3 ms·

Apple Silicon performance hasn't seen much improvement over the years

6 points by behnamoh 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
aurareturn 2y ago
He's wrong. In Geekbench 6, single thread increased by ~62% when comparing M1 Max to M4 Max. In multi-thread, the performance increased by 103%. [0] M1 Max was released on Oct 2021. M4 Max was released in Oct 2024. This is only a 3 year gap between the two chips. In the old Intel days, you'd get 1-5% increases per year. Apple's performance improvements have been insanely good. In Blender, M4 Max GPU improved by 541% over M1 Max. [1] Even in the author's charts, you can see a huge increase in performance. From the M1 Max to M4 Max, CPU cores increased from 10 to 16. GPU Tflops increased from 10 to 16. Not all Tflops are the same as the M4 Max seems to be faster than than the M1 Max by more than the Tflops figures. These are good increases in raw transistors even if you ignore architectural improvements. Looking under the hood, Apple increased the performance of each CPU core by 62% so it's not like Apple simply increased the core count by 6 and called it a day. The cores are totally different and significantly faster. GPU cores also gained ray tracing and seem to take advantage of the bandwidth much more efficiently. The only thing that hasn't really improved is memory bandwidth but bandwidth was never the bottleneck for Apple chips (until LLMs came out) which is why M3 generation even had a decrease. Bandwidth depends more on memory makers such as SK Hynix to improve. [0]https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks [1]https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?compute_type=METAL&blender_version=4.3.0&group_by=device_name https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?compute_type=...
- bigyabai 2y ago
  FWIW they also added 60% more cores to the chip so a 103% multicore improvement is pretty yawn-worthy. Honestly I'm surprised a 62% single-core improvement is all they can muster from TSMC's process improvements. > Looking under the hood, Apple increased the performance of each CPU core by 62% This is not true and not how heterogeneous core architectures or single-threaded benchmark scores work.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    Honestly I'm surprised a 62% single-core improvement is all they can muster from TSMC's process improvements. In the same time period, Intel managed a 27.5% improvement in single core performance. Intel went from Alder Lake (Nov 2021, Intel 10nm) to Arrow Lake (Oct 2024, TSMC 3nm). [0] This is not true and not how heterogeneous core architectures or single-threaded benchmark scores work. This is true based on Geekbench 6. [0]https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks 12900KS vs 285k
    - bigyabai 2y ago
      When you mean "improvement" you mean Geekbench score. There are all sorts of metrics that year-over-year improvements bring, and performance uplift is really just one of them. > This is true based on Geekbench 6. But Apple Silicon does not have a homogeneous core architecture. Your claim that "each core" was improved by 62% is simply flat-out wrong. A single-core test does not average out the performance of the efficiency core and performance core, it just schedules it to the fastest available thread. Furthermore, you're again conflating "improvement" and "Geekbench score" without controlling for variables like power consumption and ISA divergence. It's like the cherry-picked PowerISA vs Intel benchmarks all over again. OP's statement still strikes me as overwhelmingly true. The promise of ARM dominating the desktop is entirely unrealized in 2025. It's barely even reaching fruition in the datacenter.
      - aurareturn 2y ago
        When you mean "improvement" you mean Geekbench score. There are all sorts of metrics that year-over-year improvements bring, and performance uplift is really just one of them. I'm not sure what this has to do with anything I said. But Apple Silicon does not have a homogeneous core architecture. Your claim that "each core" was improved by 62% is simply flat-out wrong. A single-core test does not average out the performance of the efficiency core and performance core, it just schedules it to the fastest available thread. Furthermore, you're again conflating "improvement" and "Geekbench score" without controlling for variables like power consumption and ISA divergence. When I said "each core", I meant each P core. Geekbench does not test E cores in ST. In MT, E cores are factored in. OP's statement still strikes me as overwhelmingly true. The promise of ARM dominating the desktop is entirely unrealized in 2025. It's barely even reaching fruition in the datacenter. Weird statement devoid of any facts. Apple's laptops are generations better than anything AMD and Intel can muster in 2025. Even Qualcomm's first generation Nuvia core laptops are matching AMD and Intel's very best in CPU benchmarks. Desktop is a small market. In data centers, Graviton has had a meteoric rise.[0] Every major cloud company has its own ARM server CPU including Meta, Google, Microsoft, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Nvidia. [0]https://x.com/patrickmoorhead/status/1863986630366757279?s=46 https://x.com/patrickmoorhead/status/1863986630366757279?s=4...
- ksec 2y ago
  It would be better to measure the M1 and M4 rather than Max which has non-regular release schedule. For GB6, M1 @N5A @3.2Ghz = 2360 M4 @N3E @4.4Ghz = 3720 Roughly 15% IPC improvement in the past 4 years. Once you take away the clock speed and node advantage, along with Floating Point performance due to additional instruction set ( IIRC Apple still dont support SVE ) and Matrix Maths, both substantially increase benchmarks on certain GB6 test. You are looking at sub 10% IPC improvement over past 4 years give or take. One could say 10% in 4 years is not looking good, or 10% when you are already leading the pack and others have yet to caught on to the original M1 IPC level is actually a tremendous achievement. Hopefully something interesting in M5. Or we have reached another plateau in terms of IPC. But I could see M6 on N2 double the score of M1 in 2026. And perhaps worth mentioning, the most interesting development is actually happening with the efficiency core, not the performance core.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    Roughly 15% IPC improvement in the past 4 years. Once you take away the clock speed and node advantage, along with Floating Point performance due to additional instruction set ( IIRC Apple still dont support SVE ) and Matrix Maths, both substantially increase benchmarks on certain GB6 test. You are looking at sub 10% IPC improvement over past 4 years give or take. You can have a design that maximizes IPC but can't clock high. You can have a design that clocks very high but has low IPC. They both matter. It's tradeoffs. It's fine to isolate IPC from gen to gen, but ultimately meaningless since overall performance and performance/watt is what matters. Furthermore, Apple's IPC was and still is miles ahead of AMD and Intel so the starting base is high. Improvement to IPC should be expected to be slow. Apple is finding other ways to improve performance.
    - ksec 2y ago
      I am not sure what you are saying is any different to what I have said. The Node difference along generate at least 20% clock speed improvement give or take. i.e You could have make a M1 at higher clock speed with same power envelop but roughly 15% slower than M4 had it been on N3E. Your AMD and Intel comparison is basically rehashing what I said in the last paragraph.

