3 ms·

It's not only the "console effect" for the OS though. It's the vertical integration of the hardware to begin with. It's just better than x86 platforms because A

It's not only the "console effect" for the OS though. It's the vertical integration of the hardware to begin with. It's just better than x86 platforms because Apple control everything and can make sure it works together well. It's been very apparent as we work on the platform just how well everything ties together internally. On x86 you have the CPU vendor, the chipset vendor, the hardware OEM, the storage vendor, the GPU vendor, etc. all fighting each other and it shows. No one company ends up having the motivation and control to make things tie well together. Granted, for little things like "Asahi Linux is probably the only third party distro on the planet to autodetect your laptop's keyboard layout on first boot", yeah, it helps that we're targeting a very specific platform (and the vendor cares about these thing and left the facilities in place for us to do that). But for stuff like good battery life and power management, you just can't achieve that if the hardware isn't well integrated to begin with, and we're already getting impressive battery life numbers with minimal OS support.

solarkraft 5y ago
Could another vendor (Intel, AMD) achieve similar results? Is it possible within the IBM PC platform?
- BeefWellington 5y ago
  It's very possible; we'll have to see how the 5800X3D does. One thing that the M1 has that the competition doesn't is just more cache closer to the CPU. The M1 Ultra, if it holds that it's just two Maxes glued together, has 48MB of L2 cache.[1] AMD's newer 96MB VCache system in the 5800X3D is still L3 cache, with only 4MB of L2 cache.[2] But that's a top of the line not-quite-released processor. AMD's current high-end (5950X) only has 8MB of L2 and 64MB of L3.[3] Meanwhile Intel's 12900HK only has 24MB of their Smart Cache[4], and the 12700K has 25 but with 12MB marked for L2[5]. It's not clear to me that cache is the be all and end all but it does seem to be a significant factor, especially if AMD's claims around the boost 96MB of L3 cache is going to give it are anything remotely correct. [1]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc... [2]: https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-7-5800x3d https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-7-5800x3d [3]: https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-5950x https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-5950x [4]: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/132215/intel-core-i912900hk-processor-24m-cache-up-to-5-00-ghz/specifications.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/132215/... [5]: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/134594/intel-core-i712700k-processor-25m-cache-up-to-5-00-ghz/specifications.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/134594/...
BeefWellington 5y ago
> It's not only the "console effect" for the OS though. It's the vertical integration of the hardware to begin with. It's just better than x86 platforms because Apple control everything and can make sure it works together well. It's been very apparent as we work on the platform just how well everything ties together internally. I don't think I agree with you on this. It may be easier for Asahi's developers to manage but it's not like Apple hasn't been cutting corners[1][2] in some areas either, which affects the actual users. I don't know if a power outage leading to lost data or incredibly fast SSD wear are better. It's also only good for the use cases it's advertised for and falls drastically short in other areas.It's not close to either NVidia's or AMD's low-mid range GPUs when it comes to gaming, for example. It is excelling because it's a tool designed for a handful of specific purposes and the related audiences. It's very good to have a non-x86 competitor in the market and it would be amazing if one day I could build a comparably performant ARM-based (or heck even RISCV-based) system for home. [1]: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1494213855387734019 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1494213855387734019 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093
- marcan_42 5y ago
  You realize you're linking me my own tweet, right? [1] isn't cutting corners, it's just not optimizing a use case that didn't matter for iOS devices, and not realizing it to fix it when bringing that controller to Macs. I'm not saying the hardware/firmware is absolutely perfect. The part of the story about macOS defaulting to unsafe flushes is a software issue, not a hardware issue. [2] is a macOS bug that was fixed a long time ago. It has nothing to do with hardware whatsoever. In fact, write endurance on Apple SSDs is at the high end of the market. macOS was just eating through it like butter due to a bug.
  - BeefWellington 5y ago
    I'll be honest, I didn't see your HN username! :) I don't really agree with [1]. "Use what we already have" is cutting corners, because it's skipping the important steps of considering the impact of those engineering decisions in a new product. Re [2], glad to hear it's changed but the idea that it "has nothing to do with hardware" is a bit misleading because as you noted Apple controls everything. You can't pretend there's a console effect on one hand and then turn around and ignore the downsides to that. Fixed in software is a good answer but I'm struggling to see issues with modern hardware that aren't fixed in software.

solarkraft 5y ago

Could another vendor (Intel, AMD) achieve similar results? Is it possible within the IBM PC platform?

BeefWellington 5y ago
It's very possible; we'll have to see how the 5800X3D does. One thing that the M1 has that the competition doesn't is just more cache closer to the CPU. The M1 Ultra, if it holds that it's just two Maxes glued together, has 48MB of L2 cache.[1] AMD's newer 96MB VCache system in the 5800X3D is still L3 cache, with only 4MB of L2 cache.[2] But that's a top of the line not-quite-released processor. AMD's current high-end (5950X) only has 8MB of L2 and 64MB of L3.[3] Meanwhile Intel's 12900HK only has 24MB of their Smart Cache[4], and the 12700K has 25 but with 12MB marked for L2[5]. It's not clear to me that cache is the be all and end all but it does seem to be a significant factor, especially if AMD's claims around the boost 96MB of L3 cache is going to give it are anything remotely correct. [1]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performance-review https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc... [2]: https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-7-5800x3d https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-7-5800x3d [3]: https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-5950x https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-ryzen-9-5950x [4]: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/132215/intel-core-i912900hk-processor-24m-cache-up-to-5-00-ghz/specifications.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/132215/... [5]: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/134594/intel-core-i712700k-processor-25m-cache-up-to-5-00-ghz/specifications.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/134594/...

BeefWellington 5y ago

> It's not only the "console effect" for the OS though. It's the vertical integration of the hardware to begin with. It's just better than x86 platforms because Apple control everything and can make sure it works together well. It's been very apparent as we work on the platform just how well everything ties together internally. I don't think I agree with you on this. It may be easier for Asahi's developers to manage but it's not like Apple hasn't been cutting corners[1][2] in some areas either, which affects the actual users. I don't know if a power outage leading to lost data or incredibly fast SSD wear are better. It's also only good for the use cases it's advertised for and falls drastically short in other areas.It's not close to either NVidia's or AMD's low-mid range GPUs when it comes to gaming, for example. It is excelling because it's a tool designed for a handful of specific purposes and the related audiences. It's very good to have a non-x86 competitor in the market and it would be amazing if one day I could build a comparably performant ARM-based (or heck even RISCV-based) system for home. [1]: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1494213855387734019 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1494213855387734019 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093

marcan_42 5y ago
You realize you're linking me my own tweet, right? [1] isn't cutting corners, it's just not optimizing a use case that didn't matter for iOS devices, and not realizing it to fix it when bringing that controller to Macs. I'm not saying the hardware/firmware is absolutely perfect. The part of the story about macOS defaulting to unsafe flushes is a software issue, not a hardware issue. [2] is a macOS bug that was fixed a long time ago. It has nothing to do with hardware whatsoever. In fact, write endurance on Apple SSDs is at the high end of the market. macOS was just eating through it like butter due to a bug.
- BeefWellington 5y ago
  I'll be honest, I didn't see your HN username! :) I don't really agree with [1]. "Use what we already have" is cutting corners, because it's skipping the important steps of considering the impact of those engineering decisions in a new product. Re [2], glad to hear it's changed but the idea that it "has nothing to do with hardware" is a bit misleading because as you noted Apple controls everything. You can't pretend there's a console effect on one hand and then turn around and ignore the downsides to that. Fixed in software is a good answer but I'm struggling to see issues with modern hardware that aren't fixed in software.