←back to thread

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: 0.277s | source
Show context
maz1b ◴[12 Nov 20 02:16 UTC] No.25065664[source]▶
This is pretty crazy to see, even if the full story isn't clear yet. A base level MacBook Air is taking the crown of the best MacBook Pro. Wow. SVP Johny Srouji and all of the Apple hardware + silicon team have been smashing it for the past many years.

For what it's worth, I have a fully specced out 16 inch MacBook Pro with the AMD Radeon Pro 5600m and even with that I'm regularly hitting 100% usage of the card, and not to mention the fan noise.

Looking forward to a version from Apple that is made for actual professionals, but I imagine these introductory M1 based devices are going to be great for the vast majority of people.

replies(6): >>25065838 #>>25066040 #>>25066161 #>>25066381 #>>25067539 #>>25074822 #
martinald ◴[12 Nov 20 02:45 UTC] No.25065838[source]▶
Surely a version that can beat a 8 core Xeon is made for 'actual professionals'?
replies(3): >>25065858 #>>25065866 #>>25065870 #
kalleboo ◴[12 Nov 20 02:48 UTC] No.25065858[source]▶
It still has a lot of limitations that matter to many pros - max 16 GB of RAM, max 2 displays (only 1 external for laptops), only enough PCIe lanes to support 2 thunderbolt ports. eGPUs aren't supported either, but hopefully that is a software thing that will be fixed.

It will be very interesting to see what the performance will be of the more "pro" chip that overcomes those limitations that they'd put in the 16" and iMacs

replies(4): >>25066109 #>>25066390 #>>25066519 #>>25066601 #
1. simcop2387 ◴[12 Nov 20 04:57 UTC] No.25066601[source]▶
eGPU support will depend on if they have a way to work around the need for a PCIe I/O BAR. Many GPUs require that to initialize and as far as I know no ARM cpus support it since it's a legacy-ish x86 thing. It'll be the same problem that prevents gpu use on raspberry pi 4s still. I bet you can make a controller that'll provide a mapping for that to allow it but that'll mean needing a new enclosure (probably not a huge deal) and new silicon and drivers.
replies(3): >>25067436 #>>25068351 #>>25069145 #
2. dwaite ◴[12 Nov 20 07:37 UTC] No.25067436[source]▶
I don't quite get how Apple could claim to be Thunderbolt-compatible with this sort of limitation in hardware, though.
replies(1): >>25067877 #
3. djxfade ◴[12 Nov 20 08:59 UTC] No.25067877[source]▶
It's not a limitation in hardware. It's a legacy feature of the x86 that isn't supported on ARM.

This could be solved by the GPU engineers by removing the legacy compatibility. "Nobody" boots a modern PC from BIOS anymore

4. SXX ◴[12 Nov 20 10:16 UTC] No.25068351[source]▶
AMD GPUs work just fine with POWER8 hardware so this is certainly solved.
5. marcan_42 ◴[12 Nov 20 12:36 UTC] No.25069145[source]▶
AMD GPUs do not require I/O BARs, and highly doubt Nvidia ones do either. The VBIOS will probably assume it can use it, but most modern cards can be initialized without actually running the VBIOS (because people use them on headless servers, for virtualization, and things like that). The I/O BAR is only required for legacy VGA compatibility, you can ignore it.