3 ms·

I can't quite tell what's going on here, earlier, you seem to be clear -- c.f. "Apple doesn't make server-grade CPUs"

by refulgentis 2y ago

aurareturn 2y ago
Correct. But their M4 line has the fastest single thread performance in the world.
- nameequalsmain 2y ago
  According to what source? Passmark says otherwise[1]. The fastest Intel CPUs have both a higher single thread and multi thread score in that test. [1] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
  - orangecat 2y ago
    Passmark shows the M4 chips slower than the M3, so something weird is going on. Geekbench 6 has the M4 well ahead of Intel and AMD, with the M3 about 25% slower like you'd expect: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-geekbench_6_single_core https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-geekbench_6_sing...
  - worthless-trash 2y ago
    I keep seeing people repeat incorrect rhetoric about Apple hardware, like this example. There are nice things that Apple has, but as you can see there is significant reality warping going on. Why does it persist?
    - worthless-trash 2y ago
      Never change hn, can't criticise apple here.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    Passmark is an outdated benchmark not optimized for Arm.
    - impure-aqua 2y ago
      I think that is much too hand-wavy regarding the performance differences. Both Passmark and Geekbench are aggregates of a variety of tasks. If you dig into the individual tests that constitute this aggregate score, you will find different platforms perform better, or worse, on certain tests than others. I would wager that, for many applications, only a subset of these tasks are relevant to the performance of the application, yet such benchmark suites distil out all nuance into a single value. Here is a personal anecdote. I have tried running CASTEP (built from source), a density functional theory calculator, on both an M1 Max MacBook Pro [0], and on a Ryzen 7840HS Lenovo laptop [1]. A cursory glance at those Geekbench results linked might make you expect that the performance is roughly equivalent, but the Ryzen outperforms the Mac by about 4x, a huge difference. What happens if we try and dig into any particular benchmark to explain this? If you click on any particular benchmark in the Geekbench search lists, you will see they test things like "File Compression", "HTML5 Browser", "Clang". Which of these maps most closely to the sorts of instructions used in CASTEP? Your guess is as good as mine. If anything, I would say Passmark is quite a bit less abstract about this. Looking at the Mac [2] and Ryzen [3] Passmark results, you can see the Ryzen outperforms the Mac by about 2x on "extended instructions", which appear to involve some matrix math, and also about 2x on "integer math". The Mac, meanwhile, appears to be extremely good at finding prime numbers, at over 3x the speed of the Ryzen. Presumably the Ryzen's balance of instruction performance is more useful for DFT calculations than the Mac's, which perhaps is weaker in areas that might matter for this application, but stronger in areas that might matter for others. Of course, optimization is likely a component of this. How much effort is put into the OpenBLAS, MPI, etc, implementations on aarch64 darwin vs. x86-64 linux? This is a good question. It is, however, mostly irrelevant to the end consumer, who wishes to consume this software for use in their further research, rather than dig into high-performance computing library optimization. [0] https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=7840hs https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=7840hs [1] https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=m1+max https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=m1+max [2] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+Max+10+Core+3200+MHz&id=4585 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+Max+10+Cor... [3] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+PRO+7840HS&id=5470 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+PRO+784...
- refulgentis 2y ago
  Well, no, right? The M4 Max had great, I would argue the best at time of release, single core results on Geekbench. That is a different claim from M4 line has the top single thread performance in the world. I'm curious: You're signalling both that you understand the fundamental tradeoff ("Apple doesn't make server-grade CPUs") and that you are talking about something else (follow-up with M4 family has top single-thread performance) What drives that? What's the other thing you're hoping to communicate? If you are worried that if you leave it at "Apple doesn't make server-grade CPUs", that people will think M4s aren't as great as they are, this is a technical-enough audience, I think we'll understand :) It doesn't come across as denigrating the M-series, but as understanding a fundamental, physically-based, tradeoff.

I can't quite tell what's going on here, earlier, you seem to be clear -- c.f. "Apple doesn't make server-grade CPUs"

aurareturn 2y ago

Correct. But their M4 line has the fastest single thread performance in the world.

nameequalsmain 2y ago
According to what source? Passmark says otherwise[1]. The fastest Intel CPUs have both a higher single thread and multi thread score in that test. [1] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
- orangecat 2y ago
  Passmark shows the M4 chips slower than the M3, so something weird is going on. Geekbench 6 has the M4 well ahead of Intel and AMD, with the M3 about 25% slower like you'd expect: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-geekbench_6_single_core https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-geekbench_6_sing...
- worthless-trash 2y ago
  I keep seeing people repeat incorrect rhetoric about Apple hardware, like this example. There are nice things that Apple has, but as you can see there is significant reality warping going on. Why does it persist?
  - worthless-trash 2y ago
    Never change hn, can't criticise apple here.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  Passmark is an outdated benchmark not optimized for Arm.
  - impure-aqua 2y ago
    I think that is much too hand-wavy regarding the performance differences. Both Passmark and Geekbench are aggregates of a variety of tasks. If you dig into the individual tests that constitute this aggregate score, you will find different platforms perform better, or worse, on certain tests than others. I would wager that, for many applications, only a subset of these tasks are relevant to the performance of the application, yet such benchmark suites distil out all nuance into a single value. Here is a personal anecdote. I have tried running CASTEP (built from source), a density functional theory calculator, on both an M1 Max MacBook Pro [0], and on a Ryzen 7840HS Lenovo laptop [1]. A cursory glance at those Geekbench results linked might make you expect that the performance is roughly equivalent, but the Ryzen outperforms the Mac by about 4x, a huge difference. What happens if we try and dig into any particular benchmark to explain this? If you click on any particular benchmark in the Geekbench search lists, you will see they test things like "File Compression", "HTML5 Browser", "Clang". Which of these maps most closely to the sorts of instructions used in CASTEP? Your guess is as good as mine. If anything, I would say Passmark is quite a bit less abstract about this. Looking at the Mac [2] and Ryzen [3] Passmark results, you can see the Ryzen outperforms the Mac by about 2x on "extended instructions", which appear to involve some matrix math, and also about 2x on "integer math". The Mac, meanwhile, appears to be extremely good at finding prime numbers, at over 3x the speed of the Ryzen. Presumably the Ryzen's balance of instruction performance is more useful for DFT calculations than the Mac's, which perhaps is weaker in areas that might matter for this application, but stronger in areas that might matter for others. Of course, optimization is likely a component of this. How much effort is put into the OpenBLAS, MPI, etc, implementations on aarch64 darwin vs. x86-64 linux? This is a good question. It is, however, mostly irrelevant to the end consumer, who wishes to consume this software for use in their further research, rather than dig into high-performance computing library optimization. [0] https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=7840hs https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=7840hs [1] https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=m1+max https://browser.geekbench.com/search?q=m1+max [2] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+Max+10+Core+3200+MHz&id=4585 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+Max+10+Cor... [3] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+PRO+7840HS&id=5470 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+7+PRO+784...
refulgentis 2y ago
Well, no, right? The M4 Max had great, I would argue the best at time of release, single core results on Geekbench. That is a different claim from M4 line has the top single thread performance in the world. I'm curious: You're signalling both that you understand the fundamental tradeoff ("Apple doesn't make server-grade CPUs") and that you are talking about something else (follow-up with M4 family has top single-thread performance) What drives that? What's the other thing you're hoping to communicate? If you are worried that if you leave it at "Apple doesn't make server-grade CPUs", that people will think M4s aren't as great as they are, this is a technical-enough audience, I think we'll understand :) It doesn't come across as denigrating the M-series, but as understanding a fundamental, physically-based, tradeoff.