Most Of What Makes The M1 Interesting Is TSMC's 5nm Process, Why ...

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pengaru on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: Would you be willing to fund a Linux port to Apple... Most of what makes the M1 interesting is TSMC's 5nm process, why wouldn't we expect similar results from future x86 CPUs on 5nm or smaller.

At least AMD is supporting upstream Linux development for GPU support, if you care about Free software and control over your computers, throw your money at companies better aligned with those goals. Don't reward Apple for being assholes.

<=5nm AMD Zen SoCs will be fantastic as well

ralph84 on Nov 29, 2020 | next [–] 5nm certainly helped, but what really made M1 is the team Apple has assembled. Apple’s fat margins allowed them to attract and retain the best engineers with top of market total comp. Meanwhile Intel viewed engineering as a cost center to be optimized. So here we are.

fomine3 on Nov 30, 2020 | parent | next [–] Comparing Apple A13 and Snapdragon 865 (both TSMC 7nm) would be good to know how Apple's chip design team does things well.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15603/the-samsung-galaxy-s20-...

bschwindHN on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] Those are some of the worst colors ever chosen for a bar chart. Topped off with "Chart series order in same order as legend order" while having the bars vertically stacked, and the legend with two columns.

I don't know how some of these tech writers made it out of 6th grade science class with those charting skills.

rbanffy on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–] You optimize for where your competition is. For the past couple generations, Intel had to optimize for prices and, with hiccups in the process improvements, this pressure gets even worse.

When Zen 2 came out, IPC became a serious issue for Intel. I imagine that M1 makes it a lot more urgent.

Also keep in mind that, in a sense, M1 is a dead end. Integrated fast memory is great when the size fits, but it's terrible if it doesn't.

Eric_WVGG on Nov 29, 2020 | prev | next [–] I’m not sure that’s exactly accurate. The special JavaScript instructions, and the optimizations to retain/release counts within memory blocks, seem much more interesting. https://mobile.twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/1331735383193903...

I haven’t the foggiest idea if any of this could make it to competing ARM chips, but given how many years Snapdragons have been lagging relative to the iPhone “A” chips, I don’t feel too optimistic.

olliej on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | next [–] The “special javascript instructions” are a single instruction that’s only impact is removing a perf advantage intel has due to JS exposing x86 specific sentinels to the web.

The only thing it does is remove a branch in arm64 where the various JITs have to do:

Int value = (int)some double; If (flags) value = x86 sentinel Whereas x86 systems don’t have a branch by definition.

That is all the “special instruction” does.

novok on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–] I don't think it will be that hard for Intel & AMD to put little operations like the javascript float one (which is a standard ARM instruction BTW) or some special instructions to help garbage collection and retain/release counts work more effectively that all programming languages could leverage. It's something else that makes it better.

my123 on Nov 29, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] And that instruction is to replicate the x86 FP rounding behavior, which ended up in the JS standard. Nothing else...

ric2b on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–] > The special JavaScript instructions

That's an ARMv8 feature, not specific to Apple.

saagarjha on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] ARMv8.3 to be specific.

bschwindHN on Nov 29, 2020 | prev | next [–] Are they really assholes? Competition is important to progress and I like that their M1 release has shaken things up so much. We should hopefully be seeing similar CPUs released in the future, now that Apple has shown a glimpse of what's possible.

Until then I'll be enjoying the M1 because even if they're assholes, they're assholes who can make a computer I actually like using.

coldtea on Nov 29, 2020 | prev | next [–] >Most of what makes the M1 interesting is TSMC's 5nm process, why wouldn't we expect similar results from future x86 CPUs on 5nm or smaller.

It's many things working together, 5nm is not "most of it".

Not to mention TSMC is already working on 3nm.

someperson on Nov 30, 2020 | parent | next [–] Something nobody ever mentions is Apple is the new Intel: they will tend to be at least one process node ahead of the competition.

The reason for this is they have the scale to book all of TSMC's processing capacity for a new node. The AMDs of the world have to wait a year to receive the scraps while Apple move to the next TSMC node.

qwerty456127 on Nov 29, 2020 | prev | next [–] Do the companies better aligned make full-metal laptops challenging MacBookAir durability and design while being 100% Linux-compatible?

The_Colonel on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | next [–] There are e.g. Dell XPS "developer edition" which are shipping with Ubuntu and have near 100% hardware support (I think there's some issue with fingerprint reader).

voltagex_ on Nov 29, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] I wonder at what point they got rid of the Intel RAID/RST controller that'll never be supported in upstream Linux - it's in the non-"developer" 9350.

The_Colonel on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] Coincidentally I have this exact model (9350 non-developer) and it runs (Ubuntu) Linux great.

Laptop is completely silent, all the hardware runs flawlessly, battery life is after 5 years still pretty good, just overall great experience.

I honestly don't remember if I had to at some point disable something in BIOS ...

voltagex_ on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] I have it too. The battery is shot after 4 years (?) but lasts quite a bit longer in Ubuntu. It's had coil whine as long as I had it, the supplied Toshiba NVMe drive died and I've also replaced the Wi-fi card with a mostly sane Intel 9560.

If you're using a SATA drive with the default UEFI settings, Linux will see the drive. If you use a PCIe drive, it won't until you set it to AHCI mode.

Edit: oh and Windows frequently wouldn't recognise the USB-C port unless you had something plugged into it during boot.

hvis on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–] You turn it off in the BIOS before installing your system, and that's it.

voltagex_ on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] Which is what I've done when installing Linux. Am I losing performance? Power efficiency? Features?

It also makes dual booting trickier if you don't plan it beforehand.

