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Desktops (Apple) Graphics Portables (Apple) Apple Hardware Technology

Apple's M1 Is Exceeding Expectations (extremetech.com) 274

Reviews are starting to pour in of Apple's MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and Mac Mini featuring the new M1 ARM-based processor -- and they're overwhelmingly positive. "As with the Air, the Pro's performance exceeds expectations," writes Nilay Patel via The Verge.

"Apple's next chapter offers strong performance gains, great battery and starts at $999," says Brian Heater via TechCrunch.

"When Apple said it would start producing Macs with its own system-on-chip processors, custom CPU and GPU silicon (and a bunch of other stuff) to replace parts from Intel and AMD, we figured it would be good. I never expected it would be this good," says Jason Cross in his review of the MacBook Air M1.

"The M1 is a serious, serious contender for one of the all-time most efficient and highest-performing architectures we've ever seen deploy," says ExtremeTech's Joel Hruska.

"Spending a few days with the 2020 Mac mini has shown me that it's a barnburner of a miniature desktop PC," writes Chris Welch via The Verge. "It outperforms most Intel Macs in several benchmarks, runs apps reliably, and offers a fantastic day-to-day experience whether you're using it for web browsing and email or for creative editing and professional work. That potential will only grow when Apple inevitably raises the RAM ceiling and (hopefully) brings back those missing USB ports..."

"Quibbling about massively parallel workloads -- which the M1 wasn't designed for -- aside, Apple has clearly broken the ice on high-performance ARM desktop and laptop designs," writes Jim Salter via Ars Technica. "Yes, you can build an ARM system that competes strongly with x86, even at very high performance levels."

"The M1-equipped MacBook Air now packs far better performance than its predecessors, rivaling at times the M1-based MacBook Pro. At $999, it's the best value among macOS laptops," concludes PCMag.

"For developers, the Apple Silicon Macs also represent the very first full-fledged Arm machines on the market that have few-to-no compromises. This is a massive boost not just for Apple, but for the larger Arm ecosystem and the growing Arm cloud-computing business," writes Andrei Frumusanu via AnandTech. "Overall, Apple hit it out of the park with the M1."

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Apple's M1 Is Exceeding Expectations

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  • Meh. Who cares about speed when most of my apps won't run in MacOS
    • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @05:19PM (#60735714)

      Meh. Who cares about speed when most of my apps won't run in MacOS

      Thanks to the Rosetta 2 translation layer, they pretty much all run (there are a few minor glitches so far). What apps specifically do you use that you think will not run?

      • CUE (Corsair Utility)
        Logitech Utility
        WinAmp
        Waterfox Classic
        And most of my Steam library, specifically Halo: MCC and Dark Souls 2
        • Corsair, logetich, and Winamp all have Mac versions...

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by GigaplexNZ ( 1233886 )
          The first 3 aren't worth running to start with. Waterfox has a Mac version. I think Logitech and Winamp actually has Mac versions too.

          The only valid items on this list is your Steam library. Mac laptops were never suitable for gaming to begin with.
          • by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @05:50PM (#60735838)
            How would I control my mouse and keyboard then? And there isn't a music player as good as WinAmp. I have looked.
            • by martynhare ( 7125343 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @06:36PM (#60736104)
              It's called Corsair iCUE on macOS and Logitech G Hub is also available too. They might not be ported yet but they will be to avoid customer complaints. Your only missing software is video games, which will always be targeted for DirectX and Vulkan/OpenGL graphics on an x86 architecture anyway. At the end of the day, if you need backwards compatibility and long term support, you don't want macOS and everyone knows that.

              However, with all that said, macOS is currently the most secure desktop OS by default through isolating GUI apps (like what Wayland aims to achieve on Linux) and applying a sandbox to almost all apps which acts similarly to apparmor+seccomp-bpf but with a few creature comfort helper tools. It even has basic mandatory access controls to stop apps snooping in private user areas and will soon be the only system that has a truly robust Secure Boot implementation alongside a tamper-proof OS partition (a bit like implementing BSD Securelevels and making /usr immutable but far better).

