←back to thread

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

(www.macrumors.com)
1080 points antipaul | 9 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | 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 #
pjmlp ◴[12 Nov 20 09:53 UTC] No.25068226[source]▶
Azul and Microsoft are doing the port.
replies(1): >>25068502 #
1. ayewo ◴[12 Nov 20 10:41 UTC] No.25068502[source]▶
IIRC, Azul is a hardware vendor for the JVM ... can you please share a public source on this collaboration between Azul & Microsoft?
replies(3): >>25068736 #>>25069219 #>>25074381 #
2. dkersten ◴[12 Nov 20 11:34 UTC] No.25068736[source]▶
I don’t think Azul have sold hardware in a few years. Their current offerings, Zing and Zulu, are cross platform JVMs and don’t appear to be sold with any hardware.
replies(1): >>25069274 #
3. pjmlp ◴[12 Nov 20 12:45 UTC] No.25069219[source]▶
Sure, here sparing you the effort to learn how to use Google or whatever search engine you like using.

https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/09/microsoft-windows-mac-arm...

replies(1): >>25071538 #
4. ghaff ◴[12 Nov 20 12:52 UTC] No.25069274[source]▶
Azul was originally a hardware vendor with Java-optimized silicon. They haven't sold hardware AFAIK for probably over a decade.
replies(1): >>25070369 #
5. dkersten ◴[12 Nov 20 14:42 UTC] No.25070369{3}[source]▶
Yes, they used to have hardware with a ton of cores/cpu's and large amounts of RAM if I remember correctly.
replies(1): >>25070651 #
6. ghaff ◴[12 Nov 20 15:08 UTC] No.25070651{4}[source]▶
Yeah, it was around the time that thread-level parallelism was getting a lot of love. As I recall, they had some massive number of cores directly connected to each other and garbage collection at least partly in hardware. They got burned for pretty much the same reason a lot of the other custom CPU hardware of the time got burned; if you could just wait for Intel to double performance in a couple years it wasn't really worth going with some one-off design for a temporary advantage.
7. ayewo ◴[12 Nov 20 16:31 UTC] No.25071538[source]▶
Thanks for the link but there was no need for you to be patronizing about it.

FWIW, I originally thought your mention of Azul was a typo, so I parsed your comment as "Azure and Microsoft" before I realized the tautology, which was why I posted the question. I didn't realize that Azul had pivoted to be a software-based vendor of the JVM.

replies(1): >>25074570 #
8. frant-hartm ◴[12 Nov 20 20:19 UTC] No.25074381[source]▶
This is the actual JEP https://openjdk.java.net/jeps/391.

This is an early access build from today https://github.com/microsoft/openjdk-aarch64/releases/tag/16...

9. pjmlp ◴[12 Nov 20 20:33 UTC] No.25074570{3}[source]▶
I answered like that because of what looked like a snarky comment.