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

(www.macrumors.com)
1080 points antipaul | 1 comments | 12 Nov 20 00:56 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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zdw ◴[12 Nov 20 04:30 UTC] No.25066465[source]▶
AMD's Zen 3 (Ryzen 5xxx series) are beating the Apple M1 in single core score: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/singlecore

As another datapoint Ian (of Anandtech) estimated that the M1 would need to be clocked at 3.25Ghz to match Zen 3, and these systems are showing a 3.2Ghz clock: https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/1326516048309460992

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whalesalad ◴[12 Nov 20 04:41 UTC] No.25066520[source]▶
The M1 is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s an MVP desktop arm chip.

M2, M3... that is when I think we will see stellar performance against things like Ryzen.

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gjsman-1000 ◴[12 Nov 20 04:43 UTC] No.25066527[source]▶
It'll be sooner than that. Just wait for "M1X" or "X1" or whatever Apple calls the increased-bandwidth variant that goes into their 16-inch model and desktops.
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whalesalad ◴[12 Nov 20 04:51 UTC] No.25066568{3}[source]▶
Sure, call it what you want. This is the beta product. It’ll be buggy. It won’t be full throttle.

I’m excited for whatever is next.

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alwillis ◴[12 Nov 20 05:37 UTC] No.25066810{4}[source]▶
This is the beta product. It’ll be buggy.

Doubtful. You know they've been using ARM-based Macs with the requisite version of macOS for at least a year inside of Apple.

They've done a processor transition two other times; unlike the last two times, this time Apple controls the entire stack, which wasn't the case going from 68K to PowerPC or from PowerPC to Intel.

Apple has been designing their own processors for a decade now. There's nothing in the smartphone/tablet market that even comes close to the performance of the A series in the iPhone and iPad; there's no reason to believe this will be any different.

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viraptor ◴[12 Nov 20 07:42 UTC] No.25067464{5}[source]▶
Even if it's used internally it doesn't mean it's not beta/buggy. Intel releases regular microcode patches and has issues with all their existing experience. This is apple's v1 which was in the pipeline for over a year. The designers are likely months into working on v2 already - that cycle is very long.

"Don't upgrade MacOS to x.0 version" is already a common idea. Why would it be any different for their hardware?

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deergomoo ◴[12 Nov 20 12:36 UTC] No.25069150{6}[source]▶
They've been making ARM CPUs for 10 years. They're not new to the game, this is just the first time they're in non-mobile devices.
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1. viraptor ◴[12 Nov 20 20:39 UTC] No.25074649{7}[source]▶
And I expect it's a big enough change. (I may be wrong. We'll see)