How many apps are using multi-cores on Silicon Macs?

[Cham2000]

Sorry for the newbie question about Silicon Macs (I'm jumping to Silicon, from a 12 years old Intel Mac!).
I'm wondering if most of today apps are able to efficiently use multi-cores on Silicon Macs, or are they mostly using a single core instead?

So, for the most current apps (web navigators, Safari, FireFox, Chrome, ..., Mail, iChat, Preview, Text editors and Word Processors, MS Excel and the likes, music playing apps like iTunes, movies playing apps like VLC, ...), are they only using a single core to do their things? Or are they able to use multi-cores?

 

[apostolosdt]

Well, not quite sure if it's a newbie question. I'm in the same position as yours; after nearly 10 years with Intel Macs, I recently acquired a Mini M1, and I can't get the info you mention either. Hope there are some knowledgeable people here.

 

[Bigwaff]

TLDR .. Depends on how the program software is written. For the apps in question, most likely "Yes but..."
Explanation is a little dense -

Explainer: Parallel computing

It delivers detailed weather forecasts for days in advance, and real-time manipulation of elaborate textured 3D models. But more mundane tasks may not get any quicker.

eclecticlight.co

 

[chown33]

Not every computing task will necessarily benefit from parallelism. I'll run down your list and give a brief comment.

Safari, FireFox, Chrome --
The main place that browsers can do things in parallel is the fetching of web resources, such as HTML web pages, images, etc. and the rendering of those resources to the screen. That is, fetching things can use one core, while rendering the fetched things can use another core. Some decoding and rendering can also go in parallel. For example, if there are 5 images, each one can typically be decoded and rendered independently. There may be a bottleneck where a single core has to combine the layed-out text, images, etc. into a single window.

Also, if you have multiple tabs going at once, those can proceed in parallel.

Mail --
Not a lot can happen in parallel here, unless you have multiple mail accounts. Fetching mail is deliberately done sequentially (non parallel), so things don't break.

iChat --
How many chats do you have going at once? I can only manage one at a time, so I don't see much reason for parallelism here.

Preview --
At best, decoding multiple images at once could benefit from parallelism, but I can only look at one at a time.

Text editors and Word Processors --
I can only type in one document at a time, so not much use for parallelism.

MS Excel and the likes --
It depends. The dependencies between the cells and the formulas in each will decide how much can happen in parallel and how much needs to be sequential. Anything where the output of one cell is the input to another cell will probably need to be sequential.

music playing apps like iTunes --
I only listen to one audio stream at a time. If you were combining many many streams at once, there might be a case for parallelism, but unless it's in the dozens to hundreds of streams, I don't really see it being useful.

movies playing apps like VLC --
Decoding multiple streams at once could run in parallel, or fetching and decoding using different cores, but unless you're combining many streams, I don't see a major benefit to heavy parallelism.


FWIW, none of the above is specific to Apple Silicon. The same things apply to multi-core Intel Macs, and even multi-core PowerPC Macs.

 

[MikeDr206]

iChat --
How many chats do you have going at once? I can only manage one at a time, so I don't see much reason for parallelism here.

iChat?

 

[Cham2000]

Mathematica is using multi-cores.

Is LaTeX using multi-cores, if it compiles several PDF documents at once?

What about games?

 

[Basic75]

Sorry for the newbie question about Silicon Macs (I'm jumping to Silicon, from a 12 years old Intel Mac!)

The new thing about Macs isn't silicon, it's "Apple Silicon", which is a marketing term for Apple-designed chips. Nearly all chips, including all processors made by Intel, AMD, Motorola and IBM, are made out of silicon.

 

[Basic75]

Is LaTeX using multi-cores, if it compiles several PDF documents at once?

That depends on how you are using it. If for example you have set up a good Makefile and are using make -j 8 in the Terminal to compile many files it would use 8 cores.

 

[Basic75]

What about games?

Depends on the game. There is no general answer.

 

[Cham2000]

Depends on the game. There is no general answer.

The question is more about if games *can* use multi-cores. I know that not every game uses multi-cores, but do some 3D games may use multi-cores so it's worth having more cores?

About PDFLaTeX, I'm compiling with an interface app (not the console). For example: Latexian, Texshop and Texifier. If I compile several PDF docs, do the app use multi-cores?

 

[Basic75]

The question is more about if games *can* use multi-cores. I know that not every game uses multi-cores, but do some 3D games may use multi-cores so it's worth having more cores?

Yes, games can use multiple cores, and many, if not most, modern 3D games do. However unlike, say, raytracing, games do not scale to an arbitrary number of cores. I believe people building dedicated gaming PCs often get 8 core CPUs because few games will use more than that.

 

[unrigestered]

i think physics or AI heavy games should be good candidates, but of course some GPU functions could be used for that aswell.

music creating software (Digital Audio Workstations) like Logic, Cubase, Live, Pro-Tools, etc. have pretty much all had good multi-core support for a long time now.