m1 Apple M1 = the rest of us are living in the stone age!?

[StDragon]

5 minutes ago, Amias said:

It's so far utterly crawled running OneDrive. Crashed and gotten lagging doing basic things, logging in, installing software. It's keyboard stopped working for half an hour, then suddenly started reworking.

You're touching it wrong. Apple products are flawless.

[JamesTheFolf]

I can't wait to see the MacBook Pro 16" with the M1 chips in it

[LAwLz]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Cool story, yes it is possible for a Zen 3 core to use more but that entirely depends on which CPU you look at. His implication and what he was trying to say, and you know it, is all Zen 3 CPUs would do that. I took issue with, and still do, with that statement and you picking a single CPU, a desktop one for that matter, that shows what you want to prove an inane rhetoric point which is the problem in and of itself.

I didn't think he implied that at all, but the logic of "he implied something that was wrong so I was correct in saying he was wrong" swings both ways. You never specified that it was only incorrect when talking about the mobile and other ultra-low power Zen parts.

In fact, in my response you can see that I make the distinction and points this out and you still said I was wrong for saying "it is true in some scenarios but not all".

 

Again, here is what I wrote:

"That statement is only untrue [...] if you downclock the Ryzen chip to be slower than the M1."

 

And your response to that was:

"No it is not correct, been down this before."

 

 

To me it seems like you are not only guilty of the same things you accused him for (trying to imply that something applies to all zen 3 processors) but even when I went out of my way to say "it is true in some cases but not all" you still said I was wrong, and at that point you were no longer just implying things.

 

 

11 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The rhetoric which in the very topic I was pointing to is THE problem. M1 is not tech gods gift to CPUs and simply isn't as groundbreaking as you want it to be, it does nothing special or different to anyone else, it just happens to be using later technology than anyone else is but that by no means makes it groundbreaking. It's no different be being the current fastest 100m runner, doesn't mean you actually have the current world record i.e, groundbreaking. However this running example uses speed as what is and is not groundbreaking where as with CPUs speed alone or power efficiency alone does not make something groundbreaking. Groundbreaking here would be the first multithread CPU, or the first multicore CPU, or the first multi chip CPU i.e. some actually new groundbreaking technology not more of the same.

I think the M1 is groundbreaking, but I guess it depends on what you mean by groundbreaking. Here are some statements I want to know if you agree with or not, because they are the reason why I think the M1 is groundbreaking.

1) The microarchitecture is fantastic. It is able to match the absolute best performing x86 microarchitectures on the market from both AMD and Intel, and it does it at a fraction of the power consumption.

 

2) The M1 is most likely the lowest end part Apple will make, and it is trading blows with the highest end parts other companies are putting out (for laptops, and in some scenarios the desktop as well). Once they start pushing out higher end parts the performance will most likely go from "it is really impressive but it gets beaten if X and Y" to just "it is the best, all the time".

 

3) We now have an instruction set that can rival x86 for PCs.

 

4) Apple is proving that the ARM ISA is no just for low power devices. It can provide better performance as well.

 

5) With Zen 3 (not even worth mentioning Intel), AMD was only able to reach a desired power consumption by dramatically lowering the performance of their product. A 5980HS will not perform as well as a 5800X. Sure it might have better efficiency since the 5800X is operating outside of its efficiency sweet spot, but that does not chance the fact that the 5980HS has much lower performance. Apple does not seem to have to do this tradeoff. AMD had to choose "do we want to meet or efficiency goal or our performance goal". Apple were able to match their desktop performance goals while simultaneously beating their laptop efficiency goals.

 

6) I don't think changing the IO die to be more efficient in an AMD processor, or making the IO bigger in Apple's processor, will suddenly make it so that they are equal in terms of efficiency. I don't think the node difference (7nm vs 5nm) is the sole reason for it either. Even if AMD were to release a zen 3 processor with limited IO and built on TSMC 5nm it still wouldn't be able to match the M1 in terms of efficiency and performance at the same time. It would still lose.

