M1 extremely slow on the task

[spoxi123]

Second thoughts on M1 silicon based Apple new products and a new test I performed - yes I understand Roseta 2 but...4 days ago I found myself in need of color correcting variable data, print ready PDFs. (Change this color to this color kind of command with PitStop Global Color Change function) Each PDF contained 64 thousand pages. Around 2pm I set one task running in the office on 3.3Ghz 6 Core Intel Core i5 32RAM and took 4 files home to set them up running on my new M1 8core 16Bg MacMini and M1 based new MacBook Air. On M1's tasks started around 4pm in the afternoon and in the morning I found them to be only at 1/3 completed. After arriving to the office - with my MacBook Air in hand still processing the task at 1/3rd of progress bar - I found our older Intel-based iMac idle with the task accomplished - again the new SuperFast advertised M1s were at 1/3rd of the progress bar... Later I let my M1 MacMini at home run the task for 30 hours - Task never accomplished... Now really not sure about M1 anymore... It made me really upset! Is Roseta translation to blame or M1 is not in fact so great... Any clues?

 

[usagora]

Second thoughts on M1 silicon based Apple new products and a new test I performed - yes I understand Roseta 2 but...4 days ago I found myself in need of color correcting variable data, print ready PDFs. (Change this color to this color kind of command with PitStop Global Color Change function) Each PDF contained 64 thousand pages. Around 2pm I set one task running in the office on 3.3Ghz 6 Core Intel Core i5 32RAM and took 4 files home to set them up running on my new M1 8core 16Bg MacMini and M1 based new MacBook Air. On M1's tasks started around 4pm in the afternoon and in the morning I found them to be only at 1/3 completed. After arriving to the office - with my MacBook Air in hand still processing the task at 1/3rd of progress bar - I found our older Intel-based iMac idle with the task accomplished - again the new SuperFast advertised M1s were at 1/3rd of the progress bar... Later I let my M1 MacMini at home run the task for 30 hours - Task never accomplished... Now really not sure about M1 anymore... It made me really upset! Is Roseta translation to blame or M1 is not in fact so great... Any clues?

I understand that the i5 got it done (though I'm not sure if you've checked all 64,000 pages of each PDF to see if there are any issues), but I'm guessing most people buying a consumer machine like the Mac Mini and MBA aren't working with 64,000 page PDFs. As for the technical reasons of why the process hung on the M1, I'm not sure, but if Rosetta 2 was involved, then that seems like the most likely suspect for why you ran into an issue, whereas everything was running natively on the i5.

 

[spoxi123]

It didn’t even hang it was still processing on two M1 computers. Yes I went through the pages to briefly check for strange artifacts and accuracy of the task… Color change was accomplished correctly. Still don’t understand why M1s weren’t able to accomplish the task… let’s blame it on Rosetta for now. (but I would still expect the task to accomplished fully and faster)

 

[pshufd]

It would take some investigation as to the software involved and some performance analysis on system metrics. Rosetta 2 slows things down. If there is another interpreter stage. it can slow things down further. Examples are Java and WINE. There's one program that I run on Windows and it takes 20 seconds to load. On my M1 mini, it takes 58 seconds to load. If I hack the program to run natively on the mini, it takes 17 seconds to load. Same program on three different platforms. But it's how you run it.

 

[NT1440]

How large are these PDF’s? You might be hitting a RAM limitation given the i5 has double the RAM and completes the task.

 

[jerryk]

How large are these PDF’s? You might be hitting a RAM limitation given the i5 has double the RAM and completes the task.

This is something to investigate. In Activity Monitor on the Memory tab take a look at the Memory Pressure chart If you see yellow, or worse red that is not good.

Check if your Mac needs more RAM in Activity Monitor

Use Activity Monitor on your Mac to see if memory is being used efficiently and if you need more memory (RAM).

support.apple.com

 

[Bodie CI5]

How large are these PDF’s? You might be hitting a RAM limitation given the i5 has double the RAM and completes the task.

Hang on a sec. My brother and I bought our M1 MBP’s with 8GB of RAM on the proviso that the “unified” 8GB was more than enough even for video rendering. We’re seeing ”delete this Twitter tab as there’s insufficient RAM” prompts atop our Safari windows. Are these really not the bees knees that MANY reviewers were making out? I mean if there’s problems with PDFs [ed - “Twitter”]…

 

[pshufd]

Hang on a sec. My brother and I bought our M1 MBP’s with 8GB of RAM on the proviso that the “unified” 8GB was more than enough even for video rendering. We’re seeing ”delete this Twitter tab as there’s insufficient RAM” prompts atop our Safari windows. Are these really not the bees knees that MANY reviewers were making out? I mean if there’s problems with PDFs…

A 64K page PDF is not a small thing to process.

A lot of reviewers seem to think that the whole world is about video editing and that it's the biggest workload around. And they are wrong.

I use my M1 mini 16/512 for office stuff and I wish that it had 24 or 32 GB of RAM. My Windows Desktop has 128 GB of RAM and that gives you a lot of flexibility in how you set up your system or what you can run.

 

[Bodie CI5]

A 64K page PDF is not a small thing to process.

A lot of reviewers seem to think that the whole world is about video editing and that it's the biggest workload around. And they are wrong.

I use my M1 mini 16/512 for office stuff and I wish that it had 24 or 32 GB of RAM. My Windows Desktop has 128 GB of RAM and that gives you a lot of flexibility in how you set up your system or what you can run.

I ended up finishing my post with “problems with PDFs”, that was meant to have been “problems with Twitter” and so I’ve edited the “PDFs” out.

Yes, you quite right about the reviewers. Recently, I’ve been watching reviewers working in the film industry and one or two of them have said that there seems to be a problem with tech reviewers in that they use pre-rendered footage to show quickly M1 can render video.

For my own work, I do wish I had opted for the 16GB MBP, I shouldn’t have listened to the tech reviewers. I’m currently in the middle of either staying Mac or staying Windows (one needs to go!).

But, first, I need to apologise to the Spoxi123 for this brief hijack.