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Deep dive on the fan-cooled M1 chip in the Mac mini: performance is “outstandingly good”, besting Intel's chips and on par with AMD's new Zen 3 line

Better necessarily implies different.  —  That's one of my favorite axioms. Joe Rossignol / MacRumors : Mac Mini Teardown Provides Real-World Look at M1 Chip on Smaller Logic Board Ina Fried / Axios : Microsoft said Tuesday it is working with chipmakers AMD, Intel and Qualcomm to bring a new security processor to Windows machines. Andreessen Horowitz : 16 Minutes #45: Apple Silicon — A Long Game, Changing the Game Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac : Apple's move to M1 chips will save $2.5B this year, estimates IBM exec Jason Snell / Macworld : With M1 Macs, memory isn't what it used to be Dave Mark / The Loop : ∞ Apple's M1 MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro: Goodbye, fan noise! Dan Ackerman / CNET : Testing out the entire new Apple Mac M1 lineup Tweets: Steven Sinofsky / @stevesi : Conclusion & First Impressions - The 2020 Mac Mini Unleashed: Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test “The M1 undisputedly outperforms the core performance of everything Intel has to offer, ..."https://www.anandtech.com/ ... // @anandtech with another detailed review. Jordan Novet / @jordannovet : 'I don't think AMD and Intel are Apple's competitors. We should be looking at Qualcomm as the next significant laptop chip supplier.' https://twitter.com/... Matthew Panzarino / @panzer : Hey look, I reviewed Apple's new M1 powered MacBook Pro. It's killer. Super powerful, very snappy etc etc. But the most impressive thing is that it does it all with insane battery life. https://techcrunch.com/... Philippe Lemoine / @phl43 : Apple's new chip really looks incredible. Since even the MPA 13 with Apple silicon already outperforms the MPB 16 with Intel, I'm not sure what they're going to do when they move to ARM on the MPB 16 to justify the price difference though, but I'm looking forward to finding out. https://twitter.com/... Dhruv / @dhruvbhutani : It's not about the hardware. The M1 chip is a paradigm shift for the industry. Imagine M1 server clusters delivering this kind of performance with a thermal budget of 24W. The 2020 Mac Mini Unleashed: Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test https://www.anandtech.com/... Vlad Savov / @vladsavov : Instead of waiting to be underwhelmed by Intel every year, Apple cooked up its own Mac chips and they look like an engineering triumph already. https://www.anandtech.com/... Arnold Kim / @arnoldkim : Again, nostalgic vibes with Mac benchmarks and excitement. Feel like the excitement / benchmark enthusiasm will continue over the next year or two of Mac Apple Silicon releases. Eli Dourado / @elidourado : Apple Silicon more and more looking like a game changer for personal computing. https://twitter.com/... Rene Ritchie / @reneritchie : Terrific, terrific review and thread from @panzer with tons of details on M1 and what it means for the future of the Mac. Just chef's kisses all the way down. https://twitter.com/... Indragie Karunaratne / @indragie : “...memory copies land in at 60 to 62GB/s depending if you're using scalar or vector instructions. The fact that a single Firestorm core can almost saturate the memory controllers is astounding and something we've never seen in a design before” https://www.anandtech.com/... Eric Jhonsa / @ericjhonsa : The Geekbench results turned up by $AAPL's M1 are nothing short of remarkable, particularly for single-thread tests. https://techcrunch.com/... https://www.anandtech.com/... https://twitter.com/... Steve Troughton-Smith / @stroughtonsmith : TIL about ‘powermetrics’, and how it can show realtime power usage & CPU scaling of all the cores in your Mac, including the GPU and Apple Neural Engine. It's wild to see just how low it goes when you're not doing much. My A12Z idles at like 600MHz Harry McCracken / @harrymccracken : Here's my look at the new M1-powered MacBook Air. Apple silicon delivers great performance and battery life, and Rosetta 2 works so smoothly that you might not notice you just went through an epoch-shifting chip transition. https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... Patrick Moorhead / @patrickmoorhead : As I predicted, AMD still, by most measures, has highest perf CPU: -will Apple retract claim or show evidence (I guess it was on the highly massaged GB?) -will be interesting to see AMD Ryzen in 5nm -Apple good PPW -too bad architects left the company https://www.anandtech.com/... https://twitter.com/... @tomsguide : Apple MacBook Air M1 (late 2020) review: A computing revolution