8 ms·

This certainly makes a lot of sense, and it's a brilliant strategy to improve overall performance. But it doesn't account for the full picture either. My M1 Mac

This certainly makes a lot of sense, and it's a brilliant strategy to improve overall performance. But it doesn't account for the full picture either. My M1 Macbook Pro feels about as responsive as my desktop system with an AMD Ryzen 3900X, which is impressive to say the least. It doesn't quite have the raw computing power of the 3900X, but given that it's a portable device that's something else.

nottorp 5y ago
Well, they did it first in iOS which is more responsive than Android even when compared to devices that win benchmarks vs the iPhone. It's just doable when you care enough to optimize the OS for responsiveness.
- agloeregrets 5y ago
  Much like the M1, I don't think anything actually wins benchmarks vs the iPhone. There's display refresh rate and a few multicore stores that are closer but in any real world test, Single core dominance wins out. (Plus the big/little design in the A series chips is better than the three scales seen in QC chips as QC backfills the single large core with a ton of little cores to make the multicore numbers look competitive when in reality, any multithreaded task of two cores is much faster and you don't end up with mismatched race conditions.)
  - nottorp 5y ago
    Are you sure? iOS has been more responsive from day 1 (I mean the first 2-3 iphone versions), when they were using an off the shelf CPU that everyone else had.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      I think the commenter is saying that iOS provides no discernible performance advancements over Android. If you ran Android on an M1, it likely would score just as well as an iOS/MacOS machine.
      - CitizenKane 5y ago
        It would be an interesting comparison. Non-apple silicon has definitely not been great and lags behind significantly. Would be very interesting to see what Android would be like on more modern CPU tech.
        smoldesu 5y ago
        Non-Apple has been perfectly fine. I mean, AMD was putting higher-performing APUs in laptops half the price of the M1 Macbook Air, and they did that 18 months before the M1 even hit the market. If you wanted an 8 core, 4ghz CPU with the GPU power of a 1050ti, the R74800u was prevalent in notebooks as cheap as $400, and was even lauded for a short period as one of the best budget gaming options on the laptop market. If you're exclusively referring to the handheld market though, then you're mostly right. Apple's big lead in this generation is mostly because of how fast they were able to buy out the world's 5nm node. The only real "Android" manufacturer doing the same thing is Samsung, which is only because they have the means to fab their own chips.
        lupire 5y ago
        Is that AMD example running at similar wattage?
        smoldesu 5y ago
        It's pretty close. It's lowest TDP (before tinkering) rests at around 8-10w, and can get to 20-25w if you're running at full load (upper bounds normally come into play if the GPU is also running full blast. So no, it's the the same wattage, but it's similar enough to be a valid point of comparison, especially for a chip that appears in laptops half the price of the base Macbook Air. Plus, as time goes on, AMD seems to be getting better about power management. If you take a look at the latest reviews for the Surface Laptop 4 with Ryzen, many reviewers were surprised to find that it lasted nearly 17 hours of video playback.
        sod 5y ago
        Yes, it's a bummer that Apple has a deathgrip on 5nm and after that 3nm. Zen2 would be incredible on 5nm. IMHO the improvements we saw with geforce 30XX series and zen 2 were 80% the switch to 7nm tsmc. I'd fully expect another jump if nvidia and amd were able to get their hands on 5nm, but it's apple exclusive for now :(. Well, at least we get huge investments in chip manufacturing thanks to apple throwing money at tsmc.
ahartmetz 5y ago
Try a low latency kernel on your desktop if you use Linux, that should improve responsiveness some more. Apparently the increase in power consumption is minimal - I use (K)Ubuntu's low-latency kernel even on laptops these days.
- StavrosK 5y ago
  I run KUbuntu, how can I enable this? EDIT: I searched a bit and, although I haven't found instructions anywhere, I did find people saying that the low-latency kernel decreases throughput as a tradeoff to lower latency. Have you found this to be the case? Also, another source says that the preempt kernel might be better for some workloads: https://itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-choose-a-low-latency-kernel-over-a-generic-or-realtime-one/ https://itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-choose-a-low-latency-kerne... Can anyone comment on these?
  - pizza234 5y ago
    There's an interesting Stack Overflow question/answers: https://askubuntu.com/q/126664 https://askubuntu.com/q/126664. In general terms, one either just installs the specifically recompiled package (-preempt, -lowlatency etc.), or recompiles their own. The related parameters can't be enabled, because they're chosen as kernel configuration, and compiled in. I'd take such changes with a big grain of salt, because they're very much subject to perceptive bias.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    If there were one simple trick to make your computer feel faster without downsides, defaults would change.
    - ahartmetz 5y ago
      True in general, but there is seriously little downside to using a low-latency kernel. Sometimes it even improves throughput, usually the effect is tiny either way. I think most people just don't care or don't know that they care about responsiveness.
    - deleted 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tokamak-teapot 5y ago
Yes - I sold my Ryzen desktop because I no longer feel the need to go to the 'more powerful' machine. The Air is just as fast.
- CitizenKane 5y ago
  That's true, although I do miss the memory! And realistically, when it comes to heavy compute or multi-tasking the 3900X really shows its power. I'm honestly very interested to see AMD tech at 5nm. I think the next few years are going to be fairly mind-blowing in terms of CPU technology.

