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> Personally I do not entirely buy it. Intel and AMD have had plenty of years to catch up to Apple's M-architecture and they still aren't able to touch it in ef

> Personally I do not entirely buy it. Intel and AMD have had plenty of years to catch up to Apple's M-architecture and they still aren't able to touch it in efficiency. The PC Snapdragon chips AFAIK also offer better performance-per-watt than AMD or Intel, with laptops offering them often having 10-30% longer battery life at similar performance. Do not conflate battery life with core efficiency. If you want to measure how efficient a CPU core is you do so under full load. The latest AMD under full load uses the same power as M1 and is faster, thus it has better performance per watt. Snapdragon Elite eats 50W under load, significantly worse than AMD. Yet both M1 and Snapdragon beat AMD on battery life tests, because battery life is mainly measured using activities where the CPU is idle the vast majority of the time. And of course the ISA is entirely irrelevant when the CPU isn't being used to begin with. > The same goes for GPUs, where Apple's M1 GPU completely smoked an RTX3090 in performance-per-watt, offering 320W of RTX 3090 performance in a 110W envelope That chart is Apple propaganda. In Geekbench 5 the RTX 3090 is 2.5x faster, in blender 3.1 it is 5x faster. See https://9to5mac.com/2022/03/31/m1-ultra-gpu-comparison-with-nvidia/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/03/31/m1-ultra-gpu-comparison-with-... and https://techjourneyman.com/blog/m1-ultra-vs-nvidia-rtx-3090/ https://techjourneyman.com/blog/m1-ultra-vs-nvidia-rtx-3090/

