The M1 Benchmarks Continue - Emulated performance appears to *still* outperform any intel-based Mac

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, like_ooh_ahh said:

If there’s one advantage Intel based Macs or any laptop right now over the M1 Macs is that the former can drive two 4K displays. The M1 can only drive a single 4K display. Which makes me wonder if Apple wasn’t able to add more PCIe lanes for the M1 chip. This is probably the reason why the new Mac mini only has two TB ports while the older one with an 8th gen i5/i7 has four TB ports. Not to mention that the older Mac mini has an optional 10 Gb ethernet, the new one is limited to 1Gb.

 

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/11/11/how-apple-silicon-on-a-m1-mac-changes-monitor-support-and-what-you-can-connect

It's not really a case of not being able to add more PCIe lanes it's a design decision for the target application. I/O is not very power efficient and also does not like dense and very small transistor/traces, even on small nodes I/O portions are purposely not actually at these in the design. The Apple M1 would not be as power efficient as it is if you start adding thins like more PCIe lanes and integrated 10Gb networking, this is one of the misunderstandings around the Apple M1 SoC and ARM when people try and compare to Intel or AMD CPUs/SoCs. A lot of the power efficiency comes from TSMC 5nm as well as smart design decisions and consideration to the target devices the SoC will go in, choosing the most necessary and beneficial and not including any more than is actually required. Another benefit to making your own SoC for your own products is you have that control and don't need to cater for a wider range of needs.

 

Had Apple included all these extra power inefficient options in to the SoC it would have severely impacted the design and would have either reduced the performance or increased the power design to accommodate it and then that would flow on through to product design for things like the MacBook Air. Apple does know what they are doing very well.

 

In relation to Zen 2 and Zen 3 the CCD's are actually very power efficient themselves, each core does not require that much power to achieve high performance and higher clocks. The clock scaling and power is still poor on the upper extremes but everything is, that's not an Intel/AMD/Apple/TSMC/x86/ARM thing that's just electrical and atomic properties at play.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16214/amd-zen-3-ryzen-deep-dive-review-5950x-5900x-5800x-and-5700x-tested/8

 

The IOD can use anywhere from 10W to 20W at idle, so basically the entire Apple M1 SoC to do nothing other than provide memory controller and PCIe etc (re: my point about Apple purposely not filling their SoC with I/O). As you can see each CPU core at the middle points of 3.5Ghz-4.0Ghz does not actually use much power at all, lower those clocks a bit more again and drop down to 5nm and power usage will be very low. What's getting the high total package power is the total number of cores and that not very efficient (compared to the CCD) IOD on 12nm.

 

Apple for sure is working on higher power SoC designs that will have better I/O options and will target higher end SKUs of product lines, I don't know when but there will be Mac Mini's with 10Gb again.

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

2) The price is probably based on the cost of making the machines, not a reflection of the performance you get.

The Intel Macs don't get cheaper because the M1 base Macs are faster, Intel isn't a charity and going to issue rebates to Apple so they can drop the price of those products. Far from it when Apple is signaling completely moving away from Intel, why would Intel be interested in helping Apple at this point? 

 

Personally I think it's majority or all of this point here, it costs what it costs because that's what it costs. But hey, just don't buy them.

[Astronautical]

5 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

I feel sad for Intel for the pressure on the mac side (M1) and the pc side (Ryzen).

They are the underdog right now.

Intel has held a near monopolistic share of laptop processors for as long as I can remenber and still holds the largest market share. they are still, by far, the bigger company for processors. In no way are they an underdog. They are still winning where the investors care.

p.s am in no way an intel fanboy, but this comment really anoyed me. please roast me if you dissagree

[Taf the Ghost]

As a reminder, Apple is jumping 2 full nodes while also mostly sandbagging on the Intel parts for a while. We're basically going to be comparing Bulldozer to Zen2.

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, Maticks said:

Apple never make a move like this unless they are sure.

When they moved from IBM GX chips to Intel it was because a G5 macbook was impossible to power, IBM couldn't make their chip draw less power for more processing power.

Apple don't get what they want they walk.

 

Intel which has been developing for years has finally hit that same point 10nm++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

X86 has been stuck at roughtly the same Ghz for years with mild IPC increases.

