M1 as an "Industry Game Changer"

[dmccloud]

They used idle power to measure the difference between going idle vs. full tilt. What else would be drawing more power other than the SOC during power intensive tests? Is the Mac Mini's power supply that inefficient?

Intel's docs also say that on chip power monitoring (which is what Max only relies on) is not as accurate as just measuring power draw differences at the wall.

Intel's claim makes no sense, because power draw from the wall would also include the power drawn by the screen (if using a notebook), the HDD/SSDs inside the machine, RAM, WiFi/Bluetooth cards, etc.). If the processor is running a heavy load, data swaps to and from both RAM and storage would increase as well, which would increase the power consumption of those components.

 

[PeterJP]

Do you mean the Apple PowerPC processors that ran RISC ?

Not just that. In the 1980s, CPPs came without all the peripherals of current processors. So as a computer company, you had to decide and implement what your computer was going to be capable of I/O wise, or you didn't have a product. That's why products like the Acorn BBC, the Commodore 64 and Amiga, and the Apple II GS, caused such a furore. The Atari ST had limited graphics/sound compared to the above, but had a built-in MIDI port, which caused a music revolution (not the least here in Belgium). Remember: there were no standards like USB or PCIe so a computer with this built-in had a major advantage to 'change the industry'.

Software was also part of the picture, of course, as the original Mac shows. It's that combination of integrated hardware design choices and closely matched software that has generally been lost. Dell, Asus and the likes pick standard components and connect them up. Compared to before, that's limited inventiveness. They're integrators. If you compare to Apple, who profiled what their OS uses most and optimised the CPU to run this part ultra efficiently, it's a completely different league. Dell can't do that - they have no control over the OS. It reminds me of Acorn who looked at the available 16 bit CPUs in the early 1980s and decided none was good enough. They developed a new 32 bit RISC one and called it Acorn RISC machine (ARM) v1.

 

[Falhófnir]

Honestly, I don't see how the rest of the industry can respond 100% to Apple right now. They can look at ARM and see the potential (as I'm sure they all are doing right now). But they won't have a means of getting there in the ways that Apple got there. The vertical integration between the OS and the SoC that Apple has won't be easy or even feasible for Microsoft or third parties to do. Not without changing the business model behind Windows PCs at a fundamental level.

All that being said, it was only during the Intel Mac era that a comparison between a Mac and a Windows PC wasn't an Apples and Oranges comparison. It was the same chips. Now, we're just back to the PowerPC era of comparing Mac to PC in that they're two different computers entirely.

Apple is certainly in an advantageous position from its years of planning ahead, its expertise in chip design and business model with tight control over hardware and software integration, I don't think it's insurmountable, but it's going to take years of effort and for the big players (at least Microsoft and Nvidia (Arm), but better if more players, hardware and software are also on board) to come together and work hand in glove over that time. I would even go as far as to say Apple's biggest advantage isn't the chip hardware at all, but the fact Rosetta is so advanced, and that they're specifically running a transition, not adding Arm64 as an extra consideration for their software developers to maybe consider supporting if and when it gets to critical mass. This means Apple will probably have discontinued Rosetta and be powering ahead with native Arm64 Apps while on the Windows side it will still be pot luck whether you're getting a native Arm app, an emulated app that runs well, an emulated app that runs poorly, or an emulated app that doesn't run at all for years.

 

[rezwits]

Yep story checks out.

They could practically put TWO mac minis in one case almost...
oh and btw, if someone says, "They don't drink." That doesn't mean they don't drink water or soda, etc...

That macmini MoBo is 1/9th the size of a MacPro 2010 MB, and the SoC is 1/9th the size of a MacPro 2010 CPU (45nm vs 5nm), think tic-tac-toe board size comparision.

Here is the sicker part, how much faster is a 2020 MacMini at 1/9th the size compared in speed to a MacPro 2010!

MAN!

 

[JohnnyGo]

Well... now that you mentioned the old cMP

Here’s a beating down from Barefeats: M1 MBP just trashed (pun intended) nMP Trashcan (2013)

M1 MacBook Pro versus 2013 Mac Pro

real world speed test results for performance minded Macintosh users

barefeats.com

 

[Argon_]

Well... now that you mentioned the old cMP

Here’s a beating down from Barefeats: M1 MBP just trashed (pun intended) nMP Trashcan (2013)

M1 MacBook Pro versus 2013 Mac Pro

real world speed test results for performance minded Macintosh users

barefeats.com

Under Rosetta. With native apps, the Air could probably do better.

