5 ms·

I was until I tried doing the test myself. It takes 82 seconds to compile on my i5-4200M. I'm not sure this test is deserving of the breathless headline and co

I was until I tried doing the test myself. It takes 82 seconds to compile on my i5-4200M. I'm not sure this test is deserving of the breathless headline and commentary, especially since the original tweeter later follows up with: > Extra info: The M1 macbooks (air/pro) can't drive 2 external screens, and the air throttles a bit after 3+ minutes sustained compute (20-30%) https://twitter.com/rikarends/status/1328753176552632321 https://twitter.com/rikarends/status/1328753176552632321 I'll be more interested if the M1 can compile something 2x quicker than the i9 when the compile time on the M1 exceeds 30-60 minutes rather than being less than a minute. EDIT: to be clear, I expect the M1 to feel faster than the i9 for the vast majority of users, however the headline is "in a real world Rust compile", implying that this is a more valid test than synthetic benchmarks. I take issue with that, as I don't really consider something that compiles in less than 2 minutes on 6 year old hardware to be a much more useful test than the benchmarks. We already know the A-series of chips performs incredibly in short workloads. We have no information yet on how it performs under sustained workloads.

w0utert 6y ago
>> We already know the A-series of chips performs incredibly in short workloads. We have no information yet on how it performs under sustained workloads. What makes you think that given sufficient cooling, it will not perform exactly the same as the M1 in the MBA but sustained? It’s not like the ARM architecture changes anything in the thermodynamics of cooling cpus compared to an x86 chip, right? I’d wager that under load an i9 with passive cooling wouldn’t even last 30 seconds without throttling below even its base clock, if it doesn’t just shut down to prevent frying itself
- Nullabillity 6y ago
  It's an Apple chip that will only ever be in Apple computers. Asking about how it would do in a computer with sufficient cooling is about as relevant as asking how it would do in a computer with a usable keyboard or OS.
- imtringued 6y ago
  It's in the same ballpark of power efficiency as AMD's x86 chips. It's slightly more efficient because of 7nm vs 5nm but if you scale it up to desktop frequencies it's going to consume the same amount of power as Ryzen CPUs.
  - w0utert 6y ago
    Yes but the point is that Apple doesn't need to scale the M1 up to desktop frequencies, because it already is faster than x86 in single-threaded workloads, at lower clocks and significantly lower power. To scale up the multithreaded performance they just have to increase the core count and scale the cooling system accordingly, ie: exactly like you would have to for x86. A decent desktop cooler can dissipate enough heat to run CPU's with 100+ Watt TDP's, while the M1 in the current Mac Mini sits around ~20W estimated if you discount the RAM. So again, what would make anyone think that an M1 with decent cooling would not be able to maintain the current ST performance indefintely, or a hypothetical 8+8 or even 16+16 core M1X or M2 with a TDP of 100W and top-notch cooling solution would be impossible?
    - spronkey 6y ago
      Multicore scaling on M1 doesn't appear to be as efficient as that on Ryzen - for example, the 4200U is able to beat the M1 in multicore tasks at quite a similar power draw, but gets soundly beaten in single core. Ryzen's big advantage over previous multicore implementations was infinity fabric - so clearly there's more to scaling than just the actual compute cores. Don't forget that scaling up is also not just about frequencies, there are also packaging considerations - the CPU dies have to actually be able to dissipate the heat generated, and the package itself has to be able to do so as well. I'd expect that this is something AMD and especially Intel have a leg up over Apple with - although, considering they've already tread that ground it makes Apple's job a bit easier too.
- utxaa 6y ago
  What makes you think that given sufficient cooling, it will perform exactly the same as the M1 in the MBA but sustained?
bydo 6y ago
How about compiling WebKit? https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/webkit-compile-time.jpg https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/webkit-com...
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  For those without context, WebKit apparently takes 30+ minutes to compile, as of (2018) Intel: https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2018/02/17/on-compiling-webkit-now-twice-as-fast/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2018/02/17/on-compiling-w...
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  It's a shame we have a headline proudly announcing that the M1 is 2x faster, when the reality is it's about 8% faster when doing a similar real world test for longer. What's also hugely impressive is that under better cooling conditions, it's also 25% faster. None of these numbers capture headlines like 2x sadly, but that's still massively impressive.
vladvasiliu 6y ago
I think this just shows how little improvement there has been over the last years. However, getting twice the performance with a fanless design looks interesting, even if there is throttling after a while. For what I do, I don't regularly wait for compiles that take ages, but having a silent computer without losing performance is a net win. Curiosity got the best of me too and I ran the test on my late 2013 MBP, 2.3 GHz i7, 16 GB ram. Compilation took 44 seconds and the fans didn't even spin up (with 23 ºC ambient temperature). A little further down the thread [0] he gives the actual numbers, which are around 20s on the M1, which puts the i7 [1] at around 40s. I'm not sure how much of this is Rust specific, but for my own projects I haven't noticed a big difference between my mbp, an old i7-3930k and a newer i5-8500. The MBP is somewhat slower, but it only has 4 cores while the others have 6. [0] https://twitter.com/rikarends/status/1328706132752347138?s=20 https://twitter.com/rikarends/status/1328706132752347138?s=2... [1] A tweet corrects the MBP CPU as being an i7 and not an i9.

