Apple M1 ARM Performance With A 2020 Mac Mini

[Jumbotron]

Not only that but once Windows for ARM was running on the ARM M1 Mac he was able to then run x86 Windows programs as well. And he says the performance is pretty zippy. Here's a snippet from the article....


Developer Alexander Graf, however, took to Twitter today to share his achievement: successfully being able to virtualize ARM Windows on Apple Silicon.
Who said Windows wouldn't run well on #AppleSilicon? It's pretty snappy here 😁. #QEMU patches for reference: https://t.co/qLQpZgBIqI pic.twitter.com/G1Usx4TcvL

— Alexander Graf (@_AlexGraf) November 26, 2020
Note that he was able to virtualize the ARM version of Windows and not the x86 version. Virtualizing an x86 version of Windows might have been much difficult as compared to the ARM version as Apple’s M1 chip has a 64-bit ARM architecture.

Although, Graf also mentions in one of his tweets that “Windows ARM64 can run x86 applications really well. It’s not as fast as Rosetta 2, but close.”

He was able to achieve this by running the Windows ARM64 Insider Preview by virtualizing it through the Hypervisor.framework. This framework allows users to interact with virtualization technologies in user space without having to write kernel extensions (KEXTs), according to Apple.

Moreover, this wouldn’t have been possible without applying a custom patch to the QEMU virtualizer. QEMU is an open-source machine emulator and virtualizer. It’s known for “achieving near-native performance” by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU. So it goes without saying that only ARM guests can be perfectly virtualized on an ARM machine like the M1-supported Macs.

Below you will find links to the entire article on The 8-Bit along with the link to his patches to QEMU and his Twitter feed detailing further things about his accomplishment.


https://the8-bit.com/developer-succe...on-m1-macbook/

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/q.../msg06499.html

https://twitter.com/_AlexGraf/status...81983879569415

[rabcor]

A lot of people are surerly suprised about results but one thing people are not aware about it is....
128-bit memory bus.

Literally that M1 works in 8x 16 bit channels of memory with LPDDR4X-4266-class. A lot of results you see that are impressive do not come from superiority of ARM silicon, but more from that it supports more memory channels then normal PCs (outside of HEDT) with very fast ddr4 ram by default that is localized closely to chip itself. Also there a single core can utilize whole memory bus not just some group of cores. Speed of this chip comes a lot from that 1 core of it can access as much data as Threadripper 1950X which is 16 core-32 thread CPU (at level of ~~60GB/s)

This results with impressive results in some benchmarks like ZSTD compression or SQL stuff, but it doesn't show superiority of ARM architecture at all, but more shows it, that normal desktop CPUs should start moving to quad channels instead of dual.

Even if this is the case, the fact of the matter is that they are getting this level of performance with a 15w processor, it is so efficient that laptops using it can potentially have a similar battery life to phones if they use it, and a tdp so low it can be passively cooled in a laptop, and it is sometimes outperforming native x86 processors on emulation software, the performance per watt is something we've never seen before, and just this alone means that all signs indicate that processor technology is about to undergo a revolution, most likely with ARM replacing x86. The pros of moving to ARM clearly outweigh the cons, and no matter how they achieved it, Apple just proved this.

It just kinda sucks that it was Apple that did it, I cannot think of a worse company for this to come from...

[Weasel]

and it is sometimes outperforming native x86 processors on emulation software

Oh look another moron. Why don't you compare it with processors from 2004 too, it's gonna prove your point even better.

Imagine comparing a 5nm CPU with a 10nm CPU and still being slower. That's two fab generations ahead. 4 times the effective transistor budget.

[piotrj3]

Even if this is the case, the fact of the matter is that they are getting this level of performance with a 15w processor, it is so efficient that laptops using it can potentially have a similar battery life to phones if they use it, and a tdp so low it can be passively cooled in a laptop, and it is sometimes outperforming native x86 processors on emulation software, the performance per watt is something we've never seen before, and just this alone means that all signs indicate that processor technology is about to undergo a revolution, most likely with ARM replacing x86. The pros of moving to ARM clearly outweigh the cons, and no matter how they achieved it, Apple just proved this.

It just kinda sucks that it was Apple that did it, I cannot think of a worse company for this to come from...

It is not "15W" more like 20-24W range. What is more it does that power with just 4 performance cores that cannot even do HT/SMT. The thing is if you compare it to 4500U/4700U those CPUs also look great, and those are rather "outdated" at this point. Only thing revolutionary in Apple's case is how they optimized memory layout and how effective memory controller is - that is a place where Apple did something AMD/Intel can't, but just cores aren't that great although they are good.

[dave_boo]

Not only that but once Windows for ARM was running on the ARM M1 Mac he was able to then run x86 Windows programs as well. And he says the performance is pretty zippy. Here's a snippet from the article....


Developer Alexander Graf, however, took to Twitter today to share his achievement: successfully being able to virtualize ARM Windows on Apple Silicon.
Who said Windows wouldn't run well on #AppleSilicon? It's pretty snappy here 😁. #QEMU patches for reference: https://t.co/qLQpZgBIqI pic.twitter.com/G1Usx4TcvL

— Alexander Graf (@_AlexGraf) November 26, 2020
Note that he was able to virtualize the ARM version of Windows and not the x86 version. Virtualizing an x86 version of Windows might have been much difficult as compared to the ARM version as Apple’s M1 chip has a 64-bit ARM architecture.

Although, Graf also mentions in one of his tweets that “Windows ARM64 can run x86 applications really well. It’s not as fast as Rosetta 2, but close.”

He was able to achieve this by running the Windows ARM64 Insider Preview by virtualizing it through the Hypervisor.framework. This framework allows users to interact with virtualization technologies in user space without having to write kernel extensions (KEXTs), according to Apple.

Moreover, this wouldn’t have been possible without applying a custom patch to the QEMU virtualizer. QEMU is an open-source machine emulator and virtualizer. It’s known for “achieving near-native performance” by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU. So it goes without saying that only ARM guests can be perfectly virtualized on an ARM machine like the M1-supported Macs.

Below you will find links to the entire article on The 8-Bit along with the link to his patches to QEMU and his Twitter feed detailing further things about his accomplishment.


https://the8-bit.com/developer-succe...on-m1-macbook/

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/q.../msg06499.html

https://twitter.com/_AlexGraf/status...81983879569415

Why is it not surprising (although worthy of a chuckle) that Apple can emulate Windows faster than Microsoft can emulate Windows?

[Closed-Systems-Rock]

Most tests are Rosetta2 translations so where are the M1 native benchmarks in this piece? Surely the ‘power of open source’ would allow most tests to be recompiled (if not fully optimised, especially the ray/path tracing) almost immediately.

[Swifty Rust]

Were is the promised update for M1 results?
Openbenchmarking.org doesn't seem to be reliable source for performance comparison anymore. ARMs are crippled artificially