7 ms·

Consider the use cases. The Mac Pro is a desktop, always plugged in and used for the power. The M1 is on a laptop running on a battery where efficiency is mor

Consider the use cases. The Mac Pro is a desktop, always plugged in and used for the power. The M1 is on a laptop running on a battery where efficiency is more important to improve the battery life.

988747 5y ago
So why put efficiency cores in the desktop processor at all?
- aequitas 5y ago
  It still nice to reduce power consumption and heat production when running idle.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  A desktop runs a lot of low priority processes. The efficiency cores can be given all those processes. This means some low priority thread will get scheduled on a performance core and bust the cache. There's also plenty of time where the system has low intensity use or is idle. The efficiency cores let things like receiving notifications or checking e-mail happen for very little power draw. Fans only need to run during intense use and the system can be quiet the rest of the time.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    The guys have split the traditional UI thread and the background thread down to the silicon. Who knows, maybe the UI thread only needs access to the graphics card, and the background thread only access to network. It would save a lot of interrupt loops.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    > Fans only need to run during intense use and the system can be quiet the rest of the time. This is a bigger deal than it might seem. Fans running means that dust is accumulating in the machine at an accelerated rate, even if you have filters in place. The less the fans have to run, the less dust accumulates, and the longer cooling functions near-peak. A tower that sees sporadic heavy usage especially stand to benefit from fan minimization.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  As has been mentioned elsewhere, devoting some cores to background tasks and reserving the others for higher-priority stuff also makes the system feel more responsive. See, for example, this article from yesterday: https://eclecticlight.co/2021/05/17/how-m1-macs-feel-faster-than-intel-models-its-about-qos/ https://eclecticlight.co/2021/05/17/how-m1-macs-feel-faster-... Long story short, segregating background work from foreground work means that Spotlight indexing won't cause the UI to become sluggish. I'm guessing it also tends to be more cache-friendly.
  - andrewmunsell 5y ago
    But separating the background work doesn't actually require efficiency cores. With 40 performance cores, you could still dedicate 4 or 8 of them to "background" processes only. As that article you linked shows, the background processes would simply complete more quickly without affecting interactive work on the machine.
    - karkisuni 5y ago
      performance cores are physically larger than the efficiency ones, by about 3-4x. I'm sure there are other tradeoffs cache size like too. So would you rather have 32 performance cores and 8 efficiency or 34 performance?
    - mumblemumble 5y ago
      Consuming 1/10 as much power would also have thermal advantages for the die overall, and segregating them onto a separate L2 cache from the performance cores would help with that cache friendliness situation, different allocations of logic units means you can tailor them toward different kinds of workloads. . . I'm no CPU designer, so I really can't speak with authority here, but I can at least see several possible reasons why it would make sense even when you aren't worried about battery life.
    - ksec 5y ago
      In upper end extreme case, using 8 HE Core instead of 8 HP Core saves you 24 to 32W. Those 32W could allow more GPU usage or some other part of system such as ISP or NPU. At the end of the day you will still need HE Core, they just aren't as important comparing to a Battery devices. Not to mention Marketing, Die Size cost consideration.
- dharmab 5y ago
  To reduce the need for noisy cooling.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- snowwrestler 5y ago
  Heat.
  - Decade 5y ago
    To expand on that: The design challenge of high-performance CPUs today is heat. Too much heat induces throttling. Putting low-priority stuff onto efficiency cores reserves the power budget of the SoC for high-priority tasks. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/apples-m1-is-a-fast-cpu-but-m1-macs-feel-even-faster-due-to-qos/?comments=1&post=39917947#comment-39917947 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/apples-m1-is-a-fast-...
chrisjc 5y ago
I'm not sure I get your point, but isn't the M1 used in the Mac Mini and iMac, both of which are always plugged in and have no batteries?
- bin_bash 5y ago
  Because the M1 is used in laptops and desktops and this chip likely would only be used in the Mac Pro
dillondoyle 5y ago
I wonder what % of high end users actually work on battery only. For me it's mostly a desktop that I move between home and office. And like maybe 2% of time batteries.
- bin_bash 5y ago
  In an office all the time going to meetings. I usually have long-running processes that I’m not going to turn off just for the meeting.

