[erik-engheim.medium.com]

It's a pretty long write-up and quite technical so most of it went over my head, but interesting nonetheless, esp. for those of you who can understand everything the author is talking about

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My music blog: [www.auditorymusings.net]


The Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/2020 01:47PM by pinkoos.

Thanks! Buddy & I were just wondering why Intel & AMD are so far behind.

The CPU game has been disrupted.

Some of this is quite reminiscent of the original Amiga, or the Mac IIfx - heterogeneous CPUs dedicated to different key computer functions. In both cases, those hardware designs WERE faster but were also far too expensive for the consumer markets.

The M1 seems to have solved the cost function by SOC design at scale.

Before reading, my guesses:

1. Apple has really been refining this chip design for more than a decade.
2. Combination of low power and high power cores
3. Tight OS/hardware integration.
4. Tight integration of CPU/GPU/RAM on SOC

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bhaveshp
Thanks! Buddy & I were just wondering why Intel & AMD are so far behind.

The CPU game has been disrupted.

FLAWLESS VICTORY!

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It is what it is.

Nah, I missed it. Really good read, not quite over my head.

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anonymouse1
Before reading, my guesses:

1. Apple has really been refining this chip design for more than a decade.
2. Combination of low power and high power cores
3. Tight OS/hardware integration.
4. Tight integration of CPU/GPU/RAM on SOC

Saw this headline today:

AWS engineer puts Windows 10 on Arm on Apple Mac M1 – and it thrashes Surface Pro X

Quote

Windows on an M1 got a single-core score of 1,288 and multi-core score of 5,685 whereas the Surface Pro X's scores were roughly 800 and 3,000 in those respective benchmarks. Per MSpoweruser, the Surface Pro X benchmark was made using the SQ2 Arm-based chip that was co-developed by Qualcomm and Microsoft for Microsoft's latest Surface Pro X computers.

Yikes. That’s (math...math) 61% faster on the M1 than on the latest Qualcomm/MSFT chip, likely optimized for Windows.

Quote
pdq
Saw this headline today:

AWS engineer puts Windows 10 on Arm on Apple Mac M1 – and it thrashes Surface Pro X

Quote

Windows on an M1 got a single-core score of 1,288 and multi-core score of 5,685 whereas the Surface Pro X's scores were roughly 800 and 3,000 in those respective benchmarks. Per MSpoweruser, the Surface Pro X benchmark was made using the SQ2 Arm-based chip that was co-developed by Qualcomm and Microsoft for Microsoft's latest Surface Pro X computers.

Yikes. That’s (math...math) 61% faster on the M1 than on the latest Qualcomm/MSFT chip, likely optimized for Windows.

Out of nowhere (or rather a number of acquisitions and R&D) Apple has just completely blown by every competitor in one single product release. Makes you wonder who was the brainchild of this idea. It obviously took years and years of careful planning, development, design, and production to be able to pull this off.

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C(-)ris
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Throwback Thursday Signature:

Quote
C(-)ris

Quote
pdq
Saw this headline today:

AWS engineer puts Windows 10 on Arm on Apple Mac M1 – and it thrashes Surface Pro X

Quote

Windows on an M1 got a single-core score of 1,288 and multi-core score of 5,685 whereas the Surface Pro X's scores were roughly 800 and 3,000 in those respective benchmarks. Per MSpoweruser, the Surface Pro X benchmark was made using the SQ2 Arm-based chip that was co-developed by Qualcomm and Microsoft for Microsoft's latest Surface Pro X computers.

Yikes. That’s (math...math) 61% faster on the M1 than on the latest Qualcomm/MSFT chip, likely optimized for Windows.

Out of nowhere (or rather a number of acquisitions and R&D) Apple has just completely blown by every competitor in one single product release. Makes you wonder who was the brainchild of this idea. It obviously took years and years of careful planning, development, design, and production to be able to pull this off.

It was probably Steve Jobs that pushed this.

Quote
macphanatic

Quote
C(-)ris

Quote
pdq
Saw this headline today:

AWS engineer puts Windows 10 on Arm on Apple Mac M1 – and it thrashes Surface Pro X

Quote

Windows on an M1 got a single-core score of 1,288 and multi-core score of 5,685 whereas the Surface Pro X's scores were roughly 800 and 3,000 in those respective benchmarks. Per MSpoweruser, the Surface Pro X benchmark was made using the SQ2 Arm-based chip that was co-developed by Qualcomm and Microsoft for Microsoft's latest Surface Pro X computers.