[leadeater]

19 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Again, here is what I wrote:

"That statement is only untrue [...] if you downclock the Ryzen chip to be slower than the M1."

 

And your response to that was:

"No it is not correct, been down this before."

 

 

To me it seems like you are not only guilty of the same things you accused him for (trying to imply that something applies to all zen 3 processors) but even when I went out of my way to say "it is true in some cases but not all" you still said I was wrong, and at that point you were no longer just implying things.

Thing is I didn't say the reduction is clocks doesn't lead to less performance, that is something you've been applying to what I said. And in that post why don't we do just what I said that we can now do, pick a Zen 3 mobile part instead of continuing this charade of only comparing Zen 3 desktops at that time because Ryzen Mobile wasn't Zen 3 so we just couldn't use that for "reasons".

 

"No it is not correct" is a reiteration of "his statement was not correct", the thing we were discussing, not your tack on point about the performance decreasing if you lower the clocks which I never said anything otherwise. I wasn't going to change the discussion point over to performance just because you brought it up like that.

 

There were more words after the part you have chosen.

On 12/11/2020 at 11:05 AM, leadeater said:

No it is not correct, been down this before. You don't have to pick the 5950X to do this. How about pick a laptop/mobile part with the same or even previous generation Zen 2 core. To say Zen 3 requires more power for a single core as does the entire M1 is not at all correct.

These extra parts you seem to have chosen to ignore are a little important and aren't anything close to what you are trying to say right now.

[leadeater]

15 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I don't think changing the IO die to be more efficient in an AMD processor, or making the IO bigger in Apple's processor, will suddenly make it so that they are equal in terms of efficiency. I don't think the node difference (7nm vs 5nm) is the sole reason for it either. Even if AMD were to release a zen 3 processor with limited IO and built on TSMC 5nm it still wouldn't be able to match the M1 in terms of efficiency and performance at the same time. It would still lose.

Well neither do I, having an separate IOD at the lower power end leads to higher power usage and reduces the low point power efficiency possible. The IOD isn't really about achieving power efficiency anyway, that wasn't the purpose for it. The IOD is there to decouple the CPU cores from it so they can live on different development cycles and use different silicon technologies as required. It is also used to lower production costs and achieve higher overall product yields.

 

Even in a monolithic die configuration that is used for APUs (Desktop and Mobile) it is most likely that the cores themselves will still be a bit higher, at a guess 0.5W to 1W higher under multithread loads. Single thread power is still going to be a lot higher on TSMC 5nm, unless AMD again significantly increases IPC and lowers the single core boost to target more power efficient operation. AMD I don't expect the IPC increase on Zen 4 to be high enough to get the single thread boost power down to 5W on mobile parts though, that is a leap too far. 8W maybe, but I doubt AMD ill be targeting that low on anything but U series and I still expect them to allow short term boost higher than that.

 

And because I think I need to further re-evidence this point about the IOD being the cause of high idle power on the desktop parts Ryzen Mobile total package power at idle has been measured down to as low as 0.3W, which is a lot lower than the ~10W the IOD uses (for single CCD) in the desktop parts at idle.

 

Surely you must agree that 0.3W is far lower than ~11W.

 

Then to continue down this track the IOD can use more power than an Ryzen Mobile U series CPU can in total for sustained loads. If the IOD is using more than an entire Zen 2 CPU is (and now Zen 3), a monolithic design, then how am I not correct in saying the IOD is responsible for the bad power efficiency when people were only willing to talk about Zen 3 desktop parts at the time?

 

15 hours ago, LAwLz said:

With Zen 3 (not even worth mentioning Intel), AMD was only able to reach a desired power consumption by dramatically lowering the performance of their product. A 5980HS will not perform as well as a 5800X. Sure it might have better efficiency since the 5800X is operating outside of its efficiency sweet spot, but that does not chance the fact that the 5980HS has much lower performance. Apple does not seem to have to do this tradeoff. AMD had to choose "do we want to meet or efficiency goal or our performance goal". Apple were able to match their desktop performance goals while simultaneously beating their laptop efficiency goals.

