Now take away the option to run in normal mode. How many 16” MBPs do you think Apple will sell?
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Max Tech, running the M2 MacBook Air on just the efficiency cores
- Thread starter pshufd
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All I want is 2 more efficiency cores. They can leave all of the performance cores or take one out.
You want a 16” MacBook Air. That’s a completely different class of computer. Maybe Apple should make one but not at the expense of the 16” MacBook Pro.
Edit: They would need to take out one performance cluster which would leave you with an M2 4/4.
Yes, I've said that for a long time.
No expense to the MacBook Pro. Just add 2 efficiency cores.
Cores come in clusters. To make space they would probably need to remove a performance cluster. Now you just have an M2. Another alternative would be 4P/2E/2E/2E. That actually might be a pretty good balance.
To make the space? The Max has a bunch more GPU cores. Just take the space from those.
That’s not how the current design works. The Max has the same layout as the Pro with double the GPU cores. To take out some of the Max GPUs you no longer have that design symmetry. It would be a third new design that stands by itself. Probably not cost effective.
I think that Apple could manage.
Even Intel sees the benefit in efficiency cores. They are going from 8 to 16 from Alder Lake to Raptor Lake.
Apple has very different design goals than Intel. What works for Intel financially doesn’t necessarily work for Apple. They have very different business plans.
Yes. But Apple could do it.
We have a pissing contest for GB 5 scores between CPU makers and Intel and AMD seem to want crowns over efficiency. Unfortunately Apple got sucked in this time too.
They both want to make very fast chips that also perform reasonably well in lower-power states. It's a reality of modern chip design that the performance cores will use significantly more power vs the efficiency cores without a corresponding linear improvement in performance. Thats due to power-hungry performance core design elements like longer instruction pipelines, more superscalar units, more complicated instruction reordering capabilities. These aren't the result of Apple targeting benchmarks like Geek Bench - it's Apple trying to make the fastest and most competitive chips they can.
They can't win in the long run against competitors that are willing to use as much power as it takes.
They're not looking to win against that. They're looking to make the fastest chips they can within the power budgets they consider reasonable. The takeaway is that hybrid performance+efficiency core designs are currently the best way to achieve a good balance between performance and power efficiency. The fact that performance doesn't scale linearly with power usage on performance cores vs efficiency is not because Apple is catering to benchmarks or trying to compete with Intel's extreme power consumption. It's simply because they feel the extra performance is worth it.
We could all drive around at 40 mph to achieve the absolute best fuel efficiency over highway speeds, since fuel consumption increases markedly as you increase speed. We as a society decided the extra speed is worth the extra energy cost.
Could have fooled me. Why did they increase the frequency of the performance cores? The performance benefit doesn't scale linearly with the frequency increase.
It looks more like they are in the benchmarks game.
For the exact reasons I listed. Look at the analogy I added to my post after you quoted it.
My vehicle gets 50-55 MPG at 55-65 MPH on the highway.
The bigger factor in fuel consumption is aerodynamics.
We make some bad choices and we're paying for it.
Our electricity rates double on August 1. I'm starting to pay more attention to the efficiency of appliances. It's not a huge amount of money but it could be if it continues increasing at the current rates.
All cars made today use aerodynamic designs modeled by high-speed computers. The biggest factor in fuel consumption is driving acceleration and speed.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/driveHabits.jsp
Fine. Why does an 18 wheeler use more fuel than a Toyota Camry.
Why does an F-150 get worse gas mileage than a Prius?
Because they're much heavier vehicles. Same reason why a loaded 737 uses a lot more fuel than an empty one.
Weight and aerodynamics matter for fuel efficiency.
The top three selling vehicles in the US are large pickup trucks.
Fuel efficiency is a choice in vehicle and that's a bigger factor than speed. At least legal speeds.
My M1 mini runs around 23-30 degrees when just doing office stuff. About 35 degrees when running my production stuff and up to 50 degrees when running production and video editing. My iMacs will get up to 90 degrees if I run too much on them so I generally move heavier stuff to the mini. My Intel MacBook Pros could easily get to 80+ degrees without doing very much - just being attached to an external 4k monitor really ramped up the heat.
So 50 degrees, in the laptop world, is very good.
The performance cores got a bit faster with the clock increase and performance per watt decreased a bit. But they made up for it with the improved efficiency cores that actually do improve performance/watt. There is no point to introducing a new SoC that doesn't have improvements in performance. They gained in GPU as well. I suppose they could have left the performance cores at M1 levels and just banked on the improved efficiency and GPU cores but they must have decided that they had enough cooling to handle a bit more CPU as well. Why does it have to scale linearly to be useful?