5 ms·

Raw CPU perf obviously favours the M1, but if you're a dev, then a laptop that can take up to 64Gb of commodity RAM & as much fast storage as you can cram into

by pja 5y ago

Raw CPU perf obviously favours the M1, but if you're a dev, then a laptop that can take up to 64Gb of commodity RAM & as much fast storage as you can cram into it is pretty compelling. Compiling LLVM eats a lot of memory for instance. 16Gb is not really enough to take full advantage of the number of CPUs in a modern laptop. Is this a laptop for everyone? Not necessarily, but for certain classes of users it's manna from heaven.

google234123 5y ago
You sure this is true? I would bet the M1 is faster https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/apple-m1-compiles-linux-30-faster-my-intel-i9 https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/apple-m1-compiles-lin...
- samhw 5y ago
  As he explicitly points out, the benchmark amounts to cross-compiling for the Intel CPU vs compiling native code for the Mac CPU, so it's not exactly even. I have no dog in this hunt, I don't have an M1 Mac and I don't care, but it felt wrong to let that stand without correction.
- pja 5y ago
  Kernel compiles are not particularly memory hungry. LLVM compiles on the other hand are very memory hungry, especially during linking. I’m sure there are other 'workstation-ish' jobs that people would happily run on their laptop if it had > 16Gb memory. 64Gb is quite the leap.
liamwestray 5y ago
You realize the framework laptop’s cpus are limited to 4 cores, right? No $2000 laptop in 2020 should have only quad core cpus. The M1 16gb will run circles around the i7-1185g7 (highest spec chip framework sells) compiling llvm with 64gb of ram. Only using a shitload of idle VMs will have any apparent benefit over M1 MacBook pros. The cpu is just too limiting for the 64gb of ram argument.
- eertami 5y ago
  >The M1 16gb will run circles around the i7-1185g7 I have an M1 MBP and an 1185g7 based Linux laptop. Single core benchmarks, the i7 comes out slightly ahead. Multi core benchmarks, the M1 comes out slightly ahead. There are no circles being run around in performance - only in battery efficiency. For day to day developer usage, testing things literally side by side, I find absolutely no discernible difference in speed. The M1 does win for battery life, but the battery still lasts for a full work day in my i7 laptop. Honestly at home I always reach for the Linux laptop, because I don't really need the battery life. But for going out and about away from power, the M1 MBP has advantages. Sadly the software (personally) lets it down, I'd probably use the MBP more if it has better Linux support in the future.
  - liamwestray 5y ago
    Prolonged compiling tasks will thermally throttle the 1185g7 chip long before the M1. It will run circles around the 1185g7 compiling large codebases. Passmarks across hundreds of benches show a 25% single and 40% multithreaded performance boost over the 1185g7. I’ve got an i9 8/16 laptop chip and the 13” M1 is trading blows with my laptop despite 2-3x the thermal headroom and considerably less cores/threads across all workloads.
    - pja 5y ago
      The frame.work people are very explicit that they’ve designed the cooling system to permit you to run the CPU fairly hard. It can dump 28W continuously according to https://frame.work/gb/en/blog/the-upgradeable-mainboard https://frame.work/gb/en/blog/the-upgradeable-mainboard. The i9 Apple laptops were notorious for not having a cooling system that could match the heat output of the CPU & throttling almost instantly. Modern Intel laptop CPUs are no where near the performance / W of the M1, but they are considerably better than those that Apple stuffed into their laptops a few years ago with inadequate cooling I believe.
