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Are PC laptops going to catch up? I wonder if there is some kind of conflict of interest with Nvidia holding back more capable PC chips or software integration.
by ilaksh 3y ago
Are PC laptops going to catch up? I wonder if there is some kind of conflict of interest with Nvidia holding back more capable PC chips or software integration.
- azeirah 3y agoSnapdragon is making big claims about the Snapdragon X Elite. It is an ARM chip instead of x86, meant for the laptop market. I haven't delved deep into it yet so I can't make any comparisons or give my own take. https://www.anandtech.com/show/21112/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-performance-preview-a-first-look-at-whats-to-come https://www.anandtech.com/show/21112/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-e...
- incrudible 3y agoThe newer AMD chips have already caught up in terms of performance/efficiency. Software is more of a challenge.
- conradev 3y agoAt both ends of the spectrum? My intuition is that on the low end they’d take a hit in efficiency by not having low-power cores to schedule background tasks onto like Intel and ARM have been pushing
- incrudible 3y agoFair point. They do have efficiency cores (Zen4c) in some of the latest mobile and server chips. However, even when they do have dedicated efficiency cores, it's not clear that this would be a major advantage in the Windows software landscape.
- ahoka 3y agoWhat do you mean?
- mrweasel 3y agoAny modern CPU, made within the past 5 years or so (perhaps longer), is plenty fast, but the software either doesn't take advantage of that speed, or is does so in a very wrong way. There is no reason for Windows to be sluggish on any mid-range CPU or up, yet here we are. I should not, I haven't used Windows for a good while, but I see demos and people are amazed by the speed of which windows open and coming from the Mac or a light weight Linux desktop, I can't say that I'm impressed. Apple still holds the advantage that they just need to target a very small set of hardware configurations, all of which they have designed and control. It does still allow them to build the most pleasant desktop experience of all the current offering, even with less amazing hardware (mostly their GPU). But this is HN, what people probably mean is: LLM are still better with an Nvidia GPU and neither Apples nor AMDs APIs and libraries are as good as Nvidias CUDA.
- DeathArrow 3y ago>It does still allow them to build the most pleasant desktop experience of all the current offering I wouldn't call MacOs desktop experience as most pleasant. Not if you are a power user.
- ahoka 3y agoI don’t experience this difference with Windows vs Mac performance. Actually my desktop machine is much faster in most tasks than the similar vintage M1 Macbook Pro I use for work. Probably mostly due to faster storage in the desktop.
- DeathArrow 3y agoWhich laptop with AMD CPU I can use to watch movies for 20 hours or browse the Internet for the same amount of time without recharging? I am not an Apple or MacOs fan but I recently bought a MacBook Pro just for battery life. So I can watch movies and browse the Internet on the sofa without having to plug the laptop.
- incrudible 3y agoIf you benchmark the AMD 7xxx series aganst the Apple chips while considering their power budget, AMD is on par or on top. Battery life is strongly tied to software though, and here Apple has the upper hand. However, if you use Chrome vs Safari, you will notice degraded battery life on Mac OS too.
- DeathArrow 3y agoI use Edge and I can browse the Internet for about 20 hours.
- TheCapeGreek 3y ago> However, if you use Chrome vs Safari, you will notice degraded battery life on Mac OS too. Still way better than non-M chips. I've done the runaround and used Safari, Orion, Chrome, Arc, and back to Firefox on my M1 MBP. Some are better than others, but the machine overall is still superior.
- jeroenhd 3y agoThe ASUS ZenBook 14 has been tested to have about 18 hours of battery life for basic web browsing [1]. In the same test the 2020 MacBook Air 13" only scored about 14 hours. The Zenbook also easily beat the M1 in multicore performance, though single core is still where Apple shines. Unfortunately, this test didn't include a more recent Macbook, so I can't tell how it stacks up against the M3. Still, for about €500 less than the M2 Air, I know what I would pick. The 1600p screen and the soldered-on memory is a bit of a downside, but the thing sells for less than half the price of a new M2 Macbook Air when you actually configure it with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage; whatever improvements the M2 chip made don't seem all that interesting for that price difference. Based on their historical data [2] for another guide, the Zenbook also seems to beat the M2 in terms of multi core performance and browsing battery life when recorded in another test, but I can't tell if those numbers are representative. [1]: https://tweakers.net/reviews/11472/4/laptop-best-buy-guide-oktober-2023-thin-en-lights-tot-1000-euro.html https://tweakers.net/reviews/11472/4/laptop-best-buy-guide-o... [2]: https://tweakers.net/reviews/11610/4/laptop-best-buy-guide-december-2023-instap-macbook-air-m1-m2-of-pro-m3.html https://tweakers.net/reviews/11610/4/laptop-best-buy-guide-d...