I'm not sure why the 5980HS needs to perform the same as the 5800X? I'm not sure why this matters or why you're bringing it up in this way. 5980HS has better multithread performance than the M1 does so the fact that it's lower than a higher power 5800X doesn't really matter does it?

 

Single core performance between the two actually are not too dissimilar, multithread around 75% of the 5800X which while a decent bit lower isn't so horrible considering how much lower the power draw is between the two.

 

And Apple does have this trade off, obviously they could clock higher than they are, I don't see any reason why they could not but if they did power usage would exponentially increase and the M1 is a mobile part used in passive and actively cooled devices. Performance potentially could be even higher, maybe I'm wrong and the cores can't achieve higher clocks, I don't know but I'm not going to assume they cannot.

 

15 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Apple is proving that the ARM ISA is no just for low power devices. It can provide better performance as well.

Well Apple isn't the only one and neither the highest current in raw performance. If/when they release high core count parts they may well end up having the highest performance ARM CPUs but there are other companies making and releasing new HPC focused ARM CPUs.

 

15 hours ago, LAwLz said:

The M1 is most likely the lowest end part Apple will make, and it is trading blows with the highest end parts other companies are putting out (for laptops, and in some scenarios the desktop as well). Once they start pushing out higher end parts the performance will most likely go from "it is really impressive but it gets beaten if X and Y" to just "it is the best, all the time".

And when that happens it'll be great, but it's not happened yet. In one of the past threads I've said the same thing and if I remember correctly went through the effort of calculating out the performance and expected power for such CPUs, with 12 to 20 cores. Apple still need a lot of cores to match the same performance as a 5950X for a number of applications, could be more broad than that but the selection of cross platform software that has been tested is very limited.

 

Either way Apple would have CPUs of that class performance around the 60W-80W mark if using the same clocks etc, that's very good considering AMD is around 120W+ for the same thing. That being said when AMD moves to 5nm power could go down or remain the same, performance will increase that is for sure. Apple's opportunity to compete on the high end is now and for the next year to two years then there will be CPU on the market with either superior performance, equivalent power efficiency or  superior performance and equivalent power efficiency. It's only going to take 30% less power on the 5950X to be around the same power efficiency as 16-18 core Apple CPU which we can only crudely guess the performance of without knowing other system level impacts like memory bandwidth. Still I don't see any issue with Apple getting CPUs out with the same or even greater performance of the 5950X if they want to.

 

15 hours ago, LAwLz said:

The microarchitecture is fantastic. It is able to match the absolute best performing x86 microarchitectures on the market from both AMD and Intel, and it does it at a fraction of the power consumption.

But that doesn't actually make it all that groundbreaking though, like I've said already achieving what is expected isn't that. Overall what Apple has done with the M1, it's end product devices, their operating system to support it and the software ecosystem is far more groundbreaking than the M1 itself. I don't consider the M1 to be groundbreaking because of excellent execution of factors outside of it.

[Borgus Bohr]

ARM is not indestructible and x86 is not weak. Look at Intel, the ''less than nothing'' of the moment, and for sure the less interesting from a comercial stand point at the moment, but they can pull off mad instructions per cycle in a 14mm architecture/process. AMD cannot do that, and ARM cannot achieve that at that size right now. Nothing can really tell us what Intel will be able to do with 7 or 5 millimeters nodes. The physics in a node will differ from size to size and from architecture to architecture. Lower size is not necessarily better, and higher frequencies are not necessarily faster. 

 

Apple kind of ''shook'' the laptop world with the M1... but where the battery life and heat is not an issue, Apple needs to be able to bring good processing power for the money for the ''M'' CPUs to actually mean something. The ''PC'' and ''Mac'' (Apple's PCs), in terms of power, are pretty much differentiated by their price.

