11 ms·

Apple Silicon M1 Disruption

133 points by edward 6y ago

Razengan 6y ago
> (If I may say so, that Note is worth re-reading if only for the amusement of noticing the similarity to the recent pooh-poohing of the newborn M1.) Apple's New Thing, 2001: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.500/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.5...
- FullyFunctional 6y ago
  There's a lesson for all of us to not leap to conclusion. In the case of the Apple iPhone I didn't see it and only boarded the train by iPhone 4 (and honestly, I think it was about the right time). In the case of M1 I _did_ expect a revolution and frankly one I had been waiting for for decades (the true cost of x86 is finally exposed). I can't wait to see if Apple can keep up the momentum.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >and honestly, I think it was about the right time Why so? I got the second model (3G), and if I could, I'd had gotten the first. It was already a giant leap from the smartphones of before (and I had the "flagship" models from other companies that were shit compared to it).
    - soneil 6y ago
      I didn't see it because I didn't really use my phone. It was used entirely to phone taxis, order pizza, and as a pager-of-sorts for the office to let me know when it was Overtime time. It didn't "click" until I had to replace my ipod, and got the ipod touch. It didn't take very long for me to realise the one thing it was missing was connectivity. Realistically I'm not even sure I was wrong. Calls & SMS are amongst the functions I use the least on my phone. It's still an ipod with connectivity.
  - oblio 6y ago
    > the true cost of x86 is finally exposed They've reinvented x86 at least twice: microcode and then x86_64. I wouldn't bury x86 yet. Plus a good chunk of the M1 computing prowess is not even the CPU, it's the additional hardware such as the neural engine cores and such. This is something you could put next to a Sparc core, it's not ARM specific.
    - mepian 6y ago
      x86 used microcode from the beginning: https://www.reenigne.org/blog/8086-microcode-disassembled/ https://www.reenigne.org/blog/8086-microcode-disassembled/
      - headsupftw 6y ago
        Maybe he meant to say micro-operations.
        oblio 6y ago
        Yes, you're right.
    - RantyDave 6y ago
      Nah, this is it for x86. The only relevant piece of x86 binary software is the Windows ecosystem ... and that runs on arm now. Everything else is either interpreted (Python, Ruby), JIT'ed (Java, C#) or can be compiled natively to arm anyway. All Apple have done is prove that it's possible.
      - oblio 6y ago
        Could be. However I'm doubtful that the PC market will move to a closed system similar to Apple's. So whoever comes in with ARM better be prepared for lots of competitions and low margins in a cutthroat environment. That's not a very attractive market proposition, especially since the x86 makers won't just take this lying down. I think we'll be in a weird place soon. Apple will be doing Apple things and increasing its market share but never taking over (maybe it will reach 20-25%? who knows). Many server environments will switch to ARM, especially the big cloud providers that can make their own chips. Qualcomm will push some more desktop class SOCs but I doubt they'll reach Apple's performance levels so they risk having their lunch eaten, especially by AMD. So it's possible that the PC desktop/laptop market might be "stuck" with x86 for many more decades. There is also a scenario where Intel or AMD come up with some brilliant designs and catch up completely or well enough to Apple in which case this will all have been a tempest in a teacup.
- random5634 6y ago
  I actually used whatever was pre iPod - I think it was a phone I loaded your favorite 20 songs on? Either way, for all the talking down of the iPod when it came out - for folks who wanted to listen to music it was total magic. I bought the first iPhone too, and didn’t have a clue that it wasn’t a good email device. I still use only windows / Linux server side - but this new “gimmick” of the M1 does have me interested
  - kergonath 6y ago
    I loved my Sony Ericsson phones. With a decent memory stick and headphones it felt like the future. In a way it was, but there were many limitations and I jumped to the iPhone one year after it became available without regrets.
  - bee_rider 6y ago
    There were more than a couple MP3 players before the iPod. I had a cool little device from Sandisk with, I think, a 512MB solid state drive? I bet it's still kicking. That thing was way cooler than an iPod, it ran off a AA battery (I think) and it seemed pretty tough. I dropped it in a slushy road puddle and it just kept trucking. The iPod had good capacity but the spinning drive in there was a huge failure point.
    - samcheng 6y ago
      I remember (at about the same time CDMA cell phones began getting popular) a standalone device with 32MB of storage, enough for like 20 songs or so. I think this was the one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300 Yes, rock solid, but it didn't hold a candle to the ipod, with its clicky scroll wheel that eased browsing, and its much larger HDD-based capacity.
gizmodo59 6y ago
I have seen so many articles on HN in front page about M1 over the past few weeks. Like a curious child I read all of them because somewhere in me I want to believe there exists a possibility of a giant leap for Desktop/Laptop. Having tried it myself, I should say this is going to be remembered just like the iPhone in 2007.
- untog 6y ago
  I doubt that very much. The iPhone was a true revelation: in user interface, in form factor, in the things it allowed you to do. The M1 is amazing but it doesn’t compare. Performance (both raw and thermal) is a big boost but it’s not going to reinvent computing.
  - czzr 6y ago
    It’s not the same, but this is significantly accelerating the end of x86, and the end of Intel (at least the end of the current dominance of both). Such shifts don’t come along that often.
    - totalZero 6y ago
      To put your comment in perspective: Intel has 90+% market share in servers. Apple has 15% market share in personal computers.
      - czzr 6y ago
        Sure, but I didn’t mean that the whole world will switch to Apple. The world will mostly switch to commodity ARM chips and Intel's margins will crumble. Might take 5-10 years. This is Intel’s Nokia moment, when they lost a dominant position to Samsung/Android. Apple was the catalyst there as well, but Apple did not directly kill Nokia. The industry shift Apple sparked killed them.
  - Aperocky 6y ago
    It won't reinvent UI, but it signaled the change to ARM and by extension, RISC. To a normal consumer, that's not a big deal (although 17 hour battery life is already pretty huge). To future PC hardware and server/backend infrastructure, that's a huge deal.
breck 6y ago
The name rang a bell so I just double checked: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gassée https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gassée He knows what he’s taking about.
- totalZero 6y ago
  This feels cynical to say, but I don't know whether to listen to Gassee wholeheartedly or to take his perspective with a grain of salt. On the one hand, he has deep experience with Apple and great knowledge of the computing industry, but on the other, he is an elderly technologist who was pushed out of Apple decades ago [1] and is no more relevant to M1 than anyone else in the industry. In either case, I tend to disagree with Gassee's attack on the Morehead review, and I don't believe that there is any need to connect Morehead's M1 opinion with his 64-bit iPhone opinion. M1 should indeed be judged on its instruction set limitations because that is one of its major differences versus x86. It would be careless to consider personal computing hardware while forcibly ignoring the sofware ecosystem that it supports. I also think it's a cheap shot to accuse Morehead of choosing his opinions based on a financial interest in the supremacy of x86. [1] https://mondaynote.com/50-years-in-tech-part-13-firing-frankness-3d17e207d1cf https://mondaynote.com/50-years-in-tech-part-13-firing-frank...
xenocratus 6y ago
> Now you got a big problem, because neither Intel, AMD, or Nvidia are going to license their intellectual property I keep seeing this line and wonder - "did people miss the news about Nvidia buying Arm?". Sure, there are still plenty of hurdles to pass until it's official, but take a look at the initial piece written by Nvidia about the acquisition: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-arm-for-40-billion-creating-worlds-premier-computing-company-for-the-age-of-ai https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-arm-for... Specifically this line: > NVIDIA will continue Arm’s open-licensing model and customer neutrality and expand Arm’s IP licensing portfolio with NVIDIA technology
- knolan 6y ago
  Won’t be the first or the last acquisition to say everything will stay the same.
  - gabereiser 6y ago
    > Won’t be the first or the last acquisition to say everything will stay the same. Then change it a year or so down the road, requiring you to have an account on some other non-related service in order for your hardware to work. /sarcasm
- kergonath 6y ago
  They have to say that, though, don’t they? They need to convince a bunch of regulators that their purchase of ARM won’t cause too much damage. They couldn’t really say that they would be going to choke a whole industry by dropping the licensing model, even if it were the case.
- MBCook 6y ago
  They may license the ARM technology, but will they license their own GPU technology? That’s what a Dell would need to make their own SOC.
- GregarianChild 6y ago
  An interesting question here is: which of the big Arm customers are going to trust NVidia? As far as I understand, Arm's license requires licensees to give Arm detailed and advanced information about implementations (IIRC long before they are fabbed). This would give NVidia unprecedented insight into the competition's processors long before they hit the market. Will Samsung or Apple be happy about that? Will AMD be happy about that? Given the tension between the US and China, it's almost inconceivable that the Chinese Arm customers will be happy about this. China is the world's biggest processor market, with a government mandate to reduce dependency on foreign technology! Hello RISC-V!
chrispeel 6y ago
