I'm sure x86 will move forward, but this does recall what happened in mobile chips. People shrugged their shoulders at the A4 (it was a fine chip, just not mind-blowing). Flash forward a decade later, however, and the lowest-priced iPhone is generally faster than the most expensive Android phones. The x86 chip industry ignores Apple's moves at its peril.
![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
-
Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.
Apple M1
- Thread starter ChadD
- Start date
The problem is: Most consumers don't care. I know that personally, I don't find my Snapdragon powered Android device slow at all - I couldn't care less if an iPhone is faster as I hate iOS and aren't going to pay the iPhone tax.
D
Deleted whining member 223597
Guest
Android phone prices have crept up and are often higher than iPhones now, so I’m not sure there’s really an “iPhone tax” anymore.
Consumers do care about battery life in a laptop, which is where this new chip seems to excel at.
One would think, but look at the sales of new phones (how many of those are from people having already working phone that are upgrading)
There are areas where it will matter, though. Apple's chips don't just benchmark better -- there are harder-to-quantify elements like the overall responsiveness (and it's not just due to the faster SSDs) and the instant wake.
I suppose I should have put a greater emphasis on battery life, as that's something users will definitely notice (even during the pandemic). If your Windows laptop conks out after 6 hours in real life but your friend's MacBook lasts for 10 or 12, which platform is more tempting if battery life is important to you?
The platform which isn't deliberately eating battery life to make me upgrade again?
Considering the base MBA M1 to replace my 2018. The 2018 just never ran as well as it should. My 2013 MBP 15 is still flawless. The M1 is in a weird spot though. It is very powerful but also oddly limited. Seems to be perfect for prosumers who are totally in the Apple ecosystem. For me it comes down to the battery life and some nice to haves. Bit hard to justify the price difference given that my 2018 is only worth around $600.
Ya Micorosft needs to get its ARM shit together... but they also need a partner that can deliver a competitive ARM chip. Qualcomm probably isn't going to cut it. By the time Apple gets to M2.... MS and whoever there working for on the silicon end better have it together or there going to start bleeding x86 and Microsoft out of the picture.
Microsoft better get working with AMD (if there not already) on a AMD Ryzen ARM platform (AMD already has 90% of the work on just that done). If they wait... there going to end up at the mercy of Nvidia again. lol With Apples apparent jump in ARM performance.... Nvidias ARM purchase is making a lot more sense to me today. I can see now that Nvidia is planning to be the shinning Knight that is going to jump in around 2022 with a chip capable of Powering a Windows ARM machine that can compare to Apples second generation ARM machines. With no other players around Microsoft and the windows OEMs won't have much other choice. Nvidia really could end up replacing Intel in the consumer device space. (laptops and workstation type machines) Heck it might not even be crazy to dream a Nvidia ARM chip in a few years could actually compete with AMD and Intel in the high performance desktop category as well. (I mean I have no doubt now that Apples .... D1 ? or whatever they call the desktop version is probably not going to be big.Little but instead provide at least 8 full performance cores.... and probably 2-3x the GPU compute cores)
It's faster than the Polaris 560 units they've been shipping in the MacBook "not so pro" 15 inch models. When all you have to beat is yourself, then you make it an easy job
But they are 2x the IGP performance of Zen 2 `15w APUs, so there is still that.
View attachment 300330
With this good a performance-scaling, it's probably enough performance to play Wow at 1080p med?
View attachment 300331
That is running Rosetta translation. I would expect a pretty good uplift for native code still.
Like it or not Apple is still over 1/4 of all smartphones sold in the world. Where I live in Canada they are actually at 51% of the phone market as of October 2020.
I have known people who have dumped their Iphones for Android phones.... and I know of at least 2 people personally who sold their Samsungs and went back to Apple. I'm not a fan of Apple myself.... I like to be able to throw my 256gb microsd in my phone, and I'm a silly audiophile lite (which means I have stuck to LG for a few generations now, there is no beating LG for high(er) end phone audio). However for just your standard every day phone user messaging, sending videos, snapping pictures.... Apple is very compelling. Especially with the way the higher end Android OEMS seem to be removing things like microsd slots and such anyway.
Apple has already updated XCode for the new architecture, and they claim that most applications that were compliant with the latest MacOS versions can be made so for the ARM64 simply by choosing the compiling options in the software.
whateverer
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2016
- Messages
- 1,815
Depends if they are CPU-limited or not. Earlier benchmarks in that Anand review showed the exact same performance for GFXBEncvh native vs translated.
The overall responsiveness and wake times of my Samsung Tab S5e are absolutely fine, there's no perceptible lag that bothers me in the slightest. Likewise, my battery life is amazing.
