Apple M2 On Linux Performance Against AMD Zen 4 Mobile SoCs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Apple M2 On Linux Performance Against AMD Zen 4 Mobile SoCs

The most common request from my recent ROG Ally benchmarking with the Ryzen Z1 SoC and also the Ryzen 7 7840U laptop SoC testing has been wanting to know how these Zen 4 mobile processors compete with Apple's M2 on Linux. Well, for those curious, here are some initial performance figures of the Apple M2 in a MacBook Air running Asahi Linux up against the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme and Ryzen 7 7840U SoCs on Linux.

https://www.phoronix.com/review/apple-m2-zen4-mobile

[schmidtbag]

Seems like when the M2 does well, it tends to do very well. When it does poorly, it does very poorly.

[sophisticles]

(thanks, ad-block users...)

To everyone, Michael is right about this. I understand using an ad blocker because I use one also, for every site, but what I do for this site is after i read the article on Firefox with my ad blockers enabled I also skim through it with Chrome sans ad blocker, do that at least there are some impressions. I don't know how much it helps, but it only takes a couple of minutes and if everyone did that I'm guessing this site would be a lot more profitable.

Regarding these benchmarks, everyone knows i consider Asahi a complete waste of time, both for the developers and any potential users.

The Mac Book Air tested costs between $1200 and $1400 depending on configuration and in all honesty you are probably giving up a lot of performance by not using the OS that was designed by Apple specifically for these computers.

I guarantee if Michael ran these benchmarks on the Mac Book Air as it comes from Apple, the results would be much better for the Mac.

I honestly can't see too many people buying a Mac to run Linux on it.

[jeisom]

Seems like when the M2 does well, it tends to do very well. When it does poorly, it does very poorly.

I wonder how many of those are down to a lack of ARM optimizations that are present on AMD64.

[fitzie]

To everyone, Michael is right about this. I understand using an ad blocker because I use one also, for every site, but what I do for this site is after i read the article on Firefox with my ad blockers enabled I also skim through it with Chrome sans ad blocker, do that at least there are some impressions. I don't know how much it helps, but it only takes a couple of minutes and if everyone did that I'm guessing this site would be a lot more profitable.

Regarding these benchmarks, everyone knows i consider Asahi a complete waste of time, both for the developers and any potential users.

The Mac Book Air tested costs between $1200 and $1400 depending on configuration and in all honesty you are probably giving up a lot of performance by not using the OS that was designed by Apple specifically for these computers.

I guarantee if Michael ran these benchmarks on the Mac Book Air as it comes from Apple, the results would be much better for the Mac.

I honestly can't see too many people buying a Mac to run Linux on it.

This is certainly an apples to oranges comparison. I would like to see PTS macos vs PTS Asahi comparison. Find out what is hardware vs the kernel.

I have no doubt that macos is better optimized, but to some degree arm is arm, so I think such a comparison would show were m2 really is slower than amd.

I do think that apple could certainly pull the plug on 3rd party os's, but since I think the future of the "PC" is arm, i'm rooting for asahi to be successful because apple seems to have the best arm pc products out there by a long mile.

[stormcrow]

I wonder how many of those are down to a lack of ARM optimizations that are present on AMD64.

Unknown. But it's a relevant question since the vast majority of people aren't going to be using a half baked port of Linux on an M series Mac.

[Britoid]

I wonder how many of those are down to a lack of ARM optimizations that are present on AMD64.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Wireguard uses optimizations for encryption in the kernel, similar with OpenSSL, so will be faster where there's support for native hardware acceleration (e.g. on x86), which is probably severely lacking for ARM, or Apples Architecture.

I think all the results here when the M2 lacks behind, are all because of lack of optimization and support on the Linux side, that said its a good start. It's actually pathetic that Apple is going to be from the looks of it, the most supported ARM platform in Linux, because of how diabolical the Linux on ARM ecosystem (e.g. Android, SBCs etc) is right now.

[ziguana]

don't care, still blocking ads. have you even tried to use your own site on a phone?

M2 chip will have tons of dedicated IP which is likely not (yet?) supported in Linux.

[NeoMorpheus]

Its a shame that those great ARM chips are locked into those laptops.

That said, great showing on AMD part.

[dumbestpenguin]

Regarding the adblock thing, I have paid for lifetime premium but tend to browse without logging in (with ublock origin in use). Wonder how many others are doing the same.