      - liamwestray 5y ago
        That was a firmware issue pre 2019 model that was corrected in a few weeks that got overblown. The throttling problem doesn’t exist anymore. The only problem with the first generation framework laptop is intel’s quad core CPU because of thermal and power problems associated with their process nodes. Hex core is really the lowest I will go now for anything over $1000. If this was a Ryzen 5800u, I’d have bought one already.
aulin 5y ago
Is this really common? I mean using a laptop for such compute intensive tasks? I mostly use my macbook air m1 as a client to more powerful machines. I always have a few ssh sessions opened, a few tramp emacs buffers, some browser tab to jupyter notebooks running elsewhere...
- wonton53 5y ago
  I think it is quite common. I develop financial systems, and I compile apps regularly for running tests locally and large parts of the system is running locally using docker compose. This has the benefit of fast iteration for unit and system tests. Of course the tests and deployment is also run by a CI server but that is just for QA purposes so people dont have to remember to run their tests locally and to keep a clean main branch. I cannot imagine how long our feedback loop would be if we had to wait for the CI server for every change, or if we had a common dev server that everyone interacted with through a «dirty» development branch. Basically I think it is just different use cases. My experience with jupyter is that you use it for data analysis which is really more IO bound than cpu bound, also big data is often not possible to keep locally (because of the size and also in europe GDPR)
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    Yes, I specced my machines for local docker-compose of testing. It's pretty valuable, although different engineers use it different amounts.
  - aulin 5y ago
    Note that I didn't necessarily refer to CI servers when talking about remote machines. Sometimes it's just a better specced workstation in the office, sometimes it's my own headless machine learning rig at home. Sure different engineers and different fields have different workflows but I believe it's still easier to build a good workstation from components than finding a laptop that excels in both portability and specs.
    - wonton53 5y ago
EugeneOZ 5y ago
1) There are 64Gb M1 MacBooks. 2) If you need 64Gb just sometimes, swapping on M1 MBP is insanely fast.
- disiplus 5y ago
  64GB ram for my lenovo legion was 250EUR, i could not configure a m1 with 64gb for less then 2900EUR i hate it that they bundled the ram with the m1 max i wanted to order the 64gb ram option but the difference between 32gb pro and 64gb max is 650EUR or more, and i just dont want to pay that to have more RAM.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - EugeneOZ 5y ago
    Your laptop has DDR4 memory. I’ve checked prices for DDR5 memory 64Gb - around ~€500. So the difference with Apple is not so dramatic.
    - disiplus 5y ago
      it cost 250EUR to go from 0GB to 64GB on lenovo, but it cost 650EUR to go from 32GB pro to 64GB max macbook pro 16, so it is dramatic for me. Im buying a macbook for 4-5 years.
      - EugeneOZ 5y ago
        You want to ignore the difference between DDR4 and DDR5, but the market doesn't ignore it and DDR5 is more expensive (I'm talking about non-Apple memory sticks). Also, you want to ignore 400 Gb/s provided by Apple's 64Gb memory, but... you know.
Lio 5y ago
Yeah I totally agree with that sentiment. It’s often tempting to dismiss a product that doesn’t meet your own personal use cases but it’s a bit naive. It’s actually fun to see products get popular that I know I wouldn’t buy myself. It doesn’t make them bad it just makes them not for me right now.

