4 ms·

It seems like the M3 favors efficiency and thermals over raw power. This makes sense for the devices they've put it in. I wonder if we're going to see differen

by jmull 3y ago

It seems like the M3 favors efficiency and thermals over raw power. This makes sense for the devices they've put it in. I wonder if we're going to see different processors (M3X or M4) for the next release of the pro desktops, that favor power over thermals and efficiency? Maybe there will be a kind of tick-tock, with odd numbered processors favoring efficiency and even numbered processors for power? M3, M5, M7 for the laptops M4, M6, M8 for the pro desktops ?

pohl 3y ago
Doesn't prioritizing efficiency and thermals make sense for any device? Even a desktop has moments when it's doing almost nothing but has tasks that can adequately be handled by an E core where powering up a P core is overkill. Doesn't being efficient mean that more of the thermal budget can be held in reserve for when it's actually needed? Don't desktop users desire for their powerful machine to also be quiet?
- jeffbee 3y ago
  The blue-logo CPU company gives you a choice. You can adopt their most aggressive power profiles and get marginal performance gains if you want them. Or, you can tune them down to levels where they are pretty fast and fairly quiet. Or, you can dial them all the way down to their most efficient operating point, which pretty much nobody wants because that point is around 1W/core and they are pretty slow. Apple is dictating how much power the CPU is allowed to draw and they don't let it scale up. They are also making a static choice about how much die area and power to spend on the GPU, which might not suit every user. I know I personally don't give a rip about the GPU in my M2 mac mini, beyond the fact that it can draw things on the screen.
- diffeomorphism 3y ago
  Not really, no. Case in point: https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-9-7940HS-analysis-Zen4-Phoenix-is-ideally-as-efficient-as-Apple.713395.0.html#toc-6 https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-9-7940HS-analysis-Ze... Adjusting the TDP from 80W all the way down to 35W costs you relatively little in performance and gives you about the same efficiency as an M2 Pro. That is not done because it does not sell. > Don't desktop users desire for their powerful machine to also be quiet? No. That is not an "also" but an "instead". People claim they would make that trade-off but that is just not the case. Same for "make it heavier but give me more battery life".
  - bgirard 3y ago
    If I can tuck away my desktop under my desk and it acts as a large space heater in the below zero winter I don't mind if it's helping me get my compiles down faster. There's some jobs I want a fast desktop for and other jobs, like browsing cooking recipes, I'll take my M1 macbook air for.
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    > That is not done because it does not sell. It's not done because it doesn't sell in the PC market. Apple's kind of your only choice and if they say you're getting perf/W you're getting perf/W :) > People claim they would make that trade-off but that is just not the case. It's not 2 dimensional, tdp vs noise. It's tdp vs size vs noise vs price. You get a large ATX mid-tower and throw some Noctua 140mm fans in there and you won't hear a thing as it dispenses 1KW of heat into your feet area.
  - faeriechangling 3y ago
    >Same for "make it heavier but give me more battery life". Consumers purchase large, heavy phones more than one would expect given their pricing and one of the reason they do so is that they have better battery life.
- crest 3y ago
  > Doesn't prioritising efficiency and thermals make sense for any device? No. If you have the cooling to sustain the higher power mode it can be worth it to pay the power bill to get work done faster. Compared to the productivity gains for compute limited workloads the increased power bill is little more than a rounding error or even a net power saving because you need less supporting infrastructure per worker to accomplish the same assuming that the tasks are even efficiently parallelizable to multiple (human) workers.
