5 ms·

It doesn’t support your argument when we’re talking about a massive processor like a threadripper vs. a M1 Ultra. The performance per watt isn’t in the same un

It doesn’t support your argument when we’re talking about a massive processor like a threadripper vs. a M1 Ultra. The performance per watt isn’t in the same universe and that matters.

wyattpeak 5y ago
The article claims that the chip is "the world’s most powerful and capable chip for a personal computer". It's reasonable to ask whether it genuinely is faster than another available chip, it's not an implicit argument that it's not powerful.
forrestthewoods 5y ago
> The performance per watt isn’t in the same universe and that matters. I couldn’t give less of a shit about performance-per-watt. The ONLY metric I care about is performance-per-dollar. A Mac Studio and Threadripper are both boxes that sit on/under my desk. I don’t work from a laptop. I don’t care about energy usage. I even don’t really care about noise. My Threadripper is fine. I would not trade less power for less noise.
- hu3 5y ago
  This is what some folks miss. One hour of my time is more expensive than an entire month of a computer electricity bill. Some people just want tasks to perform as fast as possible regardless of power consumption or portability. Life's short and time is finite. Every second adds up for repetitive tasks.
  - ghshephard 5y ago
    The power is only relevant because it makes the machine quite in a compact form. If you've got a bit of space, then a water cooled system accomplishes a lot of the same thing. For some people there is an aesthetic element. Power does make a big difference in data centers though - it's often the case that you run out of power before you run out of rack space. Where power for a computer might make a difference could be in power-constrained (solar/off grid) scenarios. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone make an argument based on $$$.
  - altcognito 5y ago
    The only reason I've ever cared about watts is that generally speaking 120 watt and 180 watt processors require more complicated cooling solutions. That's less true today than it ever was. Cases are designed for things like liquid cooling, and they tend to be pretty silent. The processors stay cool, and are pretty reliable. I personally stick to the lower wattage ones because I don't generally need high end stuff, so I think Apple is going the right direction here, but it should be noted that Intel has also started down the path of high performance and efficiency cores already. AMD will find itself there too if it turns out that for home use, we just don't need a ton of cores, but instead a small group of fast cores surrounded by a bunch of specialist cores.
    - paulmd 5y ago
      wattage doesn't really tell you how difficult it is to cool a part anymore. 11th-gen Intel is really easy to cool despite readily going to 200W+. Zen3 is hard to cool even at 60W. Thermal density plays a huge role, the size of the chips is going down faster than the wattage, so thermal density is going up every generation even if you keep the same number of transistors. And everyone is still putting more transistors on their chips as they shrink. Going forward this is only going to get more complicated - I am very interested to see how the 5800X3D does in terms of thermals with a cache die over the top of the CCD (compute die). But anyway that style of thing seem to be the future - NVIDIA is also rumored to be using a cache die over the top of their Ada/Lovelace architecture. And obviously 60W direct to the IHS is easier to cool than 60W that has to be pulled through a cache die in the middle.
      - altcognito 5y ago