deleted 1y ago
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boxed 1y ago
He said "per watt", that's still true. You just talked about max throughput, which no one is discussing.
- ohdeargodno 1y ago
  It's not, because Apple purposefully lied on their marketing material. Letting a 3090 go on full blast brings it pretty much in line in perf/watt. Your 3090 will not massively thermal throttle after 30 minutes either, but the M1 Ultra will. So, yes, if you want to look good on pointless benchmarks, a M1 ultra ran for 1 minute is more efficient than a downclocked 3090.
  - boxed 1y ago
    https://techjourneyman.com/blog/m1-ultra-vs-nvidia-rtx-3090/ https://techjourneyman.com/blog/m1-ultra-vs-nvidia-rtx-3090/ Look at that updated graph which has less BS. It's never close in perf/watt. The BS part about apples graph was that they cut the graph short for the nvidia card (and bending the graph a bit at the end). The full graph still shows apple being way better per watt.
    - ohdeargodno 1y ago
      [dead]
  - brookst 1y ago
    How do you think Nvidia got Samsung’s 8nm process to be just as power efficient as TSMC’s 5nm node?
    - ohdeargodno 1y ago
      [dead]
- dwattttt 1y ago
  > The latest AMD under full load uses the same power as M1 and is faster, thus it has better performance per watt. He also said per watt. An AMD CPU running at full power and then stopping will use less battery than an M1 with the same task; that's comparing power efficiency.
  - boxed 1y ago
    https://techjourneyman.com/blog/m1-ultra-vs-nvidia-rtx-3090/ https://techjourneyman.com/blog/m1-ultra-vs-nvidia-rtx-3090/ Look at their updated graph which has less BS. It's never close in perf/watt. The BS part about apples graph was that they cut the graph short for the nvidia card (and bending the graph a bit at the end). The full graph still shows apple being way better per watt.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
petrichorko 1y ago
To me it's not as simple as comparing the efficiency under full load. I imagine the efficiency on x86 as some kind of log curve, which translates to higher power consumption even on lighter loads. Apple's ARM implementation tends to eat a lot less power on tasks that happen most of the time, hence greatly improving the battery life. I've tried a Ryzen 7 that had a similar efficiency to an M1 according to some tests, and that thing ran hot like crazy. Its just marketing bullshit to me now..
- sgc 1y ago
  The OS matters, and I would guess you were using two different OSes? I have no doubt macOS running on an m1 is more optimized than whatever you were using on the ryzen. I recently had to remove Windows completely from a few years old laptop with an 12th gen cpu and a Intel Iris / GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile combo because it was running very hot (90c+) and the fans were constantly running. Running Linux, I have no issues. I just double checked since I had not for several months, and temperature is 40c lower on my lap than it was propped up on a book for maximum airflow. Full disclaimer, I would have done this anyways, but the process was sped up because my wife was extremely annoyed with the noise my new-to-me computer was making, and it was cooking the components. I have learned to start with the OS when things are tangibly off, and only eventually come back to point the finger at my hardware.
  - petrichorko 1y ago
    Linux can definitely help with this, I had the same experience with it on Z1 (SteamOS). But even running Windows 11 in a VM on M1 does not make the machine run hot
  - ashirviskas 1y ago
    OS does matter, with Linux my M1 macbook gets kinda hot and it cannot do more than 1.5-2h of google meetings with cameras on. IIRC google meetings on macos were at least a bit more efficient. Though it has definitely been getting better in the last 1.5 years using Asahi Linux and in some areas it is a better experience than most laptops running Linux (sound, cameras, etc.). The developers even wrote a full fledged physical speaker simulator just so it could be efficiently driven over its "naive" limits.
devnullbrain 1y ago
I want to measure the device how I use it. Race-to-sleep and power states are integral to CPU design.
- ben-schaaf 1y ago
  Yes they are, but only one of those is at all affected by the choice of ISA. If modern AMD chips are better at race-to-sleep than an Apple M1 and still get worse battery life then the problem is clearly not x86-64.
  - simonh 1y ago
    Right, so as I understand it people see that x86-64 designs score poorly on a set of benchmarks and infer that it is because they are x86-64. In fact it’s because that manufacturer has made architectural choices that are not inherent to the x86-64 ISA. And that’s just hardware. MacOS gets roughly 30% better battery life on M series hardware than Asahi Linux. I’m not blaming the Asahi team, they do amazing work, they don’t even work on many of the Linux features relevant to power management, and Apple has had years of head start on preparing for and optimising for the M architecture. It’s just that software matters, a lot. So if I’m reading this right, ISA can make a difference, but it’s incremental compared to the many architectural decisions and trade offs that go into a particular design.
    - bee_rider 1y ago
      > So if I’m reading this right, ISA can make a difference, but it’s incremental compared to the many architectural decisions and trade offs that go into a particular design. This is true, but only in the sense that is very rarely correct to say “Factor Y can’t possibly make a difference.”
  - brookst 1y ago
    Does anyone care about blaming / lauding an ISA without any connection to the actual devices that people use? Performance and battery life are lived experiences. There’s probably some theoretical hyper optimization where 6502 ISA is just as good as ARM, but does it matter?
fwipsy 1y ago
> If you want to measure how efficient a CPU core is you do so under full load. Higher wattage gives diminishing returns. Chips will run higher wattage under full load just to eke out a marginal improvement in performance. Therefore efficiency improves if the manufacturer chooses to limit the chip rather than pushing it harder. Test efficiency using whatever task the chip will be used for. For most ultralight laptops, that will be web browsing etc. so the m1 MacBook/snapdragon results are valid for typical users. Maybe your workload hammers the CPU but that doesn't make it the one true benchmark.
- ben-schaaf 1y ago
  No, and that's exactly the point I'm making. If you try to measure ISA efficiency using a workload where the CPU is idle the vast majority of the time, then your power usage will be dominated by things unrelated to the ISA. To further hammer the point home, let me reduce do a reductio ad absurdum: The chip is still "in use" when its asleep. Sleeping your laptop is a typical usecase. Therefore how much power is used while sleeping is a good measure of ISA efficiency. This is of course absurd because the CPU cores are entirely turned off when sleeping, they could draw 1kW with potato performance and nothing in this measurement would change.
  - fwipsy 1y ago
    You're not taking into account dynamic clock speeds, just "idle" and "load." Most CPUs have configurable TDP, and if you give them more power they will run more cores at a higher frequency. Suppose I measured the same laptop CPU under "full load" in two different computers at full load, but one is configured for a 30w TDP and the other is configured for a 40w TDP. The first PC will be more efficient, because you get diminishing returns for increased power. But it's the same CPU. To go back to your original argument, you're claiming that x86 ISA is more efficient than ARM because a certain AMD chip beat certain M1/snapdragon chips at 50w. You can't draw that conclusion because the two chips may be designed to have peak efficiency at different power levels, even if the maximum power draw is the same. Likely the Snapdragon/M1 have better efficiency at 10W with reduced clock speed even if the CPU is not idling. Hence my response: it doesn't make sense to talk about performance per watt, without also specifying the workload. Not only will different workloads use different amounts of power, they will also rely on different instructions which may give different ISAs or CPUs the edge. Not to mention -- who even cares about ISA efficiency? What matters is the result for the product I can buy. If M1/snapdragon are able to match AMD on performance but beat it in battery life for my workloads, I don't care if AMD has better "performance per watt" according to your metric.

