made me get into computers in the first place.