              Honestly, the security part of my brain has a wet dream over some of what Apple has seamlessly added to mainstream desktop computing but ultimately the dominant part of my brain which wants 'one computer to rule them all' will always opt for Windows. All I'm missing is proper telephony+SMS+4G baseband support and my desktop PC really can do everything with no need for any of this smartphone, tablet or laptop poop.
          • The first 3 aren't worth running to start with. Waterfox has a Mac version. I think Logitech and Winamp actually has Mac versions too.

            The only valid items on this list is your Steam library. Mac laptops were never suitable for gaming to begin with.

            At the same time, since these Macs will be able to support adapted iPad and iPhone games, it may get more gamer friendly. It still won't be "PC master race" when it comes to games, but I am sure most hardcore gamers probably have a custom speced computer anyhow.

          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            The only valid items on this list is your Steam library. Mac laptops were never suitable for gaming to begin with.

            And yet, some of them will probably run with WINE, and all will run with Boot Camp or in a virtualization environment. As a non-gamer, it's not a big deal to me, but for some people, it might be.

          • by oneiron ( 716313 )

            Mac laptops were never suitable for gaming to begin with.

            I've gotten quite a bit of mileage out of my steam library on a 50gb bootcamp partition using a lowly 2018 macbook air that I picked up at launch. I use a desktop for the latest and greatest, of course, but my air serves me well for both work and leisure. I'll probably just move to a PC laptop and run linux with a windows partition next work laptop purchase.

      • That assumes your app runs on Mac OS to begin with. You can't use Windows anymore. Docker x86 is also out of the question right now.
      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        I assumed he was talking about Windows libraries. That raises an interesting question; how well does WINE run in this environment?

      • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        All x86 VM apps...you know, the apps that make the Mac the best software development platform according to you.

      • What apps specifically do you use that you think will not run?

        The question you should be asking after all the launch problems with Apple's certificate approval server failing, is what apps in the future will Apple let me run?

        The thing that got me originally buying macs was that they ran intel so if I found that there was an app I needed I could boot it into Linux or even Windows. With the new M1 chip all you have is MacOS and nothing else. So if you need to use Linux or Windows for anything that's it, game over you have to buy a PC. The huge price increases, remov

    • Meh. Who cares about speed when most of my apps won't run in MacOS

      So you are a Windows user?

  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @05:16PM (#60735708)

    There have been comparisons for a while now, that showed modern day iPads were performing as well as, or better than a number of laptops...

    So talking about a similar chip but with performance scaled up to a laptop with active cooling (in the case of the MacBook Pro), and to me it's not a surprise that people are seeing the performance Apple claimed they would.

    Some of the people I follow on social have been showing equally impressive results on tasks across the board, weather it be hight end 4k video encoding, or compilation tasks for large projects.

    For anyone that works day to day on a Mac it is VERY tempting to get even just the Mac mini for a performance boost, even with the 16GB limitation. Will probably wait a while before I take the plunge myself but it's great to see that we are at the dawn of a really promising line of systems that might actually deliver a significant increase of performance for real-world tasks, unlike the last few years of intel updates where often it was indiscernible if anything was really faster at all.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Even in Geekbench, which seems to be tuned to favour Apple parts, the M1 is lagging behind Intel Macbooks. And Macbooks are not fast compared to laptops with better cooling, and certainly not compared to AMD laptops.

      So while it's surprisingly decent the fact is it takes longer to export a video in Final Cut on an M1 than it does on an older Intel Macbook Pro. The GPU is similar to mid range AMD and Nvidia mobile chips from 3-4 years ago.

      • by Guspaz ( 556486 )

        Are we looking at the same Geekbench scores? I see the M1 using x86 emulation beating the native Intel Macbooks, and pulling out far ahead using the native Geekbench.

      • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @06:24PM (#60736026)

        Even in Geekbench, which seems to be tuned to favour Apple parts, the M1 is lagging behind Intel Macbooks.

        Not from any of the reports I've read.

        Just one example is TheNextWeb article [thenextweb.com] which states:

        The Apple Silicon Geekbench results also blow the 2019 16" i9 MacBook Pro out of the water. That scored: 1118 / 6762.

        The Apple Silicon Geekbench results for the new systems (which remember are much lower specced normally than a 16" MacBook Pro):

        Mac Mini M1: 1682 / 7097
        MacBook Air M1: 1687 / 7433
        MacBook Pro (13") M1: 1714 / 6802

        So every single new M1 Apple system is beating one of the top of the line Apple Intel systems...

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Why is the Pro lagging behind the Air?

          • Why is the Pro lagging behind the Air?

            It did on the very first released benchmark results, and never again after that.

            A possible explanation: Macs do a lot of work when they are started for the first time (like collecting information so that "search" works instantly), so if you start a brand new Mac, download a benchmark, launch the benchmark _immediately_, it will run slower because your Mac does other things.

            With all newer M1 Macs, the order is MacMini consistently very slightly faster than MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air equal to MacBook

    • Those comparisons of iPads to laptops were shown to be worthless though when the whole 20 minute WildLife benchmark came out a little while ago though.

      The A series chips after 3-4 minutes just tanked in performance to about 60%, and continued to drop until about 50%ish performance. While this might be fine on a consumption device like a iPad, they aren't on a laptop that is expected to work for more then a few moments at a time.

      Its also one of those things that I'm noticing is lacking in these reviews. What
      • by Drishmung ( 458368 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @06:36PM (#60736098)
        anandtech have reviews of the M1 in a MacMini up now [anandtech.com]. They include SPEC2006 & 2017, which take 2.5-4.8 hours to run [spec.org]. So "real usage at multiple minutes at a time" appears to be pretty good.
        • How long does it take to run? Does CPU 2017 take longer than CPU 2006? Run time depends on the system, suite, compiler, tuning, and how many copies or threads are chosen.

          https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/Docs/overview.html#Q11

          So according to the link you gave me, it will depend on how they ran the test. It says that if you run each test alone, they can be done in a few minutes.

          Can you please show/quote where anandtech states how they ran the benchmarking? Was it a full suite that will take hours, or a single test that is done in a few minutes and then lets the system cool down? I tried looking myself, but can't find any indication how the tests were run

          • So according to the link you gave me, it will depend on how they ran the test. It says that if you run each test alone, they can be done in a few minutes.

            Can you please show/quote where anandtech states how they ran the benchmarking? Was it a full suite that will take hours, or a single test that is done in a few minutes and then lets the system cool down? I tried looking myself, but can't find any indication how the tests were run

            If you believe you have found such a fundamental flaw in Anandtech's testing, then you might want to inform them of your concerns. I'm sure they would be pleased to have their errors pointed out so they can correct them.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          But once again those are artificial benchmarks. Where are the benchmarks of actual applications that people use? The only one in your linked article is Tomb Raider, all the rest are artificial. They didn't even try Cinebench.

          Rise of the Tomb Raider, enthusiast
          M1 - 39 FPS
          Low end Ryzen 4600H with 1650 - 58 FPS
          High end i7 10th gen with an old 1660Ti - 82 FPS

          Unfortunately they don't give 95 and 99th percentile scores.

    • by OzPeter ( 195038 )

      For anyone that works day to day on a Mac it is VERY tempting to get even just the Mac mini for a performance boost, even with the 16GB limitation. Will probably wait a while before I take the plunge myself but it's great to see that we are at the dawn of a really promising line of systems that might actually deliver a significant increase of performance for real-world tasks, unlike the last few years of intel updates where often it was indiscernible if anything was really faster at all

      While I am tempted by the speed and the novelty of the new, the one thing missing for me is being able to run intel based VMs. And I believe that Apple has said that Rosetta 2 doesn't do that.