[YoMz]

On 11/26/2020 at 10:07 PM, gal-m said:

I've really been impressed with the Apple M1 chip, though it seemed too good to be true at first, but after researching it extensively it looks like the claims actually do hold up.

 

My question is, what's next? Can Apple Silicon wipe everything else out? I've recently been thinking about building a new high end gaming system, but now it just seems like Apple might speed past anything in the years to come (in reference to single thread performance at least). The whole thing is making me extremely discouraged to invest in any type of Windows machine at the moment... - Yes I DO know that Windows and Macs, don't compare directly depending on a persons specific workload, but I think you get what I'm trying to say.. it's just making x86 CPUs feel a bit old ...

 

EDIT: I am NOT saying I want to play games on a Mac. I am just simply stating that the potential of Apple's new chips to wipe every other Intel or AMD off the face of the planet might move manufacturers like Intel or AMD to start looking at developing an ARM based chip as well and the potential that would have in a Windows machine..

 

Anyways, what do you guys think?

what people tend to miss on things that are new is the fact that the greatest achievement Apple has done for this chip is optimization... I don't own any Apple products myself because I hate their company policies and their manufacturing practices, but you can not help but be impressed with the optimization for Day1 Release for all of their products and even long term support... even most (if not all) of mobile apps that release for both the Apple Store and the Google Play Store, apps just tend to perform much better on Apple devices compared to the android counterparts... the chip itself is not that impressive in terms of sheer specs, but the optimization that Apple has successfully integrated within it is what impresses me the most...

however though, this chip will never really be enough to outperform Intel or AMD for the PC platform in general... not even on big scale production levels for any industry... if you see any large scale projects out there, whether it be construction, movies, engineering, architecture, or even industrial development, all of the apps they use are PC related because at the end of the day, Apple can not compete on those levels of work load... you can check Cinebench and Blender benchmarks for reference (these 2 benchmarks are very very close to real world performance for apps used on the industries I mentioned)

do not forget that even the "pro" lineup from Apple does not even remotely qualify for any "pro level" workload from actual professionals in their respective field... their products are mostly targeted (atleast in the last few years) to influencers and to people who are too deep in their "ecosystem" to actually imagine using some other platform...

 

you can name a good number of companies that can operate day in and day out without the use of any Apple products to keep functioning, but you can not name a single company that can remain operating without Windows/PC products to keep operations going... I can bet you an arm and a leg, even Apple themselves use mostly PC applications to develop their new products because modeling programs just work better for PC...

[Spindel]

3 hours ago, YoMz said:

do not forget that even the "pro" lineup from Apple does not even remotely qualify for any "pro level" workload from actual professionals in their respective field... their products are mostly targeted (atleast in the last few years) to influencers and to people who are too deep in their "ecosystem" to actually imagine using some other platform...

 

Guess that me using my M1 for work makes me an amature then  

 

But I guess engineering isn’t ”pro” enough and just an influencer occupation.

 

#gatekeeping

[YoMz]

27 minutes ago, Spindel said:

Guess that me using my M1 for work makes me an amature then  

 

But I guess engineering isn’t ”pro” enough and just an influencer occupation.

 

#gatekeeping

is your company strictly operating on Apple products atm? NO? or better yet, let's make the pot a little sweeter, do you ONLY use Apple products for your engineering work? NO, as well? so that makes my next paragraph all the more compelling now, huh? but sure let's leave it out and take my statements out of context

wanna go a little deeper into your own industry? or any industry for that matter? every single database center in the entire world runs on either a Windows or Linux based machine (even Apple's database)

 

now you realize why I'm very impressed with the optimization in my very first paragraph... Apple doesn't even have an Apple-centric database and yet they are going head to head with Windows machines on their FIRST go with ARM powered products...

if you've read OP's original post, on his edit, he mentions if Apple can wipe Intel or AMD off the face of the Earth for manufacturing... hence the reason for my response... if anyone's forgotten, Apple is the newest player in ARM based chips (both Intel and AMD have already dipped their manufacturing toes in it years prior)

there is no gatekeeping here, just stating facts that even Apple themselves can not operate a single day without relying on Windows based machines... so on what grounds can you say OP is basing that an initial product (the M1 chip) will wipe larger manufacturers out of business?

