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I've never owned a Mac and don't intend to own one but I'm very happy with this M1 move, mainly for the reasons highlighted in the introduction to the article:

by simias 6y ago

I've never owned a Mac and don't intend to own one but I'm very happy with this M1 move, mainly for the reasons highlighted in the introduction to the article: >M1 Macs embarrass all other PCs — all Intel-based Macs, including automobile-priced Mac Pros, and every single machine running Windows or Linux. Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. I think it's a bit unfair to lump Linux in there since it's been running on ARM and other embedded, low-power devices basically forever, but it is true that few of us run our Linux desktop on an ARM board. But I think the overarching point is true: now desktop and laptop makers can't just pretend that having a hot and/or slow, clunky, noisy x86-based architecture is just a fact of life. I hope and expect that it'll help create a new generation of ARM-based laptops and maybe even desktops that will run cool and smooth. I want to believe.

nix23 6y ago
>Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. Not sure what shitty machine hes talking about, but my threadripper's are not impressed with some 4 core M1.
- trinix912 6y ago
  This is not a completely fair comparison, your threadrippers surely use more energy and produce more heat than the M1 chip.
  - hajile 6y ago
    Add 50 more PCIe lanes, double the bus width, 270mb of cache, 60 cores and a communication protocol then get back to me. Anandtech ran the numbers a couple years ago and an EPYC processor spent around 60% of its budget on Infinity Fabric (up to 90% of used power with only a couple cores being used). An M2 based chip might get more done, but it won't use much less power. In truth, I'd guess there's a good chance it bottlenecks on the IO and performance doesn't increase as expected (without widening IO further with all the extra power costs).
  - reallydontask 6y ago
    Sometimes it matters other times not. If you want absolute performance then it doesn't matter, if you want efficiency then it does.
- zionic 6y ago
  Wait for an 8-core (or the rumored 12 core) variants. Those will embarrass your threadripper.
  - soneil 6y ago
    I really can't wait to see what they'll do in the desktop space. For all the gushing reviews the M1 is receiving, it's worth remembering this is their entry-level machines. As it stands right now, I have an 18 month old 27" iMac with 64GB ram and an AMD gpu - and an 8GB M1. And I'm preferring the M1 for almost any task that doesn't demand the real estate.
  - nix23 6y ago
    >Wait for an 8-core (or the rumored 12 core) variants. Those will embarrass your threadripper. It will not, my TR has 64 cores 128 Thread and you know whats the best thing? 128GB Ram...and imagine that..they aren't even soldered...and i even can exchange my GPU..or slap in 2 others. And if apple ever brings out a M1 Workstation, i can probably buy 3 other Server/Workstations with that money.
    - valuearb 6y ago
      Your TR is what, 280 watts TDP? nearly 20 times more than a M1. And is 30% slower in single core. Firestorm Cores use less than 4 watts each. A 16 firestorm core Mx will produce roughly the same multicore performance as your TR, with a less than 70 watt TDP. And a $65 M1 dusts a 4800h that costs over 4x as much and using 1/3 the power. Top end ThreadRippers cost $2,000 to $3,000 each. You can bet an Apple Mx ThreadRipper killer isn’t going to cost more than $500 given it only needs 4x the cores of the $65 M1.
      - thu2111 6y ago
        How does that matter though? His machine isn't sitting on his lap or running on a battery. Electricity isn't that expensive.
        6y ago
- simonh 6y ago
  He's talking about the vast majority of PC chips sold today, who's power consumption / performance / thermal ratios just got marmalised. You're quite right, your machine and in fact everyone else's are still just as good as they were a few weeks ago. I got an Intel 5K iMac in the summer and I'm still very happy with it. I need to be able to run windows and Linux in VMs so M1 isn't for me right now. It's no for you either. Having said that, your manufacturer of your Threadripper is now on notice. Apple isn't done with the M1, more powerful desktop chips are on their way over the next few years and there's a very good chance they'll do exactly what they just did to Intel and AMDs mobile chipsets to the high end stuff. Apple are coming for them, and not being impressed now isn't going to serve them well down the line.
  - pathartl 6y ago
    It's all going to come down to user experience and versatility. Apple is doing some crazy stuff with the M1, but I personally would chock (most of it) it up more to being clever than true innovation. I think only Intel needs to be concerned right now because they're being outpaced by both AMD and Apple. Additionally if the acquisition of Arm by Nvidia results in what people expect, Intel will basically be losing out in every market. Going back to versatility, there's no way that AWS or Azure is going to move to Apple silicon for their infrastructure, so there's still a massive market for AMD or other Arm manufacturers to target. For the consumer side unless Apple releases a chip that results in them making a sub-$800 laptop, they're just simply not going to capture a large market. With the rise of devices like Chromebooks in education and home there's still something to be said for Apple devices just being too expensive. In general, Apple devices also leave a LOT to be desired for any sort of large scale enterprise organization. Unless they go back to their 90's and early 00's mindset, I just can't see this changing. It's certainly exciting to see the CPU market being upended by Apple and AMD, as well as the potential future for a large architecture shift, but I don't think there's any real threat to market shares as a whole.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      You don’t just go and make ever part of your chip architecture wider by being clever. Well, there was probably some cleverness involved, but it’s not like this has been a one-off trick.
