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One thing that left me a bit confused was the comparison against Intel Macs. Although I am still using an Intel 16-inch MacBook, I really wanted to see how the
by koito17 3y ago
One thing that left me a bit confused was the comparison against Intel Macs. Although I am still using an Intel 16-inch MacBook, I really wanted to see how the M3 fared against the M2, not Intel and M1. I think it's no surprise the M3 exceeds the Intel Core i7-9750H in basically all of Apple's own benchmarking. My real question, which will probably be answered next week, is how it compares to the generation right before it.
My work laptop is a 14-inch MacBook Pro and I've been impressed with the battery life considering all of the containers that run (on Kubernetes!) as part of my dev workflow. I guess Apple deciding to compare Intel and M1 was to try to convince existing MacBook users to upgrade to the latest generation CPUs.
- pram 3y agoThere were comparisons to the M1 and M2 in the presentation, and indeed the linked website.
- nblgbg 3y agoThe M3 chips are 30% faster than the M2 chips for efficiency cores and 15% faster for performance cores. The overall performance is still impressive and there is no alternative to M*s when compared with performance per watt. But others have caught up, for example https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-9-7940hs https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-9-7940hs is very good.
- Jensson 3y ago> But others have caught up You mean others now got to use TSMC's 4nm process? These new M3 chips are probably on the 3nm process, Apple is still a generation ahead here. It looks like Apples aim is to always stay a generation ahead of its competition, I wonder how long they can keep that up since they aren't running their own fabs.
- blovescoffee 3y agoThey are literally on the 3nm process. They say so in the video.
- Jensson 3y agoOk, so no probably, they are on 3nm. Anyway my point that they are a generation ahead still stands.
- boomfunky 3y agoApple signed a deal with TSMC to purchase nearly all of their available 3nm chips for the next year. Ethical or not, they positioned themselves to ensure almost no competitors could develop on 3nm until they did first since no fab on earth has the scale of TSMC. They could ride this plan for years if it pays them.
- giantrobot 3y agoHow is Apple buying all the production slots for a process in any way unethical? It's not like they're buying them and then burying the chips in a landfill. They paid TSMC's asking price for production slots. AMD or Intel could have bought those same slots but didn't. TSMC has limited capacity at 3nm, it was up for sale, Apple bought it. Where's the ethics question?
- lostlogin 3y agoI’ve seen argument for ‘business ethics’ before from the losing side. It’s sometimes part of a media campaign. It’s likely cheaper than legal action.
- ksec 3y ago>How is Apple buying all the production slots for a process in any way unethical? This has been the case on HN for more than 5 years. Intel Fabs used to sell their industry best node to only Intel themselves, and charges a premium for those newer CPU. I guess that is unethical too.
- warkdarrior 3y agoHow is Google buying search defaults on all iPhones in any way unethical? It's not like they're buying them and then burying the searches in a landfill. They paid Apple's asking price for search defaults. Microsoft or Brave could have bought those same search defaults but didn't. Apple has a limited amount of search defaults on iPhones, it was up for sale, Google bought it. Where's the ethics question?
- deleted 3y ago
- bee_rider 3y agoNot running their own fabs makes it easier, right? They presumably pay a premium for being the first to use a generation, but not anywhere near as much as the full cost of developing it, since TSMC can sell that capacity to everybody else when they are done with it.
- hajile 3y agoOryon seems to have caught up in performance despite being on N4 (which is just 5nm++), but it's an ARM design from the guys who made M1 in the first place. M3 seems like it generally underwhelms. A17 had like a 3% increase in IPC. They didn't discuss battery much and I suspect that's because ramping the clockspeeds to over 4GHz isn't so good for the battery benchmarks. The most worrying part is the transistor count. M3 Max gets quite a bit higher transistor count, but M3 is only 37B transistors while M1 was 33.7B. Apple and/or N3 absolutely suck here. Looks like I might be keeping my M1 system for yet another upgrade cycle.
