AnandTech Calls Apple's Fastest CPU Core Claim for M1 'Extremely Plausible'

[MacModMachine]

The real question is, how much do they have to throttle the Macbook Air to run it fanless?

the sameount they throttle the ipad pro....not at all.

RISC has a more efficient pipeline, so less memory is needed for computing. But RAM is primarily used for data.

If you put a 20 GB file through a 16 GB system, it is going to swap and if not grind to a halt at least slow down considerably.

Doing serious Photoshop and Premiere work with MM M1 is going to be a silly joke.

did you even read what i wrote??

20gb file reading from a ssd takes a mere few seconds.

tell me why my ipad has NO problem editing 20gb images , yet a 16gb system wont.....i have proof, your making random guesses on a system no one has.

 

[The Man]

You mean entry level machines? I can see that for the Air and Mini, but not for the MacBook Pro, which should be - according to Apple's own classification - a pro machine.

But the base 13" MacBook Pro has never been a true pro machine. The previous Intel one was lacking; it didn't have the second fan, didn't have the advanced speaker system, nor the latest Intel processor, and only two thunderbolt ports. At the time when the touch bar was introduced, the base 13" MacBook pro didn't get it. The base 13" MacBook Pro has always been the Pro light, it seems, as a bridge between MacBook (Air) and the true Pro models.

 

[Jury]

In contrast to the x86 model, we will see if the Apple M1 chip has the same syndrome such as swiftly heats up in macOS due to running a moderate demanding application and booting up.

 

[fncd]

Again to see that m1 can play at highest settings 1080p baldurus gate 3..is mind blowing...and for the intel side you have to have i7 and Graphics: Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB / AMD RX580.

Was this in the video? I must have missed it if so. I didn't see it on the Apple site either.

 

[Alan Wynn]

Funny. Ram "explainers" in this forum swore up and down that Safari tab reloads (with only 2 tabs open and no other apps open) had nothing to do with RAM. Then Apple increased the RAM on the 6s, and by total magic coincidence, I stopped having tab reload problems.

I am not arguing on either side of that, but I am also pretty sure they released a new version of iOS and Safari at the same time, so there may have been other changes involved. These are complex systems and it is rare that there is one single cause.

 

[Freeangel1]

I want to see real world tests in software applications.
I don't believe an A14 can keep up with a 24 core or 32 core AMD thread ripper chip

And I don't buy throw away computers that you cant upgrade or fix!

A glorified iPad the new Macs are.

 

[cupcakes2000]

This conversations going round and round in circles 🤣

I want to see real world tests in software applications.
I don't believe an A14 can keep up with a 24 core or 32 core AMD thread ripper chip

And I don't buy throw away computers that you cant upgrade or fix!

A glorified iPad the new Macs are.

 

[DarthDon]

12 Year old design (mba) updated w/ M1. MBP same story. I think about buying the mini and wait 4 a new design.
steve, come back...

do we have to drill our speaker holes as well?

 

[Jury]

I want to see real world tests in software applications.
I don't believe an A14 can keep up with a 24 core or 32 core AMD thread ripper chip

And I don't buy throw away computers that you cant upgrade or fix!

A glorified iPad the new Macs are.

No. It's not using A14 SoC.

However, Apple is going to risk substantial sales reduction from people who work at industry that the software won't be compatible or won't be usable with rosetta 2 and unlikely to support ARM in the near future .

On top of that, Intel superFIN processor node will be a major leap in performance per watt for an ultrabook and erase any concern for people who wish to run any x86 software.

 

[ani4ani]

my favourite is ram complainers....who have no idea how memmory works on ARM based chips.

16gb is plenty , for even users with 32gb intel machines.

a 6gb ipad pro can edit 20gb images no problem....i wonder what the 16gb m1 can do...

another is the battery , the batter life will be very accurate. not like the variable power envelope of intel which can scale from 4 hours under load to 10-12 surfing web. the m1 cpu is no longer what consumes the most power. battery life wont change much under load.

Do you know how ram works with Arm processors? Genuine question? Holding data in ram is just that isn't it, or is there some amazing thing with Arm CPU's that the data shrinks in some way that means a 2GB file is no longer 2GB?

 

[Cosmosent]

Just hoping they stress-tested the Performance Controller (i.e., CPU scheduler) before committing to Release !

NOT cool when Software Devs find Apple's Hardware Bugs !

Case in Point, the A12 H/W Bug, that "I" discovered the first day I tested our first XR, the day AFTER it was released !

Moral of the Story ... Trust, but Verified !

This EE does NOT (automatically) put Apple's new HW up on a pedestal ! ... they need to earn it !

BTW, if my memory serves me, the guy who founded AnandTech now works for Apple ! ... & has the past few years.

Also BTW, Apple fixed the Perf Ctrl H/W Bug in the A13.

 

[ani4ani]

Instead of throwing around synthetic benchmarks, it would have been more convincing if they’d shown side by side comparisons of typical usage scenarios vs a reference competitor such as a M1 Air vs. Dell xps13 with a 10th gen i5 or a M1 MBPro vs. Lenovo slim 7 with Ryzen 9 doing tasks like rendering a complex web page or changing filters on a pivot table

For example, the A13 on my iOS device is supposed to run rings around intel in benchmarks yet a $300 i3 laptop at home runs browser based apps faster than the iOS device.

