Apple's A12Z Under Rosetta Outperforms Microsoft's Native Arm-Based Surface Pro X

[ClevelandGuy]

To get to a level of a xeon processor it is going to take Apple about 4 years, and Intel is still going to be improving the Xeon workstation and server processors. So if you need a machine now you might as well get it and in 4 years then evaluate xeon vs Arm. I loved the PowerPC and it was a RISC processor but Apple has a long way to go to get to a workstation/server level. Get a machine get Applecare and enjoy a system for the next 4 years. Yes they should be about to match a i5 soon but then the i7 and then the i9.

Looks like there are some Xeon level ARM processors available now 🧐https://www.networkworld.com/article/3564514/ampere-announces-128-core-arm-server-processor.html

 

[zorinlynx]

So, Geekbench has to come out with a universal binary for MacOS in order to run native on Apple silicon? not that the native score would be far from what we already know about the A12Z in the iPad, right?

They can already build and release one; they don't even need a DTM. I think they should, post it on their site, and casually mention that it's available for testing on Big Sur. We'll have native benchmarks in no time.

 

[redneckitengineer]

How exciting for a product line....that doesn't have a touchscreen, stylus input, WLAN, removable storage, or other stuff I'm surely forgetting. Comparing Apples to Oranges here.

Congrats, your new mac computer will process 10 year old technology faster....

 

[derekamoss]

Is anyone really surprised by this? I lean towards Microsoft in purchases now but had no doubt Apple's Arm processors would be really good. They have been using their own customized arm systems for what, at least 8 years and have always had great results. The Surface Pro X was the very first customized Arm Processor Microsoft has ever done, so they have a lot to catch up too. I don't care whose is really better right now as long as it keeps pushing research and development to Arm Processors over so we can all benefit.

 

[Stromos]

Quick - copy the numbers down before Apple makes them pull them down!!!

ARM Macs are gonna rock!!

Now, please lower prices to REALLY compete with PC's!

Bahaha if Apple could make these processors for free they would still charge more than ever and people would still buy them. Prices only go one way with Apple.... Up.
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[cmaier]

Is anyone really surprised by this? I lean towards Microsoft in purchases now but had no doubt Apple's Arm processors would be really good. They have been using their own customized arm systems for what, at least 8 years and have always had great results. The Surface Pro X was the very first customized Arm Processor Microsoft has ever done, so they have a lot to catch up too. I don't care whose is really better right now as long as it keeps pushing research and development to Arm Processors over so we can all benefit.

There are an awful lot of people on here who posted hundreds of times that arm cannot possibly run fast, so they may be surprised. (Though those people will point out that we are comparing one arm to another...)

 

[derekamoss]

There are an awful lot of people on here who posted hundreds of times that arm cannot possibly run fast, so they may be surprised. (Though those people will point out that we are comparing one arm to another...)

I can see why some people would think that who don't know much about the architecture. They just assume Arm means non powerful mobile processor just like some people call every tablet computer they see as an iPad. It's just been ingrained into their heads.

 

[Mr. Awesome]

These new Macs are gonna rock.

 

[NT1440]

"Apple's Arm-based Macs that run Apple Silicon will have new chips designed for the Mac and based on the A14 chip created for the 2020 iPhone lineup with a 5-nanometer process."

Er, we don't know what Apple have planned for the Mac lineup in terms of Apple Silicon and whether it will share a chip design with their mobile devices.

Actually, we do. In the PSOTU their chip lead kept talking about scaling their architectures throughout the entirety of Apple’s computing products. That was explicit.

 

[TrulsZK]

As I guessed! This is how quickly someone broke Apple's strict Terms and Conditions for the ARM based Mac mini, and information leaked online.
I am wondering how long it will take before someone does a teardown disassembly of the Mac Mini

Apple's Terms and Conditions
"Apple has many other strict rules in place for the A12Z-based Mac mini. For instance, developers are forbidden from disassembling the machine, running any benchmark tests on it, sharing it with others, or discussing it on social media."

 

[firewire9000]

Wow that’s really humiliating, I feel sorry for the SoC in the Surface.

 

[Zdigital2015]

This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one.

As the owner of a Surface RT (refurbished), I should pull the old kit out and see if it benchmarks higher than the Pro X. Something tells me I might be surprised.

