Apple M1

This will fork the professional market pretty hard. Maybe it finally pushes Autodesk and Black Magic Design off Apple?
 
So after thinking about it a bit I actually canceled my order and decided to go with an x86 Mac mini. Lack of OS backwards compatibility and egpu support were the major deciding factors. Still looking forward to seeing what the M1 is capable of and perhaps Rosetta 2 will make software support a non-issue
 
DukenukemX said:
Synthetic tests are not the best choice for comparing things. I'd like to see some real world applications like a render test or even a game. Synthetic tests are known for their fuckery.
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Real world applications and games will be tested when laptop and desktop Macs launch. Meanwhile, what common application or game you propose to compare a HEDT x86 running Windows and an ARM phone running iOS?
 
Red Falcon said:
I fully agree with both of you on this.
The exciting thing about all of this is not Apple's anti-customer/consumer megacorp attitude, non-upgradable and extremely overpriced devices, but the fact that they are going to be the ones to push mainstream development of the ARM ISA forward.

This will allow other software developers to follow, inside and outside of the Apple ecosystem, which will bring about the coming paradigm shift away from x86-64 - assuming AMD doesn't continue to push forward innovation and competition.
Apple's move forward with ARM on the workstation/desktop/laptop market is what we need to get direct comparisons of ARM to x86-64, both synthetic and real-world.

As for their new products, they are all a major step backward in terms of upgradability, and are extremely anti-consumer as far as the cost goes for what little is being offered.
Apple is a megacorp, but even a megacorp can have a silver-lining, and that is the push forward to ARM and the overall development that will be opened in all industries and markets that would otherwise not be possible or cost-effective.
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Exactly. We are excited about this announcement, because of the paradigm shift it represents for the ARM architecture and how other players will be forced to follow this route, not because "it is Apple".
 
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Red Falcon said:
Because hi-res displays are used exclusively for gaming, and absolutely positively nothing else.
Productivity? Content creation? Media creation? Photo and video editing? CAD and design work? Programming and rendering? Pfff, who needs any of that junk. :whistle:
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Fine, then show me productivity, content creation, media creation, photo and video editing, CAD, and Programming benchmarks. Just so you know this image was taken straight from Apple's website about the M1. Also worth noting that Apple shows the Tflops of the M1 at 2.6, which as we're discovering means nothing to GPU performance these days.

LG-Display-gaming-screen_11102020_big.jpg.large_2x.jpg
 
juanrga said:
Real world applications and games will be tested when laptop and desktop Macs launch. Meanwhile, what common application or game you propose to compare a HEDT x86 running Windows and an ARM phone running iOS?
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Blender, Web Browser tests, Tensorflow, Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, and file compression.
 
DukenukemX said:
Blender, Web Browser tests, Tensorflow, Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, and file compression.
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"How fast can it calculate a payroll for 1000 people." "How fast can it generate a report that crunches a 3GB dataset."
 
That their marketing is actively trying to push high end games (despite the lack of power) suggests to me that there’s a strong chance of an in-house discrete GPU in the pipeline.
 
I was discussing the preview chips performance with our lead mac developer the other day and he claimed that even with them - using rosetta the performance was really impressive (sometimes faster then native intel test devices).

I think something thats easy to miss here is that these devices are replacing the entry level ones. Often those could be previous gen cheap devices rather then top end. Memory is capped to 16GB either due to limitations or a wish to keep it low end.

I would not make too much long term assumptions based on this. Already now the benchmarks pit this above the i9 in the 16” mbp, but I’d bet the performance is not close to what they’ll be releasing for high end devices.

I’m not interested in first gen apple stuff, but anyone dismissing this ’cause it’s Apple or assuming this is the high end is not thinking this through.
 
zehoo said:
That their marketing is actively trying to push high end games (despite the lack of power) suggests to me that there’s a strong chance of an in-house discrete GPU in the pipeline.
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Interestingly somebody in Apple said something about highest expectations being on the GPU side, and I doubt it was due to the GPU in the M1.
 
idiomatic said:
This will fork the professional market pretty hard. Maybe it finally pushes Autodesk and Black Magic Design off Apple?
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Or they will work on Macs by the time Apple releases desktops.

Autodesk Maya was shown off already running on Apple ARM. They also showed off Cinema4D. Autodesk uses a Unity backend for 3D in their CAD software.... and Unity will be supporting ARM Mac.

So I wouldn't expect there will be any fragmentation. The only question really is how are they going to run on ARM mac. That seems like its going to depend on how the developers take advantage of the Apple silicon. On the CAD software side people I believe are going to be surprised in a good way (or frustrating way if your trying to avoid ARM Macs). Unity is going to for sure take advantage of all the co processors.... if Auto desk incorporates that which I would think is highly likely as they run Unity on the back end. Its possible autocads ARM Mac version is going to run very well.

