Apple Silicon M1 Chip in MacBook Air Outperforms High-End 16-Inch MacBook Pro

[cmaier]

Well, let’s see what Nvidia does to counter this. They are buying ARM and i would imagine there will be a nice profitable void for Windows machines to counter Apple.

nvidia does not know how to design chips properly (they design with crappy ASIC methodology), and even if they did they’d still be designing chips to be used by multiple customers instead of optimized for any particular customer.

So they can’t beat what apple can do.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Yeah, these are from their "Top Processor Score" section. There's also one there for the AS MBP (see below). But note their "Top Processor Score" values can be a bit wonky. Their more reliable ones are in the Benchmark Charts section; I believe these are averages of five runs. The Top Processor Scores are sometimes quite a bit higher than the scores in the Benchmark Charts; but we should be seeing Benchmark Charts scores (as well as, more meaningfully, real-world testing results) soon.


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Curious what the base frequency of the low power cores is.

 

[johnsc3]

Definitely interested in Apple Silicon as soon as its integrated graphics handily beat the discreet graphics of the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M with 8GB of HBM2 memory.

You make a great point here. However, I believe there is at least another chip for the portables (maybe Pros and Desktops) coming. That chip and its performance will definitely have my interest.

 

[citysnaps]

I've been enjoying all the hand-wringing the last few days doubting Apple with all the inane comments from the experts here!

No doubt that will continue going forward.

Looking forward to my MBA!

 

[jz0309]

RIP Intel/AMD.

GG WP Apple.

I don't think there are ANY x86 processors that match this single-core speed.

these numbers are impressive, no doubt ...
but Intel/AMD still have the Windows market, and they are not resting on their laurels either ...

 

[Jakexb]

This is crazy impressive. Can you imagine what the "high end" version of these chips are going to be able to do? Wow.

 

[Frank Philips]

Wow, just imagine what the higher end products are going to deliver. As others are saying, Intel and AMD are going to be scrambling to find a way to get just close to this kind of performance per watt - in the next 12-18 months, which by that time Apple will be at the next level again. I wonder if the PC crowd really understands what Apple has been able to deliver, or if they’ll just be in denial?

The PC crowd in denial you're referring to is, at least a good part of it, made of gamers.
Wait and see how the new Macs perform in gaming, and how many games will actually be ported to the Mac.

While I won't comment on whether or not the PC crowd is in denial, thinking that gamers will embrace a Mac with nothing to play on is probably a different way to be in denial.

Then we have the PC vs consoles part of the equation.
In other words, everyone will agree to disagree and argue all the time, as usual 😋

 

[theotherphil]

But will the M1 play nice with a dedicated gpu, because egpu is not supported?

I think people are missing the fact that the State of the Union videos stated that what Apple is most excited about is their custom GPU's. If the M1 performs like this and they are MOST EXCITED for their future custom GPU's!! Don't expect discrete graphics anytime soon but do expect some insane, SOC GPU "advancements"...likely many more than 8 cores in the top models where there is the thermal envelope to allow it.

 

[tymeframe]

Guess they didn’t want hard numbers in the event to prevent cannibalizing sales?

 

[Jack Neill]

I also see “iMac Pro” running Ryzen CPUs on there which doesn’t make much sense lol. Is this accurate?

Ryzentosh probably.

 

[KPOM]

This is VERY impressive. I can hardly wait for my MacBook Air to arrive next Tuesday/Wednesday!

 

[Zen_Arcade]

That’s remarkable. Impressive!

 

[firewood]

Well, let’s see what Nvidia does to counter this. They are buying ARM and i would imagine there will be a nice profitable void for Windows machines to counter Apple.

IIRC, I think the Apple included an announcement that there already is a native port of Tensorflow. Can't wait to see the MLPerf numbers for training on the $900 M1 Mini, and whether that scares Nvidia out of their shoes.

 

[Jack Neill]

The PC crowd in denial you're referring to is, at least a good part of it, made of gamers.
Wait and see how the new Macs perform in gaming, and how many games will actually be ported to the Mac.

While I won't comment on whether or not the PC crowd is in denial, thinking that gamers will embrace a Mac with nothing to play on is probably a different way to be in denial.

Then we have the PC vs consoles part of the equation.
In other words, everyone will agree to disagree and argue all the time, as usual 😋

Exactly. While I love macOS and use it on multiple Macs. I game with Steam, Epic and the MS store. I wanted a gaming computer so I bought a ROG G14. Amazing laptop. It looks nice sitting next to my 2020 MBA 9,1. Until the new MacBooks replicate that performance, I guess I'll be in denial too.

 

[JohnnyGo]

So, what's the likely catch? I'm willing to believe this processor is exceptionally powerful per watt, and give Apple credit where credit is clearly due, but there must be a tradeoff somewhere. Intel, AMD, even IBM or Qualcomm, know a lot about CPU design and have been fighting over the best engineers for decades.