[Spindel]

4 minutes ago, YoMz said:

is your company strictly operating on Apple products atm? NO? or better yet, let's make the pot a little sweeter, do you ONLY use Apple products for your engineering work? NO, as well? so that makes my next paragraph all the more compelling now, huh? but sure let's leave it out and take my statements out of context

wanna go a little deeper into your own industry? or any industry for that matter? every single database center in the entire world runs on either a Windows or Linux based machine (even Apple's database)

 

now you realize why I'm very impressed with the optimization in my very first paragraph... Apple doesn't even have an Apple-centric database and yet they are going head to head with Windows machines on their FIRST go with ARM powered products...

if you've read OP's original post, on his edit, he mentions if Apple can wipe Intel or AMD off the face of the Earth for manufacturing... hence the reason for my response... if anyone's forgotten, Apple is the newest player in ARM based chips (both Intel and AMD have already dipped their manufacturing toes in it years prior)

there is no gatekeeping here, just stating facts that even Apple themselves can not operate a single day without relying on Windows based machines... so on what grounds can you say OP is basing that an initial product (the M1 chip) will wipe larger manufacturers out of business?

You are grasping now...

 

"Pro" moniker in products has always been used just to denote that the product is a bit better than other products. True or false it actually means nothing other than a marketing gimmick, just as Segas "BLASTPROCESSING!" and just as everything for a while had "2000" attached to its name, it really means nothing other than marketing jargong

 

In daily speech with non autistic people "pro" is just used as a superlative to emphasize that something or someone is good. When I was a kid playing football (the rest of the world variant not the american one) with my friends at recess and yelled "Hey! Sven you really are a pro!" it didn't mean that Sven (that was 8 years old at the time) actually made money playing football.

 

"Pro" in consumer product names will always stand as a synonym to "better". Better compared to what is a different discussion.   

[YoMz]

 

4 minutes ago, Spindel said:

You are grasping now...

 

"Pro" moniker in products has always been used just to denote that the product is a bit better than other products. True or false it actually means nothing other than a marketing gimmick, just as Segas "BLASTPROCESSING!" and just as everything for a while had "2000" attached to its name, it really means nothing other than marketing jargong

 

In daily speech with non autistic people "pro" is just used as a superlative to emphasize that something or someone is good. When I was a kid playing football (the rest of the world variant not the american one) with my friends at recess and yelled "Hey! Sven you really are a pro!" it didn't mean that Sven (that was 8 years old at the time) actually made money playing football.

 

"Pro" in consumer product names will always stand as a synonym to "better". Better compared to what is a different discussion.   

ahh yes.. thank you for confirming my statement... 

5 hours ago, YoMz said:

do not forget that even the "pro" lineup from Apple does not even remotely qualify for any "pro level" workload from actual professionals in their respective field...

or did you forget that Apple's "pro" lineup is their top of the line for consumer products? it's quite amusing when you compare it to industry-wide used products that are Windows/Linux based, huh? even an engineer who uses an M1 chip agrees that it's not the best (which even further confirms my response to OP regarding whether Apple can take down Intel & AMD or not)

it's even cuter when you go deep into Apple's product stack and see that the iMac, iMac Pro and Mac Pro all are Intel-based systems... Apple is literally one of the biggest customers of Intel, so how do you think OP got the idea that Apple will wipe them off of the face of the Earth? or does my response still not make sense to you?

wanna know why I made that specific statement on that particular paragraph? because every single M1 chip based product right now lacks the versatility of choosing your own display... or do you honestly think it's industry standard to have professionals work on large scale projects on a 13inch display in 2021?

[NunoLava1998]

7 minutes ago, YoMz said:

wanna know why I made that specific statement on that particular paragraph? because every single M1 chip based product right now lacks the versatility of choosing your own display... or do you honestly think it's industry standard to have professionals work on large scale projects on a 13inch display in 2021?

