Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Silicon M1 Emulating x86 is Still Faster Than Every Other Mac in Single Core Benchmark

rowanmmcdonald said:
Can’t wait to see the M1X/M1Z coming in the macs due mid year.

My prediction is a good, better, best chips updated each year similar to the A# chips: M1, M1X for mid level, M1Z for Mac Pros, etc.
Click to expand...
Yes I make the same prediction and I quite like the tier system.
Here are my guesses.

Good (M1): Current models up to 16GB RAM and 2TB storage:
Macbook Air
Mac Mini (2x USB-c)
Macbook Pro 13 (2x USB-c)

Better (M1X) Up to 64GB RAM and 8TB Storage
Macbook Pro 13 (4x USB-c)
Mac Mini (4x USB-c)
Macbook Pro 16
iMac 24 inch and possibly 30-32 inch

Best (M1Z) Up to 128GB RAM or maybe 256GB RAM and 32TB Storage??? Who knows
iMac (Pro) 30-32 inch
Mac Pro
Possibly a really high end MacBook Pro 16??? Maybe not
 
  • Like
Reactions: Pahanda
This might inadvertently hurt Mac sales in the short term. If the reviews are too glowing of AS then far more people are going to wait for AS iMacs and higher end products. They'd better get a move on...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jimmy James
involuntarheely said:
no honestly the only complaint here is in how closed this system is going to become and for seemingly no good reason.
but M1 looks like a legit beast.
Click to expand...
It looks like blowing the doors off everyone is reason enough. This move crushes Microsoft and Google’s efforts to turn the clock back to 1998 where Apple ended up depending on future competitors supporting their platform to survive. Now they will own the stack for the fastest and most efficient computers on the market. Developers will come in groves. Especially now that it supports iOS Apps and the ability to translate them quickly.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jimmy James, Santiago, lysingur and 2 others
bviktor said:
No, we aren't sure, you are. And you're wrong by the way. No one said Rosetta 2 can't run on multiple cores. The article just emphasises the single core perf because that already exceeds all the Intels so it results in a funnier article. Reading comprehension, people.

There is a multi-core score on the benchmark site. It just happens to be beaten by Intel Macs, because apparently multi-core emulation doesn't nearly scale linearly as in a native run, where multi-core score for a proper multi-threaded executable with tasks that are easy to run in parallel is almost exactly single score times core number. Here the single core perf is 1313, so you'd expect a multi-core score of around 10504, yet in the real world it only scores 5888. So multi-core scalability isn't great, but it does exist.

Apple will work hard either to improve on that, or push ARM ports for the most important apps. Or both.
Click to expand...
@cmaier didn't say that Rosetta can't run on multiple cores, just that it can't convert single-core code to run on multiple cores when it wasn't designed to.

Also, we wouldn't expect a multi-core score of 10504 (1313*8) because the cores are not identical. The 4 efficiency cores probably have only about 1/4 of the power of the 4 performance cores, so it's much closer to 5 performance cores (=6,565)
 
  • Like
Reactions: NetMage, Colonel Blimp, secretbum and 8 others
Abazigal said:
An ipad running LumaFusion on 4gb of ram is already exporting video faster than a windows workstation running premiere pro.

I believe. In Apple’s ability to integrate their hardware and software. In Intel’s inability to innovate meaningfully in this space, and in the competition’s lack of incentive to properly optimise their offerings for the windows platform.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think anyone who has run an iPad Pro up against a MacBook Air in the past few years doing similar tasks should not be surprised.

I swear, my 2017 iPad Pro 10.5 is leaps and bounds faster than the early 2020 MacBook Air I am typing this on. With no fan.

This sort of performance from the m1 is entirely what I expected. A massive leap. But when you compare to where the Axx processors have been for the past 5 years already... not so far, and certainly not when you consider they now have a heat sink and even active cooling in the MBP13.
 
  • Like
Reactions: secretbum, Jimmy James, psychicist and 5 others
tillsbury said:
This might inadvertently hurt Mac sales in the short term. If the reviews are too glowing of AS then far more people are going to wait for AS iMacs and higher end products. They'd better get a move on...
Click to expand...

Not really, I don't think.

Anyone with work to do will buy the best machine for the job that exists at the time. You might see people dropping from say, iMacs to Mac minis or MacBook Pro 16 to MacBook Pro 13 I suspect, but you won't see Mac Pro buyers holding off as they already have the afterburner card to drastically accelerate the only stuff anyone would be sane to buy a Mac Pro for - well beyond what an M1 will do.
 
If I get an ARM Mac it will be next year or the year after
16 GB RAM only option. NOT GOOD. NOT ENOUGH
By next year all the problems and defects will be worked out.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: LeeW
Without a full version of Windows OS for ARM (which MS has no financial incentive to produce beyond Windows for their tablets), silicon Mac’s don‘t seem appealing. Yes, they’re more power efficient and Apple will have better control over CPU production but at what cost? Back when Apple moved to Intel, a big selling point for consumers switching was the ability to boot into Windows or Windows virtualization as PPC Mac’s didn’t run a lot of applications they needed. The iPod and iPhone gave people a taste of OS X but the big selling point was having two systems in one.

