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> If Apple let it go up to 100-120w GPUs and CPUs are not simply "pump more power in it to go faster hurr hurr". It is extremely likely that the M1's maximum p

> If Apple let it go up to 100-120w GPUs and CPUs are not simply "pump more power in it to go faster hurr hurr". It is extremely likely that the M1's maximum performance is attained already. Otherwise, the M1 ultra would have pumped a little bit more wattage and gotten better single core perfs, but guess what, it doesn't.

mikhailt 5y ago
> GPUs and CPUs are not simply "pump more power in it to go faster hurr hurr". I agree, they're not a simple "throw more power and it'll go faster" problem. However, that doesn't mean they do not go faster if you increase clock speed and give it a little more power. After all, overclocking would be utterly pointless over the past two decades and Intel/AMD wouldn't benefit from the so-called turbo boost technology. (I know M1 doesn't have turbo boost). Just to be clear, yes, there's a limit to everything of course. There's a balance where certain higher clocks would cause a bottleneck in the rest of the system since this is a SoC. In this case, I used the 100-120w number because Apple used that number in their GPU graph showing the GPU running at ~105w, why bother showing that if it can't accomplish it? Here's the graph: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-gpu-performance-01.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-gpu-p... Note that Apple shows 60w for their CPU graph (https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-cpu-performance-02.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-cpu-p...), which did actually match up and does show the double CPU pref that Apple stated. I didn't pull that number out of nowhere. If Apple used 60w in that graph, then I wouldn't be here. > Otherwise, the M1 ultra would have pumped a little bit more wattage and gotten better single core perfs, but guess what, it doesn't. That's because of two reasons: 1. There is only so much data wecan "process" within the same core, more power does not change the data itself, we can only increase the clock speed to finish it faster or widen the amount of data that can fit in the same core. Also of note that Intel Turbo Boost does actually help with single-core thread pref by boosting the single core speed beyond the base line. 2. M1 max clock speed is set to 3.2Ghz (single core), it can't go faster than this (set by Apple). Throwing more wattage here wouldn't change anything but throwing more power to allow all 16 P cores to hit 3.2 does improve performance as long as it isn't overheating. I don't think M1 Ultra does hit 3.2 on all 16 cores (it might have hit 60w max first; I might be wrong but I saw mostly just 3.0ghz in Max video but I have to go back to review it). Again, this is not about single-core performance, this is about GPU performance, which is extremely parallelizable and more comparable to the multi-core performance instead.
p1necone 5y ago
Apple has historically seemingly been allergic to good thermal design. I would not be surprised in the least if they were leaving a lot of performance on the table because they'd rather do that than design proper cooling, despite how silly that sounds. (Although with the m1 line it actually makes a bit of sense for once - it is useful to the end user to set things up so that fans /never spin up/ and the laptop never gets hot to the touch. Whereas with their previous intel models they had terible cooling and still had all of those problems, while not actually achieving a size win over a lot of competitors "thin and light" models that actually had competent thermal design)

mikhailt 5y ago

> GPUs and CPUs are not simply "pump more power in it to go faster hurr hurr". I agree, they're not a simple "throw more power and it'll go faster" problem. However, that doesn't mean they do not go faster if you increase clock speed and give it a little more power. After all, overclocking would be utterly pointless over the past two decades and Intel/AMD wouldn't benefit from the so-called turbo boost technology. (I know M1 doesn't have turbo boost). Just to be clear, yes, there's a limit to everything of course. There's a balance where certain higher clocks would cause a bottleneck in the rest of the system since this is a SoC. In this case, I used the 100-120w number because Apple used that number in their GPU graph showing the GPU running at ~105w, why bother showing that if it can't accomplish it? Here's the graph: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-gpu-performance-01.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-gpu-p... Note that Apple shows 60w for their CPU graph (https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-cpu-performance-02.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/17306/Apple-M1-Ultra-cpu-p...), which did actually match up and does show the double CPU pref that Apple stated. I didn't pull that number out of nowhere. If Apple used 60w in that graph, then I wouldn't be here. > Otherwise, the M1 ultra would have pumped a little bit more wattage and gotten better single core perfs, but guess what, it doesn't. That's because of two reasons: 1. There is only so much data wecan "process" within the same core, more power does not change the data itself, we can only increase the clock speed to finish it faster or widen the amount of data that can fit in the same core. Also of note that Intel Turbo Boost does actually help with single-core thread pref by boosting the single core speed beyond the base line. 2. M1 max clock speed is set to 3.2Ghz (single core), it can't go faster than this (set by Apple). Throwing more wattage here wouldn't change anything but throwing more power to allow all 16 P cores to hit 3.2 does improve performance as long as it isn't overheating. I don't think M1 Ultra does hit 3.2 on all 16 cores (it might have hit 60w max first; I might be wrong but I saw mostly just 3.0ghz in Max video but I have to go back to review it). Again, this is not about single-core performance, this is about GPU performance, which is extremely parallelizable and more comparable to the multi-core performance instead.

p1necone 5y ago

Apple has historically seemingly been allergic to good thermal design. I would not be surprised in the least if they were leaving a lot of performance on the table because they'd rather do that than design proper cooling, despite how silly that sounds. (Although with the m1 line it actually makes a bit of sense for once - it is useful to the end user to set things up so that fans /never spin up/ and the laptop never gets hot to the touch. Whereas with their previous intel models they had terible cooling and still had all of those problems, while not actually achieving a size win over a lot of competitors "thin and light" models that actually had competent thermal design)