Apple Announces Its New M2 Processor

[benjiro]

Acceptable baseline performance?

Apple M1 literally destroys top Intel and AMD CPUs in terms of absolute performance (per core <10W power envelope vs. e.g. ~25-30W for ADL/Zen3) and power efficiency (MT performance).

And their unified memory architecture? The PC can only dream of it. XBox/PS have it though but they are not PCs.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ry....623763.0.html

People still believe that stories or what...

Asus ZenBook S 13	Ryzen 7 6800U	28W	25.5W	10468	374 / 411
Apple MacBook Pro 14	M1 Pro (8 Cores)	25W	21W	9581	383 / 456

Its barely a difference of a few percentage when comparing the power vs performance on MT load. Alder Lake is a power drainer, not AMD.

Apple their benefits are that they hide a lot of their performance under their ( oa media ) encoding engine for a lot of tasks. When the CPU is put pure on CPU tasks, that famous power efficiency scales very close. Notice how a 6nm vs 5nm are pulling very close the same power in MT tasks.

Apple gains are mostly in the ST tasks where its reporting better performance on single core tasks. We see 4W * 4 + Efficiency cores (21W) result in 9581 in MT. But why can AMD deliver 10468 on a 25W power budget because X86 when not turbo boosted to hell, is actually very efficient.

Asus ZenBook S 13	Ryzen 7 6800U	28W	25.5W	10468	374 / 411
Apple MacBook Pro 14	M1 Pro (8 Cores)	25W	21W	9581	383 / 456

Asus Zenbook S 13 Flüstermodus

Ryzen 7 6800U

12W

10W

6725

560 / 672

Take a look at the 10W result in MT for AMD resulting in 6725. How is it possible for AMD to use only 10W and still deliver 70% of the performance that took Apple M1 21W?? Its funny these results are they not. And that is on 6nm, a process that is not supposed to deliver a increase in power efficiency, compared to 7nm. Unlike 5nm that gives Apple a 20% gain.

Its been clear for YEARS that AMD and Intel have been turbo boosting their CPU way too much for ST tasks. So why is AMD so efficient in MT tasks? Because CPU are not designed for laptop first, or desktop first. Its server first. Where you want great MT performance at the best possible power usage ( most server CPUs that use the exact same cores are sold with very conservative clock speeds for that reason ).

Then those CPUs get filtered down to desktop, where they need to show great benchmark/gaming results, so there goes the clock speed up because that is the most easy way to reuse the same design. That CPU then needs to conform to laptops and well, your just trying to shoehorn server / desktop designed CPUs into laptops. And that becomes harder and harder but when you really analyse the result on a more equal playing field, ARM is not that special.

We already see how Smartphone are becoming hotboxes because of that same drive for more performance at any cost, despite it also being ARM technology.

[qarium]

It's honestly sad to see how Apple has a monopoly on the low-power high-performance CPU market, because Apple is the king of lock-in considering how many people sought and worked hard to liberate their devices (e.g. "jailbreak") and had to reverse engineer the architecture to no end (e.g. Asahi Linux) just so that they could run a better operating system.
Ampere will never look at us (instead exclusively focusing on server) and so we will be stuck to either:
- low-cost, low-power systems with poor performance (e.g. Raspberry Pi)
- high-cost, high-performance systems but with terrible power efficiency (x86)
The high-cost, high-performance and low-power option is non-existent besides Apple...

dude honestly you mix up 2 different things... to have a "monopoly" and to have the the crown in a product segment because you have the best product.
apple maybe has the best product in the low-power high-performance CPU market field what gives them a crown at this point.

but at no point makes this apple have a monopole... monopole in my point of view is something what FORCE you to buy it.

without renounce many stuff you can not ignore windows or intel/amd X86_64 best example is valve steam you have 3000 games on steam OS but you have like 8000 games on windows means you can not ignore windows as a gamer if you do not want to renouce large part of the market.

the same at X86_64 without such an CPU and you maybe have an ARM64bit cpu your basket of games goes from 20 000 to maybe 1000....

so apple has the best low-power high-performance CPU on the market but this does not give them any monopole

i have an ARM smartphone and 86_64 desktop and i have ZERO apple products..-. because they have zero monopole

i even hate apple because of my personal history as a child was forced to use an apple macintosh and all the other kids used pirated software on pc but i have to admit apple has """zero monopole"""

in business and job you are maybe forced to use microsoft office but honestly apple has zero product like microsoft office to force you into their stuff.

and just because a apple product is better does not magically turn it into a monopole better does not mean monopole...

its the opposite companies who have monopole can force you to use a inferior product for example microsoft office is clearly a inferior product but the high marketshare and monopole position makes them powerfull even so powerfull they can force inferior products on the market.

apple has products who are better... but they have zero product with a monopole means they lag the high marketshare to give them the opportunity to force inferior product on people.