> Will Microsoft now offer an official Windows 10 on ARM that can run on M1 Macs? ... and how will HP, Asus, Dell and others react? I guess Windows will come to the M1, including natively. I confess that I see the M1 as a "sustaining innovation" rather than a "disruptive innovation" using terminology that Christensen [1] (and Dediu [2]) use. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation [2] https://twitter.com/asymco https://twitter.com/asymco
tyingq 6y ago
I do give Apple credit for a terrific design. It would be interesting to know how much of the performance is attributable to the smaller process size, on-package memory, etc. Things others will be able to replicate. It's not clear to me how much of it is true competitive advantage.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  I would assume that you'd have to try and scale for what ARM allows them to get away with (if you will) - e.g. ARM allows wider decoding, while also taking into account the increased density allowing you to get more bang for the same buck (so to speak)
- mamp 6y ago
  This article gives a pretty good overview of the components that make the M1 different (nb. I'm not a hardware person): https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2 https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-32...
  - alwillis 6y ago
    This is a great article. How about lets start with the M1 being able to process double the number of instructions per clock cycle… Every ARM instruction is the same size; Intel instructions range in size from 1 to 15 bytes, making decoding them a pain in the ass.
- greedo 6y ago
  If you compare the A series chips Apple has been designing and compare them to the Snapdragon line, it's pretty clear that process size doesn't matter much; the Android phones have been trying to catch up for 7 generations and still fail.
naderkhalil 6y ago
> Will Microsoft now offer an official Windows 10 on ARM that can run on M1 Macs?...This could create trouble in the x86 PC world. Or will Microsoft, less committed to Windows than it is to its applications running everywhere, be content to see Office and more run (and generate revenue) on M1 Macs…and how will HP, Asus, Dell and others react? This is just the beginning of a new competitive layout. Could this be good news for Linux?
- untog 6y ago
  I was a little confused by this part because MS is already happy for Office to run everywhere, in browsers. Given the in house expertise that’s given us VS Code I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see an Electron powered Office app suite in the not too distant future. Linux would (and does) benefit just as much as Mac.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Why? If everyone gives up and just builds everything on the web then it's an indirect boon for Linux, but M1 will probably never ever properly support Linux. Unless Apple have a complete change of heart, if it ever does it will be as a result of far too much work done for free
  - alblue 6y ago
    Early days, but Hypervisor.framework patches are being built that allow QEMU to run an Arm build of Linux (and Windows) at native speed. https://twitter.com/jonmasters/status/1333555759737663489 https://twitter.com/jonmasters/status/1333555759737663489 The reality is that some of the drivers for the M1 chip will never arrive, but that if you want to run Linux (or Windows) Arm code then you can do so soon.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      The issue for me is that I'd love to have an ARM laptop but I also love playing with the hardware and measuring it, trusting the hypervisor makes that a lot harder. If I was a web developer I'd probably buy one (not a knock on web developers, if I was any good at it I'd do it), but I like playing in the grey area of the Venn diagram where microarchitecture, compilers, and kernels meet.
Aperocky 6y ago
> BFD (Big Fantastic Disruption) There's no uncertainty about what the F stood for in that acronym.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Welcome to ~~artistic flourish~~
trynewideas 6y ago
Since these keep floating up, I'm already exhausted with this specific rebuttal to Morehead's review: > As pointed out in John Gruber’s hard takedown of Moorhead’s piece, most of the problems he encountered were software problems, not M1 hardware issues. Morehead's allegiances and work are relevant biases, as are Gruber's. But Morehead's review wasn't of the M1 processor or architecture as a technology. It was a review of the 13" M1 MacBook Pro as an end-user device. Software problems _are_ worth raising in a review of who should buy an M1 MacBook, and why someone shouldn't. Because of the architecture change, the M1 has to come up — to omit its role in requiring Rosetta would be lying through omission. It's not an indictment of the technology, and shouldn't be controversial, for an end-user review to say the first OS revision targeting the first generation of a piece of hardware maybe isn't ready for every task thrown at it, especially those that rely on the newest of the new software components. It's why my workplace isn't even mostly on Catalina yet, much less Big Sur. For the love of whatever stupid internet points people are trying to win, let Morehead's review go. It's contributor report on Forbes, which makes it only slightly more relevant than a Reddit post. Folks can absolutely find better things to squabble over about these computers.
- faitswulff 6y ago
  I think the reason it keeps coming up is that it is the most prominent bad review, but due to Moorhead’s allegiances, poor calls in the past, and eclectic selection of software, his negative review comes across as being in bad faith.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    or maybe it just really is in bad faith?
    - whynotminot 6y ago
      It's part of the Forbes contributor network. Bad faith is kind of assumed. edit: Downvote if you want, I'm not kidding. Disingenuous hot takes without much connection to reality is a feature over at Forbes when it comes to tech, not a bug. They're literally traffic mercenaries over there. I'm sure Moorhead is smarting maybe little from the internet anger, but also not too upset to collect a nice bonus before Christmas. I'm sure another Forbes contributor will reprise the role of shit-stirrer-in-chief for the inevitable M2 as well.
codeflo 6y ago
Is there already an in-depth analysis of the M1 by someone with a low-level perspective? I want to develop an intuition on why/where the M1 is fast. E.g. is it branch prediction, reordering, memory latency. Unfortunately, most articles don’t go any deeper than “seems to be optimized for macOS”.
- kergonath 6y ago
  Andrei Frumusanu’s articles at AnandTech are quite good: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... There is a reasonable discussion of the cache hierarchy, decoding units and out-of-order window.
- akmarinov 6y ago
  https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2 https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-32... One more article going into it. Better out of order execution seeming to be a big one.
shmerl 6y ago
I find the quote there that equates x86 to Windows ecosystem funny. That's just wrong.
phkahler 6y ago
Where are some benchmarks comparing M1 to the best x86 processors from AMD? Since M1 is only 4 big cores maybe it would be fair to compare it to the 4 core 8 thread APUs and not crush the poor thing with an 8 core version. A1 is cool. Good for Apple, but it's not the computing miracle it's made out to be.
- jaimex2 6y ago
  That's not how things work in the Apple world. Anything Apple release is disruptive and innovative even if its been done before. Just ignore it and continue on in reality.
- MBCook 6y ago
  You’re right, it doesn’t stand up to the multi core performance of the absolute top of the line Xeon chip. But that chip probably cost more than the entire laptop with an M1 in it. Apple started at the bottom of their lineup. Given the performance of the processor compared not only to the processors that it replaces but to others higher in their lineups, it’s extremely impressive. Is it the absolute number one best in every metric on the planet? No. But you shouldn’t expect that part in a $999 laptop. This was their first try, in the low end. In six months (or so) when they release stronger Macs with a different in one (or M2) we’ll see how well they scale it.
  - neogodless 6y ago
    I keep seeing this divide where people that are used to Apple products using Intel chips are only capable of comparing the Apple Silicon M1 to Intel products. Here, in response to someone discussing AMD processors, the Intel Xeon is raised as an example. Sorry, no - the Intel Xeon is not an AMD processor. To be sure, the comparison between the APUs found in $999 laptops should be compared to the M1. The AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS, for example, is a 35W part though that's more of a $1200 laptop part. The Ryzen 7 4800U and Ryzen 7 4800H are both found in $999 laptops though. There are definitely cases where the M1 wins (many single core benchmarks, and efficiency) and other cases where the 4900HS, 4800H and sometimes even 4800U wins (several benchmarks that take advantage of the 8 cores/16 threads, and the higher TDP.) You don't need to go to the high-end server chips, like the 128 core EPYC to find competition for the M1, but you do have to take a step outside of the Apple ecosystem that only has the old Intel and the new Apple Silicon.
no_wizard 6y ago
If the M1 proves anything at all it’s that ARM 64 can and will be a performance chip not just a chip that is strictly intended for low power devices. I think that’s what the M1 will finally signal to all the other vendors, even though many have been saying this for a long time it’s proof in the wild that you can build desktop class ARM chips. My other thought is I wonder if this will open up the idea of vendors support specific co-processors analogous to how Apple has things like the T1, some offloading to a specific chip for ML etc. This is exciting if more vendors do this, I predict the first one to do it in an open way will win the day long term as it will be attractive to all upstream manufacturers like Dell etc
- Someone 6y ago
  I don’t think we know that for sure yet. Firstly, Apple has access to better chip technology. That gives them extra room and extra speed for free (actually, for a lot of dollars) Secondly, AFAIK, nobody has attempted something similar with a different CPU. It is possible (but IMHO not likely), that a similar approach as the M1 (optimize a system , not individual chips), but with x64 (or x86, or MIPS, or RISC-V) would outperform the ARM version. “Desktop-class” is a moving target, so if that were the case, the M1 wouldn’t be called desktop class anymore.
jaimex2 6y ago