As for Davinci... yes I expect BMD is going to have a ARM mac version fully ready by the time Apple gets to professional desktops. I don't think they are worried about having support day one for mac book airs and minis. When apple gets to their pro desktop line... they'll be there I'm sure. The high end video 3d companies in general are good about supporting Linux... do we really believe they are going to drop Mac support going forward ? There going to play ball. (Apple is actively helping developers switch... and you know there spending the money where it matters with the bigs) I wouldn't be shocked if BMD is one of the companies Apple trots onto a stage somewhere when the pros launch next year.
 
Lakados said:
I’m not too worried about the lack of upgrade options on the Mac Mini’s, most people who buy them never do upgrade them. I will be far more interested in seeing what they do for their heavier units.
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Upgrades have always gotten worse, but you don't buy a mac to upgrade it. Even the macs that are "upgrade friendly" like the Pro don't really work like that. Firms buy, or generally lease, them because they have a software workflow that needs it and just go with the maxed out one. The cost of the machines compared to labor and other costs isn't all that high and nobody cares. Just as virtually all the macminis sold are just thrown in racks for them and then forgotten, they run headless.

If something fails, the leasing company sends you another, or if you bought it then it's either a shipping back and forth to apple or buy another if that's not an option.
 
A lot of the performance uplift comes from having DRAM so close to the chip as well as a huge 12MB L2 cache. They also devoted a ton of transistors for the large CPU cores, to the point where the total transistors is 60% higher than Renoir.

I bet if AMD decided to go full on SOC (which wont happen) paired with on chip DRAM(HBM!) and a large shared cache (It'll be L3 for AMD due to their cache structure), they can outperform the M1 in single core tasks pretty handily but of course that wont happen.
 
TheBuzzer said:
Here is some benchmark of the m1 chip

no clue how it compares

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/4648107
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https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/4664916 (one of the best ones I could find for Intels current high end mobile i7... ya its running Linux but its Dell and the score is higher then the windows running machines they have reported)
Intel Core i7-10875H

Puts them at better single thread vs Intel... and slightly behind in multithread. Of course Intel has hyper threading, full size cores and 5.1ghz turbo.

If this is around what we can expect.... 20% faster single thread, and 6-7% slower multi threaded. I would say Apple is sitting in a good spot. Makes me really curious what they have for their desktops.
 
juanrga said:
The current Firestorm core, constrained in a A14 phone, is able to outperform the fastest Intel core and is only pennies behind a top Zen3 core in single thread performance

View attachment 298017

The cores in the M1 will run circles around any x86 core. Moreover the Apple design is ultraefficient. The A14 is below 5W, whereas the R9 5950X goes up to 49W in 1T.
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All that power wasted in an Apple device...
 
mkppo said:
A lot of the performance uplift comes from having DRAM so close to the chip as well as a huge 12MB L2 cache. They also devoted a ton of transistors for the large CPU cores, to the point where the total transistors is 60% higher than Renoir.

I bet if AMD decided to go full on SOC (which wont happen) paired with on chip DRAM(HBM!) and a large shared cache (It'll be L3 for AMD due to their cache structure), they can outperform the M1 in single core tasks pretty handily but of course that wont happen.
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Wow 60% higher transistors than Renoir? Thats nuts!
I wonder how die size compares since its 5nm...
 
I would like to see a real world cross platform benchmark like x264/x265 encoding, 7z file compression, etc, and games that are both ARM and x86.
Only when good cross platform applications are made can we really start comparing performance.
 
juanrga said:
File compression was tested. What version of, say Photoshop, runs the same code in an iOS phone and in x86 Windows desktop?
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Doesn't matter because we're interested in how fast it can finish a task. As long as it results in the same file then we shouldn't care if it runs the same code base.
 
Elf_Boy said:
$1700 for 16 gm of ram and a 2tb drive. At least at this site: https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1...VaJzQIHVpBC2cQ7xYoAHoECBkQMA&biw=1331&bih=774

WOW that's pricey.

Was gonna check the official price but cant due to the Apple site being down -- you can look but pushing BUY does nothing.
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Finally got the the official site. Only 8gb models for sale. With 256gb storage $699 and 512 is $899.

Lets see.. get a new rx 6800 xt next week or one of these. Apple prices are just too high for the specs. At least they are cheaper then the same specked Intel model.
 
DukenukemX said:
Fine, then show me productivity, content creation, media creation, photo and video editing, CAD, and Programming benchmarks. Just so you know this image was taken straight from Apple's website about the M1. Also worth noting that Apple shows the Tflops of the M1 at 2.6, which as we're discovering means nothing to GPU performance these days.

View attachment 298459
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I am just as ready as you are to see true 1:1 benchmarks comparing ARM64 to x86-64 on these as well.
 