It frustrates me that there's not that many reviews that cover this kind of stuff, so it's hard to avoid silliness like this when making a substantial purchase like a laptop.

hvis on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] > Which is what I've done when installing Linux. Am I losing performance? Power efficiency? Features?

From what I read a year ago before doing this, you don't lose much, and software-based RAID (if you go for that sort of thing) in GNU/Linux is just as efficient/reliable, and maybe more so. And anyway, if you only have one HDD/SSD, there is no point in RAID.

> It also makes dual booting trickier if you don't plan it beforehand.

I don't think so: installing Windows will work just the same with Intel's RAID turned off.

qwerty456127 on Dec 2, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] > And anyway, if you only have one HDD/SSD, there is no point in RAID.

Obviously. But why did they care to equip this laptop with the RAID by default?

hvis on Dec 2, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] Apparently, Intel's RST is not just RAID, but it's also supposed to help when a laptop is equipped with two storage devices, one small and fast (SSD) and another big but slower (HDD): https://superuser.com/a/1578326

IIRC there were Dell XPS models like that in the lower price segment. Never tried one personally.

heelix on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | prev | next [–] It is simple enough to set up windows to use the normal boot rather than the RAID one. I've got my XPS set up with one drive in Linux, one in Windows - and boot into the drive I want to be in.

doublepg23 on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–] I'm hoping in the future System76 does, they're already making excellent desktop machines.

Shared404 on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–] My understanding is that some of the newer ThinkPad's fit that bill.

zucker42 on Nov 29, 2020 | prev | next [–] The other thing that makes M1 interesting is it's ARM with specific hardware support for fast x86 emulation, which IMO is unlikely to be replicated in a top of the line laptop for the next 5 years.

rbanffy on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | next [–] x86 emulation is not an issue for 99% of the ARM market. I think it's safe to assume M1 is the first Apple chip that has it.

saagarjha on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] A12Z has it.

rbanffy on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] That's kind of weird. What is it used for in iOS?

saagarjha on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] Nothing, but the DTK uses it.

rbanffy on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] Interesting. It's either that Apple wanted to use it as the first-gen ARM-based Macs or that they planned it to be used internally and in the DTK while M1 isn't ready.

Either way, it's quite impressive to have deliberately engineered dark silicon on consumer devices.

lumost on Nov 29, 2020 | prev | next [–] I could be mistaken, but I’m unaware of any kernel capabilities/optimizations for heterogeneous cores with differing power requirements. System memory for both gpu and cpu workloads would also be a new requirement requiring some thought.

I’d expect it to be difficult for amd/intel to match performance without similar software capabilities.

delroth on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | next [–] Aren't you basically describing big.LITTLE, which has been standard in most mobile SoCs for years now? (And was probably introduced in Android before iOS.)

lumost on Nov 29, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] ahh you are correct! I see support was added in kernel 3.11

pengaru on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | prev | next [–] Without any independent actual measurements of the same stack running on the same hardware with those optimizations turned off, we can't draw any conclusions regarding their significance.

Considering Apple has been so adamant about misrepresenting what's really TSMC silicon as "Apple Silicon", I'm viewing everything they say through "PR oozing with insecurity about not actually controlling access to their chip's manufacturing process, and desperate to convince consumers (and investors) of this being a uniquely Apple advantage" glasses.

mdellabitta on Nov 29, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] Based on your qualification of who's silicon it is, AMD, Broadcom, Marvell, MediaTek, Nvidia, STMicroelectronics, and Qualcomm do not manufacture chips... Even IBM uses TSMC. That's a lot of the CPU silicon shipping right now.

The market has changed, and most CPU vendors don't fab their own chips anymore. The IP is in the chip design. Are you saying TSMC designed the M1?

pengaru on Nov 29, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] I'm saying TSMC makes non-Apple chips as well, so Apple isn't enjoying as defensible of a moat when it comes to silicon as their marketing wants you to believe.

We are in agreement.

mdellabitta on Nov 30, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] But the point is that manufacturing has become commodified. If TSMC doesn't work out, there are other fab companies to use.

bigdict on Nov 29, 2020 | prev | next [–] Or do support Linux on M1 because you do want it, and reward Apple for making good hardware.

nicoburns on Nov 30, 2020 | prev | next [–] The other thing that makes it interesting is getting performance comparable to the fastest Intel/AMD processors as 3Ghz. I expect that AMD will catch up with Apple on performance when they switch to 5nm, but Apple's low clock speed means they're likely to retain the power usage advantage.

pjmlp on Nov 30, 2020 | prev | next [–] My AMD APU begs to differ.

hu3 on Nov 29, 2020 | prev [–] Is there an ETA for 5nm AMD SoCs?

pengaru on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | next [–] Not AFAIK, but it's not like 7nm AMD SoCs are intolerable dogs.

Most M1 vs. PC comparisons are being made against Intel's ancient process, for obvious Apple-favoring reasons.

judge2020 on Nov 29, 2020 | root | parent | next [–] It’s mostly compared to Intel since there’s no official AMD support on MacOS whatsoever. You very well could compare hackintosh AMD to Apple’s M1, but it wouldn’t be comparing Apples to Apples. There are indeed AMD Windows comparisons, however[0].

0: https://youtu.be/4MkrEMjPk24?t=10m39s

judge2020 on Nov 29, 2020 | parent | prev [–] Although Apple booked TSMC’s entire production line (for an unknown length of time)[0], this official graph looks like it indicates 5nm before 2022 (so 2021)[1].

0: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315186-apple-books-tsm...

1: https://youtu.be/iuiO6rqYV4o?t=12m56s

saddlerustle on Nov 29, 2020 | root | parent [–] Huawei got a large fraction of TSMC's 5nm production this year because it had to stockpile chips ahead of the trade sanctions kicking in

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