- paulmd 3y agothe backstory here is that TSMC N3 is a trainwreck, it's now separated into two different nodes, N3B (for bad) and N3E (enhanced). N3E gets the promised step that was originally for N3, but it only enters volume production next year. Supposedly it will actually bring costs down (and yields up) because this is where some additional steps go EUV. Both TSMC and Samsung have been fucking around with their marketing around nodes to try and say they're first in volume 4nm production, but both are having problems with the final bosses of FINFET at 3nm and after this both TSMC and Samsung do GAAFET and solve a different set of problems. Past that lies... nothing. Hyper-NA seems dead. In the meantime, M3 is on N3B despite very low yields, which surely applied design pressure to keep size down, and the power gains are not as good, and also the density is worse than promised. Apple also surely feels pressure to keep prices high (bait-tier M3 base option with 8GB lol) and honestly they probably are going to be tough to justify on a performance/efficiency basis compared to very fierce ARMv8 competition (we are now testing the thesis there's no difference lol). Apple still has advantages but man do they take you to the cleaners for the result, a loaded apple laptop is obscene. I chose to go for an older loaded M1 Max instead of waiting for M3, because I could actually get a nice laptop that wouldn't impose limits on a prosumer etc. 1TB is all anyone can afford still and that's really silly. (SSD prices in particular are absolutely inexcusable lol. Mandate a M.2 NVMe 3.0/4.0/+ port please, EU, it's time. Don't care how it works, slot it into the side or whatever if you want, it can be single-sided 2230 or 2242 if you want (or caddy-loading, the icy dock standard lol), but it's time.) https://global.icydock.com/products-c5-s48-i0.html https://global.icydock.com/products-c5-s48-i0.html https://global.icydock.com/vancheerfile/images/mb873mp-b_v2/MB873MP-B_V2_1280X853_09.webp https://global.icydock.com/vancheerfile/images/mb873mp-b_v2/... I also wonder if losing a bunch of the PA Semi team to whatever startup (it may have been nuvia or tenstorrent lol) may also have hurt apple's velocity on A16/A17. There were a lot of apple silicons before M1, after all. But certainly TSMC is a bunch of the problem here. I think they'll hustle to refresh it and do M3+ as a fast follow in 6-12 months with N3E, the cost economics are very favorable to jump as soon as there's the volume. That doesn't mean MBP gets refreshed immediately though, they'll ramp on the phones (iphone 16/16 pro, etc) and base-tier M3+ or whatever first.
- photonerd 3y ago> But others have caught up Then you proceed to link to one that... hasn't? (it's good, yes, but it's not caught up at all)
- zik 3y agoI note that if those performance numbers are correct it'll still be a lot slower than Intel's Core i9-13980HX laptop CPU. The M2 Max was between 50% and 80% of the speed of the 13980HX on most benchmarks. A 15%-30% uplift will get it closer to the Intel part but still not reach it.
- runeks 3y agoGood point. However, when they’re that close in performance, I think power usage should be taken into account. It’s a laptop CPU after all. Maybe I’d rather have 80% of the performance at 4x the battery life
- runeks 3y agoDid you account for the M3 Max having four extra performance cores (12 versus 8 for the M2 Max)?
- spacentropy 3y agoYeah, but the problem is that 13980HX has 24 cores, 32 threads and incredible 157W Turbo Power. That means it will be really slow when on battery. And when connected to the mains, it'll be as loud as an airplane taking off. The perf per watt claims still apply.
- soulofmischief 3y agoNot just that, but if you're not running ARM images then it's running a VM for your docker images to boot. It's just mind-blowing how many containers I have running and my laptop is cool to the touch, and at full battery.
- jncfhnb 3y agoDo note that cool to the touch is a bad thing if the internals are otherwise hot
- soulofmischief 3y agoIf the all-aluminum chassis remains cool to the touch despite boiling internals, that's impressive in its own right :-)
- 0x6c6f6c 3y agoThis isn't as much the case anymore. There are typically arm64 images available for the more popular images, and anything you build locally is native, unless you're trying to build x86 software. Redis, Memcached, PostgreSQL, MySQL- it's all native arm64 images now.
- soulofmischief 3y ago> if you're not running ARM images
- mat_epice 3y agoThe point was that there is rarely a reason to not run ARM images, since they’re widely available. If I’m running M3 images on my Ryzen, performance is gonna be horrible, but why would I?