6 points by behnamoh 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

He's wrong. In Geekbench 6, single thread increased by ~62% when comparing M1 Max to M4 Max. In multi-thread, the performance increased by 103%. [0] M1 Max was released on Oct 2021. M4 Max was released in Oct 2024. This is only a 3 year gap between the two chips. In the old Intel days, you'd get 1-5% increases per year. Apple's performance improvements have been insanely good. In Blender, M4 Max GPU improved by 541% over M1 Max. [1] Even in the author's charts, you can see a huge increase in performance. From the M1 Max to M4 Max, CPU cores increased from 10 to 16. GPU Tflops increased from 10 to 16. Not all Tflops are the same as the M4 Max seems to be faster than than the M1 Max by more than the Tflops figures. These are good increases in raw transistors even if you ignore architectural improvements. Looking under the hood, Apple increased the performance of each CPU core by 62% so it's not like Apple simply increased the core count by 6 and called it a day. The cores are totally different and significantly faster. GPU cores also gained ray tracing and seem to take advantage of the bandwidth much more efficiently. The only thing that hasn't really improved is memory bandwidth but bandwidth was never the bottleneck for Apple chips (until LLMs came out) which is why M3 generation even had a decrease. Bandwidth depends more on memory makers such as SK Hynix to improve. [0]https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks [1]https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?compute_type=METAL&blender_version=4.3.0&group_by=device_name https://opendata.blender.org/benchmarks/query/?compute_type=...