Once again, most consumers care about price and acceptable usability - And that's about the extent of it. A Windows 10 laptop with 4GB of ram and a 5400RPM HDD running an entry level Intel or AMD processor exceeds the level of responsiveness most are comfortable with, most Android based devices smash the performance of such a device.
8-wide decode, 8-wide issue, 320Kb L1, 630 instruction ROB, 6 INT + 4 MEM + 4 FMA,...
x86 cores are child toys compared to that.
Halon
Gawd
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2004
- Messages
- 936
Expect to wait a very long time. Apple's signaled that they won't support other OSes on Apple Silicon hardware, and devising support for all the hardware in it will be time consuming and may never be complete. As I said here earlier, these are great chips if you want to run macOS and are okay with being tethered to Apple's priorities and schedule, but anyone else should still look elsewhere.
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2011
- Messages
- 1,293
I'm pretty impressed with the M1 so far based on everything I've read. I'll be waiting for at least an M3 or greater, though.
Wouldn't "I can use my laptop all day without plugging in" be a pretty compelling usability argument? I know there's such a thing as "good enough," but genuine all-day battery is something that could reel you in if you want more than a few hours of runtime.
And let's face it: many people need more than a mobile tablet, iPads included. A new MacBook Air gives you that kind of longevity alongside a full desktop-level OS. Mobile tablets are getting closer, but I couldn't really do my job on a Galaxy Tab S5e or iPad where I can on a Mac.
UnknownSouljer
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2001
- Messages
- 9,041
I would say this is a gross oversimplification of what the wants and needs of users - even so-called consumers.
Certainly there is a subset only interested in things at the level like you say; but part of the major reason why Netbooks died is that what is "good enough" and what is expected in general has a decent floor. People's phones are instantaneous - you're saying no one would notice the difference between a phone and a slow laptop? I would disagree. I actually think your bringing up the S5e furthers that point.
I would say there is a large cross section that wants their computing devices to be "frustration free" whatever that means. That their devices will be easy to use and at least fast enough to keep up with them as they do things in the OS. I absolutely think people will notice when their friends have ARM based Mac's that everything they open up (or move, or launch, etc) will be imperceptible from instantaneous. And will absolutely care that they can watch Youtube in bed all night without having to worry about plugging in their laptop. Or work from home on their couch while in front of the TV while not having to be plugged in. This fundamentally changes what you can expect a laptop to do. It's an actual performative difference - not just what "specs" can do for you.
It's in this way that I think Apple excels. For better or worse they've never been interested in posting specs on things but rather what their hardware is capable of in tandem with their software. Instant wake, 20 hour battery life, multiple simultaneous 4k steams, completely silent (in the case of MBA), and incredibly responsive, will matter to a lot of folks. And we're not even dealing with their high end performance chips yet.
Never, unless Apple decides to make a touch interface version of macOS, which for at least 10 years they've signaled that they won't.
You can however buy a new iPad Air with an A14 in it or you can wait for the iPad Pro which rumors say will drop first quarter of 2021 with A14X.
===
EDIT: In order to not post spam I'm editing this post rather than posting again. I just saw another video from a content creator.
This is supposed to be Apple's low level chip - not designed for professional machines. And this guy is editing multiple RAW and h.265 4k and 8k streams (which notoriously have incredibly high processing overhead), while at the same time having 100mp Fuji GFX100 images opened in Lightroom, AND screencapping it all at the same time.
Obviously M1 is optimized for this kind of work and workflow but this is a serious advantage. I know most of you guys probably don't follow Lee, but he's actually primarily a PC editor in Da Vinci Resolve. His main machine is a Zen 2 machine with a 2080Ti I believe and something like 64GB of RAM. And this Mini can playback and edit files more smoothly than that machine.
For video editors that essentially means that this $800 machine (or $1300 to max out the RAM and move to a 1TB SSD) wrecks a $2000+ machine in video editing. That's a serious practical difference. And again, this is not even their big desktop class chip part that will end up in iMac Pro or Mac Pro.
Last edited:
Agreed. Referencing my earlier post on this thread, I don't think this is about how the silicon directly fares against its x86 brethren. This is about enabling acceleration of workloads by embedding features into the operating system that leverage the silicon, and cascading them upward to applications far more quickly than would otherwise be possible. Take as an example nVidia and the RTX I/O introduction. Years to develop the silicon features. Who knows how long Microsoft spent developing the API frameworks. Finally, a "launch" but now it will be years still before any game takes advantage of it. nVidia and Microsoft move only so quickly to bring the accelerator to practical use. Imagine that same feature in this new model: the OS fully exposes the hardware from Day 1, all first party apps take advantage from Day 1, and most of the application ecosystem is leveraging the feature within a few months.