Its only disruption if it disrupts. No one cares other than existing Apple users so I guess the only disruption will be the year of really fast and efficient teething issues they will be dealing with. We have one at work, I'd highly recommend waiting another year before getting one if you want to be productive.
- spideymans 6y ago
  > No one cares other than existing Apple users Anyone in the market for an ultrabook will care.
  - wait_a_minute 6y ago
    Yep, I was in the market for a new laptop and the M1 MBP is my first Apple daily driver now.
  - dingaling 6y ago
    > Anyone in the market for an ultrabook will care. My current ultrabook is 12 years old and falling apart, but the new Apple designs aren't even in the picture as replacements because they're simply not general-purpose computers. They are appliances.
    - akmarinov 6y ago
      Yeah but the end user looks at a 60-80C 6-8 hour battery general-purpose computer and a 30-40C 18-20 hour battery appliance and one of them is clearly better for the purpose that they use them for.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  If this was just a new CPU option with a performance boost over Intel (and significantly better thermals) but a compatibility mess - I would agree. But MBP is 500$ price drop from the Intel variant. At these price points these laptops are a far better value proposition than the competition - Intel thermal performance and power consumption is just terrible, AMD is better but not present in anything premium - in terms of value for money - anyone looking at a premium 13 inch new laptop right now should IMO get one of these devices unless they have a really good reason not to (and admittedly there are plenty of those). I really hate this situation because Apple is not the company I want to buy hardware from - they really suck on giving options, it's all "Apple know what's best for you" from them and their cult (for example I want a laptop with a touch screen, and ideally a 360 hinge, but there is no touch on MacOS because Apple). I would pay double for X1 Yoga with M1 class CPU. But right now Intel has dragged down the x86 laptop market down for soo long, and is still the only game in town for competition, it's just sad. AMD has good chips but no good devices. Modern ultra portable laptops are throttling, overheating and die instantly or have no work performance - it's just terrible tradeoffs for professionals.
TedShiller 6y ago
An easy way to understand the M1 is that Apple simply "iPhone-ized" the PC (or the Mac). Instead of having the modular architecture that PCs are known for (motherboard with separate CPU, RAM, hard drive, GPU, and chips for ports etc), everything is mashed together. This gives the best performance but very little modularity and zero upgradability. It's great for Apple but kind of shuts out all other ecosystems. It's unlikely anything but macOS will ever run on M1 since Apple won't open up the specs, and why should they? It is also another step into the direction of total throw-away culture.
WhoCaresLies 6y ago
The problem of Microsoft's failed attempt could be resumed in few points - They failed to provide a decent ecosystem - They wanted to carry on decades of legacy bits - They failed to provide fast hardware - All that resulted in a shy attempt with poor performance Apple didn't have all these issues, because it is in their culture, to provide software that works, without much bloat and with great hardware Them forbidding JIT for desktop applications helped them in the perf part, everything feels snappy, because nothing needs to be recompiled each startup
- ENOTTY 6y ago
  > Apple didn't have all these issues, because it is in their culture, to provide software that works, without much bloat and with great hardware It's funny you write this when the linked article specifically calls out Apple's software for a few "warts" and even agrees with Moorhead's and Gruber's take that the software is not yet fully baked.
  - WhoCaresLies 6y ago
    Nothing is perfect, of course!
nullc 6y ago
I'm really confused about the M1 hype. From the published measurements it compares favourably to some mobile cpus. It doesn't look particularly good compared to existing high performance CPUs (either in peak perf or perf/$). If having more computing power was so transformative for you (certainly I consider fast computing transformative for me...)-- it was already available, you didn't need apple's permission to use it. Maybe I've just been running dual 24+ core cpus for too long (thank you engineering samples) that I've lost perspective at how far behind typical desktop users are.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  Its a massive improvement for non gaming laptop users. Most laptops in 2020 overheat constantly and are slow and loud as a result. The non M1 macbooks are next to unusable because they will burn your legs just running safari. Now they have reached a higher level of performance without even having a fan. Not hard to see how this is pretty huge news. The M1 Macbook air seems like the best laptop for the average person by a fairly long shot right now.
  - nullc 6y ago
    Laptops ... overheat? and people put up with this? I'm earnestly surprised. (my only use for a laptop is as a remote terminal to an Actual Computer)
    - wait_a_minute 6y ago
      Laptops are Actual Computers and while it's nice to have ssh access to my home box or something even beefier in AWS/Azure, I do like the idea of having lots of performance with great battery life and low temperatures all in one sleek package. (It also plays nicely with my iPhone which is super cool)
- xiphias2 6y ago
  perf/W is what matters for laptops. I'm right now on an RTX 2070 Max-Q with 6/12 i7 Intel laptop, but I'm paying for it by it being heavy on my travels (especially the adapter for it taking up a big part of my suitcase). I'll see in half year how Zen 3 compares to M1X as this is the first time I'm thinking of buying an Apple laptop for myself.
CoconutPilot 6y ago
For a counter argument, I don't think M1 is going to disrupt anything. Its a great performer for sure, but its locked to a proprietary and closed ecosystem controlled by a single entity. Its a new direction for Apple in their laptop architecture, and a solid first step, but the raw performance is not up to the fastest from AMD and Intel, and it lacks the ability to upgrade any of its components. I get it, its a laptop, but if you want to talk about performance lets put it out there: its a fast laptop. People already in the Apple ecosystem will love M1, but it lacks a compelling reason to switch to Apple. Apple already made the best laptops, the M1 keeps that crown. People that were satisfied buying Windows laptops and Chromebooks will continue to do so because the criteria they used when making a buying decision involved other factors than "I want the best". I expect SoC designs to fracture the CPU market in the coming years and kill AMD and Intel, but unless M1 opens up to other designers and companies its a tangent in the great CPU race.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Don’t forget that M1X is coming in half year. It will be the only competition for Zen 3. I’m planning on waiting for that.
- addajones 6y ago
  It will disrupt. Intel and AMD chips aren’t on their first initial CPU release. Apple is with the M1. The future of CPU offerings from Apple looks very bright. An exciting time for computing, I’m looking forward to it.
  - neogodless 6y ago
    This is a strange argument, because the M1 is not Apple's first release. I believe that was the A5[0] To be sure, the chart comparing Apple CPU performance over time in comparison to Intel is damning for Intel (and a reminder that this argument makes no sense.) That doesn't mean it won't disrupt, but for it to disrupt, any last reason someone previously would not consider an Apple computer has to be removed. * Absolute performance for high-end multiple CPU core workstations doing massive parallel processing * AAA demanding games being played at 4K with ray-tracing and 60+ fps * Freedom to repair and upgrade your own computer * Absolutely no doubt that your software of choice will work as expected without troublesome workarounds To be sure, lots of users don't care about anything on the list above, or for their rendering, gaming and software needs, they get what they need from an Apple computer. But the M1 does not change that. Until about 3 years ago, Intel had the fastest laptop and desktop CPUs, and they were available regardless of your preferred OS. So few were choosing Windows or Linux merely because of hardware superiority. Now AMD is a better bet than Intel for Windows, and Apple Silicon is a better bet than Intel for MacOS. And some people may have been on the fence before but are perfectly suited to switching to MacOS, and will happily do so to take advantage of the power and battery life of the M1. But how big is that slice of pie? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5
webmobdev 6y ago
We all know Apple is good at marketing. And by dumping x86 and making the switch to ARM, Apple really has a lot riding here on its ARM processor. So we can understand the hint of desperation in pushing and publicising the M1 so much, especially targeting the Christmas shoppers. I have mixed feeling about this hype for the following reasons: 1. ARM processors have been ready for the desktop markets for a really long time. Hell, if the buggy and resource heavy Windows 95 / 98 could run "smoothly" on a single core 200 Mhz Pentium MMX, today's faster and multi-core ARMs have the potential to do much more with the right software. And that's exactly what has been holding ARM processors from the desktop market so far - decent system software and applications for it. It is in this area that Apple really deserves commendation for designing an ARM SoC well optimised for their system softwares (the macOS / ios platform). 2. With a well-designed SoC, and a decently optimised OS, it is not surprising that that the M1 is able to compete and match performance with the current Intel and AMD chips. The lower power performance and longer battery life is just an extra icing on the cake that ARM is already famous for. Apple is doing what it does best - utilising its strength of integrating the software and hardware to get the best possible performance out of a device. 