nottorp 5y ago

Well, they did it first in iOS which is more responsive than Android even when compared to devices that win benchmarks vs the iPhone. It's just doable when you care enough to optimize the OS for responsiveness.

agloeregrets 5y ago
Much like the M1, I don't think anything actually wins benchmarks vs the iPhone. There's display refresh rate and a few multicore stores that are closer but in any real world test, Single core dominance wins out. (Plus the big/little design in the A series chips is better than the three scales seen in QC chips as QC backfills the single large core with a ton of little cores to make the multicore numbers look competitive when in reality, any multithreaded task of two cores is much faster and you don't end up with mismatched race conditions.)
- nottorp 5y ago
  Are you sure? iOS has been more responsive from day 1 (I mean the first 2-3 iphone versions), when they were using an off the shelf CPU that everyone else had.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    I think the commenter is saying that iOS provides no discernible performance advancements over Android. If you ran Android on an M1, it likely would score just as well as an iOS/MacOS machine.
    - CitizenKane 5y ago
      It would be an interesting comparison. Non-apple silicon has definitely not been great and lags behind significantly. Would be very interesting to see what Android would be like on more modern CPU tech.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        Non-Apple has been perfectly fine. I mean, AMD was putting higher-performing APUs in laptops half the price of the M1 Macbook Air, and they did that 18 months before the M1 even hit the market. If you wanted an 8 core, 4ghz CPU with the GPU power of a 1050ti, the R74800u was prevalent in notebooks as cheap as $400, and was even lauded for a short period as one of the best budget gaming options on the laptop market. If you're exclusively referring to the handheld market though, then you're mostly right. Apple's big lead in this generation is mostly because of how fast they were able to buy out the world's 5nm node. The only real "Android" manufacturer doing the same thing is Samsung, which is only because they have the means to fab their own chips.
        lupire 5y ago
        Is that AMD example running at similar wattage?
        smoldesu 5y ago
        It's pretty close. It's lowest TDP (before tinkering) rests at around 8-10w, and can get to 20-25w if you're running at full load (upper bounds normally come into play if the GPU is also running full blast. So no, it's the the same wattage, but it's similar enough to be a valid point of comparison, especially for a chip that appears in laptops half the price of the base Macbook Air. Plus, as time goes on, AMD seems to be getting better about power management. If you take a look at the latest reviews for the Surface Laptop 4 with Ryzen, many reviewers were surprised to find that it lasted nearly 17 hours of video playback.
        sod 5y ago
        Yes, it's a bummer that Apple has a deathgrip on 5nm and after that 3nm. Zen2 would be incredible on 5nm. IMHO the improvements we saw with geforce 30XX series and zen 2 were 80% the switch to 7nm tsmc. I'd fully expect another jump if nvidia and amd were able to get their hands on 5nm, but it's apple exclusive for now :(. Well, at least we get huge investments in chip manufacturing thanks to apple throwing money at tsmc.

ahartmetz 5y ago

Try a low latency kernel on your desktop if you use Linux, that should improve responsiveness some more. Apparently the increase in power consumption is minimal - I use (K)Ubuntu's low-latency kernel even on laptops these days.

StavrosK 5y ago
I run KUbuntu, how can I enable this? EDIT: I searched a bit and, although I haven't found instructions anywhere, I did find people saying that the low-latency kernel decreases throughput as a tradeoff to lower latency. Have you found this to be the case? Also, another source says that the preempt kernel might be better for some workloads: https://itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-choose-a-low-latency-kernel-over-a-generic-or-realtime-one/ https://itectec.com/ubuntu/ubuntu-choose-a-low-latency-kerne... Can anyone comment on these?
- pizza234 5y ago
  There's an interesting Stack Overflow question/answers: https://askubuntu.com/q/126664 https://askubuntu.com/q/126664. In general terms, one either just installs the specifically recompiled package (-preempt, -lowlatency etc.), or recompiles their own. The related parameters can't be enabled, because they're chosen as kernel configuration, and compiled in. I'd take such changes with a big grain of salt, because they're very much subject to perceptive bias.
- adrianN 5y ago
  If there were one simple trick to make your computer feel faster without downsides, defaults would change.
  - ahartmetz 5y ago
    True in general, but there is seriously little downside to using a low-latency kernel. Sometimes it even improves throughput, usually the effect is tiny either way. I think most people just don't care or don't know that they care about responsiveness.
  - deleted 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tokamak-teapot 5y ago

Yes - I sold my Ryzen desktop because I no longer feel the need to go to the 'more powerful' machine. The Air is just as fast.

CitizenKane 5y ago
That's true, although I do miss the memory! And realistically, when it comes to heavy compute or multi-tasking the 3900X really shows its power. I'm honestly very interested to see AMD tech at 5nm. I think the next few years are going to be fairly mind-blowing in terms of CPU technology.