w0utert 6y ago

>> We already know the A-series of chips performs incredibly in short workloads. We have no information yet on how it performs under sustained workloads. What makes you think that given sufficient cooling, it will not perform exactly the same as the M1 in the MBA but sustained? It’s not like the ARM architecture changes anything in the thermodynamics of cooling cpus compared to an x86 chip, right? I’d wager that under load an i9 with passive cooling wouldn’t even last 30 seconds without throttling below even its base clock, if it doesn’t just shut down to prevent frying itself

Nullabillity 6y ago
It's an Apple chip that will only ever be in Apple computers. Asking about how it would do in a computer with sufficient cooling is about as relevant as asking how it would do in a computer with a usable keyboard or OS.
imtringued 6y ago
It's in the same ballpark of power efficiency as AMD's x86 chips. It's slightly more efficient because of 7nm vs 5nm but if you scale it up to desktop frequencies it's going to consume the same amount of power as Ryzen CPUs.
- w0utert 6y ago
  Yes but the point is that Apple doesn't need to scale the M1 up to desktop frequencies, because it already is faster than x86 in single-threaded workloads, at lower clocks and significantly lower power. To scale up the multithreaded performance they just have to increase the core count and scale the cooling system accordingly, ie: exactly like you would have to for x86. A decent desktop cooler can dissipate enough heat to run CPU's with 100+ Watt TDP's, while the M1 in the current Mac Mini sits around ~20W estimated if you discount the RAM. So again, what would make anyone think that an M1 with decent cooling would not be able to maintain the current ST performance indefintely, or a hypothetical 8+8 or even 16+16 core M1X or M2 with a TDP of 100W and top-notch cooling solution would be impossible?
  - spronkey 6y ago
    Multicore scaling on M1 doesn't appear to be as efficient as that on Ryzen - for example, the 4200U is able to beat the M1 in multicore tasks at quite a similar power draw, but gets soundly beaten in single core. Ryzen's big advantage over previous multicore implementations was infinity fabric - so clearly there's more to scaling than just the actual compute cores. Don't forget that scaling up is also not just about frequencies, there are also packaging considerations - the CPU dies have to actually be able to dissipate the heat generated, and the package itself has to be able to do so as well. I'd expect that this is something AMD and especially Intel have a leg up over Apple with - although, considering they've already tread that ground it makes Apple's job a bit easier too.
utxaa 6y ago
What makes you think that given sufficient cooling, it will perform exactly the same as the M1 in the MBA but sustained?

bydo 6y ago

How about compiling WebKit? https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/webkit-compile-time.jpg https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/webkit-com...

floatingatoll 6y ago
For those without context, WebKit apparently takes 30+ minutes to compile, as of (2018) Intel: https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2018/02/17/on-compiling-webkit-now-twice-as-fast/ https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2018/02/17/on-compiling-w...
oarsinsync 6y ago
It's a shame we have a headline proudly announcing that the M1 is 2x faster, when the reality is it's about 8% faster when doing a similar real world test for longer. What's also hugely impressive is that under better cooling conditions, it's also 25% faster. None of these numbers capture headlines like 2x sadly, but that's still massively impressive.

vladvasiliu 6y ago

I think this just shows how little improvement there has been over the last years. However, getting twice the performance with a fanless design looks interesting, even if there is throttling after a while. For what I do, I don't regularly wait for compiles that take ages, but having a silent computer without losing performance is a net win. Curiosity got the best of me too and I ran the test on my late 2013 MBP, 2.3 GHz i7, 16 GB ram. Compilation took 44 seconds and the fans didn't even spin up (with 23 ºC ambient temperature). A little further down the thread [0] he gives the actual numbers, which are around 20s on the M1, which puts the i7 [1] at around 40s. I'm not sure how much of this is Rust specific, but for my own projects I haven't noticed a big difference between my mbp, an old i7-3930k and a newer i5-8500. The MBP is somewhat slower, but it only has 4 cores while the others have 6. [0] https://twitter.com/rikarends/status/1328706132752347138?s=20 https://twitter.com/rikarends/status/1328706132752347138?s=2... [1] A tweet corrects the MBP CPU as being an i7 and not an i9.