Yikes. That’s (math...math) 61% faster on the M1 than on the latest Qualcomm/MSFT chip, likely optimized for Windows.

Out of nowhere (or rather a number of acquisitions and R&D) Apple has just completely blown by every competitor in one single product release. Makes you wonder who was the brainchild of this idea. It obviously took years and years of careful planning, development, design, and production to be able to pull this off.

It was probably Steve Jobs that pushed this.

Could very well have been. They bought PA Semi in 2008. That is one heck of a long game.

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C(-)ris
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Throwback Thursday Signature:

The article seems to gloss over a couple of important points. One, is that Apple and the hardware/software engineers at AIM (Apple/IBM/Motorola alliance) had a lot of prior experience with implementing a RISC ISA. Two, is that Apple worked very hard to remove an abstraction layer when writing code for the iPhone. I don't know exactly how it should be described (if they combined machine and assembly, or combined assembly and HLL) but they removed an abstraction layer and that can speed up execution by over 50%.

AMD just announced a feature where the CPU and GPU can directly share memory like the Unified Memory on the Apple M1 SoC. It will take a while for M$ and app/game developers to take advantage of it.

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In tha 360. MRF User Map

So.... it's magic, right?

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It is what it is.

Quote
C(-)ris

Quote
macphanatic

Quote
C(-)ris

Quote
pdq
Saw this headline today:

AWS engineer puts Windows 10 on Arm on Apple Mac M1 – and it thrashes Surface Pro X

Quote

Windows on an M1 got a single-core score of 1,288 and multi-core score of 5,685 whereas the Surface Pro X's scores were roughly 800 and 3,000 in those respective benchmarks. Per MSpoweruser, the Surface Pro X benchmark was made using the SQ2 Arm-based chip that was co-developed by Qualcomm and Microsoft for Microsoft's latest Surface Pro X computers.

Yikes. That’s (math...math) 61% faster on the M1 than on the latest Qualcomm/MSFT chip, likely optimized for Windows.

Out of nowhere (or rather a number of acquisitions and R&D) Apple has just completely blown by every competitor in one single product release. Makes you wonder who was the brainchild of this idea. It obviously took years and years of careful planning, development, design, and production to be able to pull this off.

It was probably Steve Jobs that pushed this.

Could very well have been. They bought PA Semi in 2008. That is one heck of a long game.

Far more likely they bought it to advance iPhone/iPad processor development.

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It is what it is.

Apple’s original long game was to dump the Mac for the iPad. But when it was clear the Mac had a long tail - and the iPad wasn’t going to be a true developer environment for years to come - they flipped to plan C.

Plan B was counting on Intel to make competitive Mac processors. Apple ended this plan when Intel couldn’t deliver 10nm chips when Apple was shipping 7nm A-series chips. The writing was on the wall.

Plan C is now owning the Mac as a real future for Apple.

I am excited by this possibility. The first new energy for my favorite digital tool since the launch of Intel Macs.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2020 07:55AM by sekker.

My explanation for the increase speed: shorter wires inside.

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M1 2020 Mac mini (16G 2T) • Ventura 13.x • Dual 25" Acer 1440p LCDs • M1 2020 13" MBAir (256G 8G) •

Quote
C(-)ris
Out of nowhere (or rather a number of acquisitions and R&D) Apple has just completely blown by every competitor in one single product release. Makes you wonder who was the brainchild of this idea. It obviously took years and years of careful planning, development, design, and production to be able to pull this off.

It is not one single release. Their first 64 bit CPU was the iPhone 5S with the A7 in September 2013. It was about this time that Intel had been failing for a couple of years to get a true 64 bit mobile processor. Their first real semi-competitive product was the Core M in the 12 inch Macbook in march 2015.

In a quick look at Geekbench 5 results, the A12x scores 1116 at 2.5 GHz (446 per GHz), the M1 scores 1640 at 3.2 GHz (512 per GHz). This is a 15% improvement per clock. It is very good but some of the previous generations had very similar increases IIRC.

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In tha 360. MRF User Map

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tuqqer
My explanation for the increase speed: shorter wires inside.

Don’t know if you’re being sarcastic, but it’s true; when you’re talking about a CPU going at 3 GHz, light (or electronic signals) can only travel a few inches per CPU cycle; it’s my understanding that’s one of the reasons why Apple is putting the RAM on the same package as the M1 chip rather than across the motherboard somewhere.

If (and/or when) the clock speed race resumes, I would guess they might have to put the RAM on the same die.