by pja 5y ago

google234123 5y ago

You sure this is true? I would bet the M1 is faster https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/apple-m1-compiles-linux-30-faster-my-intel-i9 https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/apple-m1-compiles-lin...

samhw 5y ago
As he explicitly points out, the benchmark amounts to cross-compiling for the Intel CPU vs compiling native code for the Mac CPU, so it's not exactly even. I have no dog in this hunt, I don't have an M1 Mac and I don't care, but it felt wrong to let that stand without correction.
pja 5y ago
Kernel compiles are not particularly memory hungry. LLVM compiles on the other hand are very memory hungry, especially during linking. I’m sure there are other 'workstation-ish' jobs that people would happily run on their laptop if it had > 16Gb memory. 64Gb is quite the leap.

liamwestray 5y ago

You realize the framework laptop’s cpus are limited to 4 cores, right? No $2000 laptop in 2020 should have only quad core cpus. The M1 16gb will run circles around the i7-1185g7 (highest spec chip framework sells) compiling llvm with 64gb of ram. Only using a shitload of idle VMs will have any apparent benefit over M1 MacBook pros. The cpu is just too limiting for the 64gb of ram argument.

eertami 5y ago
>The M1 16gb will run circles around the i7-1185g7 I have an M1 MBP and an 1185g7 based Linux laptop. Single core benchmarks, the i7 comes out slightly ahead. Multi core benchmarks, the M1 comes out slightly ahead. There are no circles being run around in performance - only in battery efficiency. For day to day developer usage, testing things literally side by side, I find absolutely no discernible difference in speed. The M1 does win for battery life, but the battery still lasts for a full work day in my i7 laptop. Honestly at home I always reach for the Linux laptop, because I don't really need the battery life. But for going out and about away from power, the M1 MBP has advantages. Sadly the software (personally) lets it down, I'd probably use the MBP more if it has better Linux support in the future.
- liamwestray 5y ago
  Prolonged compiling tasks will thermally throttle the 1185g7 chip long before the M1. It will run circles around the 1185g7 compiling large codebases. Passmarks across hundreds of benches show a 25% single and 40% multithreaded performance boost over the 1185g7. I’ve got an i9 8/16 laptop chip and the 13” M1 is trading blows with my laptop despite 2-3x the thermal headroom and considerably less cores/threads across all workloads.
  - pja 5y ago
    The frame.work people are very explicit that they’ve designed the cooling system to permit you to run the CPU fairly hard. It can dump 28W continuously according to https://frame.work/gb/en/blog/the-upgradeable-mainboard https://frame.work/gb/en/blog/the-upgradeable-mainboard. The i9 Apple laptops were notorious for not having a cooling system that could match the heat output of the CPU & throttling almost instantly. Modern Intel laptop CPUs are no where near the performance / W of the M1, but they are considerably better than those that Apple stuffed into their laptops a few years ago with inadequate cooling I believe.
    - liamwestray 5y ago
      That was a firmware issue pre 2019 model that was corrected in a few weeks that got overblown. The throttling problem doesn’t exist anymore. The only problem with the first generation framework laptop is intel’s quad core CPU because of thermal and power problems associated with their process nodes. Hex core is really the lowest I will go now for anything over $1000. If this was a Ryzen 5800u, I’d have bought one already.

aulin 5y ago

Is this really common? I mean using a laptop for such compute intensive tasks? I mostly use my macbook air m1 as a client to more powerful machines. I always have a few ssh sessions opened, a few tramp emacs buffers, some browser tab to jupyter notebooks running elsewhere...

wonton53 5y ago
I think it is quite common. I develop financial systems, and I compile apps regularly for running tests locally and large parts of the system is running locally using docker compose. This has the benefit of fast iteration for unit and system tests. Of course the tests and deployment is also run by a CI server but that is just for QA purposes so people dont have to remember to run their tests locally and to keep a clean main branch. I cannot imagine how long our feedback loop would be if we had to wait for the CI server for every change, or if we had a common dev server that everyone interacted with through a «dirty» development branch. Basically I think it is just different use cases. My experience with jupyter is that you use it for data analysis which is really more IO bound than cpu bound, also big data is often not possible to keep locally (because of the size and also in europe GDPR)
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  Yes, I specced my machines for local docker-compose of testing. It's pretty valuable, although different engineers use it different amounts.
- aulin 5y ago
  Note that I didn't necessarily refer to CI servers when talking about remote machines. Sometimes it's just a better specced workstation in the office, sometimes it's my own headless machine learning rig at home. Sure different engineers and different fields have different workflows but I believe it's still easier to build a good workstation from components than finding a laptop that excels in both portability and specs.
  - wonton53 5y ago

EugeneOZ 5y ago

1) There are 64Gb M1 MacBooks. 2) If you need 64Gb just sometimes, swapping on M1 MBP is insanely fast.

disiplus 5y ago
64GB ram for my lenovo legion was 250EUR, i could not configure a m1 with 64gb for less then 2900EUR i hate it that they bundled the ram with the m1 max i wanted to order the 64gb ram option but the difference between 32gb pro and 64gb max is 650EUR or more, and i just dont want to pay that to have more RAM.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- EugeneOZ 5y ago
  Your laptop has DDR4 memory. I’ve checked prices for DDR5 memory 64Gb - around ~€500. So the difference with Apple is not so dramatic.
  - disiplus 5y ago
    it cost 250EUR to go from 0GB to 64GB on lenovo, but it cost 650EUR to go from 32GB pro to 64GB max macbook pro 16, so it is dramatic for me. Im buying a macbook for 4-5 years.
    - EugeneOZ 5y ago
      You want to ignore the difference between DDR4 and DDR5, but the market doesn't ignore it and DDR5 is more expensive (I'm talking about non-Apple memory sticks). Also, you want to ignore 400 Gb/s provided by Apple's 64Gb memory, but... you know.

Lio 5y ago

Yeah I totally agree with that sentiment. It’s often tempting to dismiss a product that doesn’t meet your own personal use cases but it’s a bit naive. It’s actually fun to see products get popular that I know I wouldn’t buy myself. It doesn’t make them bad it just makes them not for me right now.