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For a laptop chip, single threaded integer performance is on par. Multi-threaded integer and floating point performance is not. >In the aggregate scores – the

For a laptop chip, single threaded integer performance is on par. Multi-threaded integer and floating point performance is not. >In the aggregate scores – there’s two sides. On the SPECint work suite, the M1 Max lies +37% ahead of the best competition, it’s a very clear win here and given the power levels and TDPs, the performance per watt advantages is clear. The M1 Max is also able to outperform desktop chips such as the 11900K, or AMD’s 5800X. In the SPECfp suite, the M1 Max is in its own category of silicon with no comparison in the market. It completely demolishes any laptop contender, showcasing 2.2x performance of the second-best laptop chip. The M1 Max even manages to outperform the 16-core 5950X – a chip whose package power is at 142W, with rest of system even quite above that. It’s an absolutely absurd comparison and a situation we haven’t seen the likes of. https://www.anandtech.com/print/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review https://www.anandtech.com/print/17024/apple-m1-max-performan... We'll see what happens when they make a desktop chip and are no longer so constrained on thermals and power draw. The unreleased Mac Pro chip is said to have the resources of either two or four M1 Pro chips glued together.

simonh 5y ago
The Mac pro chip will also likely use the next generation of core architecture as well.
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  Yes, this year's iPhone chip did get a newer version of the performance core. >with a score of 7.28 in the integer suite, Apple’s A15 P-core is on equal footing with AMD’s Zen3-based Ryzen 5950X with a score of 7.29, and ahead of M1 with a score of 6.66 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-performance-review-faster-more-efficient/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo... You'll have to look in the charts, but on single threaded floating point the scores are 10.15 for the A15, 9.58 for the 11900K, and 9.79 for the 5950X. Having your phone chip match or beat Intel and AMD's desktop variants on single core performance (with a phone's memory bandwidth) is fairly impressive in itself.
  - merb 5y ago
    Is ist? I Tought that glueing memory in the die will always yield a better memory bandwidth? Also the new phone Uses ddr5 which is not possible in the desktop (yet)
    - whynotminot 5y ago
      So it's not impressive to do the things that no one else is doing?
    - GeekyBear 5y ago
      This year's iPhone uses LPDDR4X memory that has less memory bandwidth than last year's M1, much less this year's M1 Pro or Max. >Memory type LPDDR4X; Memory frequency 4266 MHz; Max bandwidth 42.7 Gbit/s https://nanoreview.net/en/soc/apple-a15-bionic https://nanoreview.net/en/soc/apple-a15-bionic
      - merb 5y ago
        ah yeah LPDDR4X, well it's LPDDR4X memory which is fater than conventionell DDR4 memory, I tought it's ddr5 already since lpddr memory comes way before next gen dram/sdram
ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>In the SPECfp suite, the M1 Max is in its own category of silicon with no comparison in the market. How much of that performance is due to the M1 Pro/Max having way more memory bandwidth than the Intel/AMD chips, and also being specifically designed from the ground up to make use of all that bandwidth? AFAIK the RAM used by the M1 Pro/Max is more similar in performance to the GDDR used in graphics cards vs the slow-ish ageing DDR4 used in Intel/AMD systems that are designed to prioritize compatibility with RAM of varying quality, speeds and latencies instead of raw performance at a specific high speed. So I'm curious to know how an X64 chip would perform if we even the playing field not just in node size but also if Intel and AMD would adapt their X64 designs from the ground up with a memory controller, cache architecture and instruction pipeline tuned to feed the CPU with data from such fast RAM. I'm asking this since AFAIK, Ryzen is very sensitive to memory bandwidth, the more you give it the better it performs to the point where if you take two identical laptops with the same Ryzen chip but one has 33% faster RAM, then that laptop will perform nearly 33% better in most CPU/GPU intensive benchmarks, all things being equal.
- namibj 5y ago
  Should be fine to compare to an EPYC 72F3 or 73F3 (Zen3, 8/16 cores, 8 channel DDR4-3200 RDIMM (204.8 GB/s theoretical ceiling), $2500/$3500). If memory latency is that important, one would AFAIK have to compare to Zen3 Threadripper, because EPYC (and afaik Threadripper Pro, the other 8-channel variant of Zen3) is rather locked down in regards to memory "overclock"s. (Note that this is more of a latency/efficiency tradeoff, an any moderate OC is trivial to cool.)
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > 8 channel DDR4-3200 RDIMM (204.8 GB/s theoretical ceiling) But the M1 Max is 8-channel LPDDR5 400GBps, or literally twice the bandwidth of that EPYC
    - rsynnott 5y ago
      Per the article, it can't use more than about 250GB/s for the CPU, though, so it probably isn't an unreasonable comparison.
samgranieri 5y ago
Where did you hear the Mac Pro chip is supposed to have the resources of 2 or 4 M1 chips glued together?
- MR4D 5y ago
  Leak by Mark Gurman. John Siracusa put together an illustrative diagram showing how it works (functionally, not actual layout). https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/1395706013286809600?s=21 https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/1395706013286809600?s=21
- GeekyBear 5y ago
  Bloomberg's Gurman, about half a year ago. >Codenamed Jade 2C-Die and Jade 4C-Die, a redesigned Mac Pro is planned to come in 20 or 40 computing core variations, made up of 16 high-performance or 32 high-performance cores and four or eight high-efficiency cores. The chips would also include either 64 core or 128 core options for graphics. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/18/bloomberg-mac-pro-32-high-performance-cores/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/18/bloomberg-mac-pro-32-hi...
- happyopossum 5y ago
  Gurman at Bloomberg - his article mailed the M1 Pro/Max (in March!), and this is what it says about the next stage: "Codenamed Jade 2C-Die and Jade 4C-Die, a redesigned Mac Pro is planned to come in 20 or 40 computing core variations, made up of 16 high-performance or 32 high-performance cores and four or eight high-efficiency cores. The chips would also include either 64 core or 128 core options for graphics." [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-18/apple-readies-macbook-pro-macbook-air-revamps-with-faster-chips https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-18/apple-rea...
lrem 5y ago
The laptop ones are already 20mm. That likely isn't very good for yield. Going even larger would likely be ruinous in the cost department. Wouldn't putting multiple M1 Max be a better idea?

simonh 5y ago

The Mac pro chip will also likely use the next generation of core architecture as well.