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boxed 1y ago

He said "per watt", that's still true. You just talked about max throughput, which no one is discussing.

ohdeargodno 1y ago
It's not, because Apple purposefully lied on their marketing material. Letting a 3090 go on full blast brings it pretty much in line in perf/watt. Your 3090 will not massively thermal throttle after 30 minutes either, but the M1 Ultra will. So, yes, if you want to look good on pointless benchmarks, a M1 ultra ran for 1 minute is more efficient than a downclocked 3090.
- boxed 1y ago
  https://techjourneyman.com/blog/m1-ultra-vs-nvidia-rtx-3090/ https://techjourneyman.com/blog/m1-ultra-vs-nvidia-rtx-3090/ Look at that updated graph which has less BS. It's never close in perf/watt. The BS part about apples graph was that they cut the graph short for the nvidia card (and bending the graph a bit at the end). The full graph still shows apple being way better per watt.
  - ohdeargodno 1y ago
    [dead]
- brookst 1y ago
  How do you think Nvidia got Samsung’s 8nm process to be just as power efficient as TSMC’s 5nm node?
  - ohdeargodno 1y ago
    [dead]
dwattttt 1y ago
> The latest AMD under full load uses the same power as M1 and is faster, thus it has better performance per watt. He also said per watt. An AMD CPU running at full power and then stopping will use less battery than an M1 with the same task; that's comparing power efficiency.
- boxed 1y ago
  https://techjourneyman.com/blog/m1-ultra-vs-nvidia-rtx-3090/ https://techjourneyman.com/blog/m1-ultra-vs-nvidia-rtx-3090/ Look at their updated graph which has less BS. It's never close in perf/watt. The BS part about apples graph was that they cut the graph short for the nvidia card (and bending the graph a bit at the end). The full graph still shows apple being way better per watt.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

petrichorko 1y ago

To me it's not as simple as comparing the efficiency under full load. I imagine the efficiency on x86 as some kind of log curve, which translates to higher power consumption even on lighter loads. Apple's ARM implementation tends to eat a lot less power on tasks that happen most of the time, hence greatly improving the battery life. I've tried a Ryzen 7 that had a similar efficiency to an M1 according to some tests, and that thing ran hot like crazy. Its just marketing bullshit to me now..

sgc 1y ago
The OS matters, and I would guess you were using two different OSes? I have no doubt macOS running on an m1 is more optimized than whatever you were using on the ryzen. I recently had to remove Windows completely from a few years old laptop with an 12th gen cpu and a Intel Iris / GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile combo because it was running very hot (90c+) and the fans were constantly running. Running Linux, I have no issues. I just double checked since I had not for several months, and temperature is 40c lower on my lap than it was propped up on a book for maximum airflow. Full disclaimer, I would have done this anyways, but the process was sped up because my wife was extremely annoyed with the noise my new-to-me computer was making, and it was cooking the components. I have learned to start with the OS when things are tangibly off, and only eventually come back to point the finger at my hardware.
- petrichorko 1y ago
  Linux can definitely help with this, I had the same experience with it on Z1 (SteamOS). But even running Windows 11 in a VM on M1 does not make the machine run hot
- ashirviskas 1y ago
  OS does matter, with Linux my M1 macbook gets kinda hot and it cannot do more than 1.5-2h of google meetings with cameras on. IIRC google meetings on macos were at least a bit more efficient. Though it has definitely been getting better in the last 1.5 years using Asahi Linux and in some areas it is a better experience than most laptops running Linux (sound, cameras, etc.). The developers even wrote a full fledged physical speaker simulator just so it could be efficiently driven over its "naive" limits.

