←back to thread

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

(www.macrumors.com)
1080 points antipaul | 7 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 1.037s | source | bottom
Show context
mcintyre1994 ◴[12 Nov 20 07:21 UTC] No.25067338[source]▶
> The M1 chip, which belongs to a MacBook Air with 8GB RAM, features a single-core score of 1687 and a multi-core score of 7433. According to the benchmark, the M1 has a 3.2GHz base frequency.

> The Mac mini with M1 chip that was benchmarked earned a single-core score of 1682 and a multi-core score of 7067.

> Update: There's also a benchmark for the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1 chip and 16GB RAM that has a single-core score of 1714 and a multi-core score of 6802. Like the MacBook Air , it has a 3.2GHz base frequency.

So single core we have: Air 1687, Mini 1682, Pro 1714

And multi core we have: Air 7433, Mini 7067, Pro 6802

I’m not sure what to make of these scores, but it seems wrong that the Mini and Pro significantly underperform the Air in multi core. I find it hard to imagine this benchmark is going to be representative of actual usage given the way the products are positioned, which makes it hard to know how seriously to take the comparisons to other products too.

> When compared to existing devices, the M1 chip in the MacBook Air outperforms all iOS devices. For comparison's sake, the iPhone 12 Pro earned a single-core score of 1584 and a multi-core score of 3898, while the highest ranked iOS device on Geekbench's charts, the A14 iPad Air, earned a single-core score of 1585 and a multi-core score of 4647.

This seems a bit odd too - the A14 iPad Air outperforms all iPad Pro devices?

replies(14): >>25067412 #>>25067414 #>>25067435 #>>25067467 #>>25067719 #>>25067879 #>>25067931 #>>25068427 #>>25068698 #>>25068977 #>>25069217 #>>25069354 #>>25070019 #>>25071266 #
throwaway4good ◴[12 Nov 20 08:30 UTC] No.25067719[source]▶
The results seem a little weird but if remotely true then these machines are going to sell like cup cakes.

Why would anyone (who is not forced) buy an Intel PC laptop when these are available and priced as competitive as they are?

replies(19): >>25067752 #>>25067760 #>>25067775 #>>25067789 #>>25067856 #>>25067866 #>>25067936 #>>25067945 #>>25067976 #>>25068118 #>>25068189 #>>25068589 #>>25068695 #>>25068781 #>>25069148 #>>25070670 #>>25071421 #>>25072755 #>>25074611 #
martin_bech ◴[12 Nov 20 08:42 UTC] No.25067775[source]▶
I was going to add you cant do Android development on these, as you need Android Studio, but that seems to be on the way — Support for Apple Silicon is in progress
replies(2): >>25067791 #>>25069435 #
throwaway4good ◴[12 Nov 20 08:46 UTC] No.25067791[source]▶
I assume they have the OpenJDK JVM ported at this point so all of JetBrains' products should be working or close to working.
replies(3): >>25067937 #>>25068226 #>>25068480 #
1. dutchmartin ◴[12 Nov 20 09:08 UTC] No.25067937[source]▶
They have to make the claim ‘millions of devices run Java true’. But anyway. A lot of programming languages are going to have to support Arm now. Interpreters for like php and js must be cross-compiled and then most things can work. Like Rust just brought their arm support to the tier 1 support level, see https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/2959
replies(2): >>25068305 #>>25069314 #
2. Liquid_Fire ◴[12 Nov 20 10:06 UTC] No.25068305[source]▶
Most popular languages have supported Arm for many years already, on Linux (and more recently, some of them on Android and iOS).

> Rust just brought their arm support to the tier 1 support level

(for Linux)

replies(1): >>25068533 #
3. fulafel ◴[12 Nov 20 10:48 UTC] No.25068533[source]▶
Yep, most things were ported in the first wave of linux arm enthusiasm around the netwinder/ipaq craze 20 years ago.
replies(1): >>25069465 #
4. shepmaster ◴[12 Nov 20 12:55 UTC] No.25069314[source]▶
And I’ve been getting Rust to work on Apple Silicon. It’s only tier 2 for now, but that’s mostly because there are no CI providers so we can’t automatically run tests for it. I’ve been running them by hand.

https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/73908

5. cesarb ◴[12 Nov 20 13:14 UTC] No.25069465{3}[source]▶
The "netwinder/ipaq craze 20 years ago" would be 32-bit ARM (AArch32), while AFAIK this new chip is 64-bit ARM (AArch64); everything has to be ported again to this new ISA (though yeah, most things were already ported for Linux on AArch64).
replies(2): >>25070970 #>>25071010 #
6. ◴[12 Nov 20 15:38 UTC] No.25070970{4}[source]▶
7. fulafel ◴[12 Nov 20 15:42 UTC] No.25071010{4}[source]▶
Yep, in the intervening time ARM on Linux became popular enough that doing the required compiler backend work for 64-bit ARM in GCC, LLVM etc by commercial interests was a given, there was eg a big push for ARM on servers from various vendors. MS even ported Windows Server. Eg Hotspot/OpenJDK was ported in 2015.