What the heck happened in 2013?

[ahurst]

Hi everyone,

So I started a thread a while back in the Early Intel Macs forum, plotting long-term trends in Mac hardware specs and performance using a database I got my hands on (I've shared some in some posts here too). Since there are a lot of industry veterans and low-level hardware experts in this forum, though, I wanted to get some thoughts on a specific trend and what it means: around 2013, there was a noticeable decrease in year-over-year improvement in base RAM, base storage, and single-core performance. These rates (with the exception of single-core performance with the arrival of the M1) have remained fairly steady ever since.

Here are some plots to illustrate what I mean. Note that all the y-axes here are log-scaled to make long-term trends easier to see, and that the Mac Studio isn't included the database I'm working with yet:

Here's the base RAM across Mac SKUs from 1984 to present:

Here's base storage for the same timeframe, colour-coded by storage type:

And here's Geekbench 5 single-core scores from ~2009 onwards:

For a longer-term performance trend that's hampered a bit by the age of the benchmark, here's 32-bit Geekbench 2 scores (multi-core) for ~1998-2019 Macs (since it won't run on Macs that shipped with Catalina or newer), split by product category (Workstation = Power Mac, Xserve, Mac Pro, or iMac Pro):

Anyway, looking at all this data, what happened in the early 2010's? Is it a bunch of unrelated trends happening simultaneously? Were there technological limitations that prevented RAM and storage from getting cheaper at the same rates they used to? Was this all a byproduct of the broad shift to people using smartphones and tablets as their main devices, requiring website/software developers keep their code speedy on slower CPUs and limited RAM while also shifting local storage to cloud and streaming services? Would be very interested to get some insight into all this!

Personally, I'm not too complaining too much: slower growth means longer usable lifespans for old hardware, meaning less e-Waste and better long-term value. That said, I did have to wait a good 7 years for a new Mac to offer more than a ~40% improvement in single-core over my Late 2013 iMac (which more than doubled single-core over my Early 2009 iMac), but with my 14" MBP I can say it was well worth the wait

 

[uller6]

This illustrates why my late 2013 15" MBP has been such a champ. It's the longest I've ever owned a computer because...it never really slowed down like all the laptops that came before.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

The quote "640K ought to be enough for anybody" came true. It was a few years later, and a lot more bytes than expected, but we hit a plateau.

You can only input so much at once with 2 hands and 2 eyes and 1 brain. Pixel density is "good enough" at 1080p on the low end, and for most people, their files are still just a few megabytes in size, at most. For the consumer and prosumer, there's no software that needs more RAM or CPU speed, so research was instead focused on reducing power consumption - especially on the mobile side - and increased hardware security.

 

[ahurst]

For the consumer and prosumer, there's no software that needs more RAM or CPU speed, so research was instead focused on reducing power consumption - especially on the mobile side - and increased hardware security.

I mean, I think there are a lot of people in the prosumer category that would have benefited from larger CPU gains (photo/video editor, 3D graphics artists, software developers, data scientists, researchers, etc.), but for the vast majority of the consumer audience I think you're right: after hardware caught up to the demands of complex script/media-heavy Web 2.0 websites, that was enough for most people. Increasingly capable phones/tablets would have reduced the multitasking demands on most people's computers too.

Of course, I'm sure a big part of the CPU side of the plateau had to do with Intel's difficulties with smaller process nodes, but the lack of strong competition and happiness of most consumers certainly made it easier for them to coast.

 

[Mikael H]

For the storage graph, fast Internet access and the cloud happened: Many individuals who used to hoard data in the form of first music then movies began renting access to them from streaming services instead. This made the smaller size of solid state storage less of an issue compared to its speed benefits.

 

[Spindel]

Huh…

Had a 2013 iMac until the M1 release when I got a M1 mini. Seems my hunch was the right bet.

 

[ahurst]

For the storage graph, fast Internet access and the cloud happened: Many individuals who used to hoard data in the form of first music then movies began renting access to them from streaming services instead. This made the smaller size of solid state storage less of an issue compared to its speed benefits.

I'm sure that's a big part of the storage side: looking back at the graph, base storage pretty much flatlines right around the explosion of popularity of online Netflix around 2010.

Even ignoring streaming media file sizes have stayed pretty much the same for the past 10 years, with people who still download shows and movies usually locally opting for 720p over larger sizes (and usually doing so using external storage). Personally, with tons of local lossless music, 720p content, multiple VMs, scientific datasets, and plenty of software, I've had a hard time filling the 3 TB Fusion Drive in my 2013 iMac.