I would like to see a side-by-side comparision running Autodesk Inventor...oh wait?

 

[Taylor710ce]

Good direction. I wish they'd announced their M1 chip earlier. The last release cycle time was almost half of the averaged days. A little bit annoying for those that purchased a macbook air and realized the thermal distribution was nonsense.

 

[hagjohn]

I think I'll wait to jump around till we see real life performance.

 

[firewood]

So does Apple's claim of having the fastest CPU core include not only Intel and AMD cores, but the processor cores used inside IBM Power 9, Cray, and Fujitsu Top-500 supercomputers? The limiting factor is many supercomputer centers is heat density. If Apple's core is really the fastest at significantly lower power levels, that means that Apple could build true world-class supercomputers just by adding low-latency interconnect fan-out and memory bandwidth to their current core design and systems. Can't wait to see an AS Mac Pro (that I can't afford) in 2 years, and whether (yet again) someone builds a Top-500 supercomputer out of a roomful of them.

 

[Rainshadow]

Perhaps that’s what will someday distinguish the “pro” iphones from the standard and another reason for MagSafe. Hold the phone in some dock that allows some future data transfer tech to an associated display.

I'm sure we will see an iPhone replacing the laptop soon. Just hook it up to a monitor, switch to Mac OS, and presto you have a working Mac.

 

[RobbieTT]

That the base model comes with 8GB is fine.
That you can get more for an additional cost is ok.
That there is a limit of 16GB is what is bugging people.
Especially on the "Pro" book.

Yet current experience with a version with lower power, a lower core-count, more thermally constrained and equipped with just 4 or 6GB of RAM shows them to massively capable machines, challenging the performance of the latest Intel desktop offerings.

The quoted article underpinning this thread attempts to explain how Apple have achieved this and the only area of speculation is how the same CPU design but with added cores, a substantial increase in memory, more power available and a larger thermal envelope will perform. Maybe you are right and the performance will suddenly disappoint with all these changes, but I doubt it.

Personally I think Apple had to be very sure of the performance of these new machines. With the world ready to throw rocks and with no other significant changes to the 3 new machines there is simple nowhere for Apple to hide or explain away any performance shortcomings.

With apologies to Star Wars: This is it, boys.

 

[MacModMachine]

Do you know how ram works with Arm processors? Genuine question? Holding data in ram is just that isn't it, or is there some amazing thing with Arm CPU's that the data shrinks in some way that means a 2GB file is no longer 2GB?

yea of course , i have developed on arm for over 2 years, large scale enterprise packet capture at line speed 40g.

intel spends half of its time moving data around registers , arm does not. its registers are far more capable. i can do the same on 32gb ram m6g instances with a decent ssd as i can on 256gb intel based m5 instances with decent ssd's.

arm can move data far quicker than intel , and when it falls back to ssd from cache misses it can recovery much quicker.

 

[ShiftyOne]

I just made a distinction between massive improvement and innovation. SoC is not an innovation. But they took SoC to another level. M1 over other existing chips is a massive improvement indeed. How long until we see SSD storage included in that chip?

Creating a SoC is not new but combining the gpu, cpu, neural network and Ram into a single SoC is. Find me another PC chipset which already does this and then you can say it's not innovative.

 

[crsh1976]

Definitely wait & see, I can't believe we're seriously pitting the A14 against the 10900k in that graph.

Sure power consumption is a mobile processor's forte, but these single-threaded tasks are biased to make the A14 shine - let's see how well it boads compressing 4k video or rendering pro-grade real-time effects.

Not saying ditching Intel isn't an interesting move, but the first gen is for early adopters, normal folks won't drop x86 compatibiity and processing power for a glorified iPad in a laptop enclosure.

 

[RobbieTT]

Creating a SoC is not new but combining the gpu, cpu, neural network and Ram into a single SoC is. Find me another PC chipset which already does this and then you can say it's not innovative.

Yep, you are right and it is too easy to dismiss the M1 as just an 8-core ARM CPU. There are 32 cores on the M1 and whilst Apple do provide CPU, GPU & NE nomenclature to them in truth the elements are blurred together, undertaking tasks traditionally reserved for the different 'named' cores. They do so whilst sharing cache, RAM and ready access to other dedicated on-silicon hardware that used to be done by off-package coprocessors - the M1 is a beast.

 

[Wando64]

...a glorified iPad in a laptop enclosure.

What on earth does this even mean.

 

[dazzer21-2]

I still don't get what they are comparing the performance to. For instance, with the MacBook Pro, the current 2.0GHz 10th Gen is the fastest machine they make. Is the 3x faster, 5x graphics etc statement aimed at that machine, or are they saying that it's that much faster then the current entry level? Surely to qualify the statement, they mean the former.

 

[anson42]

But the base 13" MacBook Pro has never been a true pro machine.

I agree. That model should have just been called MacBook.

 

[SuperCachetes]

Johny Srouji is quickly becoming a really likable Apple hero IMHO. On paper, these SoCs knock it out of the park. Hope they (and future M_s) prove themselves performance/efficiency-wise once people get their hands on them.