        The Zen 3 stock coolers work pretty well. I've never had a problem. Looking it up though I do see a lot of concerns with the heat they generate. I can only conclude I don't push my chip very hard (which, honestly, I probably don't) I've been happy with the AMDs I purchased over the past 4 years, we'll see how they hold up and how this next gen comes out. I did see that the recent Intels are quite competitive which is good for everybody.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  The vast majority of developers today has a laptop as their main machine. Performance-per-watt is absolutely crucial there.
  - itstomkent 5y ago
    I'll just never understand this. Chances are you are at the same desk day in and day out. You probably have monitors and external keyboard/mouse hooked up because hunching over a laptop and using a touchpad is unnecessary torture for a fixed workspace. Given that why would you hamstring yourself with a thermally constrained and overpriced-because-miniaturization-isn't free setup? Until maybe these M1's (and I'm not entirely convinced) I've not in the 20 years I've been computing seen a reasonably configured desktop (eg not just a laptop on a stick ala iMac but an ACTUAL desktop) ever not smoke the pants off of every single laptop you could put up against it. It's hard to beat the one-two punch of lots of power and room to cool it. If you are sitting at at desk why the heck wouldn't you leverage that?
    - ricardobeat 5y ago
      Meetings, working from home, travel, changing desks every few months. Not having a jungle of cables. Retina screen (still hard to find on external monitors). The vast majority of devs also don’t need an insanely powerful machine. If Docker on Mac wasn’t dog slow, I could easily get by with a $999 MacBook Air.
      - arvinsim 5y ago
        The only reason I also went up to 32GB RAM(almost bought the 64GB one) was because of Docker.
    - lmm 5y ago
      I was a desktop diehard until performance reached the point where laptops are good enough. Being able to take the same computer around with you and use it seamlessly in a different place is a big improvement. I still have a proper desk-based working environment hooked up to a docking station though. I really wouldn't want to use a laptop that doesn't have a first-party dock as my primary machine.
- astrange 5y ago
  Did you know noise pollution causes dementia? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/09/transport-noise-linked-to-increased-risk-of-dementia-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/09/transport-no...
  - hu3 5y ago
    Ouch. I wonder what Apple thinks about that after selling millions of noisy intel macbooks. As for desktops, watercooling makes computers dead silent.
    - astrange 5y ago
      Yep, it's bad that those products were like that. I personally bought a Ryzen 5950(?) instead of a Threadripper because I figured I'd accidentally spill water all over it or however it works. There are not many watercooled OEM products as far as I know.
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  I care about power only because it means louder fans, and I like quiet.
  - hu3 5y ago
    Same. That's why I use watercooling to keep the room silent.
adfgadfgaery 5y ago
The M1 Ultra is by a very wide margin the bigger of the two. According to Tom's Hardware [1], top-of-the-line Epycs have 39.54 billion transistors. That is about a third of the 117 billion in the M1 Ultra. Apple builds bigger than anyone else, thanks largely to their access to TSMC's best process. The M1 Ultra is a workstation part. It goes in machines that start at $4,000. The competition is Xeons, Epycs, and Threadrippers.
- bpye 5y ago
  That’s not really a fair comparison. Apples chip spends most of that on their GPU, and the neural engine takes a chunk too. Threadripper is only a CPU.