 

Here is hoping what Apple does with the M1 will do to the desktop space what Apple did to the mobile space.

I am not an Apple fan boy but.. when the competition is forced innovation to survive us the comsumer really benefit.

 

If AMD didn't release Ryzen and Threadripper do you think you'd have more than 4 cores and 8 threads CPU's for what is now the i9 pricing.

no you wouldn't have any of that.. you would have a 20% increase in clock speed with no extra anything like we've had for 15 years.

 

 

To be fair we are seeing consistent ipc improvements from AMD and intel looks to be doing the same with their next gen cpus coming in early 2021 even if it will be limited to 8 cores. Once Intel gets their fab process sorted out i forsee a good amount of improvements from both Intel and amd as the competition gets fierce. The x86 platform has had the biggest changes in the past several years and it looks to be continuing to grow. I don't think it is fair to say that x86 is stagnating when they are actually in the biggest growth period they have been in for a long time. Sure they were stagnating for a while there before ryzen but I actually think we are about to see some major improvements in the next couple of years as AMD pushes forward and Intel is done simply doing refreshes of skylake adding a few cores. 

[Brooksie359]

11 minutes ago, Astronautical said:

Intel has held a near monopolistic share of laptop processors for as long as I can remenber and still holds the largest market share. they are still, by far, the bigger company for processors. In no way are they an underdog. They are still winning where the investors care.

p.s am in no way an intel fanboy, but this comment really anoyed me. please roast me if you dissagree

Yeah they aren't so much an underdog but they are definitely in-between a rock and a hard place in terms of competition. Granted I am sure they will bounce back once they move away from skylake refreshes. They just aren't very competitive with amd offerings right now in both laptop and desktop space. I do hope they make a comeback sooner rather than latter that way we can get more price wars between amd and Intel meaning we end up being the real winners. 

[captain_to_fire]

53 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Apple for sure is working on higher power SoC designs that will have better I/O options and will target higher end SKUs of product lines, I don't know when but there will be Mac Mini's with 10Gb again.

It’s likely that they’re working on higher power SoC perhaps for the Mac Pro and iMac. They might actually bring back the trash can design or perhaps a Mac Pro the size of a Fractal Design Meshify C 🗑 

 

Though I found out recently that it’s possible to get 10Gb ethernet on the M1 Mac mini by using a TB to 10Gb ethernet dongle which is more expensive than the 10Gb ethernet upgrade for the Intel Mac mini.

 

Edited November 16, 2020 by like_ooh_ahh

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, like_ooh_ahh said:

Though I found out recently that it’s possible to get 10Gb ethernet on the M1 Mac mini by using a TB to 10Gb ethernet dongle which is more expensive than the 10Gb ethernet upgrade for the Intel Mac mini.

Dongles can go to hell!

[Sauron]

That's pretty good, for emulated performance I'd be more worried regarding the special hardware accelerated features - do those still work in emulation?

[Taf the Ghost]

2 hours ago, Maticks said:

Apple never make a move like this unless they are sure.

When they moved from IBM GX chips to Intel it was because a G5 macbook was impossible to power, IBM couldn't make their chip draw less power for more processing power.

Apple don't get what they want they walk.

 

Intel which has been developing for years has finally hit that same point 10nm++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

X86 has been stuck at roughtly the same Ghz for years with mild IPC increases.

 

Here is hoping what Apple does with the M1 will do to the desktop space what Apple did to the mobile space.

I am not an Apple fan boy but.. when the competition is forced innovation to survive us the comsumer really benefit.

 

If AMD didn't release Ryzen and Threadripper do you think you'd have more than 4 cores and 8 threads CPU's for what is now the i9 pricing.

no you wouldn't have any of that.. you would have a 20% increase in clock speed with no extra anything like we've had for 15 years.

 

 

Apple has been planning this move for over a decade. First time I ever heard confirmation they were going this way was around 2012, but this was a Steve Jobs project from the beginning, after the iPhone took off. Apple is about full vertical integration of their ecosystem. There will be no "Apple compatible" types of systems. They're going to take their niche and hold it. It's about control of their ecosystem.