 

[windowsblowsass]

Bahaha if Apple could make these processors for free they would still charge more than ever and people would still buy them. Prices only go one way with Apple.... Up.
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Only go up except when the new iPhone was cheaper last year than the old iPhone

 

[gsurf123]

After installing a x86_64 Geekbench and running it at least once. It isn't emulation anymore. Rosetta 2 pragmatically composes a "fat binary" version of the program and simply runs that. There are probably no corner case dynamically loaded libraries that the benchmark doesn't load while composing the stats. So after run once you have another native program sitting on the disk.

P.S. there are some system calls that are being 'trapped and emulated' but the bulk of the code in Geekbench is highly directed at the CPU cores themselves. Not ducking in and out of the kernel. If enough of the benchmark gets cached that then this is just already native code just running.

ARM A12Z Fat Binary or not the code being translated was optimized at compile time for X86 and not the ARM A12Z. I would expect the natively compiled version of any app to exceed to translated one.

 

[gkarris]

Bahaha if Apple could make these processors for free they would still charge more than ever and people would still buy them. Prices only go one way with Apple.... Up.
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I don't think Apple will make anyone take down the numbers - it'll be part of all the hype leading up to the first ARM Macs...

 

[Gabebear]

That's a low bar... This is more indicative of how crappy Microsoft's Surface Pro X is rather than how great Apple's DTK is. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3453670/microsoft-surface-pro-x-review.html

 

[Jimmy James]

I wonder if we’re going to get Apple chips fast enough to run Windows in emulation as fast as boot camp on a current Intel machine.

 

[MikeSmoke]

It’s hard to imagine that Apple did not know that the details would leak quickly. It’s almost as if it was planned.

 

[ChrisA]

But people in the last thread told me the score was bad? /s

It is bad.

A 2019 iMac gets about 1,200 single core and about 8,000 multicore. This Arm chip is much slower than last year's iMac.

The Arm chip in the new developer kit seems to be about as fast is a mid 2011 iMac.

 

[gugy]

But people in the last thread told me the score was bad? /s

Let's not forget this is and older chip too. This transition is super exciting! I really can't wait to see what they do in the bigger form factors like the MacPro

Yep, I can't wait to see it on a MBP 16”. I'm holding on to my 2015 MBP. Since I don't use Windows, I see no reason to not upgrade to Apple Silicon. Adobe the primary suite I use is already moving towards it. It should be an amazing performance.

 

[spinedoc77]

Impressive, the Pro-X just seems more and more like a mistake as time goes on. Since we are still talking about iPad silicon I think Apple just has to add some memory and/or battery to fix the issue with iOS apps suspending and losing data, I wonder if that's part of what's keeping them from running full MacOS on a tablet. For it's lower performance and what I personally think is a mistaken strategy, I'd still prefer the Pro-X over iOS (although I'd prefer an Intel surface pro over either). I'm not taking away from the fact that whatever Apple has in the pipeline for ARM Macs is going to be a BEAST for their laptops/desktops.

 

[biffuz]

This thing is close to my i7 3770K which is still in my gaming rig. And it's under emulation. That's much better than I expected! Now I have high hopes for the GPU too.
If that's good too, Apple gave me a good reason to get a 13" ARM MBP - if some of my favorite games are ported, so I can play when I'm on the road. I am on a late 2013 15" MBPr now.

 

[blackcrayon]

The Arm chip in the new developer kit seems to be about as fast is a mid 2011 iMac.

Heh, I think you forgot to add "emulating x86".

 

[windowsblowsass]

It is bad.

A 2019 iMac gets about 1,200 single core and about 8,000 multicore. This Arm chip is much slower than last year's iMac.

The Arm chip in the new developer kit seems to be about as fast is a mid 2011 iMac.

For the 800000th time. This is not a Mac chip and this score is emulated. This exact chip, which is two years old and never going in a production Mac
, does 1,118 single core and 4625 multicore when running native. In an iPad with no active cooling.

 

[cmaier]

It is bad.

A 2019 iMac gets about 1,200 single core and about 8,000 multicore. This Arm chip is much slower than last year's iMac.

The Arm chip in the new developer kit seems to be about as fast is a mid 2011 iMac.

Good thing this chip will never appear in any mac for sale