 

[JohnnyGo]

Under Rosetta. With native apps, the Air could probably do better.

True.

Some of the tests were native/universal apps others were with Rosetta translation.

Just to show that Apple silicon is a game changer, upending the Pro/Desktop Macs in its first version. Imagine over the next 12-18 months with new SOCs and better software?

 

[Pressure]

True.

Some of the tests were native/universal apps others were with Rosetta translation.

Just to show that Apple silicon is a game changer, upending the Pro/Desktop Macs in its first version. Imagine over the next 12-18 months with new SOCs and better software?

It’s nice to see the low-end offering beat more than 7 year old hardware for sure.

The AMD Tahiti GPU used in the 2013 Mac Pro was released 9 years ago.

 

[KShopper]

Here is an excellent write-up that dives into the distinct technical advantages that the M1 SoC brings to the table and why it will be so difficult for legacy x86 vendors to complete, as well as the other ARM chip vendors: https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2

"Why can’t Intel and AMD add more instruction decoders?"

"...the newest AMD CPU cores, the ones called Zen3 are slightly faster than Firestorm cores. But here is the kicker, that only happens because the Zen3 cores are clocked at 5 GHz. Firestorm cores are clocked at 3.2 GHz. The Zen3 is just barely squeezing past Firestorm despite having almost 60% higher clock frequency."

 

[throAU]

Actually, Windows 10's start menu is actually MORE customizable than Windows 7's ever was. I will agree that both are better than 8.1's; though even that wasn't so bad considering the functionality was still there; it was just impossibly full screen. I cannot defend (original) Windows 8's start screen. There's just no defending it.

i didn’t say it wasn’t customisable.

i said easy to customise. the old one was a simple folder structure you could modify with explorer. not screw around with xml

 

[Argon_]

Here is an excellent write-up that dives into the distinct technical advantages that the M1 SoC brings to the table and why it will be so difficult for legacy x86 vendors to complete, as well as the other ARM chip vendors: https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2

"Why can’t Intel and AMD add more instruction decoders?"

"...the newest AMD CPU cores, the ones called Zen3 are slightly faster than Firestorm cores. But here is the kicker, that only happens because the Zen3 cores are clocked at 5 GHz. Firestorm cores are clocked at 3.2 GHz. The Zen3 is just barely squeezing past Firestorm despite having almost 60% higher clock frequency."

1503 instructions vs 16.

 

[Joelist]

Well it is a game changer for Apple in that it makes their low end laptop section perform like everyone else's medium/high end. Obviously M1 is a highly performant architecture and while some parts of it can be also done by AMD and Intel others can't (by for example AMDs own admission they can't do a pipe with 8 decoders and 7 ALU like M1).

The other reason for M1 being so strong is it has a LOT of different processing blocks for different things so the CPU and GPU are not doing things they might not be so good at - those are offloaded to different blocks custom designed to do that task. And with everything (even the RAM) in package and the Unified Memory Model doing away with the need to copy code in RAM for different uses this is something not seen before in the desktop/laptop world. And no Ryzen is not an SoC in the real sense of the word as it is not truly a system on a chip.

The other questions about competition boil down to whether companies that sell chips as a commodity can imitate M1, and there the answer is probably "yes and no". Some of the stuff they can eventually do (like the 8 wide pipe although a lot of that is Apple proprietary) but the highly customized processor blocks for particular tasks are probably specifically engineered for iOS and MacOS and iPadOS down to their ISAs.

In the short term M1 will spike sales of Macbook Air and MBP 13, so Apple current share of the notebook market will rise (in the US per recent info cited in other threads it is probably around 20%) but let's also remember that Macbook Airs are $999 base price. If someone only had about $4-500 then they will go to the piece of plastic crap because that is what they can afford.

 

[Meatsuit]

What Makes Apple Silicon So Fast?