Mac Mini

[Video Beagle]

18 hours ago, Donut417 said:

The question that’s not being asked is how does this effect other ARM chip makers? Because Apple isn’t competing with Intel or AMD. Apple is a closed eco system. It’s going to be Qualcomm, Nvidia and or etc who compete with Team Red and Blue. 

While you're right in how the products compete, I do think Apple's developments will spurn on the other ARM makers. There will be executives at other companies seeing stuff about the M1 and wanting their products to compete, at least spec wise. There will be engineers who want to out perform designs.  And likely there will be market demand from business folks who want "that arm thing they've heard about" and Dell and Lenovo and etc will be wanting systems to sell.

 

And yes, I'm pointing out superficial reasons, but this board is focused on power users who sometimes forget the real world is a bit less...quantifiable....in it's reasoning

[Obioban]

7 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

While you're right in how the products compete, I do think Apple's developments will spurn on the other ARM makers. There will be executives at other companies seeing stuff about the M1 and wanting their products to compete, at least spec wise. There will be engineers who want to out perform designs.  And likely there will be market demand from business folks who want "that arm thing they've heard about" and Dell and Lenovo and etc will be wanting systems to sell.

 

And yes, I'm pointing out superficial reasons, but this board is focused on power users who sometimes forget the real world is a bit less...quantifiable....in it's reasoning

Perhaps. Flagship Androids have been 1-2 years behind every contemporary iPhone (because generally all the phones have the best/current processor) in processor/gpu performance for years now, and those same ARM developers you're hoping will step up didn't seem to feel particularly inspired by it. 

 

I'm excited to watch what unfolds this year with Apple Silicon. People seem to be overlooking that this is Apple's processor for their extreme bottom end/ultrabook. The lowest of the low end of the Mac line. The previous processor in the MacBook Air was a 1.1-1.2 Ghz intel-- that's the performance class they've currently replaced in their line. They used it in two other product lines, because it happens to be fast enough stomp on what was in them before, but clearly the Air is the primary design target of this thing. AND these current M1 Mac are running the worst they'll ever run, as many apps are running in translation/emulation. More cores, more clocks, more cost, more power, and more heat are more acceptable in every other line they offer. 

 

And we're ~1.5 years away from their likely transition to 3nm-- by the time AMD is ramping up 5nm in volume, Apple will have moved on to 3nm. And this was their first gen mac chip-- products generally iterate/improve most dramatically in their early days. 

 

I think the current M1s are crazy impressive already, but... just a hint as to what is yet to come. 

 

Related sidenote: 

What's not captured in benchmarks is how much snappier the M1 makes everything. As in, things that are system/bottleneck bound, rather than processor or GPU bound, are all dramatically sped up on the M1. The only analogy I can think of that conveys how different the experience feels is the first time I went from a spinning drive to an SSD for my OS/Apps. SSDs didn't create faster CPU/GPU benchmarks, but in terms of usability it was HUGE-- a similar experience is happening here. It has made using my Intel iMac, $6000 workstation PC at work, or gaming PC at home feel like... wading in molasses. That, plus the never-ending battery, is why people who have these things so enthused about them. They feel, in daily use, like way more of a speed increase than the benchmarks convey (and the battery life changes the usability-- no thinking about charging each day, throughout. You just use it each day with no cares given, and charge it overnight, like a phone)

[Spindel]

1 hour ago, Obioban said:

 

 

Related sidenote: 

What's not captured in benchmarks is how much snappier the M1 makes everything. As in, things that are system/bottleneck bound, rather than processor or GPU bound are all dramatically sped up on the M1. The only analogy I can think of that conveys how different the experience feels is the first time I went from a spinning drive to an SSD for my OS/Apps.