bigyabai 2y ago
FWIW they also added 60% more cores to the chip so a 103% multicore improvement is pretty yawn-worthy. Honestly I'm surprised a 62% single-core improvement is all they can muster from TSMC's process improvements. > Looking under the hood, Apple increased the performance of each CPU core by 62% This is not true and not how heterogeneous core architectures or single-threaded benchmark scores work.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  Honestly I'm surprised a 62% single-core improvement is all they can muster from TSMC's process improvements. In the same time period, Intel managed a 27.5% improvement in single core performance. Intel went from Alder Lake (Nov 2021, Intel 10nm) to Arrow Lake (Oct 2024, TSMC 3nm). [0] This is not true and not how heterogeneous core architectures or single-threaded benchmark scores work. This is true based on Geekbench 6. [0]https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/processor-benchmarks 12900KS vs 285k
  - bigyabai 2y ago
    When you mean "improvement" you mean Geekbench score. There are all sorts of metrics that year-over-year improvements bring, and performance uplift is really just one of them. > This is true based on Geekbench 6. But Apple Silicon does not have a homogeneous core architecture. Your claim that "each core" was improved by 62% is simply flat-out wrong. A single-core test does not average out the performance of the efficiency core and performance core, it just schedules it to the fastest available thread. Furthermore, you're again conflating "improvement" and "Geekbench score" without controlling for variables like power consumption and ISA divergence. It's like the cherry-picked PowerISA vs Intel benchmarks all over again. OP's statement still strikes me as overwhelmingly true. The promise of ARM dominating the desktop is entirely unrealized in 2025. It's barely even reaching fruition in the datacenter.
    - aurareturn 2y ago
      When you mean "improvement" you mean Geekbench score. There are all sorts of metrics that year-over-year improvements bring, and performance uplift is really just one of them. I'm not sure what this has to do with anything I said. But Apple Silicon does not have a homogeneous core architecture. Your claim that "each core" was improved by 62% is simply flat-out wrong. A single-core test does not average out the performance of the efficiency core and performance core, it just schedules it to the fastest available thread. Furthermore, you're again conflating "improvement" and "Geekbench score" without controlling for variables like power consumption and ISA divergence. When I said "each core", I meant each P core. Geekbench does not test E cores in ST. In MT, E cores are factored in. OP's statement still strikes me as overwhelmingly true. The promise of ARM dominating the desktop is entirely unrealized in 2025. It's barely even reaching fruition in the datacenter. Weird statement devoid of any facts. Apple's laptops are generations better than anything AMD and Intel can muster in 2025. Even Qualcomm's first generation Nuvia core laptops are matching AMD and Intel's very best in CPU benchmarks. Desktop is a small market. In data centers, Graviton has had a meteoric rise.[0] Every major cloud company has its own ARM server CPU including Meta, Google, Microsoft, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, Nvidia. [0]https://x.com/patrickmoorhead/status/1863986630366757279?s=46 https://x.com/patrickmoorhead/status/1863986630366757279?s=4...
ksec 2y ago
It would be better to measure the M1 and M4 rather than Max which has non-regular release schedule. For GB6, M1 @N5A @3.2Ghz = 2360 M4 @N3E @4.4Ghz = 3720 Roughly 15% IPC improvement in the past 4 years. Once you take away the clock speed and node advantage, along with Floating Point performance due to additional instruction set ( IIRC Apple still dont support SVE ) and Matrix Maths, both substantially increase benchmarks on certain GB6 test. You are looking at sub 10% IPC improvement over past 4 years give or take. One could say 10% in 4 years is not looking good, or 10% when you are already leading the pack and others have yet to caught on to the original M1 IPC level is actually a tremendous achievement. Hopefully something interesting in M5. Or we have reached another plateau in terms of IPC. But I could see M6 on N2 double the score of M1 in 2026. And perhaps worth mentioning, the most interesting development is actually happening with the efficiency core, not the performance core.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  Roughly 15% IPC improvement in the past 4 years. Once you take away the clock speed and node advantage, along with Floating Point performance due to additional instruction set ( IIRC Apple still dont support SVE ) and Matrix Maths, both substantially increase benchmarks on certain GB6 test. You are looking at sub 10% IPC improvement over past 4 years give or take. You can have a design that maximizes IPC but can't clock high. You can have a design that clocks very high but has low IPC. They both matter. It's tradeoffs. It's fine to isolate IPC from gen to gen, but ultimately meaningless since overall performance and performance/watt is what matters. Furthermore, Apple's IPC was and still is miles ahead of AMD and Intel so the starting base is high. Improvement to IPC should be expected to be slow. Apple is finding other ways to improve performance.
  - ksec 2y ago
    I am not sure what you are saying is any different to what I have said. The Node difference along generate at least 20% clock speed improvement give or take. i.e You could have make a M1 at higher clock speed with same power envelop but roughly 15% slower than M4 had it been on N3E. Your AMD and Intel comparison is basically rehashing what I said in the last paragraph.