- alwillis 6y ago
  but my threadripper's are not impressed with some 4 core M1 The M1 has 8 CPU cores, 8 GPU cores and 16 Neural Engine cores. It also runs at 10 watts and maxes out at 24 watts. A Threadripper starts at over 100 watts…
  - bfgoodrich 6y ago
    To be fair, 4 of the cores on the M1 are efficiency cores and are very low performance (but sufficient performance, at incredible efficiency, for a lot of casual ongoing background things). An 8 performance core M1 would be a monster. Not sure if it maxes out at 24 watts. Someone measured wall power of a Mac Mini hitting 21 watts at full load, but that's including power supply inefficiency, all of the supporting circuitry and IO, a fan, flash storage, etc.
    - wtallis 6y ago
      > 4 of the cores on the M1 are efficiency cores and are very low performance (but sufficient performance, at incredible efficiency, for a lot of casual ongoing background things). I think you're underselling the small cores a bit. Their microarchitecture is roughly comparable to a Cortex-A75, which was the high-performance cores in Snapdragon 845 phones like the Samsung Galaxy S9. But Apple clocks them about 26% slower than the SD845 did, so maybe we should be comparing against Galaxy S8 instead: flagship Android performance from 3 years ago. That's capable of a lot more than just casual background processing. Samsung introduced their DeX docking station for smartphone-powered desktop usage back with the S8 generation, when their phones only had as much computational power as the Apple M1's smaller cores.
      - bfgoodrich 6y ago
        Pulling other cores into this discussion does nothing but muddy the waters. The Firestorm cores in the M1 are 4.5X faster at SPECfp than the Icestorm cores. The Firestorm cores in the M1 are 3.1X faster at SPECint than the Icestorm cores. In my world, the 3.1 - 4.5X faster sibling makes them very low performance, relatively. In a fully working together scenario, the "8" core M1 is equal in performance to a conceptual 4.5 core Firestorm part (see the Geekbench scaling, for instance). This, again, has positively nothing to do with any other core or part. Bizarre that anyone thinks this is somehow negative or dismissive of the M1. It is an extraordinary chip. But they intentionally, purposefully put 4 very low performance -- compared to Firestorm -- cores because it matches the computing model of users average workload.
- sib 6y ago
  Well, if you're not going to consider about power consumption, Fugaku (and its 28MW consumption) would like a word with you. https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/311995-japans-new-arm-based-supercomputer-is-the-fastest-in-the-world https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/311995-japans-new-arm-ba... I think his point about moving the bounds of the power (and heat) / performance tradeoff is valid.
- free2OSS 6y ago
  I'm completely with you. The hardest programs to run will not benefit here. I don't need chrome to open up 0.1s faster.
  - nix23 6y ago
    Well it's really good for a laptop, but praising it as the fastest and best cpu is just rubbish.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > Not sure what shitty machine hes talking about, but my threadripper's are not impressed with some 4 core M1. Gruber greatly exaggerates here. Particularly mentioning the Mac Pro in the same paragraph. Apple's M1 isn't competing with higher end Intel/ AMD desktop class CPUs with external GPUs. The M1 is a laptop CPU, designed for good performance with good thermals and excellent battery life. It will be interesting to see what they come up with over the next couple years to replace the CPU in the iMac and Mac Pro. But that is next year.
- viktorcode 6y ago
  The fact that you have to compare a high-end CPU against the base level M1 to show it isn't the fastest underlines Gruber's point pretty well.
the_af 6y ago
> I want to believe. If we can end up with superfast, supercool ARM-based Linux laptops, that'd be a huge deal :)
- jack_pp 6y ago
  Let's not forget the super long battery. While I dislike apple and have never owned any of their devices I can't help but feel thankful to them because now that we know this is possible soon others will re-create their success and we will hopefully have the same perks on a more open platform
- alwillis 6y ago
  If we can end up with superfast, supercool ARM-based Linux laptops, that'd be a huge deal :) Apple showed Debian running in a VM on an M1 prototype Mac nearly 6 months ago. I get that it won't be acceptable for some Linux diehards but the superfast, supercool ARM laptop running Linux will soon be an M1 MacBook Pro.
  - the_af 6y ago
    If I can get it to run Linux not on a VM, but natively and without coexisting with macOS at all, then it'll be good enough for me!... ...except I cannot afford a macbook. The one I'm using now was paid for by my employer. More generally, I'd love to see fast ARM platforms not built by Apple.
    - Toutouxc 6y ago
      I don't think you really pay that much extra for an Apple machine, especially for the M1 ones. I'm afraid that when/if fast ARM alternatives arrive, they will probably cost 80-100 % of what the MacBooks cost. So basically, if you can't afford a MacBook today, you won't be able to afford a comparable high-end ARM offering from, say, Dell.
