More discussions about Apple Silicon

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  • Matt_NI
    Matt_NI Administrator Posts: 1,106 admin

    Hey,

    Split your comments from the M1 compatibility thread to keep things on topic.

    You can keep the discussion about AMD / Intel and Silicon here.

    Thank you

  • nightjar
    nightjar Member Posts: 1,274 Guru
  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 2,772 Expert

    @Filip Hoško

    The M1 chips are great since they are performant but don't consume so much power/don't produce so much heat (I have my M1 Mac Mini now for some time and I never heard the fan - is it even there?). How are the x86 based PCs doing in this domain?

    I have AMD APU Zen7 5700G (8C/16T, cca 4 GHz all cores under full load). I cannot hear the fan. And it is squeezed to 15x15x8 cm box. I would be even better if it is made on the same process like M1, but it would make it more expensive. My setup is 64 GB RAM, 2 x 1 TB fast SSD. And cost? A bit more than 1000 EUR.

    It is stronger than M1, but weaker than M1 Pro.

    @mezzurias

    Apple doesn't need to outperform Intel or AMD. I'm not sure why you think that's their goal.

    I never said Apple needs outperform x86. Just that it needs to be aproximately on par.... I guess Apple users are not willing to have much weaker maschines than Win users....

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 2,772 Expert

    @Matt_NI

    You can keep the discussion about AMD / Intel and Silicon here.

    Good idea. Thanks.

  • Kaldosh
    Kaldosh Member Posts: 298 Advisor

    Let’s not forget the huge increase of x86 prices not following the usual evolution of the market. Apple anticipated this to keep control on its computer prices without being driven by intel cost. Pc market is now too expensive and ratio price/perf is what drives most of the consumers in the real world, M1 was a huge success being cheaper and more powerful than most high end intel laptop offering an excellent battery life which also drive consumers choice a lot. A MacBook Air was never a good choice for music makers until M1 arrived and changed the game for new comers at an unbeatable price. In fine we are at a time where any setup is good enough in terms of processing power as long as a user learn what turns a setup into chaos. Intel, AMD, Apple, all good 👍 the only thing I hope for is a more decent market becoming reasonable again…

  • Mutis
    Mutis Member Posts: 472 Pro

    It’s not about bruteforce…

  • mezzurias
    mezzurias Member Posts: 27 Helper

    On par in-terms of what? Power to performance? x86 is probably never going to be "on par" in that regard. Intel is still basically throwing more power at the problem regardless of how much little sense it makes. They just released the Alder Lake-HX chips for laptops. Sure they are fast but they also draw far more power (rated at 157W which as we know is Intel being conservative, it's way higher than that in practice), require far more cooling. I personally don't want to go back to the days where my laptop sounds like an airplane when all its doing is updating Office.

    My personal 16" MBP running a full session of Logic never even ramps up the fan. I have yet to hear the fan at all and I can run the machine all day on battery at full performance. Again you can't do that on x86 at the moment. When Intel or AMD addresses that then we can talk about being "on par". Otherwise Apple is not even playing the same game as Intel or AMD to begin with. For one Apple could focus on more specialized chips versus just focusing on single or multithreaded performance. Like for example Apple's media encoders and built in neural cores.

    Not to mention that Qualcomm is also working on their ARM based equivalent with former Apple Silicon engineers. This is all speculation but to think Apple wouldn't improve their chips performance to fit their users needs is ignoring the fact that Apple has had one of the top performing mobile chips for almost a decade.

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 2,772 Expert

    You are too focused on Intel. And I agree they were not doing well last decade, or so.

    But there is also AMD. They almost got bancrupt several years ago, but brought new Zen platform and pushed x86 way ahead.

    AMD notebook with latest Zen3+ chip is able to run 20 hours on bateries. It is up to 8C/16T CPU.

    I do not know if Zen3+ is as power efficient as M1 (Apple does not declare TDP), but it may be pretty sure. Why do you think ARM should be much more efective than x86? Little bit maybe yes, but not much....

    But there are not only notebooks or small computers. Music is pretty demanding on CPU, so also strong computers are needed. And there is not that important if one takes 10% or so, more.... Much more important is how much computing power it is able to deliver....

    And at this field Apple is not able to compete with AMD even now.

    ---------------------

    x86 is in many aspects close to RISC, like M1. It just has hardware Rosetta on top.....

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 2,772 Expert

    @Kaldosh

     Intel, AMD, Apple, all good  the only thing I hope for is a more decent market becoming reasonable again…

    Well, Intel is not very good, IMHO.... If I had to choose between Intel and M1, I would prefer M1 and Rosetta (and Windows).