 

As a result, as much as they're comparing against Intel, this isn't an x86 competitor. It's an Intel replacement so they can control their Desktops in the same way they do their Mobile phones. Apple will offer Turn-Key products to end users. Intel & AMD offer commodity products to points of sales. They compete and don't compete at the same time. Also, without Intel's volume, Apple can't really dent Intel or AMD's market share that much. All that's really happening is moving about 7% of the global SoC market from Intel Fabs to TSMC.

[captain_to_fire]

Just now, leadeater said:

Dongles can go to hell!

10Gb ethernet to TB dongle: $149

10Gb ethernet upgrade for the Intel Mac mini and iMac 5K: $100

[captain_to_fire]

2 hours ago, Maticks said:

If AMD didn't release Ryzen and Threadripper do you think you'd have more than 4 cores and 8 threads CPU's for what is now the i9 pricing.

no you wouldn't have any of that.. you would have a 20% increase in clock speed with no extra anything like we've had for 15 years.

It would be interesting if AMD has plans of releasing an ARM desktop CPU considering that they have an ARM license, Intel doesn’t have one. 

[Spindel]

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Dongles can go to hell!

Mehhh I don't agree to this dongles are better. 

 

Instead of shipping my computer with a: Ethernet port, RS 232 port, parallell port, display port, mini display port, HDMI port, firewire port, SD-card reader, MIDI interface, VGA port, DVI port etc. 

 

My computer comes with a couple of TB3/USB4 type C ports and I get a dongle for the connection I actually need. 

 

Less different types of ports are a good thing and then you sort the interface you need with appropriate dongle. 

[leadeater]

37 minutes ago, Spindel said:

Instead of shipping my computer with a: Ethernet port, RS 232 port, parallell port, display port, mini display port, HDMI port, firewire port, SD-card reader, MIDI interface, VGA port, DVI port etc. 

Well then simply don't ship it with those, making idiotic port choices isn't a requirement but an Ethernet port, HDMI and mini-DP really is not too much to ask for over and above TB and USB ports. MacBook Air sure knock your socks off, Mac Mini and MacBook Pro no.

 

Dongles are crap, they get lost, are a worse solution and specifically for ethernet is a totally horrid solution as the MAC Address is tied to the dongle not the device and some people do actually care about the MAC address and only allow known approved ones as part of RADIUS authentication chains and auto port configuration on switches.

 

Edit:

Why do people feel the need to defend actually bad solutions to problems that don't need to exist and were created by the bad solution trying to be peddled? Don't take away Ethernet ports then offer them back as dongles as the solution to the device not having Ethernet, can you guess the better idea?

[Dabombinable]

I still think Apple is going to drop Intel cold turkey, just as they did with PowerPC (that beta version of OSX Leopard is proof that Apple was going to switch slowly)

[Spindel]

22 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Edit:

Why do people feel the need to defend actually bad solutions to problems that don't need to exist and were created by the bad solution trying to be peddled? Don't take away Ethernet ports then offer them back as dongles as the solution to the device not having Ethernet, can you guess the better idea?

I'm just contrarian  

 

Nah on a serious note. I do agree that there is a bare minimum and on desktops you usually have space to have many ports. But on laptops I actually do think dongleton is better than just a slew of ports. 

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

The reason Apple remove ports and sells dongles is to get more money, because profit of laptop+dongle > profit of laptop + ports

Interestingly, Apple uses a special port for their phones, so dongles for phones are not compatible with laptops without even more dongle adapters. Even Dell and other windows laptop manufacturers are following the trend shipping laptop with fewer ports.

 

Personally I would never buy a laptop without an ethernet and an SD card reader, HDMI and a full complement of USB ports and a dedicated charging port. I might compromise on the audio jack since bluetooth are more convenient, but it would need to be a lot cheaper to justify that.

 

I'm still salty about lack of removable battery on most new laptops. It used to be I could carry a spare battery/leave battery out depending on the need.

[captain_to_fire]

30 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Dongles are crap, they get lost, are a worse solution and specifically for ethernet is a totally horrid solution as the MAC Address is tied to the dongle not the device and some people do actually care about the MAC address and only allow known approved ones as part of RADIUS authentication chains and auto port configuration on switches.