GeekyBear 5y ago
Yes, this year's iPhone chip did get a newer version of the performance core. >with a score of 7.28 in the integer suite, Apple’s A15 P-core is on equal footing with AMD’s Zen3-based Ryzen 5950X with a score of 7.29, and ahead of M1 with a score of 6.66 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-performance-review-faster-more-efficient/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo... You'll have to look in the charts, but on single threaded floating point the scores are 10.15 for the A15, 9.58 for the 11900K, and 9.79 for the 5950X. Having your phone chip match or beat Intel and AMD's desktop variants on single core performance (with a phone's memory bandwidth) is fairly impressive in itself.
- merb 5y ago
  Is ist? I Tought that glueing memory in the die will always yield a better memory bandwidth? Also the new phone Uses ddr5 which is not possible in the desktop (yet)
  - whynotminot 5y ago
    So it's not impressive to do the things that no one else is doing?
  - GeekyBear 5y ago
    This year's iPhone uses LPDDR4X memory that has less memory bandwidth than last year's M1, much less this year's M1 Pro or Max. >Memory type LPDDR4X; Memory frequency 4266 MHz; Max bandwidth 42.7 Gbit/s https://nanoreview.net/en/soc/apple-a15-bionic https://nanoreview.net/en/soc/apple-a15-bionic
    - merb 5y ago
      ah yeah LPDDR4X, well it's LPDDR4X memory which is fater than conventionell DDR4 memory, I tought it's ddr5 already since lpddr memory comes way before next gen dram/sdram

ChuckNorris89 5y ago

>In the SPECfp suite, the M1 Max is in its own category of silicon with no comparison in the market. How much of that performance is due to the M1 Pro/Max having way more memory bandwidth than the Intel/AMD chips, and also being specifically designed from the ground up to make use of all that bandwidth? AFAIK the RAM used by the M1 Pro/Max is more similar in performance to the GDDR used in graphics cards vs the slow-ish ageing DDR4 used in Intel/AMD systems that are designed to prioritize compatibility with RAM of varying quality, speeds and latencies instead of raw performance at a specific high speed. So I'm curious to know how an X64 chip would perform if we even the playing field not just in node size but also if Intel and AMD would adapt their X64 designs from the ground up with a memory controller, cache architecture and instruction pipeline tuned to feed the CPU with data from such fast RAM. I'm asking this since AFAIK, Ryzen is very sensitive to memory bandwidth, the more you give it the better it performs to the point where if you take two identical laptops with the same Ryzen chip but one has 33% faster RAM, then that laptop will perform nearly 33% better in most CPU/GPU intensive benchmarks, all things being equal.

namibj 5y ago
Should be fine to compare to an EPYC 72F3 or 73F3 (Zen3, 8/16 cores, 8 channel DDR4-3200 RDIMM (204.8 GB/s theoretical ceiling), $2500/$3500). If memory latency is that important, one would AFAIK have to compare to Zen3 Threadripper, because EPYC (and afaik Threadripper Pro, the other 8-channel variant of Zen3) is rather locked down in regards to memory "overclock"s. (Note that this is more of a latency/efficiency tradeoff, an any moderate OC is trivial to cool.)
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > 8 channel DDR4-3200 RDIMM (204.8 GB/s theoretical ceiling) But the M1 Max is 8-channel LPDDR5 400GBps, or literally twice the bandwidth of that EPYC
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    Per the article, it can't use more than about 250GB/s for the CPU, though, so it probably isn't an unreasonable comparison.

samgranieri 5y ago

Where did you hear the Mac Pro chip is supposed to have the resources of 2 or 4 M1 chips glued together?

MR4D 5y ago
Leak by Mark Gurman. John Siracusa put together an illustrative diagram showing how it works (functionally, not actual layout). https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/1395706013286809600?s=21 https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/1395706013286809600?s=21
GeekyBear 5y ago
Bloomberg's Gurman, about half a year ago. >Codenamed Jade 2C-Die and Jade 4C-Die, a redesigned Mac Pro is planned to come in 20 or 40 computing core variations, made up of 16 high-performance or 32 high-performance cores and four or eight high-efficiency cores. The chips would also include either 64 core or 128 core options for graphics. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/18/bloomberg-mac-pro-32-high-performance-cores/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/18/bloomberg-mac-pro-32-hi...
happyopossum 5y ago
Gurman at Bloomberg - his article mailed the M1 Pro/Max (in March!), and this is what it says about the next stage: "Codenamed Jade 2C-Die and Jade 4C-Die, a redesigned Mac Pro is planned to come in 20 or 40 computing core variations, made up of 16 high-performance or 32 high-performance cores and four or eight high-efficiency cores. The chips would also include either 64 core or 128 core options for graphics." [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-18/apple-readies-macbook-pro-macbook-air-revamps-with-faster-chips https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-18/apple-rea...

lrem 5y ago

The laptop ones are already 20mm. That likely isn't very good for yield. Going even larger would likely be ruinous in the cost department. Wouldn't putting multiple M1 Max be a better idea?