I tried to explain this in another thread, but was told I was an apple shill and it didn’t count becasue there are no benchmarks that shows this

[NunoLava1998]

2 hours ago, Spindel said:

I tried to explain this in another thread, but was told I was an apple shill and it didn’t count becasue there are no benchmarks that shows this

My first impressions of the M1 MacBook Air are that it's insanely smooth to use, to the point even Solus on my old Ryzen 5 machine felt a bit slow.

[Blade of Grass]

10 hours ago, YoMz said:

 

ahh yes.. thank you for confirming my statement... 

or did you forget that Apple's "pro" lineup is their top of the line for consumer products? it's quite amusing when you compare it to industry-wide used products that are Windows/Linux based, huh? even an engineer who uses an M1 chip agrees that it's not the best (which even further confirms my response to OP regarding whether Apple can take down Intel & AMD or not)

I got tons of engineer friends who love their M1 computers, they're amazing for software engineering. Faster than a lot of other systems (esp for the price), especially because of how fast the memory/storage is. 

https://tech.ssut.me/apple-m1-chip-benchmarks-focused-on-the-real-world-programming/

Quote

it's even cuter when you go deep into Apple's product stack and see that the iMac, iMac Pro and Mac Pro all are Intel-based systems... Apple is literally one of the biggest customers of Intel, so how do you think OP got the idea that Apple will wipe them off of the face of the Earth? or does my response still not make sense to you?

I feel like you're being dishonest here, Apple has a two year transition plan, that they just started not even 6 months ago. They are quite literally planning on not being Intel customers anymore. 

Quote

wanna know why I made that specific statement on that particular paragraph? because every single M1 chip based product right now lacks the versatility of choosing your own display... or do you honestly think it's industry standard to have professionals work on large scale projects on a 13inch display in 2021?

The M1 powered Mac Mini? Believe you can connect it to two displays up to 6k resolution.

The laptops also have the same high speed thunderbolt outputs that can easily be docked to, I believe, 1 6k monitor. 

[Obioban]

Yes, the Mac mini can connect 2 external displays from any vendor and the M1 laptops can connect one. Almost certainly the non ultrabook versions of apple silicon will support more monitors than that. 

 

My favorite software compile benchmark is this:

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/yeah-apples-m1-macbook-pro-is-powerful-but-its-the-battery-life-that-will-blow-you-away/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAJVtZ9NAex-ZZ_VP79s6TYDTewc1_EhCTqwAwsCYiTaTuF6Oga78aIy5YYKMUeQDPH4VwsojMX1Xl-uZKCvOPeuId3ZbwPOfUBIx74HnIPxeIaRZRTnq7Pdt-0ddG6ysaVnXIBFyODXC3E51nrcrSjCFu2QhpyRq5iw9_ONtRwl8

 

Cliffs:

The 13" M1 MacBook Pro used 9% of its battery to compile webkit.

The (otherwise identical) 13" Intel MacBook Pro used 76% of its battery to compile webkit. 

 

That really nicely encapsulates the power efficiency gain AND the performance gain (as the M1 has to work hard for less time because it was done faster).

[YoMz]

7 hours ago, Blade of Grass said:

I feel like you're being dishonest here, Apple has a two year transition plan, that they just started not even 6 months ago. They are quite literally planning on not being Intel customers anymore. 

not really... every single one of those products I mentioned came out in 2020, and so did the M1 chip based products... ARM based processing is amazing, we all agree on that, but like I said earlier, based on OP's original statements, these first generation ARM chips by Apple will in no way wipe Intel or AMD off of the face of the Earth... I simply pointed out products in Apple's lineup that prove this point... how is it possible to sweep another manufacturer off of the face of the Earth if you are one of the biggest customer of that said company...

sure, Apple may be planning to not be Intel's customer anymore, but I don't see any of their Intel based products out of their own product page, so until that point in time (which none of us really know whether it will happen or not) I can not agree to a claim that literally contradicts itself when you look at the companies in question...

and if anyone's forgotten, both Intel and AMD are chip manufacturers while Apple is not (and both are vastly larger in manufacturing capacity compared to Apple), and both companies have had previous experience on ARM chip design... now what do you think will happen if both Intel and AMD achieve similar optimization levels to what Apple has achieved in their M1 chips? now that's an interesting race to look forward to isn't it? whether Intel and AMD can catch up to optimization and whether Apple can catch up to manufacturing capacity...

