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

    (www.macrumors.com)
    1080 points antipaul | 23 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 1.417s | source | bottom
    1. andy_threos_io ◴[12 Nov 20 04:34 UTC] No.25066484[source]▶
    Can somebody explain how is M1 going to work on larger GPU tasks (rendering, encoding etc) with it's memory bandwidth M1 total memory bandwidth is 68.2 GB/s (128 bit LPDDR4x-4267)

    AMD Radeon Pro 5600m memory bandwidth is 394.2 GB/s (2048 bit HBM2)

    https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-pro-5600m.c3612

    replies(5): >>25066523 #>>25066548 #>>25066569 #>>25066693 #>>25067438 #
    2. gjsman-1000 ◴[12 Nov 20 04:42 UTC] No.25066523[source]▶
    It's not clear, but here's some knowledgeable speculation:

    - All M1 models only have 1 Thunderbolt Controller, thus can only handle 2 Thunderbolt ports on all announced models so far.

    - All M1 models only support 1 monitor, but up to 6K.

    - No M1 model supports >16GB of RAM or 10GB Ethernet.

    All of the above seem like bandwidth limitations to save cost that a future "M1X" or "M2" or "X1" would be extremely likely to fix, and that's where you'll see the bandwidth increase.

    replies(3): >>25066573 #>>25066584 #>>25066906 #
    3. PragmaticPulp ◴[12 Nov 20 04:46 UTC] No.25066548[source]▶
    You can buy an entire M1-based Mac Mini for the price of the 5600M upgrade cost over a base MacBook Pro (5600M is a $700 upgrade over base configuration).

    It's an apples and oranges comparison. The M1 GPU is an integrated solution targeted at the cheapest Macs. The 5600M is external GPU targeted at $4000+ top of the line Macs.

    There's no reason that higher end Apple silicon machines can't also use external GPUs like the 5600M (after development, of course).

    4. baybal2 ◴[12 Nov 20 04:51 UTC] No.25066569[source]▶
    68.2GB/s is a ton of bandwidth.

    Actually, very, very few tasks on a desktop can stress a CPU enough to saturate the bandwidth on a single task.

    Proper HPC programs written to have absolutely zero cache misses can. A javascript eating 1GB of RAM to show some text, and pictures, cannot.

    replies(2): >>25067077 #>>25068391 #
    5. Steko ◴[12 Nov 20 04:52 UTC] No.25066573[source]▶
    The Mac Mini supports two monitors one 6K and one 4K.

    https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/

    replies(1): >>25066786 #
    6. fludlight ◴[12 Nov 20 04:55 UTC] No.25066584[source]▶
    Is there a legitimate laptop purpose that requires 10GB internet? If so, how niche is that purpose?
    replies(5): >>25066788 #>>25066803 #>>25066805 #>>25067494 #>>25069087 #
    7. wmf ◴[12 Nov 20 05:12 UTC] No.25066693[source]▶
    The M1 will work as well as Tiger Lake or Renoir which have the same bandwidth and acceptable (not great) GPU performance.
    8. maxyme ◴[12 Nov 20 05:32 UTC] No.25066786{3}[source]▶
    If you count the display in the macbook that's the same number of screens
    replies(1): >>25067166 #
    9. russler23 ◴[12 Nov 20 05:33 UTC] No.25066788{3}[source]▶
    Ethernet ≠ Internet
    10. geerlingguy ◴[12 Nov 20 05:36 UTC] No.25066803{3}[source]▶
    More the Mac mini, which had built in 10G as an option in prior generations.

    For laptops, you can use an external dongle. It has its uses, like for a NAS on a 10G network for video or other data-intense work.

    11. the_lucifer ◴[12 Nov 20 05:36 UTC] No.25066805{3}[source]▶
    Well, the older Mini that the M1 Mini replaces has 10Gb Ethernet. That being said, there's no modern MacBook that has 10Gb Ethernet anyways. Cannot that port be added over Thunderbolt 3/USB 4 based dongle?
    12. desmap ◴[12 Nov 20 05:54 UTC] No.25066906[source]▶
    > - All M1 models only support 1 monitor, but up to 6K.

    Where did you find this? In the Macbook Pro 13 landing page I find the specs per Thunderbolt port which states the display capabilities for each while not restricting anywhere to just one monitor.

    So I'd would expect 1x monitor per Thunderbolt port leading to total 3 displays for the Pro ARM model: one internal and two external displays. I assume the restriction you refer to just applies to the Air model.

    replies(1): >>25067147 #
    13. ◴[12 Nov 20 06:32 UTC] No.25067077[source]▶
    14. Ndymium ◴[12 Nov 20 06:44 UTC] No.25067147{3}[source]▶
    In the tech specs page, under "Video Support":

    > Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at millions of colors and:

    >

    > One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz

    Source: https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-13/specs/

    replies(1): >>25067816 #
    15. fastball ◴[12 Nov 20 06:49 UTC] No.25067166{4}[source]▶
    So if the Macbook is closed can you drive two?
    replies(1): >>25067741 #
    16. tedd4u ◴[12 Nov 20 07:38 UTC] No.25067438[source]▶
    They were waving their hands around a bit saying that in addition to on-package RAM with high bandwidth, they have done optimizations inside driver, OS and APIs to eliminate 1 or even 2 or more RAM to RAM copies for common tasks. So maybe there is a higher effective bandwidth when comparing to Wintel machines. It was very vague. Would love to read a detailed article comparing the systems.
    replies(1): >>25083718 #
    17. jmnicolas ◴[12 Nov 20 07:48 UTC] No.25067494{3}[source]▶
    I have about 20TB of data on several external hard disks / nas / machines. Due to some disks failures I had to move these data and believe me I wish I had 10GB Ethernet so that transfers don't take literally days.
    18. JohnBooty ◴[12 Nov 20 08:35 UTC] No.25067741{5}[source]▶
    Theoretically yes (the M1 Mac Mini supports two external) but it's unknown whether the capability to disable the built in display is actually exposed.

    You can disable the built in display on (some?) Intel MBPs via `sudo nvram boot-args="niog=1"` according to another poster. Whether this is supported on M1's remains to be seen.

    19. desmap ◴[12 Nov 20 08:50 UTC] No.25067816{4}[source]▶
    Ok thanks and this is really quite a bummer.
    20. andy_threos_io ◴[12 Nov 20 10:21 UTC] No.25068391[source]▶
    I asked about GPU workloads the bandwidths are 394.2 GB/s > 68.2 GB/s (5.78 times)

    And even the raw GPU processing power AMD Radeon Pro 5600M is 5.274 TFLOPS vs M1 as Apple rated 2.6 TFLOPS

    It's a downgrade in GPU processing power for the user.

    replies(1): >>25071220 #
    21. soneil ◴[12 Nov 20 12:29 UTC] No.25069087{3}[source]▶
    It makes a huge difference for networked storage. For some rough equivalency (ignoring seek times, but also ignoring tcp overheads etc, total spherical cow territory)

    - An 8x cdrom narrowly beats 10meg ethernet.

    - 1x dvdrom narrowly beats 100meg ethernet.

    - ATA133 narrowly beats 1gbit ethernet.

    Original SATA is 1.5gbit, so 1Gbit ether bottlenecks us to 1999 storage speeds.

    22. baybal2 ◴[12 Nov 20 16:02 UTC] No.25071220{3}[source]▶
    Yes, but for computational, non gaming tasks, it barely is.
    23. wmf ◴[13 Nov 20 16:11 UTC] No.25083718[source]▶
    Intel and AMD theoretically also support zero-copy but I wonder if it gets used in reality since most apps are probably optimized for discrete GPUs.