https://www.tomsguide.com/... https://twitter.com/... @pcmag : The new M1-based MacBook Air is simply an amazing laptop. https://www.pcmag.com/... John Koetsier / @johnkoetsier : Wow. @panzer has a massive data-rich post on why M1 is the future of desktop/laptop processors. M1 beat out Mac Pro with dual Xeons in some tests!!! >> Yeah, Apple's M1 MacBook Pro is powerful, but it's the battery life that will blow you away https://techcrunch.com/... Andreas Proschofsky / @suka_hiroaki : Truly impressive: “While AMD's Zen3 still holds the leads in several workloads, we need to remind ourselves that this comes at a great cost in power consumption in the +49W range while the Apple M1 here is using 7-8W total device active power” https://www.anandtech.com/... @othermaciej : I always enjoy Anandtech's thoughtful in-depth performance analysis. In their M1 Mac review, I particularly enjoyed this insane Speedometer result. (By the way, it's not just the CPU; our JS JIT is crazy tuned for arm64. But the CPU is also stupid fast.) https://www.anandtech.com/... https://twitter.com/... Maya Posch / @mayaposch : Seeing the first benchmarks on Apple's first proper desktop CPU/SoC makes one realise why they wanted to cut themselves loose from Intel. These are some good numbers for a first-gen Apple Silicon chip: https://www.anandtech.com/... Matthew Panzarino / @panzer : If you're into processors then this whole page is just this gif over and over https://www.anandtech.com/... https://twitter.com/... Thanks: @iancutress

AnandTech Andrei Frumusanu

Discussion

  • @stevesi Steven Sinofsky on x
    Conclusion & First Impressions - The 2020 Mac Mini Unleashed: Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test “The M1 undisputedly outperforms the core performance of everything Intel has to offer, ..."https://www.anandtech.com/ ... // @anandtech with another detailed review.
  • @indragie Indragie Karunaratne on x
    “...memory copies land in at 60 to 62GB/s depending if you're using scalar or vector instructions. The fact that a single Firestorm core can almost saturate the memory controllers is astounding and something we've never seen in a design before” https://www.anandtech.com/...
  • @tomsguide @tomsguide on x
    Apple MacBook Air M1 (late 2020) review: A computing revolution https://www.tomsguide.com/... https://twitter.com/...
  • @pcmag @pcmag on x
    The new M1-based MacBook Air is simply an amazing laptop. https://www.pcmag.com/...
  • @dhruvbhutani Dhruv on x
    It's not about the hardware. The M1 chip is a paradigm shift for the industry. Imagine M1 server clusters delivering this kind of performance with a thermal budget of 24W. The 2020 Mac Mini Unleashed: Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test https://www.anandtech.com/...
  • @harrymccracken Harry McCracken on x
    Here's my look at the new M1-powered MacBook Air. Apple silicon delivers great performance and battery life, and Rosetta 2 works so smoothly that you might not notice you just went through an epoch-shifting chip transition. https://www.fastcompany.com/ ...
  • @vladsavov Vlad Savov on x
    Instead of waiting to be underwhelmed by Intel every year, Apple cooked up its own Mac chips and they look like an engineering triumph already. https://www.anandtech.com/...
  • @patrickmoorhead Patrick Moorhead on x
    As I predicted, AMD still, by most measures, has highest perf CPU: -will Apple retract claim or show evidence (I guess it was on the highly massaged GB?) -will be interesting to see AMD Ryzen in 5nm -Apple good PPW -too bad architects left the company https://www.anandtech.com/..…
  • @suka_hiroaki Andreas Proschofsky on x
    Truly impressive: “While AMD's Zen3 still holds the leads in several workloads, we need to remind ourselves that this comes at a great cost in power consumption in the +49W range while the Apple M1 here is using 7-8W total device active power” https://www.anandtech.com/...
  • @othermaciej @othermaciej on x
    I always enjoy Anandtech's thoughtful in-depth performance analysis. In their M1 Mac review, I particularly enjoyed this insane Speedometer result. (By the way, it's not just the CPU; our JS JIT is crazy tuned for arm64. But the CPU is also stupid fast.) https://www.anandtech.com…
  • @mayaposch Maya Posch on x
    Seeing the first benchmarks on Apple's first proper desktop CPU/SoC makes one realise why they wanted to cut themselves loose from Intel. These are some good numbers for a first-gen Apple Silicon chip: https://www.anandtech.com/...
  • @panzer Matthew Panzarino on x
    If you're into processors then this whole page is just this gif over and over https://www.anandtech.com/... https://twitter.com/...