3. Competition is good for us consumers. But for those of us like me, who prefer "freer and open" systems, I'd place my bet on Intel and AMD in the long run. They still have a huge advantage over other processors in not only raw performance, but portability and backward compatibility of software on their system. Hell, this is one of the reason why many of us, hesitant of Apple's famous obsessive control over their devices, were swayed to purchased an Intel mac - if Apple turned the screw on us, we could theoretically turn away from it by switching to another OS. 4. And as the Intel and AMD competition has shown us, both have bested each other in the past at some point, and continue to do so. As Apple's past switching of CPUs and architecture shows, even they recognize that marketing can only get you so far and people won't pay a premium if the hardware isn't atleast equal to the competition. In a year or two, both Intel and AMD will have even better processors. Will Apple be able to sustain competing with them in the long term will be interesting to watch for. 5. As I mentioned before, Intel and AMD's huge advantage over ARM processors in general, and here specifically with Apple processor, is that they are more "open and free" when compared to the ARM platform that are a jumble of closed and customised SoCs. We all know Apple's nature here - they are extremely obsessive about controlling the device totally, and least interested in letting their users customise it outside the bounds they set (hardware or software). A highly customised and closed ARM SoC gives them precisely that kind of control on the desktop that they have been desiring for a long time. The closed ios platform has proved to them that they can earn RECURRING revenues from such devices - they earn billions of dollars from the App Store. Apple's desktop processors now allow them to do the same with the mac Desktops. And that's why as an Apple user who owns a mac and is typing this on his iPad, I don't celebrate the Apple processors, or their temporary "game changing" performance. I don't want to live in a gilded cage, deprived of my computing freedom. And I know it doesn't matter to Apple - it's still a huge profit for Apple even if they lose 100's of thousands of users like me because they'd rather have millions of non-tech savvy users who see a smart-phone or a tablet just like their TV or microwave - day to day appliance whose working they don't understand but are glad to have. Apple can make more money from these consumers than from us. It was a sad day when we developers had to pay Apple for the privilege to develop and distribute software on it. It was disconcerting as a user to pay an "Apple tax" when you are not even buying the software from them. It is depressing now that Apple processor has tightened this stranglehold even further now, with the push to convert a computer to a calculator like appliance that will run only Apple authorised softwares. I celebrate the innovations but have no reason to celebrate Apple's role and only hope it fails. Its success will result in further imitation of Apple's business practice and pushing of such closed ARM SoCs by others in this industry - the future of fragmented, incompatible, custom and closed ARM processors is not something I look forward to at all as a developer or a user.
miguelmota 6y ago
"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." — Alan Kay
walterbell 6y ago
The biggest innovation of the M1 ecosystem is the unification of software ecosystem, battery life and performance for phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. Many iOS apps can now be run on MacOS via IPA files, e.g. native Slack iOS client app instead of bloated and memory-hogging web/electron client. For the long-suffering power users of iPads, a Macbook Air offers most of the benefits, plus a proper terminal and toolchains. With early virtualization support, Linux can be run in a VM. Plus all-day battery life and proper docking support for external peripherals. This has the least compromises of any device in the last few years. MBA has a good keyboard, smallish bezels, ESC key, TouchID for auth and is relatively affordable with same weight and less cost than iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard. MBA is now the perfect "thin client" that also works offline. As an example: the usable and powerful iOS video editor LumaFusion is now available on M1 MacOS via app store. It costs a fraction of traditional video editors and works well. Looking forward to a new class of prosumer apps that can raise the bar for both iOS and MacOS.
- wait_a_minute 6y ago
  Well said! And it really is all-day battery life, too! I myself got the MBP 13" and I have put it through its paces ever since I got it. The battery life, temperature, and performance are amazing. Can't wait to see what they do with the M1 performance variant they'll be putting into the 16".
- spideymans 6y ago
  >Many iOS apps can now be run on MacOS via IPA files, e.g. native Slack iOS client app instead of bloated and memory-hogging web/electron client. I expected iOS apps on the Mac to be absolute trash (and they are... at least by Mac standards), so there's really something to be said about the state of the web when the iOS variants of these apps (running on a Mac) still provide a better UX than the web variants. I know when Twitter for Mac came out (another unoptimized iOS app running on the Mac), I installed it and never once looked back at their bloated web client. And I know that if I could get the apps for Gmail, Youtube, Netflix, Reddit and other popular websites on my Intel Mac, I'd likely never go back to their web versions either (seriously, Apollo for iOS is so much better than the Reddit website). The open web is important. But until the web provides a UX of comparable quality to native clients, users will understandably flock to closed app sandboxes when given the opportunity. Great web apps do exist, but us haphazardly bolting on framework after framework is killing the performance and UX of the web. Sticking our heads in the sand about this isn't doing the open web any favours.
nbzso 6y ago
As a longtime Apple user I am shocked to find out that nobody cares about telemetry malpractice in Apple software. If M1 is future of Apple computers it reminds me of era in the past when running a mac was brilliant idea but software ecosystem was absent. Actually move to intel chip has widen Apple adoption as a platform. There are two milestones in this transition. Hardware and software. On a hardware and optimisation of SOC Apple has delivered significant result. Let see how software adoption part will happen and how third party non App Store apps will perform in this transition. Let's not forget lessons from the past. Hardware is vehicle for running software and iPhone and iPad apps are not desktop software alternative.
GoodJokes 6y ago
I can’t believe people make money writing about this bs.
doggydogs94 6y ago
I am looking at two compatibility points regarding M1-macOS. First, will VMWare (and Parallels and virtualBox) run x86 Windows VMs on M1 and second, will Linux run natively on M1 (even though I don’t do much Linux). Until these two things are taken care of, M1-MacOS will just be (an important) niche system.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  No, maybe.
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
A credible ARM response will probably come in about 1-2 years from Intel/AMD/Qualcomm/etc. This is the second major opportunity for Linux to make an actual push onto the desktop. Windows 8/10's abhorrent design was left at the roadside, but arguably there was no motivation from big backers to get Linux up to par on desktop. This time may be different. Why would AMD/Intel/Qualcomm wait/hope/gamble that Microsoft executes the transition? Especially given the major shortcomings in UI? The architecture transition will destroy Microsoft's compatibility advantage. Why not hedge with a really well supported Linux Desktop alternative they personally/collectively fund and push... personally I think that's corporate malfeasance given the scale of revenue to not pursue. Or a BeOS. The architecture switch will probably limit the hardware that needs support. A linux-based or at least OSS_based x86 emulation somewhat on par with Rosetta will be a critical component as well.
ksec 6y ago
Sigh. >Later, with the A11, previously licensed PowerVR GPUs were also replaced with in-house designs. They are, as of A14, and likely in A15 and A16, still licensed from IMG / PowerVR. [1] [2] Arguing the GPU is not from PowerVR because they have their own variation of design is like arguing Apple doesn't use ARM because they design their own CPU. They are still using tile based rendering, patented by IMG. And for much of the M1 discussions, People want to trust what they want to trust, and believe what they want to believe. Even with science and tech. [1] “London, UK; 2nd January 2020 – Imagination Technologies (“Imagination”) announces that it has replaced the multi-year, multi-use license agreement with Apple, first announced on February 6, 2014, with a new multi-year license agreement under which Apple has access to a wider range of Imagination’s intellectual property in exchange for license fees.” https://www.imgtec.com/news/press-release/imagination-and-apple-sign-new-agreement/ https://www.imgtec.com/news/press-release/imagination-and-ap... [2] In 2019 IMG's new CEO also went on record and said Apple has never not been a IMG client. Although Google results these days are generally littered with crap I can no longer find that pieces of information.
- saati 6y ago
  Everyone (nvidia, amd, intel) switched to tile based rendering in their latest gpus, so are they all PowerVR?
  - ksec 6y ago
    Nvidia and AMD were both using tile based rasterization with deferred rendering which is different to tile based rendering. Correct me if I am wrong, as I dont follow GPU that closely any more. ( Because I believe we have hit a point where processing node matters a lot more than uArch on GPU as their performance scales very well with transistor count. )
jbirer 6y ago
People on Hacker News are too easily impressed with the performance and the shininess of a new architecture, looking over the severe issues of Apple locking down it's platform and allowing less control over the device by the user. What good is a fast machine with long battery if I can't do what I want on it?
- leadingthenet 6y ago
  Because the vast majority of people will be able to do exactly what they want on it.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    "Nobody cares about freedom of speech because the vast majority will be able to speak what they want anyway".
    - leadingthenet 6y ago
      Yeah, that’s true also. Have you not noticed that essentially everyone is pro-censorship nowadays? As long as it’s their preferred brand of censorship, of course.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Worrying about the system becoming locked down is a fringe concern. You might be passionate about it but the majority don't care.