Regardless of how much sense it makes, it still feels weird to me that my 2021 MBP and old 2009 iMac have the same storage capacity (1 TB) even though I know the MBP's SSD is many orders of magnitude faster. Given that I lived through the maximum storage for an iMac going from 6 GB in 1998 to 1 TB in 2009 (a 166x increase), it's just surprising that another 12 years down the road and it's still in the same ballpark.

 

[theluggage]

Lots of plausible reasons here so far, particularly the “good enough” factor. Just to throw in some other ideas:
1. The big switch from spinning rust to SSD - SSD was far faster (and made computers a lot more responsive in ways that might not show up in CPU benchmarks) but it was a lot more expensive per GB than hard drives - and still hasn’t caught up.

2. 2010- was probably the peak of the mobile boom. ”Why would anybody want a PC?” and all that. All the R&D effort was going into reducing power consumption for phones, tablets and the smallest ultraportables.

3. More cynically, 2012 was when Apple really started to shift to non-upgradeable RAM and storage. No more buying cheap 3rd Party RAM - if Apple low-balled you on the base RAM you had to pay their whopping BTO upgrade prices. Cha-ching. (Although there is also the switch to LPDDR which couldn’t be made upgradeable).

 

[leman]

Nothing much happened. The problem is that you are using logarithmic scale. Memory demands have been growing linearly and not exponentially, same (with caveats) for production capacity. Back in the day getting extra 2GB meant doubling your RAM. Now computers come with more RAM preinstalled than most users will ever need over the lifespan of that computer.

Regarding disc storage - HDDs are actually growing in size with more or less the same pace as earlier. Just couple of years ago, 4TB was the biggest you could get. Now we have 18GB HDDs for the same price. It’s just that none of this matters to the normal PC user. Speed, latency and portability matter much more for user experience, and something like 256 or 512GB is more than plenty for a home user. In the age of cloud media and storage, you just don’t need TB and TB of local storage. And even if you do want to keep your digital collection or archive, well, external HDDs have you covered.

P.S. And another important point - this is not Apple specific, the rest of the PC industry follows the same trend. Even today entry-level Pc laptops ship with 4GB of RAM.

 

[Pugly]

The end of Moore's law basically, and the things a computer is for doesn't need more power. I think the needs have gone up slightly recently with all the video calls and screen sharing the average person does now.

Graphics capabilities are going up during this time though, and multicore performance was improving.

I think those saying to always upgrade the ram on a Mac don't quite understand these trends, and that for a large chuck of computer usage more isn't really needed. We almost need a new class of software to really increase the demands, web browsers and editing documents is pretty easy for current computers. Even audio production is a relatively solved problem for CPU requirements. The higher cpu/ram demands are in video, some software development, high end games or 3d modeling for movies, advanced scientific work... not really the domains of the average user.

I use a MacBook Air for Logic Pro, and the 2015 i7 was pretty good for it. On some projects I did reach the limits of what it could do, about 60 tracks or so with lots of instruments and effects. I did some benchmarks on the 2015 and the M1 and the M1 can run 3 times as many instruments/effects. The amount of CPU I need is a solved problem as far as I'm concerned. Many seem to be saying the same thing, even more so, about the M1 Max and M1 Pro. I can't even imagine the kinds of projects that would stop a M1 Ultra.

The need to upgrade computers for their hardware is basically over.

 

[ahurst]

Nothing much happened. The problem is that you are using logarithmic scale. Memory demands have been growing linearly and not exponentially, same (with caveats) for production capacity. Back in the day getting extra 2GB meant doubling your RAM. Now computers come with more RAM preinstalled than most users will ever need over the lifespan of that computer.

Thanks for the detailed response! I've enjoyed your technical insights in other threads so I'm glad you weighed in. I get that a big factor in the base RAM plateau is that 8 GB is more than enough for the average user, but I'm curious how technical limits play in too: if the RAM demands of the average user hadn't levelled off, would the industry have been able to keep that same exponential rate of RAM capacity growth, or are there technical challenges and limitations we've run into that would have made it difficult?

Regarding disc storage - HDDs are actually growing in size with more or less the same pace as earlier. Just couple of years ago, 4TB was the biggest you could get. Now we have 18GB HDDs for the same price. It’s just that none of this matters to the normal PC user. Speed, latency and portability matter much more for user experience, and something like 256 or 512GB is more than plenty for a home user. In the age of cloud media and storage, you just don’t need TB and TB of local storage. And even if you do want to keep your digital collection or archive, well, external HDDs have you covered.