Consider the use cases. The Mac Pro is a desktop, always plugged in and used for the power. The M1 is on a laptop running on a battery where efficiency is more important to improve the battery life.

988747 5y ago

So why put efficiency cores in the desktop processor at all?

aequitas 5y ago
It still nice to reduce power consumption and heat production when running idle.
giantrobot 5y ago
A desktop runs a lot of low priority processes. The efficiency cores can be given all those processes. This means some low priority thread will get scheduled on a performance core and bust the cache. There's also plenty of time where the system has low intensity use or is idle. The efficiency cores let things like receiving notifications or checking e-mail happen for very little power draw. Fans only need to run during intense use and the system can be quiet the rest of the time.
- laurent92 5y ago
  The guys have split the traditional UI thread and the background thread down to the silicon. Who knows, maybe the UI thread only needs access to the graphics card, and the background thread only access to network. It would save a lot of interrupt loops.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  > Fans only need to run during intense use and the system can be quiet the rest of the time. This is a bigger deal than it might seem. Fans running means that dust is accumulating in the machine at an accelerated rate, even if you have filters in place. The less the fans have to run, the less dust accumulates, and the longer cooling functions near-peak. A tower that sees sporadic heavy usage especially stand to benefit from fan minimization.
mumblemumble 5y ago
As has been mentioned elsewhere, devoting some cores to background tasks and reserving the others for higher-priority stuff also makes the system feel more responsive. See, for example, this article from yesterday: https://eclecticlight.co/2021/05/17/how-m1-macs-feel-faster-than-intel-models-its-about-qos/ https://eclecticlight.co/2021/05/17/how-m1-macs-feel-faster-... Long story short, segregating background work from foreground work means that Spotlight indexing won't cause the UI to become sluggish. I'm guessing it also tends to be more cache-friendly.
- andrewmunsell 5y ago
  But separating the background work doesn't actually require efficiency cores. With 40 performance cores, you could still dedicate 4 or 8 of them to "background" processes only. As that article you linked shows, the background processes would simply complete more quickly without affecting interactive work on the machine.
  - karkisuni 5y ago
    performance cores are physically larger than the efficiency ones, by about 3-4x. I'm sure there are other tradeoffs cache size like too. So would you rather have 32 performance cores and 8 efficiency or 34 performance?
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    Consuming 1/10 as much power would also have thermal advantages for the die overall, and segregating them onto a separate L2 cache from the performance cores would help with that cache friendliness situation, different allocations of logic units means you can tailor them toward different kinds of workloads. . . I'm no CPU designer, so I really can't speak with authority here, but I can at least see several possible reasons why it would make sense even when you aren't worried about battery life.
  - ksec 5y ago
    In upper end extreme case, using 8 HE Core instead of 8 HP Core saves you 24 to 32W. Those 32W could allow more GPU usage or some other part of system such as ISP or NPU. At the end of the day you will still need HE Core, they just aren't as important comparing to a Battery devices. Not to mention Marketing, Die Size cost consideration.
dharmab 5y ago
To reduce the need for noisy cooling.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
snowwrestler 5y ago
Heat.
- Decade 5y ago
  To expand on that: The design challenge of high-performance CPUs today is heat. Too much heat induces throttling. Putting low-priority stuff onto efficiency cores reserves the power budget of the SoC for high-priority tasks. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/apples-m1-is-a-fast-cpu-but-m1-macs-feel-even-faster-due-to-qos/?comments=1&post=39917947#comment-39917947 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/apples-m1-is-a-fast-...

chrisjc 5y ago

I'm not sure I get your point, but isn't the M1 used in the Mac Mini and iMac, both of which are always plugged in and have no batteries?

bin_bash 5y ago
Because the M1 is used in laptops and desktops and this chip likely would only be used in the Mac Pro

dillondoyle 5y ago

I wonder what % of high end users actually work on battery only. For me it's mostly a desktop that I move between home and office. And like maybe 2% of time batteries.

bin_bash 5y ago
In an office all the time going to meetings. I usually have long-running processes that I’m not going to turn off just for the meeting.