      I'm almost to the point of replacing my 2014 mac mini with an intel 2018 model, rather than new shiny. And I'm sure a lot of people are in the same boat.

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      As long as those "real-world tasks" don't require much memory or scaling to multiple cores or x86 OS compatibility, otherwise known as "real world tasks that suit a low power portable processor". But sure, cherry pick the results, as you always do SuperKendall.

    • Until recently, the expectation was that nobody could make something competitive with Intel. Times are changing.
    • or compilation tasks for large projects.

      Can this even compile large projects? AFAIK chromium for example requires more than 16GB of ram to compile.

  • by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @05:17PM (#60735710)
    the announced performance of their new M1 equipped devices.
    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Yeah, I've noticed that most of the reviews that have come out so far have been Apple fanboys who have been bragging how well it runs Geekbench.

      I don't know about you, but I don't use Geekbench on a daily basis. I do use Docker, though... does that even work in a Mac with an M1 processor?

  • Sorry, none of the apps I need exist in the Apple ecosystem.

    The performance doesn't impress me.

    They were on the right track with the Intel Macs- and made a mistake by eschewing AMD's new chips for ARM. Big mistake.

    • Sorry, none of the apps I need exist in the Apple ecosystem.

      Just out of curiosity, what apps are those?

  • by gupg ( 58086 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @05:32PM (#60735750) Homepage
    Here is a cost based analysis of building ARM-chips themselves versus buying from Intel. Net-net, they save $2B + (and this analysis does not include the RAM costs) https://medium.com/@sumitg_168... [medium.com]
  • by localgh0st ( 1588343 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @05:37PM (#60735774)

    If you hate Apple enough, it's easy to dismiss what's happening right in front of us at the moment. What I find most interesting is looking at what this M chip can do already but also to keep in mind that they have yet to release their "Pro" spec chip (P-series?).

    This is just the first iteration of a mobile level chip and it's already outperforming x86 CPUs and discrete GPUs, albeit older ones. Going the route of previously unseen levels vertical integration also opens up all sorts of new systems development avenues in areas that are up until now unexplored by PC makers.

    Given the performance levels we're already seeing, I believe we're all in for quite the shock when they release their P-series chip.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They are going to have to work hard to overtake AMD mobile chips. Take this Cinebench test for example: https://m.hexus.net/tech/news/... [hexus.net]

      The M1 scores less than half what the AMD mobile part does. The GPU is years behind current AMD ones as well.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Which if you look at the chart is less than 3/4 the mid range AMD mobile CPU.

        • Anandtech says that the M1 scored 1522 (single) and 7833 (multi), using Cinebench R23.

          Mac Miini M1 tested [anandtech.com]

          There are also specbench 2006 results, though some of the more spectacular results are due in part to the optimizing compiler.

        • Now I'm impressed. My year old Linux box with a Ryzen 3400G is 1068 single and 4810 multi. And it is entirely fast enough for my use.

          The remaining problem with the mini is the lack of ports. I have four usb things plugged in now, and I would need two more to make up for the second drive and the DVD drive. And I still need a plug for a flash drive, so I'd need 8 USB ports on the mini.

          Can't argue the processor performance though.

      • That article you linked to has an update with M1 numbers a lot closer to the AMD part.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          You are right, the updated score is a little under 3/4 the CPU performance of the mid range AMD part.

      • Read the Links Luke (Score:4, Informative)

        by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @06:17PM (#60735984)

        The M1 scores less than half what the AMD mobile part does.

        Not if you read the Ars link from the summary [arstechnica.com]

        Scroll down to the Cinebench R23 section...

        The M1 is out-performing the Ryzen 7...

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Only against the low-mid range ultra low power 4700U. It's only got a 15W TDP, very much a budget low power device.

          The link I posted compared with a mid range 4800 with 35W TDP.

          By the way laptops with a 4800 start at around £500 and have a much better GPU than the M1.

          • The link I posted compared with a mid range 4800 with 35W TDP.