Mega6 said:
Geekbench
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More then I expected out of their first gen mobile part. That multi threaded isn't mad when you consider its only 4 "big" cores.
If they iron out software kinks with this mobile generation.... AMD and Intel are going to have have some heat next year when the desktop parts roll out.
 
ChadD said:
More then I expected out of their first gen mobile part. That multi threaded isn't mad when you consider its only 4 "big" cores.
If they iron out software kinks with this mobile generation.... AMD and Intel are going to have have some heat next year when the desktop parts roll out.
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Hold your horses, it's only one benchmark suite.
 
Mega6 said:
Hold your horses, it's only one benchmark suite.
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Of course. Still a lot of shake out... hardware wise never mind all the potential software issues. For sure though Intel is going to feel the pain... they lost the business. They been feeling the pressure from AMD on the mobile front, where they have been basically without competition for ages. Now to rub the salt in, yes Apple looks like its going to pull some major mind share if not market share. (but probably both)

I'm not suggesting where all going to trash pile our x86 chips. Apple looks like there going to be a strong competitor in some lucrative markets. Intels range of profit generating mobile segment just shrunk a bit more.

I agree though it will be most interesting to see apples to apples (oh man no pun intended really). Seeing how these machines stack up against the last Intel macs should be interesting. From there we should be able to extrapolate Apple vs latest Intel/amd somewhat. It will also be interesting to see how apples x86 translation works vs native code.
 
Elf_Boy said:
Finally got the the official site. Only 8gb models for sale. With 256gb storage $699 and 512 is $899.

Lets see.. get a new rx 6800 xt next week or one of these. Apple prices are just too high for the specs. At least they are cheaper then the same specked Intel model.
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I don’t think Apple cares at all for the ”spec game”.

I mean sure they are happy to charge you (an arm and a leg) for more RAM or a bigger SSD, but they play that game on their own terms.

If you look at phones, they don’t really talk about how much memory they have, but they definately get by with a lot less then Android. They don’t really talk about the size of the battery, rather they focus on batterylife. They happily equip all phones from the cheapest to the most expensive with the same processor. They don’t usually focus onclockspeed / cores etc over generations, but rather on what end user functionality the changes will bring.

In general this scheme actually works really well. If you are a manufacturer stuck in a competition of specs, you have little reason to optimise. For Apple, making the system more efficient means they can put a smaller battery and keep battery life the same. They have an incentive to think end to end.
 
I don't think it's trolling just because someone doesn't want to suckle on the Apple marketing teat. I don't think it's unreasonable to want to see actual verified 3rd party numbers using industry-standard cross-platform benchmarks. No, "leaks" and niche tests don't cut it.

If performance is actually impressive then the results should speak for themselves. The secrecy and lack of specifics so far would seem to suggest otherwise. Suffice it to say, I'm pessimistic about apple's claims, but I'm not afraid of being proven wrong either. Bring on the benchmarks.
 
Yeah, I don’t think it’s trolling to ask for that either.

I would still highlight that Apple is not planning on selling these processors to anyone. Apple has always marketed new releases by comparing them to what they sold before. For people here on the forum it seems strange that they compare it to ”some old processor from 2 years ago”, but it’s what they always did.

-> you get 2 hours longer battery life then the previous model
-> 3 times faster then the previous model

Why compare to something that never existed in their ecosystem? If they want to lure people into the ecosystem they won’t talk about processor speed, they’ll talk about things that matter like speed to wake up from sleep or how applications always persist their state so you can update and reboot your computer without saving open documents.

For us this seems strange as we live in an Intel vs AMD world. We are just as much targetted by marketing, but what we are being told is important is totally different. You only expect ”industry standard benchmarks” because you assume they are joining the Intel vs AMD race. I don’t think they have any interest in that beyond ensuring their own userbase accepts the change. A few years forward they will compare the performance of the M5 chip to the M4, not what Intel will have on the market (even if that comparison would look good).
 
dropadrop said:
If they want to lure people into the ecosystem they won’t talk about processor speed
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They already are:
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/introducing-the-next-generation-of-mac/
in MacBook Air, M1 is faster than the chips in 98 percent of PC laptops sold in the past year
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So yeah, they've thrown down the gauntlet with that comment.

I want to see numbers because people ask me for advice about what to buy and I want to give them answers based on fact, not marketing. There is also a fundamental shift toward ARM happening, and this is one of our first real views of what a company with money and motivation can do with ARM outside of mobile. This isn't as much about apple as it is about ARM. If apple succeeds, others will follow.
 
That’s like saying it isn’t so much about AMD as it is x86 for the new Ryzen CPUs. o_O
Some of you guys seem to bend over backwards to take a jab at Apple and downplay anything they do.
 
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