      - snazz 6y ago
        One big difference is that MacBooks (and Apple products in general) retain their value far better than any other computer brand. If you're looking at the used market to save money, a Dell looks way cheaper because it's depreciated far more than the Apple machine.
s3cur3 6y ago
It's not just "ARM is fast," though—Apple's ARM chips in particular beat the pants off their ARM competitors. (See benchmarks of any iPhone compared to flagship Android devices.) I don't think you should expect similar levels of performance from a run-of-the-mill ARM chip on the desktop (though I'm happy to be shown benchmarks to the contrary).
- HJain13 6y ago
  It depends on what you're comparing: A14 on phones have a Multi Core score which would be quite comparable to Snapdragon 888 (extrapolating a 20% boost over SD865) that was just announced all while A14 being clocked higher (3.0ghz 4 core vs 2.84 x 1, 3 x 2.4) comparing performance cores. Single thread OTOH Apple wins comfortably but I would suspect X1 to reduce the lead a bit. As for AI performance Apple claimed 11 TOPs, while Qualcomm claims 25 TOPs
  - jcheng 6y ago
    A14 has two performance cores.
- simias 6y ago
  Apple's ARM SoCs are definitely ahead, but it's not like the competition is hugely far behind. Top of the line Android phones and tablets perform well enough for most desktop tasks IMO. It's mostly the software and I/O that makes them unusable as such.
  - zepto 6y ago
    The numbers say otherwise.
    - ChrisLTD 6y ago
      The numbers show that the other chips are slower, but they don't show that they are "unusable".
cbhl 6y ago
I think in the last year or so we hit an inflection point for ARM performance that makes it acceptable. The Raspberry Pi 4 / Raspberry Pi 400 are halfway decent to use. The Lenovo Chromebook Duet is probably the first ARM-based Chromebook where I haven't felt constrained to keeping only three tabs open (and although it still struggles with some of the largest spreadsheets and dashboards at work, it is a delightful second-screen device). But I think the M1 still has an edge because of the vertical integration between software and hardware -- if you previously wrote an app against Core Video or Metal, it should get hardware acceleration once you recompile it for the M1. Whereas if similar accelerators were exposed in Linux or Windows you'd probably have to write against a new custom API/library (such as nvenc).
piokoch 6y ago
I am not sure if the derogatory tone is fair. This is just example how progress works. Not that long time ago Apple had to be saved by some pennies thrown by Microsoft. Not that long time ago Apple was moving from Motorola processors to Intel ones. There is nothing bad that someone stayed behind. Someone has to stay behind if we want progress. No reason to insult predecessors. Planc and Dirac weren't making fun of Newton. Minitel was used in France as some simple version of Internet years before Internet was created. Was Minitel bad? Should we make fun of it? Was Minitel standing in its underwear in front of Internet? Has Dirac stolen Newton pants? Intel made a lot of great stuff. Now Apple is making great stuff (or, to be precise, TSMC does). Next year someone else is going to make great stuff. Maybe Apple maybe not. Intel and AMD chips are not that far behind, depending on what benchmark is used, even though they use older 14/10 or 7nm technology. I also really hate the concept of not being able to upgrade RAM - If I use Mac and I need more RAM I need to throw away my old Apple laptop and buy a new one. So I have to spend way more money, not to mention impact on environment. So, today, I am still choosing Intel/AMD computer, I can install whatever operating system I wish and upgrade my system to whatever configuration I dream about and I can afford now or in future.
- simias 6y ago
  I agree with you but I basically filtered that as "typical Mac fanboy noise" and try to search for insightful content which I think this piece has, in spite of its "I have a shrine dedicated to Steve Jobs in my living room" tone.
- zepto 6y ago
  The point about being able to upgrade ram or upgrade to whatever you want doesn’t make sense. A ram upgrade will never compensate for a less efficient memory architecture. There is no CPU architecture other than Apple’s that will make your laptop faster because AMD and Intel are thermally limited, so there is nothing to upgrade to. The only situation in which you are right, is if you are talking about a high end desktop tower.
  - nix23 6y ago
    >The point about being able to upgrade ram or upgrade to whatever you want doesn’t make sense. If my program needs 64GB of ram, your 8GB highly efficient "memory architecture" can do nothing about it...you have to know that even my gpu has 16GB alone. But i have to say that 8GB are probably enough for your Chrome Browser.
yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
> I think it's a bit unfair to lump Linux in there since it's been running on ARM and other embedded, low-power devices basically forever, but it is true that few of us run our Linux desktop on an ARM board. We aren't running ARM on our desktops because there aren't ARM desktops for us to use. The market jumps from low-end boards like the Pi and Pine's lineups - which are excellent for what they are, but suffer from poor performance and I/O - to the high end where ex. https://www.asacomputers.com/Cavium-ThunderX-ARM.html https://www.asacomputers.com/Cavium-ThunderX-ARM.html looks like a nice system but $2,820 is a bit of a barrier to entry.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > We aren't running ARM on our desktops because there aren't ARM desktops for us to use. Indeed, while ARM based Linux desktops hit the price and energy efficiency on the nose, they aren't going to wow anyone with performance.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    Exactly! I would love to switch my systems off of x86, but I can't buy anything performant for a price that I'm willing to spend on hardware. I might yet try a Pi 4 as a desktop with USB for disk, but that's hacky and still suffers from performance problems. Or, I could get something with good performance, either POWER or ARM, but then I'd have to pay through the nose for the privilege. Now, some of this is market size: I get my x86 boxes at a huge discount by buying used, and high-end ARM/POWER machines aren't popular enough to really show up on eBay (yet). But in practice, there's just no good options.