It doesn’t support your argument when we’re talking about a massive processor like a threadripper vs. a M1 Ultra. The performance per watt isn’t in the same universe and that matters.

wyattpeak 5y ago

The article claims that the chip is "the world’s most powerful and capable chip for a personal computer". It's reasonable to ask whether it genuinely is faster than another available chip, it's not an implicit argument that it's not powerful.

forrestthewoods 5y ago

> The performance per watt isn’t in the same universe and that matters. I couldn’t give less of a shit about performance-per-watt. The ONLY metric I care about is performance-per-dollar. A Mac Studio and Threadripper are both boxes that sit on/under my desk. I don’t work from a laptop. I don’t care about energy usage. I even don’t really care about noise. My Threadripper is fine. I would not trade less power for less noise.

hu3 5y ago
This is what some folks miss. One hour of my time is more expensive than an entire month of a computer electricity bill. Some people just want tasks to perform as fast as possible regardless of power consumption or portability. Life's short and time is finite. Every second adds up for repetitive tasks.
- ghshephard 5y ago
  The power is only relevant because it makes the machine quite in a compact form. If you've got a bit of space, then a water cooled system accomplishes a lot of the same thing. For some people there is an aesthetic element. Power does make a big difference in data centers though - it's often the case that you run out of power before you run out of rack space. Where power for a computer might make a difference could be in power-constrained (solar/off grid) scenarios. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone make an argument based on $$$.
- altcognito 5y ago
  The only reason I've ever cared about watts is that generally speaking 120 watt and 180 watt processors require more complicated cooling solutions. That's less true today than it ever was. Cases are designed for things like liquid cooling, and they tend to be pretty silent. The processors stay cool, and are pretty reliable. I personally stick to the lower wattage ones because I don't generally need high end stuff, so I think Apple is going the right direction here, but it should be noted that Intel has also started down the path of high performance and efficiency cores already. AMD will find itself there too if it turns out that for home use, we just don't need a ton of cores, but instead a small group of fast cores surrounded by a bunch of specialist cores.
  - paulmd 5y ago
    wattage doesn't really tell you how difficult it is to cool a part anymore. 11th-gen Intel is really easy to cool despite readily going to 200W+. Zen3 is hard to cool even at 60W. Thermal density plays a huge role, the size of the chips is going down faster than the wattage, so thermal density is going up every generation even if you keep the same number of transistors. And everyone is still putting more transistors on their chips as they shrink. Going forward this is only going to get more complicated - I am very interested to see how the 5800X3D does in terms of thermals with a cache die over the top of the CCD (compute die). But anyway that style of thing seem to be the future - NVIDIA is also rumored to be using a cache die over the top of their Ada/Lovelace architecture. And obviously 60W direct to the IHS is easier to cool than 60W that has to be pulled through a cache die in the middle.
    - altcognito 5y ago
      The Zen 3 stock coolers work pretty well. I've never had a problem. Looking it up though I do see a lot of concerns with the heat they generate. I can only conclude I don't push my chip very hard (which, honestly, I probably don't) I've been happy with the AMDs I purchased over the past 4 years, we'll see how they hold up and how this next gen comes out. I did see that the recent Intels are quite competitive which is good for everybody.
ricardobeat 5y ago
The vast majority of developers today has a laptop as their main machine. Performance-per-watt is absolutely crucial there.
- itstomkent 5y ago
  I'll just never understand this. Chances are you are at the same desk day in and day out. You probably have monitors and external keyboard/mouse hooked up because hunching over a laptop and using a touchpad is unnecessary torture for a fixed workspace. Given that why would you hamstring yourself with a thermally constrained and overpriced-because-miniaturization-isn't free setup? Until maybe these M1's (and I'm not entirely convinced) I've not in the 20 years I've been computing seen a reasonably configured desktop (eg not just a laptop on a stick ala iMac but an ACTUAL desktop) ever not smoke the pants off of every single laptop you could put up against it. It's hard to beat the one-two punch of lots of power and room to cool it. If you are sitting at at desk why the heck wouldn't you leverage that?
  - ricardobeat 5y ago
    Meetings, working from home, travel, changing desks every few months. Not having a jungle of cables. Retina screen (still hard to find on external monitors). The vast majority of devs also don’t need an insanely powerful machine. If Docker on Mac wasn’t dog slow, I could easily get by with a $999 MacBook Air.
    - arvinsim 5y ago
      The only reason I also went up to 32GB RAM(almost bought the 64GB one) was because of Docker.
  - lmm 5y ago
    I was a desktop diehard until performance reached the point where laptops are good enough. Being able to take the same computer around with you and use it seamlessly in a different place is a big improvement. I still have a proper desk-based working environment hooked up to a docking station though. I really wouldn't want to use a laptop that doesn't have a first-party dock as my primary machine.
astrange 5y ago
Did you know noise pollution causes dementia? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/09/transport-noise-linked-to-increased-risk-of-dementia-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/09/transport-no...
- hu3 5y ago
  Ouch. I wonder what Apple thinks about that after selling millions of noisy intel macbooks. As for desktops, watercooling makes computers dead silent.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Yep, it's bad that those products were like that. I personally bought a Ryzen 5950(?) instead of a Threadripper because I figured I'd accidentally spill water all over it or however it works. There are not many watercooled OEM products as far as I know.
brokenmachine 5y ago
I care about power only because it means louder fans, and I like quiet.
- hu3 5y ago
  Same. That's why I use watercooling to keep the room silent.

adfgadfgaery 5y ago

The M1 Ultra is by a very wide margin the bigger of the two. According to Tom's Hardware [1], top-of-the-line Epycs have 39.54 billion transistors. That is about a third of the 117 billion in the M1 Ultra. Apple builds bigger than anyone else, thanks largely to their access to TSMC's best process. The M1 Ultra is a workstation part. It goes in machines that start at $4,000. The competition is Xeons, Epycs, and Threadrippers.

bpye 5y ago
That’s not really a fair comparison. Apples chip spends most of that on their GPU, and the neural engine takes a chunk too. Threadripper is only a CPU.