  • @om @om on x
    This is my 3500-word opus on Apple's M1, why it matters, and how it fits into the future/evolution of computing, both at chip and software level. I chatted with Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Johny Srouji and Craig Federighi about importance of M1 to Apple. .https://om.co/... https://twitte…
  • @dmoren Dan Moren on x
    You asked for it, and here it is: I benchmarked my 2014 11-inch MacBook Air (which has a respectable-for-the-time Core i7 processor) against the new M1 MacBook Air and the results are...hilarious? https://twitter.com/...
  • @stroughtonsmith Steve Troughton-Smith on x
    According to an early @markgurman report, one of the other configurations in the running for early Apple Silicon Macs is a twelve-core model, 8p+4e. You'd imagine it might be a config intended for iMacs & 16" MBPs. Knowing what we know about M1, how much faster will that be?
  • @reckless Nilay Patel on x
    We came extremely close to giving the new MacBook Air a 10 out of 10 review score. It is very, very good. @backlon review: https://www.theverge.com/...
  • @briannawu Brianna Wu on x
    @reneritchie @reckless Yes after I posted this tweet I read @backlon's MacBook Air review. 38 frames per second for tomb raider through Rosetta 2? That is absolutely crazy
  • @searls Justin Searls on x
    For the sake of the nation, it's time for Intel to acknowledge that it lost and concede the race to Apple so that the transition can continue without delay. https://www.theverge.com/...
  • @dhh @dhh on x
    The extent to which Apple's chip team keeps doing victory laps around the rest of the industry is as astounding as it is baffling. How Qualcomm, AMD, and Intel could all falter this badly is 🤯. What's the secret sauce? A ring of patents? Inscrutable genius? https://twitter.com/..…
  • @patrickmoorhead Patrick Moorhead on x
    Remember: “your AAA games will run great. Buttery smoothe.” Reality: “I had little luck in installing and running Mac-compatible games from Steam, and the Steam app itself ran poorly under Rosetta.” https://www.cnet.com/...
  • @zacbowden Zac Bowden on x
    Google to Windows 10 On ARM: 🖕 https://twitter.com/...
  • @jsnell Jason Snell on x
    One real trend with these systems is that people will want to view their specs in traditional ways and Apple is just going to refuse. Clock speed? What's that? Broader issue: when do trad specs matter and when do they not, with devices like these. We'll have to figure it out. htt…
  • @ijustine @ijustine on x
    Me when I was editing 8k prores off the new MacBook Air... AND IT WAS RUNNING PERFECT 😂😂😂😂 https://twitter.com/...
  • @jonmasters @jonmasters on x
    The stages of grief will play out this week: 1. There's no way M1 can be better than x86! 2. It's not fair... 3. But you need x86 because... 4. Oh, this is a problem 5. Wow, the future is awesome! The iPhone moment has happened. Folks will now see why I pushed Arm all the time.
  • @stevesi Steven Sinofsky on x
    I get that most are in the here and now when buying a new laptop. M1 Macs are much better w/ same shell as old Macs (minus one port). Still, reviews based on that are like faulting a Tesla over EV range anxiety. M1 represents a huge paradigm shift. https://www.theverge.com/...
  • @jendudley Jen Dudley-Nicholson on x
    ICYMI: My M1 MacBook Pro review, from benchmarks and whether you'll notice any power boost to how it uses old Intel programs and those big battery promises. Alternative headline: one woman's eternal battle against too many tabs. https://amp.heraldsun.com.au/ ... via @theheraldsun
  • @0xtim Tim Condon on x
    “If Apple's M1 isn't the fastest single-thread—and quad-thread—consumer-available processor on the planet, it certainly isn't missing it by much.” ... and this is the first gen non-pro level hardware.... 😳 Really not making it easy to hold off! https://twitter.com/...
  • @lukemiani Luke Miani on x
    Guys Apple Silicon isn't that good !⃝ 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗶 𝗺 𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗽 𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗱
  • @rikarends Rik Arends on x
    This means there is no more ‘high end’ laptop/macbook except for maybe Ram. The M1 macbook air simply beats them by such a wide margin, it's done.
  • @whatthebit Stefan Constantine on x
    Do you know how mad I am that Apple's new $999 laptop is faster than my less than one year old $3,300 MacBook Pro? https://twitter.com/...
  • @starfire2258 Sean Hollister on x
    Add a touchscreen, two more ports, dGPU and eGPU support, fix the webcam, and a Mac might be my next laptop. The 2021 16-inch MacBook Pro, perhaps? https://twitter.com/...