Definitely agreed that we've long since hit the limits of usable storage for most people: heck, with my media collection residing on my iMac I was able to squeeze by for years with a 128 GB SSD in my old ThinkPad hackintosh! We've certainly seen storage speeds increase dramatically since 2010, though I'm sure we're close to hitting the point of diminishing returns on that front as well.

Regarding mechanical hard drives though, the largest sizes you can buy may have increased, but it doesn't seem like the price per GB has changed much in the past 5 years. I got an 8 TB external SMR drive for backups in 2017 for ~$230 CAD, and it looks like the price is pretty much the same today. I remember reading something about us running into the physical limits of conventional hard drive capacity a while back, which is why so many newer drives are using SMR to fit more data despite its trade-offs. Is that accurate, or is there still technical room to grow if the demand was there?

P.S. And another important point - this is not Apple specific, the rest of the PC industry follows the same trend. Even today entry-level Pc laptops ship with 4GB of RAM.

Absolutely, I certainly didn't mean to imply otherwise! I'm only using Mac SKU data here because it's much easier to find all in one place than, say, a database with the specs of every Dell model ever made: these are definitely industry wide shifts.

 

[LinkRS]

When Intel released the Core microarchitecture (itself a refinement of the older Pentium Pro microarchitecture) in response to AMDs Athlon, they (ironically like Apple now) jumped so far ahead on performance, that it wasn't until 2018 AMD was able to provide any competition.
Competition is what generally pushes performance forward, and since Intel had none, they did not do much innovation. Not to mention that rise of the smart phone. I remember when smart phones were only used by busy business professionals and technology enthusiasts (nerds ). I started using smart devices back in the 1999, with my first "Pocket PC," which was replaced by an actual smart phone around 2002. Prior to that, I carried the Pocket PC, AND a flip-phone. I was stoked when I was able to combine the two devices (I have thoughts on this as well, but it is beyond the scope of this post and thread). This was before the iPhone and Android, and app offerings were primarily productivity oriented. Once the iPhone came out, and showed the world the "glory" of smart phones, the whole market exploded. By 2010, most folks had some sort of smart device, and were spending most of their time on those, as opposed to PCs. Computers (and Macs for that matter) were fast enough, so with no competition and no "need," Intel slowed down and improvements stagnated. AMD stirred the sleeping giant with Ryzen, and SSDs are getting closer to being cheap enough, we may see this tech stagnation finally end. Apple Silicon, while great for Apple and Apple users, really doesn't factor too much into competition with Intel. Since Apple will not release anything new on Intel, it doesn't really matter about Intel performance (or comparison) for macOS. What this could mean, and I have seen speculated on this board, that others could follow suit with Apple, and go down the custom or semi-custom ARM route, and Intel could see some actual competition indirectly caused by Apple Silicon. If enough options come out for consumers, and Microsoft makes Windows ARM more available, Intel may have some stiff competition, which is great for everyone. Perhaps we won't ever see the "great tech stagnation" of the 2010s again.

All of this is speculation on my part, based on my personal experiences over the past 25 years or so.

 

[TechnoLawyer]

"Good enough" happened once SSDs became cheap and microprocessors advanced sufficiently. What does your average person do with a home PC? (note, Mr.22 year old gamer, you are not the average person -- your mom is). Pay some bills, surf the web, maybe watch some video. What does your average business PC user do? Office, e-mail, browser.

For all of that, 2013-era tech was good enough. Still is. PCs have become commodities.

The same thing has happened with cell phones.

 

[macacam]

"Good enough" happened once SSDs became cheap and microprocessors advanced sufficiently. What does your average person do with a home PC? (note, Mr.22 year old gamer, you are not the average person -- your mom is). Pay some bills, surf the web, maybe watch some video. What does your average business PC user do? Office, e-mail, browser.

For all of that, 2013-era tech was good enough. Still is. PCs have become commodities.

The same thing has happened with cell phones.

I'm not a gamer myself, but going off Wikipedia, the average gamer is 35 years old. You may be stuck in a bubble in which you believe gamers aren't getting older along with you..

 

[ahurst]

When Intel released the Core microarchitecture (itself a refinement of the older Pentium Pro microarchitecture) in response to AMDs Athlon, they (ironically like Apple now) jumped so far ahead on performance, that it wasn't until 2018 AMD was able to provide any competition.