            The article at the link you posted has been updated [hexus.net], the M1 is better at single thread and almost the same in multi-threaded performance... on Apple's lowest end laptop. Compared to both mobile and desktop CPU's from AMD.

            • Unless less points are better on this benchmark, or you think 10,600 is less than 4,530 ... Your link shows the Ryzen 4800 is a fair bit ahead of the M1. Although I looked up the same benchmark (Cinemark R23) on a different site and it showed them nearly tied.

              No idea what's going on there, but my Ryzen 48000H system cost me $1100 and it came with a discrete, gameable GPU (RX 5600M) whereas the $1000 Apple does not. I've had it for 6 months, the price has already dropped since then. This month AMD released t

      • by pellik ( 193063 )
        TSMC wins either way.
    • It is actually quite easy to predict. Expect single core performance to be no more then 5% faster then the M1. Better cooling will facilitate a slightly faster clock rate but the core should be the same. For multi-threaded performance expect ~1.75 times faster with 8 fast cores or ~3.3 times faster for 16 fast cores.

      The unknown is the memory architecture, GPU, and PCIe lanes. The internal GPU might be excluded in favor of more CPU cores. The number of memory lanes is unknown but it is possible we se

    • by lazarus ( 2879 )

      Agreed. I think the P-series is going to be a game changer for the desktop folks who can really use it.

      Right now my concern is the complete lack of virtualization on the platform. The best you can do is an arm-based linux distro. Both Parallels and VMware have reported that they are working on a version of their platforms that will work with the Apple silicon, but I can't imagine that this isn't going to suck as there would have to be a lot of instruction set translation going on.

      I have no idea how this

    • This is just the first iteration of a mobile level chip and it's already outperforming x86 CPUs and discrete GPUs, albeit older ones.

      You have a short memory. Apple used to use PowerPC before switching to Intel. They were RISC-based and also claimed to be much more powerful than Intel CPUs...and yet Macs had a terrible market share. There was a reason that Macs took off when they switched to Intel.

    • by pellik ( 193063 )
      Apple isn't shifting any paradigms with it's m1 processor. This is just TSMC doing what they do. It's the same way with the new AMD processors that TSMC also makes and which beat the older intel stuff by an even larger margin.
  • by GregMmm ( 5115215 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @05:50PM (#60735842)

    As in most of, well anyting that is complex and new technology, I'll allow others to buy the first ones and work out the kinks.

    Simple rule for me: Never buy the first generation of technology. I've worked the back side of technology and see how they test things, or just don't...

    • I think, for a lot of people, there's just not a compelling case to be on the leading edge with new tech anymore. We've been at a point for a number of years where the performance of even relatively "old" tech outstrips what most people need.

      I can't say that I ever feel constrained writing code on this 2015 MacBook Pro, for instance.

  • I am glad to finally see a competitive ARM laptop.

    Though one day we may see the Apple MV chip, based on Risc-V, to avoid ARM royalties.

  • Is this an ad? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @05:59PM (#60735876)

    All the comments compare the M1 to the writer's own "expectations", which is meaningless. Actual objective benchmarks show it's nowhere near a decent gaming / workstation PC. Couple that with Apple's walled garden, anti-repair and anti-recycling stance, and terrible ethics, and it's a very solid "no".

  • by caseih ( 160668 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @06:01PM (#60735890)

    I hope that Apple's success with ARM will spur the rest of the ARM industry to get its act together and get ARM standardized into a complete and compatible platform that Linux and Windows can work with. Right now the ARM landscape outside of this new Apple ecosystem is quite a wasteland full of incompatible and proprietary boot systems and requiring custom kernels, device drivers, hardware trees, etc.

    When we get to the point that a person can buy an ARM laptop, server, or desktop mini PC, and then go to RedHat.com and get stock RHEL for it, or go to Fedora, Ubuntu, or Arch, and get a stock distribution for it, or even a Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft, then Intel start to find themselves in trouble. Right now they have little to worry about in the PC world, other than AMD. Except for some hobby or embedded applications, the way things are currently, I would pick an Intel or AMD CPU any day over ARM. And that includes my router firewall. I want that to change!