Real world experience with the new Macs has sunk in. They are fast. Real fast. But why? What is the magic?

debugger.medium.com

 

[Yebubbleman]

i didn’t say it wasn’t customisable.

i said easy to customise. the old one was a simple folder structure you could modify with explorer. not screw around with xml

You don't need to screw around with an XML to customize Windows 10's start menu. That's just for setting up a GPO to control it on other client systems. You definitely don't need to do that to tweak your own Windows 10 start menu.

Well it is a game changer for Apple in that it makes their low end laptop section perform like everyone else's medium/high end. Obviously M1 is a highly performant architecture and while some parts of it can be also done by AMD and Intel others can't (by for example AMDs own admission they can't do a pipe with 8 decoders and 7 ALU like M1).

The other reason for M1 being so strong is it has a LOT of different processing blocks for different things so the CPU and GPU are not doing things they might not be so good at - those are offloaded to different blocks custom designed to do that task. And with everything (even the RAM) in package and the Unified Memory Model doing away with the need to copy code in RAM for different uses this is something not seen before in the desktop/laptop world. And no Ryzen is not an SoC in the real sense of the word as it is not truly a system on a chip.

The other questions about competition boil down to whether companies that sell chips as a commodity can imitate M1, and there the answer is probably "yes and no". Some of the stuff they can eventually do (like the 8 wide pipe although a lot of that is Apple proprietary) but the highly customized processor blocks for particular tasks are probably specifically engineered for iOS and MacOS and iPadOS down to their ISAs.

In the short term M1 will spike sales of Macbook Air and MBP 13, so Apple current share of the notebook market will rise (in the US per recent info cited in other threads it is probably around 20%) but let's also remember that Macbook Airs are $999 base price. If someone only had about $4-500 then they will go to the piece of plastic crap because that is what they can afford.

The M1's greatness comes from the fact that Apple designed both it and the operating system that runs on it and that tight vertical integration that results from that. No one is going to replicate that combination anytime soon. At best, we'll see other beefier ARM designs come close, albeit nowhere near as efficiently matching the performance of contemporary Apple Silicon as is currently the case with iPhone SoCs versus contemporary Android phone SoCs. Apple's designs will still be more efficient, but that's because they can optimize everything.

What Makes Apple Silicon So Fast?

Real world experience with the new Macs has sunk in. They are fast. Real fast. But why? What is the magic?

debugger.medium.com

That was a good read!

 

[throAU]

You definitely don't need to do that to tweak your own Windows 10 start menu.

Oh, you're talking about right clicking on stuff and pinning one item at a time?

🤣

Right...


We had easier, more flexible configuration back in 1995. The only thing the tiles do that I couldn't do 25 years ago are show active content, which if history is any guide with the malware we've seen - is a bad thing.

 

[JMacHack]

We had easier, more flexible configuration back in 1995. The only thing the tiles do that I couldn't do 25 years ago are show active content, which if history is any guide with the malware we've seen - is a bad thing.

Call me a sucker for nostalgia, but I'd pay good money to have the Windows 98 look back. It was clunky and not sleek at all but customizing screensavers and changing everything to garish colors and fonts was a lot of fun.

 

[dmccloud]

On my Windows machine I use Stardock's Start 10 to bring back the old style Start menu. The best thing is that I have all sorts of customization options with that app.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Oh, you're talking about right clicking on stuff and pinning one item at a time?

🤣

Right...

Not exactly sure how that differs from the customization ability you'd have with the Windows 7 start menu.

We had easier, more flexible configuration back in 1995. The only thing the tiles do that I couldn't do 25 years ago are show active content, which if history is any guide with the malware we've seen - is a bad thing.

I'm not saying the tiles are all that and a bag of chips. Just that customization of the start menu that isn't producing or editing an XML file does exist and isn't any worse than it was with Windows 7 or any worse than Dock/Launchpad customization is with macOS today.

 

[throAU]

Not exactly sure how that differs from the customization ability you'd have with the Windows 7 start menu.


I'm not saying the tiles are all that and a bag of chips. Just that customization of the start menu that isn't producing or editing an XML file does exist and isn't any worse than it was with Windows 7 or any worse than Dock/Launchpad customization is with macOS today.

right click explore the start menu and you could delete, move or add multiple icons at a time.

win10? It’s one at a time. And bundled with crap.