  - koffiezet 6y ago
    The thing is not just "ARM", it's Apple's implementation. Their A* mobile cpu lineup destroys any competing mobile ARM CPU, and the M1 evolved from that. So just running ARM isn't going to save anyone.
- maximilianburke 6y ago
  The ThunderX is also, what, 4-5 years old now? There are no ThunderX3 desktops, are there?
ekianjo 6y ago
> But I think the overarching point is true: now desktop and laptop makers can't just pretend that having a hot and/or slow, clunky, noisy x86-based architecture is just a fact of life. I hope and expect that it'll help create a new generation of ARM-based laptops and maybe even desktops that will run cool and smooth. Be careful what you wish for. X86 is the most open architecture right now. ARM, on the other hand, has locked bootloaders, messy device trees and so on. You can see that virtually every Linux distro running on an ARM SOC needs some specific tweaks.
- daenney 6y ago
  > Be careful what you wish for. X86 is the most open architecture right now You might want to take a look at PowerPC/OpenPOWER. ARM not being very open is mostly because there's been limited development interest in it, aside from specialised devices, and those companies have no real need or interest to have open things. Doesn't mean ARM itself can't evolve past it.
  - Koshkin 6y ago
    > ARM not being very open is mostly because there's been limited development interest in it, aside from specialised devices That's an extremely weird thing to say...
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I know very little about this space, but presumably that will change if/when a significant portion of the laptop space (and probably the server space as well) moves from x86 to ARM? It might be painful for early adopters for a few years, but I would expect this stuff to get ironed out in time, no?
  - buran77 6y ago
    No, that ship has sailed. Anything new that comes now can be built according to the expectations smartphones have set over the past decade and a half. Closed systems that are treated like disposable items. Even PCs in their mobile incarnation are now far less open and flexible than they used to be. The reason PCs are still open is historical, they started like this and people can't really see PCs any other way but they're a dying breed and whatever comes after is a different game with different rules. We'll have some niche manufacturer building something more open for the small segment of enthusiasts.
free2OSS 6y ago
The whole narrative has changed over the last few weeks too. "Fastest chip" uhh well no.. "Fast for this one thing", yeah it's 0.1s faster opening that program no one ever said was slow. "It has good battery life" So this is the new narrative? Are nerds constantly fighting back against Apple marketing and they are adapting? Usually their marketing team just insists over and over. Maybe because this is actually measurable (unlike privacy and security) their legal team is holding the marketing team back.
nvarsj 6y ago
Such a silly argument. An M1 Mac embarrasses no one but prior Macbooks, as it only runs OS X. There is no useful comparison to Windows or Linux. It's as asinine as comparing a mobile phone performance to a desktop PC.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  How are 2 laptops running different operating systems not comparable? The similarities of a Windows laptop and a Macbook far outweigh the differences.
  - nvarsj 6y ago
    Because the software I use that works on Linux or Windows doesn't exist or cannot be run on OS X. CUDA doesn't even support OS X anymore. If I can't run my OS/software of choice, it doesn't matter how great M1 is.
    - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
      Oh so because this laptop doesn't work for YOU, anyone who compares it to Windows or Linux is making a "silly argument". Gotcha.
      - nvarsj 6y ago
        I think my original response was a bit overly dramatic. But my point still remains. I don't think you can compare an OS X based laptop to anything else. The software available is far too different, and OS X is much more locked down (and getting even more locked down).
Skunkleton 6y ago
It is fair to lump Linux in there. Linux is supported on pretty much every largish Arm system other than Apples, at least if you include Android Linux. No other Arm system comes close to matching the M1 in terms of performance. I don't think that is an indictment of Linux. It is likely if the specs for the M1 were released, Linux could wring more performance out of the M1 than MacOS. At least in some workloads.
refulgentis 6y ago
I don't understand this _extremely_ common viewpoint: Intel has been putting out awesome fanless chips for Windows and ChromeOS for a couple years now, and Tiger Lake scores ~1400 single threaded/3700 multithread on 4 cores in GeekBench. M1 is __awesome__ but it's exactly what you'd expect from a Tiger Lake die shrink, which is coincidentally, the same die M1 is on.