"and had to reverse engineer the architecture to no end (e.g. Asahi Linux) just so that they could run a better operating system."

apple locks out everything on their iphones but apple allows 'Asahi linux on apple M1...

in the past evil monopolist microsoft did try to lock out linux from windows laptops just read halloween documents they did multibble stradegies to make this happen.

"Ampere will never look at us (instead exclusively focusing on server) and so we will be stuck to either:"

what a bullshit talk... they sell 128core versions but you can also buy 64core versions or 32core versions or 16core versions
if you pay the price you can already use it on workstation and desktop.

you can not do it because Wintel monopole most games and closed source products do not run on ARM CPU and also microsoft does not really work good on these ARM systems to.

but it is clear it is not Ampere who does sapotage you it is intel and microsoft who do sapotage you.

no one stops you to even put a 16 or 32core ampere cpu into a laptop but still outside of server who linux dominsate the evil intel and microsoft monopole will make you suffer.

we can say apple is the only company because of their lock-in stradgey is the only company who is able to break out of this intel and microsoft monopole

and we should be happy about this. because we suffer from microsoft/intel monopole for like 40 years now.

so stop talking bullshit about words you do not unetrstand like "monopole" an product who is better is plain and simple still not a monopole.

[qarium]

As torsionbar28 pointed out, x86-64 can achieve similar levels of efficiency when you don't push the chips so hard. Wattage does not scale linearly with overall performance. There are a lot of factors to consider. Generally speaking, ARM is going to be more efficient because it's a significantly simpler design.
What he didn't mention is how critical optimization is. Apple gains a lot of performance-per-watt specifically because they lock down their platform. Everything is finely tuned and tightly integrated, which makes their design more efficient. They don't allow a bunch of BS 3rd party bloatware. Their compiler takes advantage of all the instructions of the CPU. They don't have to compensate for a bunch of 3rd party APIs which may add overhead. On a RISC architecture, these differences add up quite significantly.

What Intel has done with Clear Linux is a good example of how much more performance you can squeeze out of a CPU without disproportionately cranking up the wattage (whereas overclocking or adding more cores will).

this all has a logical error: linux on apple M1 is faster on CPU tasks than MACOS...

apple can compensate the inferior product "macos" with their good hardware.

but just think about this: what if apple switch to the linux kernel ?...

[Spacefish]

The advantage of the M1 mainly comes from the smaller process node. TSMC 5nm vs 7nm for example for Zen 3 or 6nm for Zen 3+ (Rembrandt).
If you run the Zen cores at similar frequencies the power draw is only marginally higher and the performance is comparable.
Considering the process node, Zen 3 on 5nm would be equal or better than the M1 Design.
Furthermore the M1 has a way higher memory bandwidth and lower latency cache architecture.

x86/AMD64 cores are mainly developed for high-throughput in multithreading scenarious (server usage), but not for low latency.
The M1 is developed exclusively for end user interactive devices.

Running typical workloads on a laptop, runtime will be pretty equal / depend more on the battery size and screen than the CPU.

[Slartifartblast]

That last Apple product I ever owned was an Apple III (yes a 3) and I can proudly say I've never owned one since.

[qarium]

https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ry....623763.0.html
People still believe that stories or what...

Asus ZenBook S 13	Ryzen 7 6800U	28W	25.5W	10468	374 / 411
Apple MacBook Pro 14	M1 Pro (8 Cores)	25W	21W	9581	383 / 456

Its barely a difference of a few percentage when comparing the power vs performance on MT load. Alder Lake is a power drainer, not AMD.
Apple their benefits are that they hide a lot of their performance under their ( oa media ) encoding engine for a lot of tasks. When the CPU is put pure on CPU tasks, that famous power efficiency scales very close. Notice how a 6nm vs 5nm are pulling very close the same power in MT tasks.
Apple gains are mostly in the ST tasks where its reporting better performance on single core tasks. We see 4W * 4 + Efficiency cores (21W) result in 9581 in MT. But why can AMD deliver 10468 on a 25W power budget because X86 when not turbo boosted to hell, is actually very efficient.