Too bad I have to use dongles because my university refuses to retire those old projectors that still use VGA. So I have a lightning to VGA dongle as well as a HDMI to VGA dongle.

[Bombastinator]

What I am seeing reading this:

 

the M1 appears to emulate well enough that it can at least keep up and perhaps narrowly beat the newest native laptop x86 stuff running in emulation, at least for things that have been tried so far.  Jury is still out on general, and there’s a reasonable chance it’s going to be case by case. Rather than general. 
This has happened once before long ago.  There was a chip that could emulate x86 faster than native x86 could run.  This scared the pants of the x86 chip makers so they made faster stuff.  the x86 makers already seem to be running as fast as they can though. We shall see how this pans out.  There does seem to be a real potential threat though in at least some areas.

Edited November 16, 2020 by Bombastinator

[StDragon]

2 hours ago, like_ooh_ahh said:

It would be interesting if AMD has plans of releasing an ARM desktop CPU considering that they have an ARM license, Intel doesn’t have one. 

What market would that serve?

 

The PC (Personal Computer) Desktop is defined by x86. And games are all coded to x86 to the point of gaming consoles having moved away from dedicated RISK processors of the past (yes, modern X86 now blurs that line between RISK and CISC, but whatever).

 

I'm of the opinion that the desktop and mobile market will continue to be bifurcated between x86 and ARM. If there's any future instruction set that can converge the two markets again, that would be RISC-V: and that would be contingent upon the mobile market moving to RISC-V first.

 

Don't be surprised if China and India start making move to RISC-V first. That would be the watershed event. 

[Taf the Ghost]

3 hours ago, like_ooh_ahh said:

It would be interesting if AMD has plans of releasing an ARM desktop CPU considering that they have an ARM license, Intel doesn’t have one. 

it cost Apple 10+ billion and a decade to get ARM within reach of the still developing x86. AMD was looking at doing it, but almost all of the ARM server projects have fallen apart everywhere.

 

Also, AMD uses ARM designs all over the place, actually. They're used heavily in accelerator engines.

[LAwLz]

34 minutes ago, StDragon said:

What market would that serve?

 

The PC (Personal Computer) Desktop is defined by x86. And games are all coded to x86 to the point of gaming consoles having moved away from dedicated RISK processors of the past (yes, modern X86 now blurs that line between RISK and CISC, but whatever).

 

I'm of the opinion that the desktop and mobile market will continue to be bifurcated between x86 and ARM. If there's any future instruction set that can converge the two markets again, that would be RISC-V: and that would be contingent upon the mobile market moving to RISC-V first.

 

Don't be surprised if China and India start making move to RISC-V first. That would be the watershed event. 

Microsoft are trying VERY hard to make ARM PCs a thing.

There are however three major things that is making sure x86 is still king, and will continue to be king for Windows for a long time.

1) The ARM chips PC makers have access to are dog shit. The best we (PC users) got is the Qualcomm 8cx Gen 2. Like I said in some other thread, Apple's cores are like 60% faster than Qualcomm's. Performance is shit. We need some really good CPU cores in order for Windows on ARM to take off. 

2) Microsoft's idiotic decisions and outdated design in Windows makes the code written for it not portable at all. Not only is code not portable s applications written for x86 Windows can be really hard to migrate to ARM, but they have also let developers do stupid shit like develop a ton of closed source kernel space drivers everywhere. It's absolutely insane that so many applications like games load things in kernel space. 

3) Windows developers seem to have a raging hard-on for writing closed source software and then abandoning it, and not want to do any changes to it. So Microsoft are stuck supporting a bunch of terribly written programs.

 

Apple will not have any of these issues with their transition. On top of that, it seems like Apple are simply better at writing software than Microsoft at this point. Microsoft's x86 emulation layer in Windows for ARM seems to suck ass compared to Rosetta Stone 2. 

[RedRound2]

2 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

The reason Apple remove ports and sells dongles is to get more money, because profit of laptop+dongle > profit of laptop + ports

That doesn't make much sense. They use USB C, so literally any USB C dongle from Amazon will work. They don't really get anything out of it - other than cause a inconvinece for users (which is -ve) in the name of moving forward.