133 points by edward 6y ago

> (If I may say so, that Note is worth re-reading if only for the amusement of noticing the similarity to the recent pooh-poohing of the newborn M1.) Apple's New Thing, 2001: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.500/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apples-new-thing-ipod.5...

FullyFunctional 6y ago
There's a lesson for all of us to not leap to conclusion. In the case of the Apple iPhone I didn't see it and only boarded the train by iPhone 4 (and honestly, I think it was about the right time). In the case of M1 I _did_ expect a revolution and frankly one I had been waiting for for decades (the true cost of x86 is finally exposed). I can't wait to see if Apple can keep up the momentum.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >and honestly, I think it was about the right time Why so? I got the second model (3G), and if I could, I'd had gotten the first. It was already a giant leap from the smartphones of before (and I had the "flagship" models from other companies that were shit compared to it).
  - soneil 6y ago
    I didn't see it because I didn't really use my phone. It was used entirely to phone taxis, order pizza, and as a pager-of-sorts for the office to let me know when it was Overtime time. It didn't "click" until I had to replace my ipod, and got the ipod touch. It didn't take very long for me to realise the one thing it was missing was connectivity. Realistically I'm not even sure I was wrong. Calls & SMS are amongst the functions I use the least on my phone. It's still an ipod with connectivity.
- oblio 6y ago
  > the true cost of x86 is finally exposed They've reinvented x86 at least twice: microcode and then x86_64. I wouldn't bury x86 yet. Plus a good chunk of the M1 computing prowess is not even the CPU, it's the additional hardware such as the neural engine cores and such. This is something you could put next to a Sparc core, it's not ARM specific.
  - mepian 6y ago
    x86 used microcode from the beginning: https://www.reenigne.org/blog/8086-microcode-disassembled/ https://www.reenigne.org/blog/8086-microcode-disassembled/
    - headsupftw 6y ago
      Maybe he meant to say micro-operations.
      - oblio 6y ago
        Yes, you're right.
  - RantyDave 6y ago
    Nah, this is it for x86. The only relevant piece of x86 binary software is the Windows ecosystem ... and that runs on arm now. Everything else is either interpreted (Python, Ruby), JIT'ed (Java, C#) or can be compiled natively to arm anyway. All Apple have done is prove that it's possible.
    - oblio 6y ago
      Could be. However I'm doubtful that the PC market will move to a closed system similar to Apple's. So whoever comes in with ARM better be prepared for lots of competitions and low margins in a cutthroat environment. That's not a very attractive market proposition, especially since the x86 makers won't just take this lying down. I think we'll be in a weird place soon. Apple will be doing Apple things and increasing its market share but never taking over (maybe it will reach 20-25%? who knows). Many server environments will switch to ARM, especially the big cloud providers that can make their own chips. Qualcomm will push some more desktop class SOCs but I doubt they'll reach Apple's performance levels so they risk having their lunch eaten, especially by AMD. So it's possible that the PC desktop/laptop market might be "stuck" with x86 for many more decades. There is also a scenario where Intel or AMD come up with some brilliant designs and catch up completely or well enough to Apple in which case this will all have been a tempest in a teacup.
random5634 6y ago
I actually used whatever was pre iPod - I think it was a phone I loaded your favorite 20 songs on? Either way, for all the talking down of the iPod when it came out - for folks who wanted to listen to music it was total magic. I bought the first iPhone too, and didn’t have a clue that it wasn’t a good email device. I still use only windows / Linux server side - but this new “gimmick” of the M1 does have me interested
- kergonath 6y ago
  I loved my Sony Ericsson phones. With a decent memory stick and headphones it felt like the future. In a way it was, but there were many limitations and I jumped to the iPhone one year after it became available without regrets.
- bee_rider 6y ago
  There were more than a couple MP3 players before the iPod. I had a cool little device from Sandisk with, I think, a 512MB solid state drive? I bet it's still kicking. That thing was way cooler than an iPod, it ran off a AA battery (I think) and it seemed pretty tough. I dropped it in a slushy road puddle and it just kept trucking. The iPod had good capacity but the spinning drive in there was a huge failure point.
  - samcheng 6y ago
    I remember (at about the same time CDMA cell phones began getting popular) a standalone device with 32MB of storage, enough for like 20 songs or so. I think this was the one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_PMP300 Yes, rock solid, but it didn't hold a candle to the ipod, with its clicky scroll wheel that eased browsing, and its much larger HDD-based capacity.

gizmodo59 6y ago

I have seen so many articles on HN in front page about M1 over the past few weeks. Like a curious child I read all of them because somewhere in me I want to believe there exists a possibility of a giant leap for Desktop/Laptop. Having tried it myself, I should say this is going to be remembered just like the iPhone in 2007.

untog 6y ago
I doubt that very much. The iPhone was a true revelation: in user interface, in form factor, in the things it allowed you to do. The M1 is amazing but it doesn’t compare. Performance (both raw and thermal) is a big boost but it’s not going to reinvent computing.
- czzr 6y ago
  It’s not the same, but this is significantly accelerating the end of x86, and the end of Intel (at least the end of the current dominance of both). Such shifts don’t come along that often.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    To put your comment in perspective: Intel has 90+% market share in servers. Apple has 15% market share in personal computers.
    - czzr 6y ago
      Sure, but I didn’t mean that the whole world will switch to Apple. The world will mostly switch to commodity ARM chips and Intel's margins will crumble. Might take 5-10 years. This is Intel’s Nokia moment, when they lost a dominant position to Samsung/Android. Apple was the catalyst there as well, but Apple did not directly kill Nokia. The industry shift Apple sparked killed them.
- Aperocky 6y ago
  It won't reinvent UI, but it signaled the change to ARM and by extension, RISC. To a normal consumer, that's not a big deal (although 17 hour battery life is already pretty huge). To future PC hardware and server/backend infrastructure, that's a huge deal.

breck 6y ago

The name rang a bell so I just double checked: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gassée https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Louis_Gassée He knows what he’s taking about.

totalZero 6y ago
This feels cynical to say, but I don't know whether to listen to Gassee wholeheartedly or to take his perspective with a grain of salt. On the one hand, he has deep experience with Apple and great knowledge of the computing industry, but on the other, he is an elderly technologist who was pushed out of Apple decades ago [1] and is no more relevant to M1 than anyone else in the industry. In either case, I tend to disagree with Gassee's attack on the Morehead review, and I don't believe that there is any need to connect Morehead's M1 opinion with his 64-bit iPhone opinion. M1 should indeed be judged on its instruction set limitations because that is one of its major differences versus x86. It would be careless to consider personal computing hardware while forcibly ignoring the sofware ecosystem that it supports. I also think it's a cheap shot to accuse Morehead of choosing his opinions based on a financial interest in the supremacy of x86. [1] https://mondaynote.com/50-years-in-tech-part-13-firing-frankness-3d17e207d1cf https://mondaynote.com/50-years-in-tech-part-13-firing-frank...

xenocratus 6y ago

> Now you got a big problem, because neither Intel, AMD, or Nvidia are going to license their intellectual property I keep seeing this line and wonder - "did people miss the news about Nvidia buying Arm?". Sure, there are still plenty of hurdles to pass until it's official, but take a look at the initial piece written by Nvidia about the acquisition: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-arm-for-40-billion-creating-worlds-premier-computing-company-for-the-age-of-ai https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-to-acquire-arm-for... Specifically this line: > NVIDIA will continue Arm’s open-licensing model and customer neutrality and expand Arm’s IP licensing portfolio with NVIDIA technology

knolan 6y ago
Won’t be the first or the last acquisition to say everything will stay the same.
- gabereiser 6y ago
  > Won’t be the first or the last acquisition to say everything will stay the same. Then change it a year or so down the road, requiring you to have an account on some other non-related service in order for your hardware to work. /sarcasm
kergonath 6y ago
They have to say that, though, don’t they? They need to convince a bunch of regulators that their purchase of ARM won’t cause too much damage. They couldn’t really say that they would be going to choke a whole industry by dropping the licensing model, even if it were the case.
MBCook 6y ago
They may license the ARM technology, but will they license their own GPU technology? That’s what a Dell would need to make their own SOC.
GregarianChild 6y ago
An interesting question here is: which of the big Arm customers are going to trust NVidia? As far as I understand, Arm's license requires licensees to give Arm detailed and advanced information about implementations (IIRC long before they are fabbed). This would give NVidia unprecedented insight into the competition's processors long before they hit the market. Will Samsung or Apple be happy about that? Will AMD be happy about that? Given the tension between the US and China, it's almost inconceivable that the Chinese Arm customers will be happy about this. China is the world's biggest processor market, with a government mandate to reduce dependency on foreign technology! Hello RISC-V!

