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Apple Silicon M1 chip in MacBook Air outperforms high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro

(www.macrumors.com)
1080 points antipaul | 5 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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WoodenChair ◴[12 Nov 20 01:47 UTC] No.25065476[source]▶
Their line from the video about being the highest performance chip in single core appears to be true. This is of course a synthetic benchmark but the single core result is very promising. Note that the single core and multi core scores exceed the top-of-the-line 16” MacBook Pro (9th generation 8-core i9 2.4 ghz). I actually made the call to sell my 16” for the new Air yesterday. It’s looking like a good call. Glad I’m selling my 16” while it still has some value.

You can see all Air results so far here: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/search?q=MacBookAir10%2...

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S_A_P ◴[12 Nov 20 02:02 UTC] No.25065571[source]▶
Damnit I have to decide the same thing. I’m really happy with my 16” mbp for once and I’m not sure if I want to get a smaller screen and give up windows support (for now) I feel like Ms could be convinced to make a version for Apple silicone if it keeps its performance advantage.
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minxomat ◴[12 Nov 20 02:05 UTC] No.25065590[source]▶
Good news is Parallels announced a closer colab with Apple to bring x86 virt to M1, too. They demo'd Parallels running a linux VM at WWDC, but the upcoming release will also support seamless Windows virt again.
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LeoPanthera ◴[12 Nov 20 02:06 UTC] No.25065599[source]▶
That demo shows an ARM VM with Linux for ARM running inside it. There have been no announcements or demos of Intel emulation, besides Rosetta 2.
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minxomat ◴[12 Nov 20 02:10 UTC] No.25065625{3}[source]▶
Parallels announced a full version of Parallels Desktop (which is the Win-on-macOS product) at the same time as the event on Nov 10: https://www.parallels.com/blogs/parallels-desktop-apple-sili...
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LeoPanthera ◴[12 Nov 20 02:47 UTC] No.25065854{4}[source]▶
That PR doesn't actually say anything about running Windows. You can't just port the app. A VM on an ARM system is still ARM inside, and given that the PR specifically mentions "support of x64 applications in Windows on ARM", this is clearly for ARM VMs. You'd need actual Intel emulation in order to run the normal version of Windows.
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1. terramex ◴[12 Nov 20 02:58 UTC] No.25065919{5}[source]▶
> You'd need actual Intel emulation in order to run the normal version of Windows.

Microsoft is working on enabling x64 emulation on ARM, it should roll out in preview this month[1]. I can see Windows 10 ARM-edition working inside Parallels with its own x64 emulation inside. The issue right now is that MS does not sell Win 10 ARM, it is available for OEMs only.

x86 emulation on Windows 10 ARM was already done few years ago, when MS shipped their Surface ARM notebook.

[1] https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2020/09/30/now-m...

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2. cbsks ◴[12 Nov 20 04:30 UTC] No.25066459[source]▶
X64 apps running in a emulator, running on ARM64 Windows, running virtualized in ARM64 MacOS. What is the world coming to??
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3. tonyedgecombe ◴[12 Nov 20 05:59 UTC] No.25066938[source]▶
At least it doesn't involve Electron.
4. soneil ◴[12 Nov 20 11:44 UTC] No.25068783[source]▶
That actually seems more logical than the alternatives.

One of the big hopes for Rosetta2 is the possibility of intercepting library calls and passing them to the native library where possible. So a well-behaved app using OS libraries for everything it can, and really only driving the business logic itself, would be running mostly-native with the business logic emulated/translated.

(This is hopes/dreams/speculation with no insider knowledge.)

If Windows could do the same, then letting windows-arm do the translation of windows-x86/64 binaries would allow it to leverage windows-arm libraries - so an app could be running in mostly-virt with some-emu. If we let parallels/qemu/etc do the emu, it can only ever be 100% emu.

5. my123 ◴[12 Nov 20 12:21 UTC] No.25069034[source]▶
The VHDX for Windows 10 on Arm inside of virtual machines can be downloaded at: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windowsins... as part of the Insider program.