  • Kaldosh
    Kaldosh Member Posts: 298 Advisor

    I tend to agree in many regards… though I purchased my setup during the huge leap of 2018 and it was amazing in terms of price/perf.. then the rates went mad and it divided the market badly and changed criterias considerably for consumers . But hey, we can live like what’s out here is not happening like we already did in the past . Thanks to Apple for its attractivity on the computer side , though there will always a downside because of something else , that has a downside because of something else etc etc. Again, I hope the market is going to be positive again and help the entire world to strive again and not only a few… the music industry seem to open that road, that’s great , but to use affordable music programs you need affordable tools. When I saw the dev community looking for what was driving the prices down, it was not that complicated to point out really. If the masses can’t buy, there is no market…just a bubble In the cloud. If the phone market continues to go crazy like that it will end up the same way I am afraid. It’s always surprising to see how old problems always come back because there is no transmission at some stage. Anyway congratulations to those who can innovate as it goes really fast now and it is all beautiful really. Life on a screen is amazing 🤩

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 2,772 Expert

    Yes, thanks to AMD, and later Apple, Intel's "four cores will do all, forever" is gone....

    I guess Intel will catch the breath. I am sure they have many improvements in a pocket. Just to place it to silicon. Part of Intel's current tragedy were problems with 10 nm technology... They were forced to use 14+++++ nm process, while others alredy used 10, 5 nm. From that fact comes Intel's CPU insanity (old technology pushed to very limits) and hungryness....

    And also the fact that they placed everything on one chip, like Apple, while AMD already have used chiplets... It makes redesign easier and production way cheaper.... Intel will switch to chiplets in next generation of CPU. Apple, who knows?

    CPU technology evolves very fast past few years. And will do at least for few more years. Apple has pushed x86 platform to focus even more on energy efficiency. Zen 3+ for notebooks shows that x86 may be competetive even in this field. Not better, worse, but pretty close.

  • nightjar
    nightjar Member Posts: 1,274 Guru

    AMD Chiplets... smart

    And Apple has UltraFusion... to make the new M1 Ultra, it combined two M1 Max's.

    Groundbreaking UltraFusion Architecture

    The foundation for M1 Ultra is the extremely powerful and power-efficient M1 Max. To build M1 Ultra, the die of two M1 Max are connected using UltraFusion, Apple’s custom-built packaging architecture. The most common way to scale performance is to connect two chips through a motherboard, which typically brings significant trade-offs, including increased latency, reduced bandwidth, and increased power consumption. However, Apple’s innovative UltraFusion uses a silicon interposer that connects the chips across more than 10,000 signals, providing a massive 2.5TB/s of low latency, inter-processor bandwidth — more than 4x the bandwidth of the leading multi-chip interconnect technology. This enables M1 Ultra to behave and be recognized by software as one chip, so developers don’t need to rewrite code to take advantage of its performance. There’s never been anything like it.

  • Fordela
    Fordela Member Posts: 5 Newcomer

    I don't understand anything you say, the arm architecture is the next step, less energy consumption, same processing power, and I just came to this forum to complain, since my macbook pro (m1 pro) has problems with maschine and it crashes Randomly, I don't know what preference towards apple silicon you are talking about, because both in windows and in apple, there are many failures of the native software, and I have both, a pc with ryzen 5600x and I must say that it even works better in windows.

  • mezzurias
    mezzurias Member Posts: 27 Helper
    edited May 2022

    No you are too focused on some made up narrative about Apple not being able to compete with x86. Considering no one knows what M2 or M3 or whatever will perform like I find it funny that you are making these statement based on thin air.

    Your assertion that Apple can't compete with Zen3+ is based on what? Benchmarks show that Apple is in-fact competitive with AMD's chips and it does it at lower clock speed (M1 Max is 3.3Ghz, vs 4.4Ghz on AMDs chips) and lower power usage. On average the 5900H only beats an M1 Max by 5% using significantly more power to do so.

    You say Apple can't compete with AMD/x86 but provide no numbers or benchmarks to back it up. Owning both I can pretty much debunk this. M1 perform really well in music apps does so quietly can do it all day. AMD can't do that. Period.

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 2,772 Expert

    5700G works with audio like charm, is silent and visibly stronger than M1. Period. And also cheaper.

    5900H (Zen3) is not the latest AMD. It is 6xxx (Zen3+).

    AS uses lower frequency than AMD or Intel. It brings lower consumption, but it cost considerably more silicon. And lower power consumption of AS is also due to the fact it uses more advanced process, which is considerably more expensive.

    So OK, Apple has a chip that draws less energy, but the cost is it needs more silicon and more advanced and more expensive process. And everything is on one chip, which makes production even more expensive.

    If Apple would sell AS chips they would be way too expensive comparing to x86. I guess only few folks would be willing to pay so much just to save a bit electricity.

    Apple users are acustomed that Apple products cost quite a bit, so no real problem with expensive CPU in this user segment.

    Concerning M2. Apple does not publish its roadmaps. I have investigated pages of Apple fans, their guesses seemed to me be sound. We will see soon, if the guesses were correct.

    By saying Apple most probably cannot compete with AMD and Intel I speak about foreseen future, not about now. M1 is OK, just its production is somewhat expensive.

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