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  > Doesn't prioritizing efficiency and thermals make sense for any device? Intel did just ship 14th Gen Core i9 chips with a 400 watt power draw under load and very little in the way of a performance gain. > In some areas, the extra clock speeds available on the Core i9-14900K show some benefit, but generally speaking, it won't make much difference in most areas. The most significant win performance for the Core i9-14900K came in CineBench R23 MT... the Core i9-14900K sits 6% ahead in this benchmark https://www.anandtech.com/show/21084/intel-core-i9-14900k-core-i7-14700k-and-core-i5-14600k-review-raptor-lake-refreshed/15 https://www.anandtech.com/show/21084/intel-core-i9-14900k-co... Having your best benchmark result only see a 6% gain in return for a more than 400 watt power draw makes it pretty clear that just as with the Pentium IV of old, Intel isn't on a sustainable path. It also makes the M3's 20% performance gain along side efficiency gains look pretty darn good in comparison.
solardev 3y ago
You can just stack more of them for performance, no? You can't magically cool them down for idle periods though.
- jmull 3y ago
  Dollars are never unlimited though, so you can't just add more chips/chiplets/cores.
stetrain 3y ago
For the M3 and M3 Pro, they kept the same number of cores or in the case of the Pro actually decreased them. On the other hand, the M3 Max gained 4 Performance cores for a total of 16 cores (12P 4E) vs the M2 Max's 12 cores (8P 4E). The M3 Max beats the M2 Ultra (2x M2 Max dies) in single and multicore benchmarks. Seems like Apple is leaning towards efficiency on their lower end chips, but also using the extra transistor density to push performance on M3 Max, increasing the gap between the low and high end chips. That M3 Max is presumably going to be turned into an M3 Ultra sometime next year with 32 cores, which would roughly double the M2 Ultra multicore performance.
- jltsiren 3y ago
  The M3 Max beats the M2 Ultra in single-task benchmarks, that measure how well various kinds of software can take advantage of the hardware. Such benchmarks don't scale well with the number of CPU cores, because many tasks involve sequential bottlenecks. With higher-end hardware, you should get more meaningful results by running a few copies of the benchmark software in parallel and reporting the sum of multicore scores as the true multicore score. That would reflect the common use case of running several independent tasks in parallel.
deagle50 3y ago
Apple is favoring yields and margin over everything else. They cut the M3 Pro as much as possible so it's half the area of the M2 Pro.
- cubefox 3y ago
  That would explain it. Reduced chip size, presumably due to increase in price per transistor. But do you have evidence for this theory?
  - deagle50 3y ago
    Why else go through the trouble of a custom layout for the M3 Pro with multiple custom reductions (caches, vector units, cores, memory controllers) vs lopping off half of the Max GPU like in the two previous generations?
hajile 3y ago
I think it's more accurate to say that M3 favors smaller chips because N3B has atrocious yields (not to mention cost savings). When they switch to N3E and get better yields, I imagine that we'll see chip size grow. As we're getting close to the number of cores that the average consumer can use or would want to use in a desktop, I imagine that we'll be seeing an increase in GPU, NPU, and other specialized units instead of more CPUs though.
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Fluorescence 3y ago
> I wonder if we're going to see different processors (M3X or M4) for the next release of the pro desktops I don't think they care much about pro desktops given the pretty embarrassing MacPro. They just don't mean much for the bottom line compared to consumer lifestyle devices. I expect they would be happily rid of the customer segment - annoying power users wanting low-level access and customisation. They keep their machines for too long and don't give much upselling opportunity for subscriptions, fashion accessories, house and family trinkets.
- philistine 3y ago
  Apple just created a whole new Mac last year. It's a desktop. Last time they had created a new Mac was so long ago no one remembers. For so long it was just Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro. Now there's a whole new family member and it's a desktop. Apple is managing the slow death of desktops very well.
jwells89 3y ago
It can make sense for desktops too, like in the case of the Mac Studio. The role it plays there is keeping fans inaudible while maintaining good thermals rather than conserving battery.