chrispeel 6y ago

> Will Microsoft now offer an official Windows 10 on ARM that can run on M1 Macs? ... and how will HP, Asus, Dell and others react? I guess Windows will come to the M1, including natively. I confess that I see the M1 as a "sustaining innovation" rather than a "disruptive innovation" using terminology that Christensen [1] (and Dediu [2]) use. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation [2] https://twitter.com/asymco https://twitter.com/asymco

tyingq 6y ago

I do give Apple credit for a terrific design. It would be interesting to know how much of the performance is attributable to the smaller process size, on-package memory, etc. Things others will be able to replicate. It's not clear to me how much of it is true competitive advantage.

mhh__ 6y ago
I would assume that you'd have to try and scale for what ARM allows them to get away with (if you will) - e.g. ARM allows wider decoding, while also taking into account the increased density allowing you to get more bang for the same buck (so to speak)
mamp 6y ago
This article gives a pretty good overview of the components that make the M1 different (nb. I'm not a hardware person): https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2 https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-32...
- alwillis 6y ago
  This is a great article. How about lets start with the M1 being able to process double the number of instructions per clock cycle… Every ARM instruction is the same size; Intel instructions range in size from 1 to 15 bytes, making decoding them a pain in the ass.
greedo 6y ago
If you compare the A series chips Apple has been designing and compare them to the Snapdragon line, it's pretty clear that process size doesn't matter much; the Android phones have been trying to catch up for 7 generations and still fail.

naderkhalil 6y ago

> Will Microsoft now offer an official Windows 10 on ARM that can run on M1 Macs?...This could create trouble in the x86 PC world. Or will Microsoft, less committed to Windows than it is to its applications running everywhere, be content to see Office and more run (and generate revenue) on M1 Macs…and how will HP, Asus, Dell and others react? This is just the beginning of a new competitive layout. Could this be good news for Linux?

untog 6y ago
I was a little confused by this part because MS is already happy for Office to run everywhere, in browsers. Given the in house expertise that’s given us VS Code I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see an Electron powered Office app suite in the not too distant future. Linux would (and does) benefit just as much as Mac.
mhh__ 6y ago
Why? If everyone gives up and just builds everything on the web then it's an indirect boon for Linux, but M1 will probably never ever properly support Linux. Unless Apple have a complete change of heart, if it ever does it will be as a result of far too much work done for free
- alblue 6y ago
  Early days, but Hypervisor.framework patches are being built that allow QEMU to run an Arm build of Linux (and Windows) at native speed. https://twitter.com/jonmasters/status/1333555759737663489 https://twitter.com/jonmasters/status/1333555759737663489 The reality is that some of the drivers for the M1 chip will never arrive, but that if you want to run Linux (or Windows) Arm code then you can do so soon.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    The issue for me is that I'd love to have an ARM laptop but I also love playing with the hardware and measuring it, trusting the hypervisor makes that a lot harder. If I was a web developer I'd probably buy one (not a knock on web developers, if I was any good at it I'd do it), but I like playing in the grey area of the Venn diagram where microarchitecture, compilers, and kernels meet.

Aperocky 6y ago

> BFD (Big Fantastic Disruption) There's no uncertainty about what the F stood for in that acronym.

eyelidlessness 6y ago
Welcome to ~~artistic flourish~~

trynewideas 6y ago

Since these keep floating up, I'm already exhausted with this specific rebuttal to Morehead's review: > As pointed out in John Gruber’s hard takedown of Moorhead’s piece, most of the problems he encountered were software problems, not M1 hardware issues. Morehead's allegiances and work are relevant biases, as are Gruber's. But Morehead's review wasn't of the M1 processor or architecture as a technology. It was a review of the 13" M1 MacBook Pro as an end-user device. Software problems _are_ worth raising in a review of who should buy an M1 MacBook, and why someone shouldn't. Because of the architecture change, the M1 has to come up — to omit its role in requiring Rosetta would be lying through omission. It's not an indictment of the technology, and shouldn't be controversial, for an end-user review to say the first OS revision targeting the first generation of a piece of hardware maybe isn't ready for every task thrown at it, especially those that rely on the newest of the new software components. It's why my workplace isn't even mostly on Catalina yet, much less Big Sur. For the love of whatever stupid internet points people are trying to win, let Morehead's review go. It's contributor report on Forbes, which makes it only slightly more relevant than a Reddit post. Folks can absolutely find better things to squabble over about these computers.

faitswulff 6y ago
I think the reason it keeps coming up is that it is the most prominent bad review, but due to Moorhead’s allegiances, poor calls in the past, and eclectic selection of software, his negative review comes across as being in bad faith.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  or maybe it just really is in bad faith?
  - whynotminot 6y ago
    It's part of the Forbes contributor network. Bad faith is kind of assumed. edit: Downvote if you want, I'm not kidding. Disingenuous hot takes without much connection to reality is a feature over at Forbes when it comes to tech, not a bug. They're literally traffic mercenaries over there. I'm sure Moorhead is smarting maybe little from the internet anger, but also not too upset to collect a nice bonus before Christmas. I'm sure another Forbes contributor will reprise the role of shit-stirrer-in-chief for the inevitable M2 as well.

codeflo 6y ago

Is there already an in-depth analysis of the M1 by someone with a low-level perspective? I want to develop an intuition on why/where the M1 is fast. E.g. is it branch prediction, reordering, memory latency. Unfortunately, most articles don’t go any deeper than “seems to be optimized for macOS”.

kergonath 6y ago
Andrei Frumusanu’s articles at AnandTech are quite good: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste... There is a reasonable discussion of the cache hierarchy, decoding units and out-of-order window.
akmarinov 6y ago
https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2 https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-32... One more article going into it. Better out of order execution seeming to be a big one.

shmerl 6y ago

I find the quote there that equates x86 to Windows ecosystem funny. That's just wrong.

phkahler 6y ago

Where are some benchmarks comparing M1 to the best x86 processors from AMD? Since M1 is only 4 big cores maybe it would be fair to compare it to the 4 core 8 thread APUs and not crush the poor thing with an 8 core version. A1 is cool. Good for Apple, but it's not the computing miracle it's made out to be.

jaimex2 6y ago
That's not how things work in the Apple world. Anything Apple release is disruptive and innovative even if its been done before. Just ignore it and continue on in reality.
MBCook 6y ago
You’re right, it doesn’t stand up to the multi core performance of the absolute top of the line Xeon chip. But that chip probably cost more than the entire laptop with an M1 in it. Apple started at the bottom of their lineup. Given the performance of the processor compared not only to the processors that it replaces but to others higher in their lineups, it’s extremely impressive. Is it the absolute number one best in every metric on the planet? No. But you shouldn’t expect that part in a $999 laptop. This was their first try, in the low end. In six months (or so) when they release stronger Macs with a different in one (or M2) we’ll see how well they scale it.
- neogodless 6y ago
  I keep seeing this divide where people that are used to Apple products using Intel chips are only capable of comparing the Apple Silicon M1 to Intel products. Here, in response to someone discussing AMD processors, the Intel Xeon is raised as an example. Sorry, no - the Intel Xeon is not an AMD processor. To be sure, the comparison between the APUs found in $999 laptops should be compared to the M1. The AMD Ryzen 9 4900HS, for example, is a 35W part though that's more of a $1200 laptop part. The Ryzen 7 4800U and Ryzen 7 4800H are both found in $999 laptops though. There are definitely cases where the M1 wins (many single core benchmarks, and efficiency) and other cases where the 4900HS, 4800H and sometimes even 4800U wins (several benchmarks that take advantage of the 8 cores/16 threads, and the higher TDP.) You don't need to go to the high-end server chips, like the 128 core EPYC to find competition for the M1, but you do have to take a step outside of the Apple ecosystem that only has the old Intel and the new Apple Silicon.

no_wizard 6y ago

If the M1 proves anything at all it’s that ARM 64 can and will be a performance chip not just a chip that is strictly intended for low power devices. I think that’s what the M1 will finally signal to all the other vendors, even though many have been saying this for a long time it’s proof in the wild that you can build desktop class ARM chips. My other thought is I wonder if this will open up the idea of vendors support specific co-processors analogous to how Apple has things like the T1, some offloading to a specific chip for ML etc. This is exciting if more vendors do this, I predict the first one to do it in an open way will win the day long term as it will be attractive to all upstream manufacturers like Dell etc

Someone 6y ago
I don’t think we know that for sure yet. Firstly, Apple has access to better chip technology. That gives them extra room and extra speed for free (actually, for a lot of dollars) Secondly, AFAIK, nobody has attempted something similar with a different CPU. It is possible (but IMHO not likely), that a similar approach as the M1 (optimize a system , not individual chips), but with x64 (or x86, or MIPS, or RISC-V) would outperform the ARM version. “Desktop-class” is a moving target, so if that were the case, the M1 wouldn’t be called desktop class anymore.