This is true, but despite that lack of competition they still came through with a big boost in single-core and multi-core performance with the Core i3/i5/i7 series in 2009. I guess looking back at the Geekbench 2 plots above, the rate of year-over-year improvement was more or less the same during 2006-2009 as it was from 2010-2019, it's just that huge leap from the Core 2 to Core i architecture that makes for the dramatic increase before the relative plateau.

 

[uller6]

I use a MacBook Air for Logic Pro, and the 2015 i7 was pretty good for it. On some projects I did reach the limits of what it could do, about 60 tracks or so with lots of instruments and effects. I did some benchmarks on the 2015 and the M1 and the M1 can run 3 times as many instruments/effects. The amount of CPU I need is a solved problem as far as I'm concerned. Many seem to be saying the same thing, even more so, about the M1 Max and M1 Pro. I can't even imagine the kinds of projects that would stop a M1 Ultra.

The need to upgrade computers for their hardware is basically over.

I recorded my first two albums (~50 tracks per song) on a single core G5 using Logic 7. That was plenty of CPU speed for audio - instead I had to manage HDD read/write speed and latency. SSDs solved that issue though, and modern machines are insane audio recording beasts.

 

[TechnoLawyer]

I'm not a gamer myself, but going off Wikipedia, the average gamer is 35 years old. You may be stuck in a bubble in which you believe gamers aren't getting older along with you..

I was a pretty hardcore gamer back in the day. I remember having dual-3dFX Voodoo2 cards in SLI mode when they came out.

Now I'm in my 40s with a wife and kids. I play through 1, maybe 2 games a year these days. I tend to think that even I am an outlier, based on talking with friends, most of whom gave up gaming long ago.

Unless you count gaming with my kids, but I'm not sure if playing Mario Kart, Super Mario Wii, Castle Crashers, or various retro games with them counts. I'm apparently too old to be able to play 3D platformers effectively and they're into those.

 

[MK500]

What happened in CPUs space is the **** hit the fan with Intel's die-shrink goals and they completely stalled out. Intel's fabs stopped being competitive and TSMC rose to dominance.

Best illustration of this: In April of 2012 I built an Intel i7-3930K based system. It runs 12 threads stable at 4.2Ghz (locked, not boost) that gives a Geekbench 5 score of 875 Single Core and 5345 Multi Core. I have run this PC now for 10 years and until the last 18 months it was quite competitive with current Intel processors. It's still generally usable and current feeling for multithreaded applications and games. Cyberpunk 2077 runs fine on it with my 6900xt GPU.

10 Years!

They went through 6 GENERATIONS of CPU on their 14nm process node alone!

Intel created a huge space for Apple to develop the A series (what became Apple Silicon) and for AMD to rise back to being a true competitor again.

The lead was theirs to lose and they did so. Many are saying that Intel is finally competitive again with their current generation, and I generally agree. However they were only able to achieve this by driving massive power (watts) through their chips. Pushing this much power through their CPUs is causing some problems as motherboards are becoming much more expensive in order to support the necessary power delivery components. These systems will also likely be less reliable and fail more in the coming years. Apple and AMD have a considerable lead in the overall cost to manufacture complete systems because of their power efficiency.

RAM and storage went through some parallel drama. There were some fires and manufacturing issues that set back the RAM industry a few times. And frankly RAM follows processor innovation (especially die shrinks).

In the storage world solid-state hit the mainstream. Consumers were willing to put up with significantly less storage for 3x to 100x performance improvements. So cost-per-TB stopped being the main objective as the market moved from space-focused to performance-focused. The remaining mass-storage world shifted to enterprise drives where spinning platters were still key to large data volumes. As these storage companies merged to a few massive companies; they seem to have agreed to keep their prices in-line with each other and stop driving for the bottom. If you look at cost-per-TB on spinning disks there has been remarkably little downward price competition in the last 5 years. Drives are getting bigger but not much cheaper.

Also it is important to note that SSD and RAM were competing for a lot of the same manufacturing capacity, so prices have continue to drop...but more slowly than before. The industry 10 years ago was able to be spread more across many countries and different types of manufacturing processes; but today everything is focused on extremely few silicon fabs that can produce extremely small components.

Over the next 10 years I expect silicon fabs to be more cookie-cutter operations that are located all over the world and fully automated. This should drive down prices considerably.

 

[ahurst]

I recorded my first two albums (~50 tracks per song) on a single core G5 using Logic 7. That was plenty of CPU speed for audio - instead I had to manage HDD read/write speed and latency. SSDs solved that issue though, and modern machines are insane audio recording beasts.