by jmull 3y ago

pohl 3y ago

Doesn't prioritizing efficiency and thermals make sense for any device? Even a desktop has moments when it's doing almost nothing but has tasks that can adequately be handled by an E core where powering up a P core is overkill. Doesn't being efficient mean that more of the thermal budget can be held in reserve for when it's actually needed? Don't desktop users desire for their powerful machine to also be quiet?

jeffbee 3y ago
The blue-logo CPU company gives you a choice. You can adopt their most aggressive power profiles and get marginal performance gains if you want them. Or, you can tune them down to levels where they are pretty fast and fairly quiet. Or, you can dial them all the way down to their most efficient operating point, which pretty much nobody wants because that point is around 1W/core and they are pretty slow. Apple is dictating how much power the CPU is allowed to draw and they don't let it scale up. They are also making a static choice about how much die area and power to spend on the GPU, which might not suit every user. I know I personally don't give a rip about the GPU in my M2 mac mini, beyond the fact that it can draw things on the screen.
diffeomorphism 3y ago
Not really, no. Case in point: https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-9-7940HS-analysis-Zen4-Phoenix-is-ideally-as-efficient-as-Apple.713395.0.html#toc-6 https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-9-7940HS-analysis-Ze... Adjusting the TDP from 80W all the way down to 35W costs you relatively little in performance and gives you about the same efficiency as an M2 Pro. That is not done because it does not sell. > Don't desktop users desire for their powerful machine to also be quiet? No. That is not an "also" but an "instead". People claim they would make that trade-off but that is just not the case. Same for "make it heavier but give me more battery life".
- bgirard 3y ago
  If I can tuck away my desktop under my desk and it acts as a large space heater in the below zero winter I don't mind if it's helping me get my compiles down faster. There's some jobs I want a fast desktop for and other jobs, like browsing cooking recipes, I'll take my M1 macbook air for.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  > That is not done because it does not sell. It's not done because it doesn't sell in the PC market. Apple's kind of your only choice and if they say you're getting perf/W you're getting perf/W :) > People claim they would make that trade-off but that is just not the case. It's not 2 dimensional, tdp vs noise. It's tdp vs size vs noise vs price. You get a large ATX mid-tower and throw some Noctua 140mm fans in there and you won't hear a thing as it dispenses 1KW of heat into your feet area.
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  >Same for "make it heavier but give me more battery life". Consumers purchase large, heavy phones more than one would expect given their pricing and one of the reason they do so is that they have better battery life.
crest 3y ago
> Doesn't prioritising efficiency and thermals make sense for any device? No. If you have the cooling to sustain the higher power mode it can be worth it to pay the power bill to get work done faster. Compared to the productivity gains for compute limited workloads the increased power bill is little more than a rounding error or even a net power saving because you need less supporting infrastructure per worker to accomplish the same assuming that the tasks are even efficiently parallelizable to multiple (human) workers.
GeekyBear 3y ago
> Doesn't prioritizing efficiency and thermals make sense for any device? Intel did just ship 14th Gen Core i9 chips with a 400 watt power draw under load and very little in the way of a performance gain. > In some areas, the extra clock speeds available on the Core i9-14900K show some benefit, but generally speaking, it won't make much difference in most areas. The most significant win performance for the Core i9-14900K came in CineBench R23 MT... the Core i9-14900K sits 6% ahead in this benchmark https://www.anandtech.com/show/21084/intel-core-i9-14900k-core-i7-14700k-and-core-i5-14600k-review-raptor-lake-refreshed/15 https://www.anandtech.com/show/21084/intel-core-i9-14900k-co... Having your best benchmark result only see a 6% gain in return for a more than 400 watt power draw makes it pretty clear that just as with the Pentium IV of old, Intel isn't on a sustainable path. It also makes the M3's 20% performance gain along side efficiency gains look pretty darn good in comparison.

solardev 3y ago

You can just stack more of them for performance, no? You can't magically cool them down for idle periods though.

jmull 3y ago
Dollars are never unlimited though, so you can't just add more chips/chiplets/cores.

stetrain 3y ago

For the M3 and M3 Pro, they kept the same number of cores or in the case of the Pro actually decreased them. On the other hand, the M3 Max gained 4 Performance cores for a total of 16 cores (12P 4E) vs the M2 Max's 12 cores (8P 4E). The M3 Max beats the M2 Ultra (2x M2 Max dies) in single and multicore benchmarks. Seems like Apple is leaning towards efficiency on their lower end chips, but also using the extra transistor density to push performance on M3 Max, increasing the gap between the low and high end chips. That M3 Max is presumably going to be turned into an M3 Ultra sometime next year with 32 cores, which would roughly double the M2 Ultra multicore performance.

jltsiren 3y ago
The M3 Max beats the M2 Ultra in single-task benchmarks, that measure how well various kinds of software can take advantage of the hardware. Such benchmarks don't scale well with the number of CPU cores, because many tasks involve sequential bottlenecks. With higher-end hardware, you should get more meaningful results by running a few copies of the benchmark software in parallel and reporting the sum of multicore scores as the true multicore score. That would reflect the common use case of running several independent tasks in parallel.

deagle50 3y ago

Apple is favoring yields and margin over everything else. They cut the M3 Pro as much as possible so it's half the area of the M2 Pro.

cubefox 3y ago
That would explain it. Reduced chip size, presumably due to increase in price per transistor. But do you have evidence for this theory?
- deagle50 3y ago
  Why else go through the trouble of a custom layout for the M3 Pro with multiple custom reductions (caches, vector units, cores, memory controllers) vs lopping off half of the Max GPU like in the two previous generations?

hajile 3y ago

I think it's more accurate to say that M3 favors smaller chips because N3B has atrocious yields (not to mention cost savings). When they switch to N3E and get better yields, I imagine that we'll see chip size grow. As we're getting close to the number of cores that the average consumer can use or would want to use in a desktop, I imagine that we'll be seeing an increase in GPU, NPU, and other specialized units instead of more CPUs though.

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Fluorescence 3y ago

> I wonder if we're going to see different processors (M3X or M4) for the next release of the pro desktops I don't think they care much about pro desktops given the pretty embarrassing MacPro. They just don't mean much for the bottom line compared to consumer lifestyle devices. I expect they would be happily rid of the customer segment - annoying power users wanting low-level access and customisation. They keep their machines for too long and don't give much upselling opportunity for subscriptions, fashion accessories, house and family trinkets.

philistine 3y ago
Apple just created a whole new Mac last year. It's a desktop. Last time they had created a new Mac was so long ago no one remembers. For so long it was just Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro. Now there's a whole new family member and it's a desktop. Apple is managing the slow death of desktops very well.

jwells89 3y ago

It can make sense for desktops too, like in the case of the Mac Studio. The role it plays there is keeping fans inaudible while maintaining good thermals rather than conserving battery.