Many still need Windows for work. MacBook’s offered the perfect solution for those who wanted a Mac for personal use while not needing to own a Windows system for work. I know it’ll be a few years before the full transition but it already has businesses weary of investing time and money into Mac’s that will offer less options and flexibility and consumers don’t want to spend $2499+ on a MacBook Pro when they will need a Windows system as well.

Virtualization software won’t matter when it still depends on MS to produce a full version of Windows for ARM and virtualization will have to process more for Windows to run. It’s a shame that Cook cut Apple’s in-house departments that worked with Intel to focus on ARM systems for iPhones and iPads as that partnership with Intel since the mid-2000’s was a big factor in Intel’s production. Couple that with Intel’s unfortunate leadership - it makes me wonder if Intel could have produced better CPU’s and avoided another transition. As it stands, Mac’s are headed towards the PPC era even with Rosetta 2 and Catalyst.

I know some may disagree but this transition does have many thinking twice about investing money and time in systems that will offer less long term. I know engineers at AutoDesk have said they aren’t porting their products to ARM as they’re already juggling Windows and Mac Intel versions as it is and with the uncertainty of discrete GPU support, the current graphics power simply isn’t there for workstations and Pro systems.

Time will tell. I just don’t like the direction Apple is heading especially as Big Sur is just more iOS/iPadOS running on a Mac.
 
  • Disagree
  • Angry
  • Like
Reactions: NetMage, secretbum, filmak and 6 others
ZipZilla said:
This is all fake news until production units are in the hands of real users and YouTubers. Does anyone *actually* believe the gimped M1 with 8GB or 16GB of RAM is going to process video faster than an Intel blowtorch. Probably not. But the marketing is cute.
Click to expand...
What evidence are your doubts based upon?

We have already seen some evidence (cf MaxTech YT channel and others) that A14 processors in iPads can process video (scrubbing, export) faster than some desktop Macs (possibly based on hardware support for certain codecs). Geekbench benchmarks show very impressive early numbers, which will be tested in the next couple of days will real applications. Apple stated that the M1 Mini was playing 8K clips from Davinci Resolve without dropping frames (probably ProRes @24fps), which is quite impressive.

This isn't conclusive evidence, but it does look very promising.

We will all find out very soon. I find it odd that you assert that "it's unbelievable that it could be true"...why not just wait until you see the evidence before making a conclusion? (same could apply to certain political election results too :cool: )
 
  • Like
Reactions: NetMage, Mescagnus, amartinez1660 and 1 other person
Basilornis said:
I’d still be a little wary. Although the silicon appears impressive we dont know how load over time is dealt with. The architecture of the chip is significantly different in comparison to the normal train of thought (when it comes to chip design) that it may possibly be that the some quirk of the m1 layout might make it better at performing with these short workloads. Not saying that the performance isn’t real, just don’t assume because a handful of geek benches show it as powerful that it actually is.
Those who remember the g4/5 days know what I mean. Apple was good at demonstrating superiority that actual users were often unable to reproduce in normal workloads. I’d wait for actual reviews from trusted sources before buying into the hype.
Click to expand...
If anything I expect the M1 benchmarks to be the most realistic. M1 uses way less energy and therefore won't be thermal throttling after extended load like these Intel machines, except probably in the ironically named Air since it's fanless.
 
  • Like
Reactions: NetMage
grjj said:
I said it in another article's comment: Legacy support. Apple was able to shed all the x86 legacy BS and focus on just what's needed for today's OS and apps. Intel and AMD have to maintain compatibility with a slew of antiquated technologies.
Click to expand...
Probably mostly this. Apple isn't magical. Legacy support is the bane of engineering. But customers like it, and Microsoft and others cater to that.
 
Edsel said:
Isn't this closing Apples ecosystem even more? Developers are now more challenged to write specific instructions for Apple hardware than ever before. Apple has become the "Big Brother", they have become the dystopian character in their 1984 commercial.
Click to expand...
Devs don't write instructions (except in very rare cases), they compile their code to instructions in Xcode. Nothing has changed there.
 
  • Like
Reactions: NetMage, Mescagnus, bgillander and 4 others
More of a testament to lackluster Mac CPUs: this is a the same performance, at the same price, as a Dell XPS 13 w/ 17-1165G7. With a Touch display, and the option to add more RAM & storage.
Battery life and silence will be better though.
 
  • Angry
Reactions: NetMage
cmaier said:
Anyway, that’s actually more of a Rosetta-speed hit than I expected, but we’ll see when we get real world data.
Click to expand...
Small detail: Compiling with Rosetta doesn't throw the old Intel code away. Apple fully intends to ship future macOS versions with improved version of Rosetta which will recompile your code.
 
  • Like
Reactions: fivenotrump and LeeW
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back