It's pretty wild to think of the amount of computer-sequenced music made on machines with less than 1/40th of the CPU or RAM of a base model M1 Air. IIRC apart from an Akai sampler, The Avalanches composed Since I Left You (which involved thousands of individual samples from different records layered throughout) entirely on a Beige G3!

 

[ahurst]

Best illustration of this: In April of 2012 I built an Intel i7-3930K based system. It runs 12 threads stable at 4.2Ghz (locked, not boost) that gives a Geekbench 5 score of 875 Single Core and 5345 Multi Core. I have run this PC now for 10 years and until the last 18 months it was quite competitive with current Intel processors. It's still generally usable and current feeling for multithreaded applications and games. Cyberpunk 2077 runs fine on it with my 6900xt GPU.

10 Years!

I know what you mean. I have a 2013 iMac with an i7-4771 and it feels way newer and more usable after 8 years than my previous 2009 Core 2 Duo iMac did after 4!

RAM and storage went through some parallel drama. There were some fires and manufacturing issues that set back the RAM industry a few times.

This is really interesting, what would I look up to learn more about the setbacks?

In the storage world solid-state hit the mainstream. Consumers were willing to put up with significantly less storage for 3x to 100x performance improvements. So cost-per-TB stopped being the main objective as the market moved from space-focused to performance-focused. The remaining mass-storage world shifted to enterprise drives where spinning platters were still key to large data volumes. As these storage companies merged to a few massive companies; they seem to have agreed to keep their prices in-line with each other and stop driving for the bottom. if you look at cost-per-TB on spinning disks there has been remarkably little downward price competition in the last 5 years. Drives are getting bigger but not much cheaper.

Right, I'd forgotten about all the big HDD manufacturer mergers... that definitely helps explain why spinning disk prices have stayed so stagnant over the past half-decade. I'm also remember vaguely that a tsunami in the early 2010's hit some major HDD distributors and set back production considerably, that can't have helped.

Also it is important to note that SSD and RAM were competing for a lot of the same manufacturing capacity, so prices have continue to drop...but more slowly than before.

Ahhhhh, there we go. That's the kind of industry detail I was hoping for! That makes sense that they'd tie up similar resources and production space.

 

[venom600]

I was a pretty hardcore gamer back in the day. I remember having dual-3dFX Voodoo2 cards in SLI mode when they came out.

Now I'm in my 40s with a wife and kids. I play through 1, maybe 2 games a year these days. I tend to think that even I am an outlier, based on talking with friends, most of whom gave up gaming long ago.

Unless you count gaming with my kids, but I'm not sure if playing Mario Kart, Super Mario Wii, Castle Crashers, or various retro games with them counts. I'm apparently too old to be able to play 3D platformers effectively and they're into those.

You count. Gaming with your kids counts. As does playing on your phone. 26% of gamers are between 35 and 54. 16% are over 55. Source is the Electronic Software Association 2021 report. Someone is playing these games, and it isn't just college bros.

 

[MK500]

This is really interesting, what would I look up to learn more about the setbacks?

This is probably the biggest one; it happened in 2013. Hynix was in every computer I remember working on back then.

China factory fire sends memory chip prices to three-year high

Fire damage halts production at Hynix, the world's second largest maker of DRAM chips for mobile phones and computers

www.theguardian.com

I believe it set off something of a cascade effect that lasted for years.

 

[M3Stang]

I have a couple Mid-2010 2.4Ghz White MacBooks and 13" Pros, and they are all completely usable (if not a little warm) for the modern web. Can't say the same for my 1.67Ghz PPC collection from only 7 years prior.

 

[Argon_]

I have a couple Mid-2010 2.4Ghz White MacBooks and 13" Pros, and they are all completely usable (if not a little warm) for the modern web. Can't say the same for my 1.67Ghz PPC collection from only 7 years prior.

Interestingly, there are current low end machines that match the two thread MacBooks almost spec for spec.

Four gigs of RAM, two cores, two threads, and a soldered eMMC instead of a spinner. Still usable.

 

[TechnoLawyer]

Interestingly, there are current low end machines that match the two thread MacBooks almost spec for spec.

Four gigs of RAM, two cores, two threads, and a soldered eMMC instead of a spinner. Still usable.

My wife has one of those cheapie things. A Samsung Notebook Flash. I think it looks kind of cool actually and I love the keyboard. It works fine as long as you always close every program and tab you're not actively using. If you aren't careful like that, it gets slooooooow.