- soulofmischief 3y agoToday? Sure. Thus my statement, which came with a caveat about not running ARM images, the implication being that it's a rare thing today.
- ezfe 3y agoI still know a number of my colleagues who haven't jumped onto the Apple Silicon machines despite our 2019 Intel machines being out of warranty (and thus eligible for replacement) for two years now
- andrewprock 3y agoI'm still using a 2015 macbook for my personal daily driver. I have to plug it in regularly, but otherwise it works just fine for everything except video editing.
- latchkey 3y agoAny reason for not upgrading?
- rewmie 3y ago> Any reason for not upgrading? Why is this sort of question always framed as if people have to provide a justification for not buying a new model, as if spending money on the new shiny without any reason is normal or desirable? We live in a day and age where hardware bought a decade ago still packs enough punch to run most of today's software without any hiccup. Why would anyone waste their cash to replace something that works without having any compelling reason?
- latchkey 3y agoIt is an honest question. For some background in my thinking, it is because today's announcement really focused on Intel users. My semi-educated guess is that Apple did a whole bunch of user studies and realized there are a lot of people out there, like the OP, who haven't upgraded yet, hence the focus. As a result, I'm genuinely curious why this person hasn't upgraded. And for my own personal experience, the upgrade/switch from intel to m*, is night and day better ergonomics as a developer. It isn't just some shiny new toy or a waste in cash. For the same reason professional mechanics in F1 don't use shitty tools to work on their cars. Or tour de france racers aren't using 30lbs Huffy bikes. TLDR: I don't give a f'ck if you don't happen to upgrade, that's your choice. I'm just curious about why.
- internet2000 3y agoI imagine the amount of people upgrading from an M2 Mac will be close to 0, while there's a lot of Intel stragglers out there.
- elif 3y agoI think the point is more that "is it worth buying this new m3 or should I buy a secondhand m2 for half the price?"
- photonerd 3y agomore like "a hundred bucks less". The M1's go for maybe half... if you're lucky. Most are more.
- OJFord 3y agoBecause there's a newer model, which is now true for the M2 ones too?
- photonerd 3y agoM1’s took a hit because multiple processors came out each gen. Remember: the M1 was superseded by both the Pro & the Max (and the unites but that’s not in a MacBook). By the time the M2 came around ppl knew what was up. So you might be able to find a bog standard M1 that low (they do show up) due to this… but it’s rare.
- jki275 3y agoI don't think you're going to find any M2s for half the price. They hold their value pretty solidly.
- kimixa 3y agoThey won't if the M3 turns out to be a significant upgrade.
- bertil 3y agoI was more surprised not to see any AI-specific benchmarks—sure, the most popular open-source models are from avowed competitors, but there should have been a way to define a re-training task that would be relevant for the wave of ML programmers.
- outside1234 3y agoIt won’t excel at this. It is a mobile GPU and won’t be able to put up remotely similar numbers to a desktop GPU with massive amounts of power and cooling.
- aurareturn 3y agoThey didn't improve the neural engine. M3's NPU is half the speed of the A17 Pro in iPhone 15 Pro.
- _ea1k 3y agoI had the same thought. It seems like the improvements there weren't worth talking about. AFAICT, the biggest benefit is just the unified memory model at this point.
- rrrurueuururu 3y agoFor years now, Apple's biggest competitor is Apple from five years ago. One of their biggest threats is that sales flatline because people are still using their perfectly good laptops and phones from several years ago. And that's a hard problem to deal with when you advertise your products as high-end goods that will last a long time.
- zacmps 3y agoThis shouldn't be a problem, and the answer is to refresh devices less frequently.
- aroman 3y agoIt objectively is a problem for Apple as a corporation though, as they are expected by their shareholders to to continue to grow and increase profits year over year.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoOnly in a modern capitalist society etc etc. One thing Apple diversified in in the past years is its non-hardware offering; iCloud earns them billions and Apple TV is churning out massive productions, a 3.5 hour Scorsese flick in cinemas for example.