    It's not that ARM can't perform. It's that each ARM system is a world of its own right now. I've heard about some standards being proposed and attempted, but I've not seen much evidence of movement there. Currently most vendors are satisfied to supply binary blobs for proprietary Android installations.

    • by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @06:20PM (#60735998)

      Right now the ARM landscape outside of this new Apple ecosystem is quite a wasteland full of incompatible and proprietary boot systems and requiring custom kernels, device drivers, hardware trees, etc.

      How would a closed proprietary system from Apple produce different results here?

    • GPUs are one of the main offenders. I messed around with linux based SBCs for a while and they end up being stuck with a particular kernel and distro most of the time. The binaries just won’t play nicely with anything new and update to date. It’s a real shame and I don’t see anything fixing it.

    • by Burdell ( 228580 )

      Right now the ARM landscape outside of this new Apple ecosystem

      Congratulations! You have solved the standards problem [xkcd.com]! "this new Apple ecosystem" is just the n+1th version of how to boot ARM. And I wouldn't be surprised if Apple doesn't make it easy for other OSes to boot on their devices - we already have a good standard for booting on x86_64, UEFI... and then we have the Apple version of EFI. And if Apple doesn't care about other OSes, why would they even release sufficient hardware information to create reliable and high-performance drivers for other OSes?

  • If they can provide more performance for less money, that's great. I won't be buying one but I bet this will produce consumer-friendly pressure on MS, Intel, and AMD.
    • You forgot the sarcasm tag there. :)

      Or did you mistype "consumer-unfriendly".

      Because if they want to imitate Apple... and they usually do... sadly...

  • don't care because I don't trust
  • Do their margins go way up? If these ARM MacBook are successful, I'd definitely give an arm Linux laptop a chance too. I'm really waiting for a laptop / tablet convertible with a good desktop os interface like Ubuntu /Linux mint, then a good tablet interface like Android. (Not looking for a chrome book)
  • mac mini (Score:5, Funny)

    by encrypted ( 614135 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @06:50PM (#60736170) Homepage
    $600 extra to go from 500gb/8gb to 1tb/16gb is just stupid. Are they saying the entire rest of the system is worth $99?
  • the virge? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Osgeld ( 1900440 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @08:04PM (#60736388)

    you mean the morons that do not know the difference between a zip tie and tweezers? Yea Ill trust their "expert" opinion

  • by NimbleSquirrel ( 587564 ) on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @09:41PM (#60736558)

    ARM cores are not new, and multicore ARM CPUs are not new. What is new is the unified memory archictecture, and moving that RAM from the motherboard into the CPU package.

    In package memory may not be new (system-in-package chips are often used in low-cost, low power applications like MP3 players and cheap phones), but doing this for a large RAM sizes (8-16GB) on a high performance CPU is new. On of the most common system performance bottlenecks is memory performance. Making sure your machine has plenty of fast memory is often cheap way of improving system performance. Apple have effectively removed this bottleneck by moving the RAM in package. Apple have been doing package-on-package for several years, but moving the RAM is the next evolution. In a traditional motherboard, traces to RAM slots/chips may be tens of millimeters long (or longer). In the M1, it is tens of microns. This short distance allows the RAM to run much faster: 4.266GHz in the M1, as well as run at a much lower voltage.

    Of course the downside is that the CPU is stuck with only 8GB or 16GB or RAM and you can never upgrade. That may not be a problem in the MacBook Air and Mac Book Pro, as those have not had upgradeable RAM in a long time, but Mac Mini users will be out of luck if 16GB isn't enough for their needs.

    I do wonder what the next generation of CPUs will bring for the iMacPro and MacPro.... I cannot see them offering 32GB or more of in package RAM. Will they instead use the in-package RAM as a cache instead and have another memory controller for external RAM?

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