[Blade of Grass]

1 hour ago, YoMz said:

and if anyone's forgotten, both Intel and AMD are chip manufacturers while Apple is not (and both are vastly larger in manufacturing capacity compared to Apple), and both companies have had previous experience on ARM chip design...

Intel also uses TSMC now, same as AMD and Apple. Intel is the only one that owns their own fabrication of the three. 
Pretty sure Apple sells more devices with Apple designed processors (mobile or otherwise) then AMD sells in total. 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Blade of Grass said:

Intel also uses TSMC now, same as AMD and Apple. Intel is the only one that owns their own fabrication of the three. 
Pretty sure Apple sells more devices with Apple designed processors (mobile or otherwise) then AMD sells in total. 

Apple is 20% of TSMC, AMD is a bit less than that. Both are capacity limited by TSMC and both would buy more if there were more to buy so it's not likely this percentage will change much. I'm not sure how Apple is going to handle development and release cycles of future CPUs as it actually wouldn't be possible for them to support another product right now, doing so would just make all products become supply limited which is something Apple wouldn't want.

 

Personally I think Apple will do products in group cycles much in the way they already update their end products and try and control the demand of each product line so they can stop making one CPU SKU and switch to another, then another or back etc. While they are mass producing one CPU they could be doing development production on another ready to update once they intend to switch back to making CPUs of that particular end product line.

 

So I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple at 25% of TSMC soon as more 5nm fab lines come online, for Apple and other customers.

 

The only way I can see AMD changing this ratio of revenue share of TSMC is if their RTG business unit becomes a lot more competitive and in demand. TSMC's total production capacity is going up but I expect these ratios to stay the same or slightly increase towards Apple, logically it sort of has to as they replace Intel CPUs with their own.

[Letgomyleghoe]

17 hours ago, Obioban said:

Related sidenote: 

What's not captured in benchmarks is how much snappier the M1 makes everything. As in, things that are system/bottleneck bound, rather than processor or GPU bound, are all dramatically sped up on the M1. The only analogy I can think of that conveys how different the experience feels is the first time I went from a spinning drive to an SSD for my OS/Apps. SSDs didn't create faster CPU/GPU benchmarks, but in terms of usability it was HUGE-- a similar experience is happening here. It has made using my Intel iMac, $6000 workstation PC at work, or gaming PC at home feel like... wading in molasses. That, plus the never-ending battery, is why people who have these things so enthused about them. They feel, in daily use, like way more of a speed increase than the benchmarks convey (and the battery life changes the usability-- no thinking about charging each day, throughout. You just use it each day with no cares given, and charge it overnight, like a phone)

I feel like a lot of that "snapiness" is OS related, I felt that same feeling changing my DNS server to cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 and using linux. 

[NunoLava1998]

1 hour ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

I feel like a lot of that "snapiness" is OS related, I felt that same feeling changing my DNS server to cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 and using linux. 

I switched from Solus and I can say it's definitely smoother than that, in the first day or so I did feel a pretty significant difference. But then I just got used to it

[NunoLava1998]

26 minutes ago, NunoLava1998 said:

I switched from Solus and I can say it's definitely smoother than that, in the first day or so I did feel a pretty significant difference. But then I just got used to it

And one reason for that is probably how well the M1 is optimized web browsing. On Speedometer 2.0 the M1... well

[Roswell]

2 hours ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

I feel like a lot of that "snapiness" is OS related, I felt that same feeling changing my DNS server to cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 and using linux. 

Yeah, it is. macOS is crazy aggressive with caching application data. Once you close an app it stays in memory regardless until the system or currently running apps need it. I routinely see 20GB+ of cached memory on top of whatever is actually in use.