This is not Apple vs. AMD/Intel. This is Apple vs. AMD/Intel + Microsoft/Linux. Specifically, who can iterate faster on bringing practical accelerators to market more quickly. AMD/Intel and Microsoft need to get much better at entangling their roadmaps if they want to compete.
Last edited:
The m1 chip shows clearly why Nvidia is buying ARM. They wish to repeat what apple is trying to do with their new chips, and take a large chunk of the x86 market that apple won’t take.
Intel should have just given Jensen an x86 license. The accountants were in charge for too long.
Intel should have just given Jensen an x86 license. The accountants were in charge for too long.
UnknownSouljer
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2001
- Messages
- 9,041
People keep repeating this, but it's factually not true. There is nothing stopping nVidia from making ARM chips exactly like Apple is doing without buying ARM.
Apple doesn't own ARM and is obviously doing just fine. nVidia themselves made ARM chips from licensing agreements - that's their Tegra line.
Most folks involved and myself have no idea why nVidia would invest this much money to essentially buy an IP that only has the purpose of licensing to other groups. Although the IP is valuable, it's only valuable as long as someone is licensing it and paying for that license (ARM has literally no other business other than licensing - that's where all their money comes from). Apple as an example undoubtedly has a license on all ARM tech for probably decades - because that's how they plan.
No one has access to M1 other than Apple. nVidia will have to invest their own money and time into development of specialized chips, the same as any other vendor.
But I don't see how you would believe that nVidia is more in position to do this than Apple is - again, because if they could they already would have by simply licensing whatever they can from ARM. But more to the point nVidia can't sell a single thing to anyone without a platform. Windows ARM is complete garbage. Right now macOS 11 is the only complete OS that has library support to essentially run everything quickly and smoothly and the only one with an SOC that's worth a damn. If nVidia is expecting to take over Intel's space then they're either going to have to develop another OS or spend huge money on Microsoft to actually make an OS that integrates well with their SOC.
If nVidia wanted an x86 license they could've gotten it for pennies on the dollar compared to buying ARM. That is of course if and when buying ARM gets past regulators.
D
Deleted member 89018
Guest
owning and licensing arm means they get extra revenue as long as the ecosystem continues to do well, regardless of whether it’s Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, or whoever, as those companies renew licenses or new companies want to get licensing.
Apple making a big splash with arm means increased mindshare - and potentially market share - in an area where it has traditionally had none (desktops/laptops/workstations) and that could lead to more customers for arm technology, which is just good for nvidia as the licensor.
I can’t speak for anyone else here obviously but I think saying “this is why nvidia bought arm”, to me, is really saying “this could be really big for arm, so nvidia is in a good position.”
although I would like to see what they can cook up, if they decide to enter the general purpose cpu market as more than just a company selling expensive sbc setups to customers with very specific needs.
Apple making a big splash with arm means increased mindshare - and potentially market share - in an area where it has traditionally had none (desktops/laptops/workstations) and that could lead to more customers for arm technology, which is just good for nvidia as the licensor.
I can’t speak for anyone else here obviously but I think saying “this is why nvidia bought arm”, to me, is really saying “this could be really big for arm, so nvidia is in a good position.”
although I would like to see what they can cook up, if they decide to enter the general purpose cpu market as more than just a company selling expensive sbc setups to customers with very specific needs.
It also gives NVidia directional control of where they take ARM, they can work those sorts of system-level integration initiatives and fund it through ARM and their licensing rather than through NVidia while giving them a potential future leg up and providing additional revenue streams. They could have done it now with their licensing and not purchased ARM but it would have greatly changed the accounting and financials of it in the process.
UnknownSouljer
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2001
- Messages
- 9,041
They're going to have to get a lot of new license holders for it to matter. Most years ARM Ltd has been a losing business. Which is why Softbank is selling it in the first place and why ARM themselves sold themselves to Softbank. Their model has made up a lot of mind share but not a lot of profit.
I feel like they're setting themselves up to have regulators in all of their business. If they torpedo ARM or horde specific technology for themselves - it wouldn't take much to prove they are being anti-competitive.
This is the reason why Apple devested in ARM (they used to be 15% shareholders). Because owning ARM would just raise up more scrutiny from regulators. M1 is the fastest chip currently available in a consumer class product - if Apple owned ARM then they'd have to answer the very direct question of: "why isn't this chip being licensed to any other companies for use?".
The Cortex SOC as an obvious example is licensed away. If nVidia wants to have "competitive advantage" with their chips they essentially won't be able to, because as soon as they make it they'll also have to license their designs.