  • @altimor Flo Crivello on x
    The reviews of Apple's M1 laptops are unbelievable. Is there a precedent to a new generation bearing the previous one's performance by a factor of 2-3x, *and* its battery life by one of 2? https://twitter.com/...
  • @reneritchie Rene Ritchie on x
    Also, after years and years of seeing the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and AirPods redefine expectations in their respective categories, it's really cool to see the Mac do it. Again. Again. (Again.) Feels like today has been a decade in the making and they just crushed it. https://…
  • @spencerdailey Spencer Dailey on x
    16GB max RAM will be a bigger deal than before, b/c people are going to have iOS apps running alongside other RAM heavy desktop apps like Chrome. That's never entered into the equation before, and if it makes even just 1GB of difference, it's a big deal https://www.techmeme.com/.…
  • @benedictevans Benedict Evans on x
    The press reviews are pretty clearly confirming Apple's claim: ARM + TSMC + Apple execution mean Apple is shipping a ‘PC’ chip that's dramatically ahead of Intel on almost any measure.
  • @reckless Nilay Patel on x
    I purposefully bought Becky a maxed-out Core i7 MacBook Air a few months ago because she has to run one sad Windows app for work. It scored a 2867 in Cinebench with the fan blazing. The new Air silently scored... 6803. Just an astounding leap in performance and battery life. http…
  • @stroughtonsmith Steve Troughton-Smith on x
    If you took umbrage at Apple's graphs at the event, you haven't been paying attention; I'm not at all surprised that the cheapest, entry-level M1 Macs have performance to embarrass even top-end MBPs, because we've seen it in the iPad for years. Next, let's burn it all on 120Hz 😂
  • @dhh @dhh on x
    Also, what a timing for the transition. While that chip team keeps killing it on iOS, they've hit the ceiling on what Apple seems to know what to do with all that power. Not so on laptops. Such a combined leap in performance + battery is epochal.
  • @ow @ow on x
    This review has me *very* optimistic about how Apple's ARM-based M1 chips are going to shake up laptops in a big way https://www.theverge.com/...
  • @reneritchie Rene Ritchie on x
    Basically, the only major regression on M1 Macs is heat generation. M1 Mac mini can't keep my coffee as warm, nor can M1 MacBook Pro work as a heat blanket, like the Intel versions can. If you want either of those things, alas, you have to stick with Intel. https://twitter.com/..…
  • @jbenton Joshua Benton on x
    New MacBook Air gets a 9.5/10 from @theverge https://www.theverge.com/...
  • @ampressman Aaron Pressman on x
    “Basically, the $5000 iMac Pro I bought three years ago has been humbled by a $999 MacBook Air and a $699 Mac mini. This is real life. This is where we are now.” @jsnell https://sixcolors.com/...
  • @rikarends Rik Arends on x
    It's hard to believe, a hot running fan blasting i9 loses by a factor 2 in a real world Rust compile from a passively cooled M1 macbook air. This has consequences.
  • @twostraws Paul Hudson on x
    My M1 MacBook Pro arrived today. Chances are you have various questions, but I think a whole lot is summed up in this 50-second video. (Alt text, because Twitter still doesn't make this easy: Xcode 12.3 beta unzips in 5 minutes on an M1, vs 13 minutes 22 seconds on an Intel i9) h…
  • @jordannovet Jordan Novet on x
    'I don't think AMD and Intel are Apple's competitors. We should be looking at Qualcomm as the next significant laptop chip supplier.' https://twitter.com/...
  • @panzer Matthew Panzarino on x
    Hey look, I reviewed Apple's new M1 powered MacBook Pro. It's killer. Super powerful, very snappy etc etc. But the most impressive thing is that it does it all with insane battery life. https://techcrunch.com/...
  • @lukemiani Luke Miani on x
    Truly incredible chart here compiling Cinebench R23 scores I've gathered so far. M1 outperforms most laptops and even a desktop Core i5 9600K (95W!) processor. What Apple has done here is truly remarkable. Video explaining this chart will be coming soon! https://twitter.com/...
