Apple M1 Performance On Linux: Benchmarks Better Than Expected For Its Alpha State

Written by Michael Larabel in Processors on 23 March 2022 at 01:00 PM EDT. Page 2 of 7. 50 Comments.
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS

First up is a look at macOS 12.3 against Asahi Linux Alpha on the same Mac Mini with its 8 cores / 8GB of RAM / 256GB SSD. The default compiler of each operating system and other defaults were in use on both macOS and Asahi Linux.

Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS

The I/O performance was mixed but it's been found that macOS handles fsync very poorly, so just look at these I/O benchmark numbers rather loosely. In any event, under Asahi Linux I haven't noticed the I/O to be in bad shape or issues like that with this Mac Mini.

Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS

The WebP image encode performance was competitive between the two operating systems with Asahi Linux even leading in some of these WebP benchmarks. The default compilers (Clang on macOS, GCC on Asahi Linux were used) with the same compiler flags.

Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS

I really didn't expect Asahi Linux to be competitive with macOS performance on the Apple M1 at this early alpha stage.

Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS
Apple M1 - Asahi Linux Alpha vs. macOS

But there are areas where macOS is still clearly faster than Asahi Linux due to not hitting the M1 P-core boost states under Linux right now and more work in general for power management / performance tuning.


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