Asus ZenBook S 13	Ryzen 7 6800U	28W	25.5W	10468	374 / 411
Apple MacBook Pro 14	M1 Pro (8 Cores)	25W	21W	9581	383 / 456

Asus Zenbook S 13 Flüstermodus

Ryzen 7 6800U

12W

10W

6725

560 / 672

Take a look at the 10W result in MT for AMD resulting in 6725. How is it possible for AMD to use only 10W and still deliver 70% of the performance that took Apple M1 21W?? Its funny these results are they not. And that is on 6nm, a process that is not supposed to deliver a increase in power efficiency, compared to 7nm. Unlike 5nm that gives Apple a 20% gain.
Its been clear for YEARS that AMD and Intel have been turbo boosting their CPU way too much for ST tasks. So why is AMD so efficient in MT tasks? Because CPU are not designed for laptop first, or desktop first. Its server first. Where you want great MT performance at the best possible power usage ( most server CPUs that use the exact same cores are sold with very conservative clock speeds for that reason ).
Then those CPUs get filtered down to desktop, where they need to show great benchmark/gaming results, so there goes the clock speed up because that is the most easy way to reuse the same design. That CPU then needs to conform to laptops and well, your just trying to shoehorn server / desktop designed CPUs into laptops. And that becomes harder and harder but when you really analyse the result on a more equal playing field, ARM is not that special.
We already see how Smartphone are becoming hotboxes because of that same drive for more performance at any cost, despite it also being ARM technology.

right. the point that apple m1 is faster in singlecore tasks per watt becomes irrelevant to the fact that nearly all modern software can uilize 8 cores or more.

intel did the same and over displayed single core performance in their advertisement.

apple m1 is still a good product the only one who is overall really the worst product is intel.

AMD AM5 +zen4 and apple M2 of course destroy everything intel has.

and this in all cadegories in single core performance in single core performance per watt and in multicore performance and in multicore performance per watt...

[sinepgib]

nearly all modern software can uilize 8 cores or more.

I find that to be a really bold claim.

but just think about this: what if apple switch to the linux kernel ?...

Won't happen. That would stop them from adding secret sauce, would take control from them, would make it more expensive for them to get code in (now they don't control the process, they can't decide when something is "good enough" and fix later) while being even more expensive to maintain a fork, and mostly they're allergic to the GPL in general, for whatever reason they avoid it like the plague.
Besides, they'd need to rewrite a ton of stuff in userspace that assumes it's running on Darwin.

[qarium]

I find that to be a really bold claim.

i have a 12 core threadripper right now means 24 threads and if i open firefox i have more than 500 tabs open.
and of course more than 24 tabs also run at the same time-

so tell me what kind of software you run that you need singlecore performance at all cost ?

all stuff i run can easily utilize 8cores or more.

[tildearrow]

No, this is a bad conclusion from otherwise quite fine article. Perhaps a bit misleading and you have fallen into its trap. There is an urban legend than x86 is limited to 4 isns decoders. It was this till, hmm, Elkhart Lake IIRC which may use 2 decoder both decoding up to 3 isns in parallel and then till AlderLake/P-core which can decode 6 isns in parallel.

So Intel is able to decode 6 CISC ISNs. Do you know what the CPU does with those decoded ISNs -- it caches them, it saves them as a *precious* material for reuse and it holds them like Glum his ring up to the last moment... So, I guess limitation of x64/decoder is highly overhyped here.

So why is M1/M2 that fast? IMHO! Due to:

- cache. -- their cache design is *fantastc*
- RAM integration -- fantastic choice for *common* case. Hmm, in comparison with my Xeon W with 256GB RAM, M1/2 is still just a toy right? -- but for *common* *consumer* workload, fantastic
- simple ISA -- but my bed here is that this is just 1-2% of a speed result. internally both SoCs are just pure load-store RISC machines.

And why are M1/M2 that power effecient? IMHO!

- whole package design is limited to efficient frequencies (~3GHz sweet spot)

- the most modern TSMC node tech which competitors do not have access to yet.

What about idle? Majority of desktop/server/workstation x86 motherboards idle at 5-25W, whereas M1 and Raspberry Pi idle at <5W.

[sinepgib]

i have a 12 core threadripper right now means 24 threads and if i open firefox i have more than 500 tabs open.

and of course more than 24 tabs also run at the same time-

all stuff i run can easily utilize 8cores or more.

That's far from proving most modern software does. Further, that's far from proving most software in a system is actually modern. A lot of stuff written in Python will definitely run a single core. Many of the core utils tend to be single threaded.
Multithreading is something that scares away a lot of developers, so many tend to write single threaded code instead and cross their fingers that it's enough.

so tell me what kind of software you run that you need singlecore performance at all cost ?

Not the claim under discussion. But just to give an example of software I use that may be slow (if it has many plugins, mostly) and runs on a single thread, Vim.
I'm not claiming single core performance is more important BTW (in reality, it doesn't matter because you'll still have multiple processes running which actually scale better on multicore than a single process with multiple threads because they don't need to sync), just that saying most applications do use them individually, well, I'd rather have numbers for such a claim.