by simias 6y ago

nix23 6y ago

>Those machines are just standing around in their underwear now because the M1 stole all their pants. Not sure what shitty machine hes talking about, but my threadripper's are not impressed with some 4 core M1.

trinix912 6y ago
This is not a completely fair comparison, your threadrippers surely use more energy and produce more heat than the M1 chip.
- hajile 6y ago
  Add 50 more PCIe lanes, double the bus width, 270mb of cache, 60 cores and a communication protocol then get back to me. Anandtech ran the numbers a couple years ago and an EPYC processor spent around 60% of its budget on Infinity Fabric (up to 90% of used power with only a couple cores being used). An M2 based chip might get more done, but it won't use much less power. In truth, I'd guess there's a good chance it bottlenecks on the IO and performance doesn't increase as expected (without widening IO further with all the extra power costs).
- reallydontask 6y ago
  Sometimes it matters other times not. If you want absolute performance then it doesn't matter, if you want efficiency then it does.
zionic 6y ago
Wait for an 8-core (or the rumored 12 core) variants. Those will embarrass your threadripper.
- soneil 6y ago
  I really can't wait to see what they'll do in the desktop space. For all the gushing reviews the M1 is receiving, it's worth remembering this is their entry-level machines. As it stands right now, I have an 18 month old 27" iMac with 64GB ram and an AMD gpu - and an 8GB M1. And I'm preferring the M1 for almost any task that doesn't demand the real estate.
- nix23 6y ago
  >Wait for an 8-core (or the rumored 12 core) variants. Those will embarrass your threadripper. It will not, my TR has 64 cores 128 Thread and you know whats the best thing? 128GB Ram...and imagine that..they aren't even soldered...and i even can exchange my GPU..or slap in 2 others. And if apple ever brings out a M1 Workstation, i can probably buy 3 other Server/Workstations with that money.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Your TR is what, 280 watts TDP? nearly 20 times more than a M1. And is 30% slower in single core. Firestorm Cores use less than 4 watts each. A 16 firestorm core Mx will produce roughly the same multicore performance as your TR, with a less than 70 watt TDP. And a $65 M1 dusts a 4800h that costs over 4x as much and using 1/3 the power. Top end ThreadRippers cost $2,000 to $3,000 each. You can bet an Apple Mx ThreadRipper killer isn’t going to cost more than $500 given it only needs 4x the cores of the $65 M1.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      How does that matter though? His machine isn't sitting on his lap or running on a battery. Electricity isn't that expensive.
      - 6y ago
simonh 6y ago
He's talking about the vast majority of PC chips sold today, who's power consumption / performance / thermal ratios just got marmalised. You're quite right, your machine and in fact everyone else's are still just as good as they were a few weeks ago. I got an Intel 5K iMac in the summer and I'm still very happy with it. I need to be able to run windows and Linux in VMs so M1 isn't for me right now. It's no for you either. Having said that, your manufacturer of your Threadripper is now on notice. Apple isn't done with the M1, more powerful desktop chips are on their way over the next few years and there's a very good chance they'll do exactly what they just did to Intel and AMDs mobile chipsets to the high end stuff. Apple are coming for them, and not being impressed now isn't going to serve them well down the line.
- pathartl 6y ago
  It's all going to come down to user experience and versatility. Apple is doing some crazy stuff with the M1, but I personally would chock (most of it) it up more to being clever than true innovation. I think only Intel needs to be concerned right now because they're being outpaced by both AMD and Apple. Additionally if the acquisition of Arm by Nvidia results in what people expect, Intel will basically be losing out in every market. Going back to versatility, there's no way that AWS or Azure is going to move to Apple silicon for their infrastructure, so there's still a massive market for AMD or other Arm manufacturers to target. For the consumer side unless Apple releases a chip that results in them making a sub-$800 laptop, they're just simply not going to capture a large market. With the rise of devices like Chromebooks in education and home there's still something to be said for Apple devices just being too expensive. In general, Apple devices also leave a LOT to be desired for any sort of large scale enterprise organization. Unless they go back to their 90's and early 00's mindset, I just can't see this changing. It's certainly exciting to see the CPU market being upended by Apple and AMD, as well as the potential future for a large architecture shift, but I don't think there's any real threat to market shares as a whole.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    You don’t just go and make ever part of your chip architecture wider by being clever. Well, there was probably some cleverness involved, but it’s not like this has been a one-off trick.
alwillis 6y ago
but my threadripper's are not impressed with some 4 core M1 The M1 has 8 CPU cores, 8 GPU cores and 16 Neural Engine cores. It also runs at 10 watts and maxes out at 24 watts. A Threadripper starts at over 100 watts…
- bfgoodrich 6y ago
  To be fair, 4 of the cores on the M1 are efficiency cores and are very low performance (but sufficient performance, at incredible efficiency, for a lot of casual ongoing background things). An 8 performance core M1 would be a monster. Not sure if it maxes out at 24 watts. Someone measured wall power of a Mac Mini hitting 21 watts at full load, but that's including power supply inefficiency, all of the supporting circuitry and IO, a fan, flash storage, etc.
  - wtallis 6y ago
    > 4 of the cores on the M1 are efficiency cores and are very low performance (but sufficient performance, at incredible efficiency, for a lot of casual ongoing background things). I think you're underselling the small cores a bit. Their microarchitecture is roughly comparable to a Cortex-A75, which was the high-performance cores in Snapdragon 845 phones like the Samsung Galaxy S9. But Apple clocks them about 26% slower than the SD845 did, so maybe we should be comparing against Galaxy S8 instead: flagship Android performance from 3 years ago. That's capable of a lot more than just casual background processing. Samsung introduced their DeX docking station for smartphone-powered desktop usage back with the S8 generation, when their phones only had as much computational power as the Apple M1's smaller cores.
    - bfgoodrich 6y ago
      Pulling other cores into this discussion does nothing but muddy the waters. The Firestorm cores in the M1 are 4.5X faster at SPECfp than the Icestorm cores. The Firestorm cores in the M1 are 3.1X faster at SPECint than the Icestorm cores. In my world, the 3.1 - 4.5X faster sibling makes them very low performance, relatively. In a fully working together scenario, the "8" core M1 is equal in performance to a conceptual 4.5 core Firestorm part (see the Geekbench scaling, for instance). This, again, has positively nothing to do with any other core or part. Bizarre that anyone thinks this is somehow negative or dismissive of the M1. It is an extraordinary chip. But they intentionally, purposefully put 4 very low performance -- compared to Firestorm -- cores because it matches the computing model of users average workload.
sib 6y ago
Well, if you're not going to consider about power consumption, Fugaku (and its 28MW consumption) would like a word with you. https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/311995-japans-new-arm-based-supercomputer-is-the-fastest-in-the-world https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/311995-japans-new-arm-ba... I think his point about moving the bounds of the power (and heat) / performance tradeoff is valid.
free2OSS 6y ago
I'm completely with you. The hardest programs to run will not benefit here. I don't need chrome to open up 0.1s faster.
- nix23 6y ago
  Well it's really good for a laptop, but praising it as the fastest and best cpu is just rubbish.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> Not sure what shitty machine hes talking about, but my threadripper's are not impressed with some 4 core M1. Gruber greatly exaggerates here. Particularly mentioning the Mac Pro in the same paragraph. Apple's M1 isn't competing with higher end Intel/ AMD desktop class CPUs with external GPUs. The M1 is a laptop CPU, designed for good performance with good thermals and excellent battery life. It will be interesting to see what they come up with over the next couple years to replace the CPU in the iMac and Mac Pro. But that is next year.
viktorcode 6y ago
The fact that you have to compare a high-end CPU against the base level M1 to show it isn't the fastest underlines Gruber's point pretty well.