- throwaway5959 3y agoYou can buy a laptop with a 4060 with 8 GB of VRAM for under $1500. For many ML tasks that’s plenty of memory for inference and training (assuming you’re willing to deal with a lower batch size).
- jillesvangurp 3y agoI think most chip manufacturers have plans to do that. But it's going to take some time for that to get to market. AMD, Nvidia, Samsung, and a few others are working on arm based chips for laptops. It will be interesting to see if Intel adapts. These things don't happen instantly and Apple seems to have caught most of the industry off guard by doing such a good job with the m1 and its successors. They put a stake in the ground for high performance computing on Arm and raised the ambition level quite a bit. Nvidia of course has the added complexity that they were going to buy Arm and then that got blocked. They had to adjust to that as well. And of course they are the GPU provider of choice for GPUs to many AI developers and researchers. On paper they have all the right tech and ideas here. There's a recent announcement of them working on this now: https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-make-arm-based-pc-chips-major-new-challenge-intel-2023-10-23/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/nvidia-make-arm-based-pc-... AMD, Samsung and a few others have similar plans. My guess is there will be several options in the market in a few years. We'll have to see how good those are.
- stavros 3y agoIs software ever going to become more responsive? I'm tired of Slack constantly fucking up its UI because I'm faster than it is, and that's on an M2.
- KingLancelot 3y ago[dead]
- DeathArrow 3y agoAre people going to be less lazy and use a compiled language like C, C++, Rust instead of Javascript for desktop and mobile apps? Are companies going to pay for that development?
- trevyn 3y agoNobody really cares. I’m not usually the type to complain about input lag; most modern apps on a recent machine are snappy enough for me. But I’ve been messing around with egui lately, and it just feels… fast. It’s weird. But nobody really cares.
- icemelt8 3y agounlikely
- poisonborz 3y agoWho will develop a cross-platform UI system as capable, flexible and well-embedded as HTML/CSS and as responsive as native UI? Google did its shot with Flutter, it's not exactly eating the world. The performance issue will long be solved before somebody comes up with a capable contender.
- bandergirl 3y ago> The performance issue will long be solved before somebody comes up with a capable contender. I wish I had such a positive outlook. New highways are built and they are quickly filled with traffic.
- 3y ago
- adrian_b 3y agoAll AMD Zen 4, including the laptop 7x4x and 8x4x series support bfloat16 too. The laptop models also include a separate ML/AI inference accelerator besides the CPU and GPU, but for now that has software support only for Windows.
- segfaultbuserr 3y agoIf I recall correctly, these integrated "AI accelerators" from both Intel and AMD are actually rather underpowered in comparison to an actual GPU (even the iGPU), at least in their current forms. So they don't have any performance advantage, but was put in place for power efficiency.
- Zetobal 3y agoThe new amd agpus are on par.
- pjmlp 3y agoI hope they never catch up to Apple's prices per RAM and SSDs on laptops.
- DeathArrow 3y ago>Are PC laptops going to catch up? x86 has to scale from embedded boards to laptops to servers. AMD made different trade offs than Apple. Apple chose to achieve a level of performance by keeping the frequency low and having a high IPC. High IPC means that cores consume a larger size of the die. That helped with lower power consumption. x86 makers like AMD, did the other way around. They dedicated a smaller portion of the die to a core. That makes it cheaper. To make up for that, they used a higher frequency, which also means a higher power consumption. Apple also has a node advantage, which also makes their CPUs more expensive. AMD could totally do what Apple did: have faster IPC at lower power consumption if they would have release more expensive CPUs targeted at the mobile market. But AMD and Apple have different goals. If we stick to the mobile world, Qualcomm is doing with their Orion cores just what Apple did with their M cores. In the first half of this year we will see laptops with Orion cores that will have both strong IPC and low power consumption.