devnullbrain 1y ago

I want to measure the device how I use it. Race-to-sleep and power states are integral to CPU design.

ben-schaaf 1y ago
Yes they are, but only one of those is at all affected by the choice of ISA. If modern AMD chips are better at race-to-sleep than an Apple M1 and still get worse battery life then the problem is clearly not x86-64.
- simonh 1y ago
  Right, so as I understand it people see that x86-64 designs score poorly on a set of benchmarks and infer that it is because they are x86-64. In fact it’s because that manufacturer has made architectural choices that are not inherent to the x86-64 ISA. And that’s just hardware. MacOS gets roughly 30% better battery life on M series hardware than Asahi Linux. I’m not blaming the Asahi team, they do amazing work, they don’t even work on many of the Linux features relevant to power management, and Apple has had years of head start on preparing for and optimising for the M architecture. It’s just that software matters, a lot. So if I’m reading this right, ISA can make a difference, but it’s incremental compared to the many architectural decisions and trade offs that go into a particular design.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    > So if I’m reading this right, ISA can make a difference, but it’s incremental compared to the many architectural decisions and trade offs that go into a particular design. This is true, but only in the sense that is very rarely correct to say “Factor Y can’t possibly make a difference.”
- brookst 1y ago
  Does anyone care about blaming / lauding an ISA without any connection to the actual devices that people use? Performance and battery life are lived experiences. There’s probably some theoretical hyper optimization where 6502 ISA is just as good as ARM, but does it matter?

fwipsy 1y ago

> If you want to measure how efficient a CPU core is you do so under full load. Higher wattage gives diminishing returns. Chips will run higher wattage under full load just to eke out a marginal improvement in performance. Therefore efficiency improves if the manufacturer chooses to limit the chip rather than pushing it harder. Test efficiency using whatever task the chip will be used for. For most ultralight laptops, that will be web browsing etc. so the m1 MacBook/snapdragon results are valid for typical users. Maybe your workload hammers the CPU but that doesn't make it the one true benchmark.

ben-schaaf 1y ago
No, and that's exactly the point I'm making. If you try to measure ISA efficiency using a workload where the CPU is idle the vast majority of the time, then your power usage will be dominated by things unrelated to the ISA. To further hammer the point home, let me reduce do a reductio ad absurdum: The chip is still "in use" when its asleep. Sleeping your laptop is a typical usecase. Therefore how much power is used while sleeping is a good measure of ISA efficiency. This is of course absurd because the CPU cores are entirely turned off when sleeping, they could draw 1kW with potato performance and nothing in this measurement would change.
- fwipsy 1y ago
  You're not taking into account dynamic clock speeds, just "idle" and "load." Most CPUs have configurable TDP, and if you give them more power they will run more cores at a higher frequency. Suppose I measured the same laptop CPU under "full load" in two different computers at full load, but one is configured for a 30w TDP and the other is configured for a 40w TDP. The first PC will be more efficient, because you get diminishing returns for increased power. But it's the same CPU. To go back to your original argument, you're claiming that x86 ISA is more efficient than ARM because a certain AMD chip beat certain M1/snapdragon chips at 50w. You can't draw that conclusion because the two chips may be designed to have peak efficiency at different power levels, even if the maximum power draw is the same. Likely the Snapdragon/M1 have better efficiency at 10W with reduced clock speed even if the CPU is not idling. Hence my response: it doesn't make sense to talk about performance per watt, without also specifying the workload. Not only will different workloads use different amounts of power, they will also rely on different instructions which may give different ISAs or CPUs the edge. Not to mention -- who even cares about ISA efficiency? What matters is the result for the product I can buy. If M1/snapdragon are able to match AMD on performance but beat it in battery life for my workloads, I don't care if AMD has better "performance per watt" according to your metric.