  • @phl43 Philippe Lemoine on x
    Apple's new chip really looks incredible. Since even the MPA 13 with Apple silicon already outperforms the MPB 16 with Intel, I'm not sure what they're going to do when they move to ARM on the MPB 16 to justify the price difference though, but I'm looking forward to finding out. …
  • @reneritchie Rene Ritchie on x
    “You don't worry about the CPU specs; instead, you think about the job. ... how many streams of 4k or 8k video can you process simultaneously while performing... effects? That is the question video professionals want an answer to. No spec on the chip is going to answer that...” h…
  • @esizkur Ralf on x
    First M1 hardware units have arrived with real customers and Intel is in for a brutal awakening... https://twitter.com/...
  • @stroughtonsmith Steve Troughton-Smith on x
    TIL about ‘powermetrics’, and how it can show realtime power usage & CPU scaling of all the cores in your Mac, including the GPU and Apple Neural Engine. It's wild to see just how low it goes when you're not doing much. My A12Z idles at like 600MHz
  • @rklau Rick Klau on x
    this computer is very, very fast. Went with the MacBook Air w/16 gigs of RAM. oh my.
  • @bzamayo Benjamin Mayo on x
    I can't remember the last time reviews for an Apple product were so universally positive, especially considering these are machines that look the same as the previous-gen. Apple simply excelled themselves with the ARM transition.
  • @ericjhonsa Eric Jhonsa on x
    The Geekbench results turned up by $AAPL's M1 are nothing short of remarkable, particularly for single-thread tests. https://techcrunch.com/... https://www.anandtech.com/... https://twitter.com/...
  • @reneritchie Rene Ritchie on x
    Terrific, terrific review and thread from @panzer with tons of details on M1 and what it means for the future of the Mac. Just chef's kisses all the way down. https://twitter.com/...
  • @arnoldkim Arnold Kim on x
    Again, nostalgic vibes with Mac benchmarks and excitement. Feel like the excitement / benchmark enthusiasm will continue over the next year or two of Mac Apple Silicon releases.
  • @elidourado Eli Dourado on x
    Apple Silicon more and more looking like a game changer for personal computing. https://twitter.com/...
  • @rikarends Rik Arends on x
    All that is left now is for apple to make a x4-or-so-scale GPU version for their pro line, add a 32gb ram option and it's a no brainer for, well, everyone really.
  • @kevinctofel Kevin C. Tofel on x
    “The M1 chip can't be viewed in isolation. It is a silicon-level manifestation of what is happening across computing, especially in the software layer.” Great perspective on computing experience changes & why Apple Silicon matters from @om https://om.co/...
  • @rklau Rick Klau on x
    This essay from @om is the best deep-dive into what Apple is doing w/the M1 I've read yet. (And makes me even more excited that my Macbook Air arrives today.) “We live in a world that is wired and moves at a network scale.” https://om.co/... via @om
  • @floracatz Flora Cat on x
    So really, this is looking like it might be the biggest possible leap in laptops I have seen in years. Laptop battery life has been good for years, unless you are doing the wrong type of activities. Software Development is one of them. https://twitter.com/...
  • @johnkoetsier John Koetsier on x
    Wow. @panzer has a massive data-rich post on why M1 is the future of desktop/laptop processors. M1 beat out Mac Pro with dual Xeons in some tests!!! >> Yeah, Apple's M1 MacBook Pro is powerful, but it's the battery life that will blow you away https://techcrunch.com/...
  • @danfrakes Dan Frakes on x
    Good thread if you're interested in the performance vs battery life of the new Air/Pro. https://twitter.com/...
  • @stroughtonsmith Steve Troughton-Smith on x
    Apple makes this stuff look effortless, but you need only look at other platforms to see just how incredibly difficult it is to change your OS so dramatically and convince your developers to come along with you. Apple's power to affect evolution on its platforms is unparalleled
  • @stroughtonsmith Steve Troughton-Smith on x
    Twice as fast at unxipping Xcode than the Mac Pro 😱 https://twitter.com/...
  • @nicolasmagand Nicolas Magand on x
    Reading the first reviews of the M1 chip laptops and I cannot figure out when was the last time I read so many raving reviews for a tech product. AirPod Pros had good reviews, Pixel phone cameras once had great reviews. This is something else entirely. https://twitter.com/...
  • @slightlylate Alex Russell on x
    As a consumer, I'm hugely excited by the competition; if I were at Intel or AMD, I'd be *terrified* of performance-per-watt from these benchmarks: https://www.anandtech.com/...
  • @slightlylate Alex Russell on x
    Re: browser performance on iOS, we'd always guessed but never had access to port our engine to confirm; however: “...we can come to the conclusion that the performance advantage is due to Apple's CPU designs.”: https://www.anandtech.com/...