6 ms·
Is an irrelevant metric, like battery life, when doing scientific computation.
by fartcannon 5y ago
Is an irrelevant metric, like battery life, when doing scientific computation.
- flatiron 5y agoPerformance per watt is a pretty big metric. Personally the fact they didn’t produce Linux drivers for these things is baffling. It would just make more people buy them. So what if they don’t run macOS? I would buy a M1 air tomorrow if they published Linux drivers for the full stack.
- macintux 5y agoI have to think they’re developer- and supply-constrained. They’ll make up those sales once others have cracked the problem.
- fartcannon 5y agoThe richest tech company in the world worth trillions is constrained?
- etchalon 5y agoWeird, but true.
- fartcannon 5y agoI don't believe it, honestly. I would gamble that it's because helping Linux grow doesn't financially benefit them, now or in the future. And that, to me at least, feels quite a bit more likely from Apple.
- macintux 5y ago> Personally the fact they didn’t produce Linux drivers for these things is baffling. Followed by > helping Linux grow doesn't financially benefit them, now or in the future Is a bit perplexing. Why are you baffled? Opportunity cost is a very real thing. Apple would probably be better served by developing Windows drivers, if they were going to take developers away from macOS drivers.
- fartcannon 5y agoI didn't write that I'm baffled. That was a different poster.
- macintux 5y agoOops, sorry, the shared 'f' first character must have thrown me.
- etchalon 5y agoYou'd lose the bet. Apple, like every company, is limited by the speed at which their supply chain can produce specific parts. And, while they're often the largest customer for a given manufacturer, they're rarely the only.
- fartcannon 5y agoThere's literally people working on it right now, for free, that they could pay and give access to all of the docs for the hardware that they designed in house.
- MobiusHorizons 5y agoThere are always constraints. Usually it's the time and attention of the people who are working on the problem. Throwing more people at the problem can help, but also adds a lot of coordination overhead to the problem. It doesn't matter how many resources you have, hard problems are still hard.
- paulmd 5y agoit's a perennial topic of discussion in the AMD vs Intel debate, so a lot of people do seem to care about it. And why wouldn't you, when it all becomes heat in your room? I'm not saying every single watt matters but, in cases where you're putting the M1 ultra at 40W against a 280W threadripper or Epyc... yeah that hugely matters.
- jltsiren 5y agoMany people don't care about power consumption precisely because it becomes heat in the room. They live in places where the need for heating is bigger than the need for air conditioning. In my experience, a ~500 W gaming PC does not generate any noticeable heat unless you use it in a small room behind a closed door. A 1450 W vacuum cleaner does, so I guess heat becomes significant somewhere around 1 kW of sustained power.
- fartcannon 5y agoThat's debate. That's just what you and me are doing right now. Useless internet fluff. When push comes to shove, and you really wanna shove something, you're not going to pick the most efficient, you're going to pick the best pusher available. And right now that's gonna be something by AMD or Intel with an (probably several) nvidia GPUs. Or you offload it to GCP/AWS but then the wattage of the M1 Ultra is still irrelevant because you could use a Chromebook to do that.
- Fomite 5y agoAs someone who does a fair amount of scientific computation in the field, power consumption as it relates to battery life is not an irrelevant metric.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]