But by owning ARM NVidia doesn't really need to have a competitive advantage, if they build the platform then license it accordingly it's open and anybody can use it, and that way NVidia doesn't have to worry about sourcing fab time or any of the logistics. This way if they build the fastest or somebody else does they are winners regardless because it just helps their brand. As far as regulators go unless they make drastic changes to the licensing model or the pricing structure regulators won't be giving them any more of a stink eye than they already were. In Apple's case there is a distinct competitive advantage to them keeping their ARM work internal and exclusive to them so yes it would be a conflict for them if they had made the purchase regulators would be crawling all over them for being anti-competitive to the Android market. In NVidia's case, even Apple's successes help them now because it pushes the ARM brand even if their chips are exclusive to Apple.
Totally. It's the reason I dumped my MacBook Pro for a Samsung Tab S5e with keyboard folio and DeX mode - I can do my job as a tech just fine on a Tab S5e under DeX. Furthermore there's nothing slow about it.
Saw this today... and thought back to your post. Video of someone using M1 mini base with logic. Long video but I found it entertaining.
Gotta say..... Apples mem management may be just that good. We may have to stop thinking of the apple machines in comparison to Intel/Windows PCs. Seeing him SMOOTHLY running logic with over 900 plugins on a 8gb machine is pretty damn impressive. In the end this guy is still not switching yet... until more third party Plugin developers catch up. Looks good for the future though. I gotta say I didn't expect that machine to be able to run that smooth with a large project.
Last edited:
^ awesome video. That guy is entertaining. I do note that the system overloaded at 1030 which is probably due to crossing the 1024 (10 bit) addressing barrier. (or whatever logic deems as max buffers). An adjusted system could most likely handle more. That whole project probably fits comfortably in the 12meg L2. Still walking 1k of anything of more than trivial computations will tax any CPU quite a bit.
That feels like Apple's ultimate strategy. It's not just to outperform Intel (and ideally AMD) whenever possible, it's to defy direct comparisons. You can't simply say "I could buy a similarly-specced Windows system for less" (even if that wasn't always true) because there is no similarly-specced system, and what Apple can do defies what we're used to with x86 on any OS. You may buy a Mac simply because there's nothing else like it.
His 6 year old mini hit the CPU wall at around 400 plugins. Clearly a well built PC could go further. Still impressive for a mini. Its surprising how many creative types have been using minis for years for things like Logic. Gotta say from experience... in terms of Audio the Mac platform is just miles ahead of windows. Yes you can build a much more powerful PC.... but yes they are annoying more often then they should be. When this guy recounted the story of pitching his 90s PC out a 4th floor window for real.... I sympathized. I never destroyed one much less toss it out 4th floor window. I did have a (prosumer not pro level for sure) line6 audio interface for awhile probably around a decade back already.... shit the bed all the time in windows. Would work for a few days then stop working... and hang the audio system completely forcing a reboot. Plug it into a mac and it just worked... hell even just worked in Linux.
Its easy to see how creative types bail on Windows PCs, when mac really is just plug and play with that stuff. Even now recording on windows relies on non standard audio systems to get latency to a acceptable place for live recording ect. The Apple audio framework is just far superior. Makes the "apple tax" crowd seem silly honestly. Why pay more for a Mac.... geez I don't know cause I'm plugging it into 10k worth of audio gear that I would rather have just work. Who cares if the PC costs 500 bucks more.
I can also say that for video processing they just work better. I have a handful of 2015 MBP’s and they are holding their own in Adobe Premier against Much newer systems. They loose out to the Ryzen 3900’s I have in the classroom but not by as much as you think they should. And most of the kids prefer working from the Mac’s they say they just do it easier.
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2000
- Messages
- 77,678
looks like my work is confident in them. they ordered 350 m1 mbas for teachers. hopefully they "just work", like us support guys have been told.
The MDM providers have all updated accordingly, software wise anything that comes from the Apple store doesn’t see or care about a difference. From a mass management side there isn’t any difference either, and Office 365 is ready to go as well. I don’t know what your district uses for back end but I could plop them in beside the 2018’s and have no difference in workflow deploying either at this point.
Also makes wireless streaming work nicely if you have an Apple TV in there.
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2000
- Messages
- 77,678
well hopefully thats actually the case. local o365 or online? 'cause online works on anything. i know big sur(sp?) is giving us grief with some apps, drivers and a/v....
Local, though I don’t know if it’s the “full” install or the lite version they have on the iPad Pro’s.
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2000
- Messages
- 77,678
guess ill find out in a couple weeks. i hope it goes smooth but its a new os and processor so do expect some hipcups.