the_af 6y ago

> I want to believe. If we can end up with superfast, supercool ARM-based Linux laptops, that'd be a huge deal :)

jack_pp 6y ago
Let's not forget the super long battery. While I dislike apple and have never owned any of their devices I can't help but feel thankful to them because now that we know this is possible soon others will re-create their success and we will hopefully have the same perks on a more open platform
alwillis 6y ago
If we can end up with superfast, supercool ARM-based Linux laptops, that'd be a huge deal :) Apple showed Debian running in a VM on an M1 prototype Mac nearly 6 months ago. I get that it won't be acceptable for some Linux diehards but the superfast, supercool ARM laptop running Linux will soon be an M1 MacBook Pro.
- the_af 6y ago
  If I can get it to run Linux not on a VM, but natively and without coexisting with macOS at all, then it'll be good enough for me!... ...except I cannot afford a macbook. The one I'm using now was paid for by my employer. More generally, I'd love to see fast ARM platforms not built by Apple.
  - Toutouxc 6y ago
    I don't think you really pay that much extra for an Apple machine, especially for the M1 ones. I'm afraid that when/if fast ARM alternatives arrive, they will probably cost 80-100 % of what the MacBooks cost. So basically, if you can't afford a MacBook today, you won't be able to afford a comparable high-end ARM offering from, say, Dell.
    - snazz 6y ago
      One big difference is that MacBooks (and Apple products in general) retain their value far better than any other computer brand. If you're looking at the used market to save money, a Dell looks way cheaper because it's depreciated far more than the Apple machine.

s3cur3 6y ago

It's not just "ARM is fast," though—Apple's ARM chips in particular beat the pants off their ARM competitors. (See benchmarks of any iPhone compared to flagship Android devices.) I don't think you should expect similar levels of performance from a run-of-the-mill ARM chip on the desktop (though I'm happy to be shown benchmarks to the contrary).