 

And even Apple themselves don't sell all kinds of dongles. It takes 5 seconds for anyone to find out a cheaper alternative to Apple's and if they don't do that, that means they can afford it and not care as much. SImple as that

Quote

Interestingly, Apple uses a special port for their phones, so dongles for phones are not compatible with laptops without even more dongle adapters.

They use lightning. As to why they still use lightning, it's becasue they plan to move to portless iPhones (we've seen rumours for this for a while and MagSafe is definitely a step into that direction). Moving to USB C now would require them to piss of users of lightning accessories - use USB C for like two cycles and then again change standards to portless, which would really piss of customers

 

The new techquickie actually gives a pretty decent picture about it, despite the clickbaity title

 

[LAwLz]

13 minutes ago, Sakuriru said:

I'm not specifically an Intel/AMD fanboy or anything, but this is very misleading. Allocating memory depends on memory speed and other factors which probably has more to do with their CPU/memory architecture than just the processor itself. If you could take the M1 chip and plug it into your home gaming rig you probably wouldn't get the same result.

 

Similarly I always takes claims about the nanoseconds it takes to do x task like this with a grain of salt. We don't know what other background tasks are running, the OS version, or what kind of CPU scheduling was being used.

 

That said the M1 processor is of course faster. It's 5 nm. And when AMD/Intel catch up they'll see performance gains as well. I guess it's cool for Apple users, but I'm going to be honest the only way this benefits anyone is for people that were using MacOS for creative workloads since MacOS can't be used for games. It doesn't have the same market dominance and their processor doesn't have GPU support, so if you're a gamer you'll be sticking to Windows or be left with a depressing lineup of titles that you can play.

The transistor size isn't what makes the M1 so fast. It's the architecture. Moving AMD's and Intel's current CPU architectures to 5nm wouldn't really change anything, other than make them consume a bit less power (but not anywhere near as little as the M1).

Smaller transistor size does not equal faster processor.

 

Also, with this move I think the Macs are better than ever for gaming. You won't be playing the next COD or Battlefield game on a Mac, but you couldn't do that before either. But now thanks to support for iOS apps you can all of a sudden run a bunch of iOS games on it. For me, that is more than enough.

 

I see the move to ARM on Macs as 99% positive, and like 1% negative.

The negative stuff is things like fewer ports which shouldn't be an issue for most people buying these specific SKUs. Once they start replacing their 16" Macbooks for example then they will probably have chips with more connectivity.

[Taf the Ghost]

5 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

The transistor size isn't what makes the M1 so fast. It's the architecture. Moving AMD's and Intel's current CPU architectures to 5nm wouldn't really change anything, other than make them consume a bit less power (but not anywhere near as little as the M1).

Smaller transistor size does not equal faster processor.

 

Also, with this move I think the Macs are better than ever for gaming. You won't be playing the next COD or Battlefield game on a Mac, but you couldn't do that before either. But now thanks to support for iOS apps you can all of a sudden run a bunch of iOS games on it. For me, that is more than enough.

 

I see the move to ARM on Macs as 99% positive, and like 1% negative.

The negative stuff is things like fewer ports which shouldn't be an issue for most people buying these specific SKUs. Once they start replacing their 16" Macbooks for example then they will probably have chips with more connectivity.

At the systematic level, this was actually a move Apple had to make. They basically had to manage two completely separate Ecosystems within a Turn-Key Approach consumer-facing business. They had to bite the bullet and set about the transition. It took them a decade and a solid 11 figures of money to do it. Within 3 years, they'll be completely within their own silicon ecosystem. That's powerful & extremely valuable to them.

 

However, it also means they really aren't competing with Windows, much like they haven't been for years. The Apple ecosystem will stretch from mobile into the two places in Desktop that mattered for 20 years to Apple: Compute Illiterates and Graphic Designers. I've been able to give this exact same advice to people for over 20 years at this point. It's still true. I still wonder how much money Apple was forking over to Adobe to make sure their products ran well on Macs. The PC-versions of Photoshop was a disaster for way, way too long.

 

Anyone heard from the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) sector? I have a feeling they're going to be very unhappy.