jaimex2 6y ago

Its only disruption if it disrupts. No one cares other than existing Apple users so I guess the only disruption will be the year of really fast and efficient teething issues they will be dealing with. We have one at work, I'd highly recommend waiting another year before getting one if you want to be productive.

spideymans 6y ago
> No one cares other than existing Apple users Anyone in the market for an ultrabook will care.
- wait_a_minute 6y ago
  Yep, I was in the market for a new laptop and the M1 MBP is my first Apple daily driver now.
- dingaling 6y ago
  > Anyone in the market for an ultrabook will care. My current ultrabook is 12 years old and falling apart, but the new Apple designs aren't even in the picture as replacements because they're simply not general-purpose computers. They are appliances.
  - akmarinov 6y ago
    Yeah but the end user looks at a 60-80C 6-8 hour battery general-purpose computer and a 30-40C 18-20 hour battery appliance and one of them is clearly better for the purpose that they use them for.
reader_mode 6y ago
If this was just a new CPU option with a performance boost over Intel (and significantly better thermals) but a compatibility mess - I would agree. But MBP is 500$ price drop from the Intel variant. At these price points these laptops are a far better value proposition than the competition - Intel thermal performance and power consumption is just terrible, AMD is better but not present in anything premium - in terms of value for money - anyone looking at a premium 13 inch new laptop right now should IMO get one of these devices unless they have a really good reason not to (and admittedly there are plenty of those). I really hate this situation because Apple is not the company I want to buy hardware from - they really suck on giving options, it's all "Apple know what's best for you" from them and their cult (for example I want a laptop with a touch screen, and ideally a 360 hinge, but there is no touch on MacOS because Apple). I would pay double for X1 Yoga with M1 class CPU. But right now Intel has dragged down the x86 laptop market down for soo long, and is still the only game in town for competition, it's just sad. AMD has good chips but no good devices. Modern ultra portable laptops are throttling, overheating and die instantly or have no work performance - it's just terrible tradeoffs for professionals.

TedShiller 6y ago

An easy way to understand the M1 is that Apple simply "iPhone-ized" the PC (or the Mac). Instead of having the modular architecture that PCs are known for (motherboard with separate CPU, RAM, hard drive, GPU, and chips for ports etc), everything is mashed together. This gives the best performance but very little modularity and zero upgradability. It's great for Apple but kind of shuts out all other ecosystems. It's unlikely anything but macOS will ever run on M1 since Apple won't open up the specs, and why should they? It is also another step into the direction of total throw-away culture.

WhoCaresLies 6y ago

The problem of Microsoft's failed attempt could be resumed in few points - They failed to provide a decent ecosystem - They wanted to carry on decades of legacy bits - They failed to provide fast hardware - All that resulted in a shy attempt with poor performance Apple didn't have all these issues, because it is in their culture, to provide software that works, without much bloat and with great hardware Them forbidding JIT for desktop applications helped them in the perf part, everything feels snappy, because nothing needs to be recompiled each startup

ENOTTY 6y ago
> Apple didn't have all these issues, because it is in their culture, to provide software that works, without much bloat and with great hardware It's funny you write this when the linked article specifically calls out Apple's software for a few "warts" and even agrees with Moorhead's and Gruber's take that the software is not yet fully baked.
- WhoCaresLies 6y ago
  Nothing is perfect, of course!

nullc 6y ago

I'm really confused about the M1 hype. From the published measurements it compares favourably to some mobile cpus. It doesn't look particularly good compared to existing high performance CPUs (either in peak perf or perf/$). If having more computing power was so transformative for you (certainly I consider fast computing transformative for me...)-- it was already available, you didn't need apple's permission to use it. Maybe I've just been running dual 24+ core cpus for too long (thank you engineering samples) that I've lost perspective at how far behind typical desktop users are.

SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
Its a massive improvement for non gaming laptop users. Most laptops in 2020 overheat constantly and are slow and loud as a result. The non M1 macbooks are next to unusable because they will burn your legs just running safari. Now they have reached a higher level of performance without even having a fan. Not hard to see how this is pretty huge news. The M1 Macbook air seems like the best laptop for the average person by a fairly long shot right now.
- nullc 6y ago
  Laptops ... overheat? and people put up with this? I'm earnestly surprised. (my only use for a laptop is as a remote terminal to an Actual Computer)
  - wait_a_minute 6y ago
    Laptops are Actual Computers and while it's nice to have ssh access to my home box or something even beefier in AWS/Azure, I do like the idea of having lots of performance with great battery life and low temperatures all in one sleek package. (It also plays nicely with my iPhone which is super cool)
xiphias2 6y ago
perf/W is what matters for laptops. I'm right now on an RTX 2070 Max-Q with 6/12 i7 Intel laptop, but I'm paying for it by it being heavy on my travels (especially the adapter for it taking up a big part of my suitcase). I'll see in half year how Zen 3 compares to M1X as this is the first time I'm thinking of buying an Apple laptop for myself.

CoconutPilot 6y ago

For a counter argument, I don't think M1 is going to disrupt anything. Its a great performer for sure, but its locked to a proprietary and closed ecosystem controlled by a single entity. Its a new direction for Apple in their laptop architecture, and a solid first step, but the raw performance is not up to the fastest from AMD and Intel, and it lacks the ability to upgrade any of its components. I get it, its a laptop, but if you want to talk about performance lets put it out there: its a fast laptop. People already in the Apple ecosystem will love M1, but it lacks a compelling reason to switch to Apple. Apple already made the best laptops, the M1 keeps that crown. People that were satisfied buying Windows laptops and Chromebooks will continue to do so because the criteria they used when making a buying decision involved other factors than "I want the best". I expect SoC designs to fracture the CPU market in the coming years and kill AMD and Intel, but unless M1 opens up to other designers and companies its a tangent in the great CPU race.

xiphias2 6y ago
Don’t forget that M1X is coming in half year. It will be the only competition for Zen 3. I’m planning on waiting for that.
addajones 6y ago
It will disrupt. Intel and AMD chips aren’t on their first initial CPU release. Apple is with the M1. The future of CPU offerings from Apple looks very bright. An exciting time for computing, I’m looking forward to it.
- neogodless 6y ago
  This is a strange argument, because the M1 is not Apple's first release. I believe that was the A5[0] To be sure, the chart comparing Apple CPU performance over time in comparison to Intel is damning for Intel (and a reminder that this argument makes no sense.) That doesn't mean it won't disrupt, but for it to disrupt, any last reason someone previously would not consider an Apple computer has to be removed. * Absolute performance for high-end multiple CPU core workstations doing massive parallel processing * AAA demanding games being played at 4K with ray-tracing and 60+ fps * Freedom to repair and upgrade your own computer * Absolutely no doubt that your software of choice will work as expected without troublesome workarounds To be sure, lots of users don't care about anything on the list above, or for their rendering, gaming and software needs, they get what they need from an Apple computer. But the M1 does not change that. Until about 3 years ago, Intel had the fastest laptop and desktop CPUs, and they were available regardless of your preferred OS. So few were choosing Windows or Linux merely because of hardware superiority. Now AMD is a better bet than Intel for Windows, and Apple Silicon is a better bet than Intel for MacOS. And some people may have been on the fence before but are perfectly suited to switching to MacOS, and will happily do so to take advantage of the power and battery life of the M1. But how big is that slice of pie? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5