- orthoxerox 3y agoThe whole company is sized to a specific revenue stream, and this revenue stream requires a specific sales volume. Apple could get off Mr. Bones' wild ride, but this would require remaking how the whole company works: - less frequent laptop releases mean lower sales (do you want this 2020 Mac or this 2023 Dell?) - lower sales mean lower revenue, lower revenue means lower costs - so now Apple has to spend less on R&D and at the same time convince its board of directors that lower sales don't mean Apple is failing
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoWhy would they do that? It wouldn't solve the problem @rueeeeru stated. They need to remain competitive and you can't do that by sitting on your backside for four or five years between products.
- cusx 3y agoOut of curiosity, how much RAM do you have on your MacBook to run containers?
- OJFord 3y agoHow much RAM do you want to give the containers on your MacBook? I'm being facetious, but it's an unanswerable question.
- _joel 3y agoHowever much you set on the slider, so not quite so unanswerable.
- OJFord 3y agoI mean the person I replied to asked the unanswerable question. How can we say how much memory they need in their computer 'for containers' without knowing where they want to set those sliders (and how many of them there are), and then it's not really worth asking, or it would be a question about runtime overhead or something.
- GoofballJones 3y agoI think this is squarely aimed at people who are holding onto their Intel-based Macs with an iron grip. There are always people out there that don't ever want to move to another architecture. I saw it going from Motorola 68030s to PowerPC. I saw people not wanting to upgrade from PowerPC to Intel. Now we're still seeing the people who don't want to migrate to Apple Silicon. They may have legit reasons and what-not. But time is ticking. So I think it's mostly aimed at the Intel hold-overs.
- johnklos 3y agoNobody has to upgrade. m68030 Macs still worked after the PowerPC transition. I used my Mac mini G4 for years after the Intel transition, and still use both an m68030 Mac and that G4 mini with NetBSD now. Currently I'm running Sonoma on a 2010 MacBook Pro. I'd love an ARM-based Mac, but can't afford one yet. I'd have to disagree about the idea that "time is ticking"...
- GoofballJones 3y agoTrue. But I was just offering a possible reason why Apple was hitting that comparison so hard in the presentation.
- kar1181 3y agoIntel ride or die here. My 2019 i9 mbp is trucking along still - and this time of year the heat helps keep the room hospitable. Was looking towards M3 for a big leap, but apart from heat and power (I use my MBP plugged in 95% of the time) there still isn't that compelling a reason to deal with some of the issues (thunderbolt / multiple displays) for my use case. At 4 grand (sterling!) for comparable spec to my intel mbp, I just can't bring myself to take a plunge.
- prmoustache 3y agoA container that is idle and do not serve any request only really as memory in its footprint. There is no reason having tens or hundreds of processes not occupying cpu and i/o time would affect battery life in a significant manner.
- klohto 3y agoBro and where do you think the containers and scheduler run? There is a whole linux underneath running all the time
- prmoustache 3y agoOnly one kernel and scheduler for all the containers, that doesn't have a lot to do if most of the processes are idle. And I am not your bro.
- klohto 3y agoYour whole argument is containers will not occupy CPU or I/O. Which is not true, you’re running a full fledged VM, not just a kernel. And presumably the person running k8s is probably not running them to have them idle. They are technically knowledgeable enough to be aware how much resources do they consume, and be excited for such comparison.
- prmoustache 3y agoA linux VM with only a kubernetes/docker with most workloads idling doesn't use a lot of resources, except memory, probably less than the typical open browser tab full of unoptimized js. When you have kubernetes on your laptop, that is to test your code alongside a set of other microservices functionnally representative of a prod deployment. That doesn't mean your containers will have much load appart from your own punctual testing.
- manmal 3y agoIn case you are not already using orbstack, that might give you even more battery life (not affiliated, just a fan).
- ExoticPearTree 3y agoThe comparison with M2 is not very useful at this point. Throughout the presentation, the gains were something like 15-20% in some areas. Even if they do their own chips, Apple cannot achieve a revolutionary performance gain year over year, that's why between two generations we'll see something like this for a long time. And since their idea is for people to be using Macs for many years, it makes sense to compare it to older generations to try and persuade people to do the upgrade.
- m3kw9 3y agoIt shows the comparison right on the chart, what else you need? But you should get m3 most times if you want to use it for the longest period.