HJain13 6y ago
It depends on what you're comparing: A14 on phones have a Multi Core score which would be quite comparable to Snapdragon 888 (extrapolating a 20% boost over SD865) that was just announced all while A14 being clocked higher (3.0ghz 4 core vs 2.84 x 1, 3 x 2.4) comparing performance cores. Single thread OTOH Apple wins comfortably but I would suspect X1 to reduce the lead a bit. As for AI performance Apple claimed 11 TOPs, while Qualcomm claims 25 TOPs
- jcheng 6y ago
  A14 has two performance cores.
simias 6y ago
Apple's ARM SoCs are definitely ahead, but it's not like the competition is hugely far behind. Top of the line Android phones and tablets perform well enough for most desktop tasks IMO. It's mostly the software and I/O that makes them unusable as such.
- zepto 6y ago
  The numbers say otherwise.
  - ChrisLTD 6y ago
    The numbers show that the other chips are slower, but they don't show that they are "unusable".

cbhl 6y ago

I think in the last year or so we hit an inflection point for ARM performance that makes it acceptable. The Raspberry Pi 4 / Raspberry Pi 400 are halfway decent to use. The Lenovo Chromebook Duet is probably the first ARM-based Chromebook where I haven't felt constrained to keeping only three tabs open (and although it still struggles with some of the largest spreadsheets and dashboards at work, it is a delightful second-screen device). But I think the M1 still has an edge because of the vertical integration between software and hardware -- if you previously wrote an app against Core Video or Metal, it should get hardware acceleration once you recompile it for the M1. Whereas if similar accelerators were exposed in Linux or Windows you'd probably have to write against a new custom API/library (such as nvenc).

piokoch 6y ago

I am not sure if the derogatory tone is fair. This is just example how progress works. Not that long time ago Apple had to be saved by some pennies thrown by Microsoft. Not that long time ago Apple was moving from Motorola processors to Intel ones. There is nothing bad that someone stayed behind. Someone has to stay behind if we want progress. No reason to insult predecessors. Planc and Dirac weren't making fun of Newton. Minitel was used in France as some simple version of Internet years before Internet was created. Was Minitel bad? Should we make fun of it? Was Minitel standing in its underwear in front of Internet? Has Dirac stolen Newton pants? Intel made a lot of great stuff. Now Apple is making great stuff (or, to be precise, TSMC does). Next year someone else is going to make great stuff. Maybe Apple maybe not. Intel and AMD chips are not that far behind, depending on what benchmark is used, even though they use older 14/10 or 7nm technology. I also really hate the concept of not being able to upgrade RAM - If I use Mac and I need more RAM I need to throw away my old Apple laptop and buy a new one. So I have to spend way more money, not to mention impact on environment. So, today, I am still choosing Intel/AMD computer, I can install whatever operating system I wish and upgrade my system to whatever configuration I dream about and I can afford now or in future.

simias 6y ago
I agree with you but I basically filtered that as "typical Mac fanboy noise" and try to search for insightful content which I think this piece has, in spite of its "I have a shrine dedicated to Steve Jobs in my living room" tone.
zepto 6y ago
The point about being able to upgrade ram or upgrade to whatever you want doesn’t make sense. A ram upgrade will never compensate for a less efficient memory architecture. There is no CPU architecture other than Apple’s that will make your laptop faster because AMD and Intel are thermally limited, so there is nothing to upgrade to. The only situation in which you are right, is if you are talking about a high end desktop tower.
- nix23 6y ago
  >The point about being able to upgrade ram or upgrade to whatever you want doesn’t make sense. If my program needs 64GB of ram, your 8GB highly efficient "memory architecture" can do nothing about it...you have to know that even my gpu has 16GB alone. But i have to say that 8GB are probably enough for your Chrome Browser.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago

> I think it's a bit unfair to lump Linux in there since it's been running on ARM and other embedded, low-power devices basically forever, but it is true that few of us run our Linux desktop on an ARM board. We aren't running ARM on our desktops because there aren't ARM desktops for us to use. The market jumps from low-end boards like the Pi and Pine's lineups - which are excellent for what they are, but suffer from poor performance and I/O - to the high end where ex. https://www.asacomputers.com/Cavium-ThunderX-ARM.html https://www.asacomputers.com/Cavium-ThunderX-ARM.html looks like a nice system but $2,820 is a bit of a barrier to entry.