webmobdev 6y ago

We all know Apple is good at marketing. And by dumping x86 and making the switch to ARM, Apple really has a lot riding here on its ARM processor. So we can understand the hint of desperation in pushing and publicising the M1 so much, especially targeting the Christmas shoppers. I have mixed feeling about this hype for the following reasons: 1. ARM processors have been ready for the desktop markets for a really long time. Hell, if the buggy and resource heavy Windows 95 / 98 could run "smoothly" on a single core 200 Mhz Pentium MMX, today's faster and multi-core ARMs have the potential to do much more with the right software. And that's exactly what has been holding ARM processors from the desktop market so far - decent system software and applications for it. It is in this area that Apple really deserves commendation for designing an ARM SoC well optimised for their system softwares (the macOS / ios platform). 2. With a well-designed SoC, and a decently optimised OS, it is not surprising that that the M1 is able to compete and match performance with the current Intel and AMD chips. The lower power performance and longer battery life is just an extra icing on the cake that ARM is already famous for. Apple is doing what it does best - utilising its strength of integrating the software and hardware to get the best possible performance out of a device. 3. Competition is good for us consumers. But for those of us like me, who prefer "freer and open" systems, I'd place my bet on Intel and AMD in the long run. They still have a huge advantage over other processors in not only raw performance, but portability and backward compatibility of software on their system. Hell, this is one of the reason why many of us, hesitant of Apple's famous obsessive control over their devices, were swayed to purchased an Intel mac - if Apple turned the screw on us, we could theoretically turn away from it by switching to another OS. 4. And as the Intel and AMD competition has shown us, both have bested each other in the past at some point, and continue to do so. As Apple's past switching of CPUs and architecture shows, even they recognize that marketing can only get you so far and people won't pay a premium if the hardware isn't atleast equal to the competition. In a year or two, both Intel and AMD will have even better processors. Will Apple be able to sustain competing with them in the long term will be interesting to watch for. 5. As I mentioned before, Intel and AMD's huge advantage over ARM processors in general, and here specifically with Apple processor, is that they are more "open and free" when compared to the ARM platform that are a jumble of closed and customised SoCs. We all know Apple's nature here - they are extremely obsessive about controlling the device totally, and least interested in letting their users customise it outside the bounds they set (hardware or software). A highly customised and closed ARM SoC gives them precisely that kind of control on the desktop that they have been desiring for a long time. The closed ios platform has proved to them that they can earn RECURRING revenues from such devices - they earn billions of dollars from the App Store. Apple's desktop processors now allow them to do the same with the mac Desktops. And that's why as an Apple user who owns a mac and is typing this on his iPad, I don't celebrate the Apple processors, or their temporary "game changing" performance. I don't want to live in a gilded cage, deprived of my computing freedom. And I know it doesn't matter to Apple - it's still a huge profit for Apple even if they lose 100's of thousands of users like me because they'd rather have millions of non-tech savvy users who see a smart-phone or a tablet just like their TV or microwave - day to day appliance whose working they don't understand but are glad to have. Apple can make more money from these consumers than from us. It was a sad day when we developers had to pay Apple for the privilege to develop and distribute software on it. It was disconcerting as a user to pay an "Apple tax" when you are not even buying the software from them. It is depressing now that Apple processor has tightened this stranglehold even further now, with the push to convert a computer to a calculator like appliance that will run only Apple authorised softwares. I celebrate the innovations but have no reason to celebrate Apple's role and only hope it fails. Its success will result in further imitation of Apple's business practice and pushing of such closed ARM SoCs by others in this industry - the future of fragmented, incompatible, custom and closed ARM processors is not something I look forward to at all as a developer or a user.

miguelmota 6y ago

"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." — Alan Kay

walterbell 6y ago

The biggest innovation of the M1 ecosystem is the unification of software ecosystem, battery life and performance for phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. Many iOS apps can now be run on MacOS via IPA files, e.g. native Slack iOS client app instead of bloated and memory-hogging web/electron client. For the long-suffering power users of iPads, a Macbook Air offers most of the benefits, plus a proper terminal and toolchains. With early virtualization support, Linux can be run in a VM. Plus all-day battery life and proper docking support for external peripherals. This has the least compromises of any device in the last few years. MBA has a good keyboard, smallish bezels, ESC key, TouchID for auth and is relatively affordable with same weight and less cost than iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard. MBA is now the perfect "thin client" that also works offline. As an example: the usable and powerful iOS video editor LumaFusion is now available on M1 MacOS via app store. It costs a fraction of traditional video editors and works well. Looking forward to a new class of prosumer apps that can raise the bar for both iOS and MacOS.

wait_a_minute 6y ago
Well said! And it really is all-day battery life, too! I myself got the MBP 13" and I have put it through its paces ever since I got it. The battery life, temperature, and performance are amazing. Can't wait to see what they do with the M1 performance variant they'll be putting into the 16".
spideymans 6y ago
>Many iOS apps can now be run on MacOS via IPA files, e.g. native Slack iOS client app instead of bloated and memory-hogging web/electron client. I expected iOS apps on the Mac to be absolute trash (and they are... at least by Mac standards), so there's really something to be said about the state of the web when the iOS variants of these apps (running on a Mac) still provide a better UX than the web variants. I know when Twitter for Mac came out (another unoptimized iOS app running on the Mac), I installed it and never once looked back at their bloated web client. And I know that if I could get the apps for Gmail, Youtube, Netflix, Reddit and other popular websites on my Intel Mac, I'd likely never go back to their web versions either (seriously, Apollo for iOS is so much better than the Reddit website). The open web is important. But until the web provides a UX of comparable quality to native clients, users will understandably flock to closed app sandboxes when given the opportunity. Great web apps do exist, but us haphazardly bolting on framework after framework is killing the performance and UX of the web. Sticking our heads in the sand about this isn't doing the open web any favours.

nbzso 6y ago

As a longtime Apple user I am shocked to find out that nobody cares about telemetry malpractice in Apple software. If M1 is future of Apple computers it reminds me of era in the past when running a mac was brilliant idea but software ecosystem was absent. Actually move to intel chip has widen Apple adoption as a platform. There are two milestones in this transition. Hardware and software. On a hardware and optimisation of SOC Apple has delivered significant result. Let see how software adoption part will happen and how third party non App Store apps will perform in this transition. Let's not forget lessons from the past. Hardware is vehicle for running software and iPhone and iPad apps are not desktop software alternative.

GoodJokes 6y ago

I can’t believe people make money writing about this bs.

doggydogs94 6y ago

I am looking at two compatibility points regarding M1-macOS. First, will VMWare (and Parallels and virtualBox) run x86 Windows VMs on M1 and second, will Linux run natively on M1 (even though I don’t do much Linux). Until these two things are taken care of, M1-MacOS will just be (an important) niche system.

saagarjha 6y ago
No, maybe.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago

A credible ARM response will probably come in about 1-2 years from Intel/AMD/Qualcomm/etc. This is the second major opportunity for Linux to make an actual push onto the desktop. Windows 8/10's abhorrent design was left at the roadside, but arguably there was no motivation from big backers to get Linux up to par on desktop. This time may be different. Why would AMD/Intel/Qualcomm wait/hope/gamble that Microsoft executes the transition? Especially given the major shortcomings in UI? The architecture transition will destroy Microsoft's compatibility advantage. Why not hedge with a really well supported Linux Desktop alternative they personally/collectively fund and push... personally I think that's corporate malfeasance given the scale of revenue to not pursue. Or a BeOS. The architecture switch will probably limit the hardware that needs support. A linux-based or at least OSS_based x86 emulation somewhat on par with Rosetta will be a critical component as well.

ksec 6y ago

Sigh. >Later, with the A11, previously licensed PowerVR GPUs were also replaced with in-house designs. They are, as of A14, and likely in A15 and A16, still licensed from IMG / PowerVR. [1] [2] Arguing the GPU is not from PowerVR because they have their own variation of design is like arguing Apple doesn't use ARM because they design their own CPU. They are still using tile based rendering, patented by IMG. And for much of the M1 discussions, People want to trust what they want to trust, and believe what they want to believe. Even with science and tech. [1] “London, UK; 2nd January 2020 – Imagination Technologies (“Imagination”) announces that it has replaced the multi-year, multi-use license agreement with Apple, first announced on February 6, 2014, with a new multi-year license agreement under which Apple has access to a wider range of Imagination’s intellectual property in exchange for license fees.” https://www.imgtec.com/news/press-release/imagination-and-apple-sign-new-agreement/ https://www.imgtec.com/news/press-release/imagination-and-ap... [2] In 2019 IMG's new CEO also went on record and said Apple has never not been a IMG client. Although Google results these days are generally littered with crap I can no longer find that pieces of information.

saati 6y ago
Everyone (nvidia, amd, intel) switched to tile based rendering in their latest gpus, so are they all PowerVR?
- ksec 6y ago
  Nvidia and AMD were both using tile based rasterization with deferred rendering which is different to tile based rendering. Correct me if I am wrong, as I dont follow GPU that closely any more. ( Because I believe we have hit a point where processing node matters a lot more than uArch on GPU as their performance scales very well with transistor count. )

jbirer 6y ago

People on Hacker News are too easily impressed with the performance and the shininess of a new architecture, looking over the severe issues of Apple locking down it's platform and allowing less control over the device by the user. What good is a fast machine with long battery if I can't do what I want on it?

leadingthenet 6y ago
Because the vast majority of people will be able to do exactly what they want on it.
- fsflover 6y ago
  "Nobody cares about freedom of speech because the vast majority will be able to speak what they want anyway".
  - leadingthenet 6y ago
    Yeah, that’s true also. Have you not noticed that essentially everyone is pro-censorship nowadays? As long as it’s their preferred brand of censorship, of course.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Worrying about the system becoming locked down is a fringe concern. You might be passionate about it but the majority don't care.