It strikes me as unlikely that Apple has simply beaten all of them in all use cases, with less power, on their first desktop class CPU. It's not that I'm calling BS, just that engineering doesn't usually work that way; there's usually a tradeoff made somewhere.

It’s called ARM. It was designed in the 80s for low power. So it’s an almost 40 year evolution.

Secondly, billions of smartphones! So much money has been poured into chip making that Intel (WTF!) was left in the dust, still producing 14nm chips while TSMC and Samsung are churning 5nm chips.

Thirdly, Apple has invested billions in chip design since buying PA Semi in 2008. That’s 12 year of investments, probably $10-20 billion poured in, paying off (with the help of ARM and TSMC).

 

[MrGimper]

There’s a 10th-gen 2.4 i9 16”?

 

[cpnotebook80]

Is there a metal score also for the new m1 yet? Also geekbench shows mbpro multi score less than the air

 

[citysnaps]

they're typing something about power adapters or web cameras.

And power cords for the new HomePod Mini being mercilessly shredded by pets and children. Wah....

 

[cmaier]

these numbers are impressive, no doubt ...
but Intel/AMD still have the Windows market, and they are not resting on their laurels either ...

Intel is certainly resting on their laurels. Have you seen the graph comparing their rate of improvement vs. Apple?

And I helped design opteron and athlon64 and we had great success at AMD. Then I quit and they went in the toilet for 10 years (me quitting was an effect, not the cause, of course), and they will go in the toilet again in a year or so.

 

[cmaier]

It’s called ARM. It was designed in the 80s for low power. So it’s an almost 40 year evolution.

Secondly, billions of smartphones! So much money has been poured into chip making that Intel (WTF!) was left in the dust, still producing 14nm chips while TSMC and Samsung are churning 5nm chips.

Thirdly, Apple has invested billions in chip design since buying Intrinsic in 2008. That’s 12 year of investments, probably $10-20 billion poured in, paying off (with the help of ARM and TSMC).

Intrinsity, not Intrinsic. And PA Semiconductor was probably the more important purchase

 

[triangletechie]

these numbers are impressive, no doubt ...
but Intel/AMD still have the Windows market, and they are not resting on their laurels either ...

Intel has been the last few years.

 

[Icelus]

IIRC, I think the Apple included an announcement that there already is a native port of Tensorflow. Can't wait to see the MLPerf numbers for training on the $900 M1 Mini, and whether that scares Nvidia out of their shoes.

Will be interesting if they utilize macOS's Core ML library.

 

[firewood]

It’s called ARM. It was designed in the 80s for low power. So it’s an almost 40 year evolution.

Secondly, billions of smartphones! So much money has been poured into chip making that Intel (WTF!) was left in the dust, still producing 14nm chips while TSMC and Samsung are churning 5nm chips.

Thirdly, Apple has invested billions in chip design since buying Intrinsic in 2008. That’s 12 year of investments, probably $10-20 billion poured in, paying off (with the help of ARM and TSMC).

Don't forget Apple's purchase of P.A.Semi, also in 2008, which came with a good portion of Dobberpuhl's DEC Alpha and StrongArm design team.

 

[TPALTony]

So, what's the likely catch? I'm willing to believe this processor is exceptionally powerful per watt, and give Apple credit where credit is clearly due, but there must be a tradeoff somewhere. Intel, AMD, even IBM or Qualcomm, know a lot about CPU design and have been fighting over the best engineers for decades.

It strikes me as unlikely that Apple has simply beaten all of them in all use cases, with less power, on their first desktop class CPU. It's not that I'm calling BS, just that engineering doesn't usually work that way; there's usually a tradeoff made somewhere.

Honestly, I think Intel and AMD are busily building a faster horse (to borrow from the urban myth Henry Ford saying.). Look at the Linus Tech Tips video (where he's dismissive precisely because he's coming at it from the established approach perspective.). "So you can't upgrade your memory. waaaaah waaaaah".

In my opinion, I think most people who buy Macs never think about things like upgrading the memory, and they don't actually care what chip is in it. They care what the machine can do. So giving up the ability to upgrade your memory, by putting the memory IN THE CHIP, instead of inventing faster and faster pipelines from the CPU to the memory... It's the sort of stuff Intel and AMD aren't even thinking about because they are stuck in the established approach of "CPU, GPU, Memory, Motherboard, IO controller, etc etc etc." They make chips. Someone else has to turn them into a working physical system and someone else has to supply an Operating System that can make use of the features...

Vertical integration is incredibly powerful and I'm very hopeful for what Apple is going to do next.

I'm just waiting cautiously to see what happens with virtualisation as I use my Mac for development and I need to be able to use Postgres, Node, etc etc.

 

[bugFinder]

Nice. My Air is now preparing to ship.

Not mine...🙁