ogre_codes 6y ago
> We aren't running ARM on our desktops because there aren't ARM desktops for us to use. Indeed, while ARM based Linux desktops hit the price and energy efficiency on the nose, they aren't going to wow anyone with performance.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  Exactly! I would love to switch my systems off of x86, but I can't buy anything performant for a price that I'm willing to spend on hardware. I might yet try a Pi 4 as a desktop with USB for disk, but that's hacky and still suffers from performance problems. Or, I could get something with good performance, either POWER or ARM, but then I'd have to pay through the nose for the privilege. Now, some of this is market size: I get my x86 boxes at a huge discount by buying used, and high-end ARM/POWER machines aren't popular enough to really show up on eBay (yet). But in practice, there's just no good options.
- koffiezet 6y ago
  The thing is not just "ARM", it's Apple's implementation. Their A* mobile cpu lineup destroys any competing mobile ARM CPU, and the M1 evolved from that. So just running ARM isn't going to save anyone.
maximilianburke 6y ago
The ThunderX is also, what, 4-5 years old now? There are no ThunderX3 desktops, are there?

ekianjo 6y ago

> But I think the overarching point is true: now desktop and laptop makers can't just pretend that having a hot and/or slow, clunky, noisy x86-based architecture is just a fact of life. I hope and expect that it'll help create a new generation of ARM-based laptops and maybe even desktops that will run cool and smooth. Be careful what you wish for. X86 is the most open architecture right now. ARM, on the other hand, has locked bootloaders, messy device trees and so on. You can see that virtually every Linux distro running on an ARM SOC needs some specific tweaks.

daenney 6y ago
> Be careful what you wish for. X86 is the most open architecture right now You might want to take a look at PowerPC/OpenPOWER. ARM not being very open is mostly because there's been limited development interest in it, aside from specialised devices, and those companies have no real need or interest to have open things. Doesn't mean ARM itself can't evolve past it.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  > ARM not being very open is mostly because there's been limited development interest in it, aside from specialised devices That's an extremely weird thing to say...
throwaway894345 6y ago
I know very little about this space, but presumably that will change if/when a significant portion of the laptop space (and probably the server space as well) moves from x86 to ARM? It might be painful for early adopters for a few years, but I would expect this stuff to get ironed out in time, no?
- buran77 6y ago
  No, that ship has sailed. Anything new that comes now can be built according to the expectations smartphones have set over the past decade and a half. Closed systems that are treated like disposable items. Even PCs in their mobile incarnation are now far less open and flexible than they used to be. The reason PCs are still open is historical, they started like this and people can't really see PCs any other way but they're a dying breed and whatever comes after is a different game with different rules. We'll have some niche manufacturer building something more open for the small segment of enthusiasts.

free2OSS 6y ago

The whole narrative has changed over the last few weeks too. "Fastest chip" uhh well no.. "Fast for this one thing", yeah it's 0.1s faster opening that program no one ever said was slow. "It has good battery life" So this is the new narrative? Are nerds constantly fighting back against Apple marketing and they are adapting? Usually their marketing team just insists over and over. Maybe because this is actually measurable (unlike privacy and security) their legal team is holding the marketing team back.

nvarsj 6y ago

Such a silly argument. An M1 Mac embarrasses no one but prior Macbooks, as it only runs OS X. There is no useful comparison to Windows or Linux. It's as asinine as comparing a mobile phone performance to a desktop PC.

buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
How are 2 laptops running different operating systems not comparable? The similarities of a Windows laptop and a Macbook far outweigh the differences.
- nvarsj 6y ago
  Because the software I use that works on Linux or Windows doesn't exist or cannot be run on OS X. CUDA doesn't even support OS X anymore. If I can't run my OS/software of choice, it doesn't matter how great M1 is.
  - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    Oh so because this laptop doesn't work for YOU, anyone who compares it to Windows or Linux is making a "silly argument". Gotcha.
    - nvarsj 6y ago
      I think my original response was a bit overly dramatic. But my point still remains. I don't think you can compare an OS X based laptop to anything else. The software available is far too different, and OS X is much more locked down (and getting even more locked down).

Skunkleton 6y ago

It is fair to lump Linux in there. Linux is supported on pretty much every largish Arm system other than Apples, at least if you include Android Linux. No other Arm system comes close to matching the M1 in terms of performance. I don't think that is an indictment of Linux. It is likely if the specs for the M1 were released, Linux could wring more performance out of the M1 than MacOS. At least in some workloads.

refulgentis 6y ago

I don't understand this _extremely_ common viewpoint: Intel has been putting out awesome fanless chips for Windows and ChromeOS for a couple years now, and Tiger Lake scores ~1400 single threaded/3700 multithread on 4 cores in GeekBench. M1 is __awesome__ but it's exactly what you'd expect from a Tiger Lake die shrink, which is coincidentally, the same die M1 is on.