- aurareturn 3y ago>AMD could totally do what Apple did: have faster IPC at lower power consumption if they would have release more expensive CPUs targeted at the mobile market. Doubtful. I'm not sure they have the talent/knowledge to pull it off while Apple Silicon is a moving target with a new generation introduced in each new iPhone.
- DeathArrow 3y agoAMD and Apple are in a different business. What makes sense for Apple doesn't make sense for AMD. And AMD employed some of the most talented people in the area like Jim Keller. They totally can do it. Intel, too. Qualcomm is doing it with Orion and Qualcomm has less expertise and resources.
- BlackFingolfin 3y agoWell, Qualcomm at least claims that. Whether they can deliver is to be seen. Wouldn't be the first time they fail to do so...
- 3y ago
- emmet 3y agoIt's difficult for them to catch up when the market for Windows laptops can't bear a 2k+ price tag. Expensive Windows laptops do exist and are pretty good, but they're few and far between. I know giant gaming laptops exist, but in order to keep that power and go smaller, the price is going to jump up in the moon.
- zozbot234 3y agoThere are plenty of expensive Windows laptops, they're just sold as "gaming" laptops with added blinkenlichten.
- emmet 3y agoI mean that was my second point there, but I did enjoy blinkenlichten.
- MBCook 3y agoApple’s best selling laptop, by far, is the Air. And most likely the cheapest model. So that’s $1100 or $1200. Yes other models go way up from there. And many PCs are sub $500. But $2k is not the normal Apple price.
- smoldesu 3y agoWith that being said, the base-model Macbook Air is absolutely designed to leave you unsatisfied. 256gb of storage is a decade-running joke, and 8gb base RAM in an age of unified memory might as well be planned obsolescence. The upgraded models feel like a different beast entirely. Apple wants you to feel like you're justified paying for 16gb of memory and 1tb of storage because... you are. Those upgraded machines run smooth and stay running nice after multiple years of software updates. MacOS is a storage-hungry OS, 3 years of daily-driving a base-model Macbook Air will make you wish you spent $2k on your laptop.
- kube-system 3y agoThe Air is designed to satisfy the target market for the Air, which it does, and is why they sell in large numbers. It runs Safari, MS Word, and TurboTax just fine. For comparison, a base Surface Pro has even lower specs than a basic MacBook Air. (8GB/128GB) But both of these devices are absolutely useable for general tasks.
- akmittal 3y agoQualcomm is supposed to launch new laptop chips(snapdragon x series) and they are supported to be 21% master than Apple M3 muti-core performance. https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/18/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-faster-apple/ https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/18/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-e...
- zuhsetaqi 3y ago> Qualcomm is supposed to launch new laptop chips(snapdragon x series) and they are supported to be 21% master than Apple M3 muti-core performance. ... while using 4 times the power of an M3.
- akmittal 3y agoQualcomm has not given much details but it will be interesting to see performance numbers for 23Watt profile. Even if you can match M1/M2 performance that would be big step up from x86 Edit: looks like 23 watt performance is more or less the same https://www.anandtech.com/show/21112/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite-performance-preview-a-first-look-at-whats-to-come https://www.anandtech.com/show/21112/qualcomm-snapdragon-x-e...
- _ea1k 3y agoOn battery life? Its hard to say. On things like GPU and LLM performance, I'd say they already have, and often at significantly lower prices.
- bombcar 3y agoPeople seem to have taken "Apple made a very performant laptop" and factored it down to "the M1/2 series of chips beats everything every time" - which is obviously not the case. For the particular use case of "a laptop on battery that doesn't die in ten minutes" Apple is decently far ahead. But everything else you can easily beat it if you make different trade-offs.
- shiroiuma 3y agoI think the problem is Microsoft and Intel. Intel isn't too interested in making an ARM chip like the M2/M3, and Windows only runs on x86. If Linux had a significant marketshare on the desktop/laptop, this wouldn't be so much of a problem, and it'd be possible for someone to challenge Intel/AMD in non-Apple CPUs, but that's not the world we live in.