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Why is Apple’s M1 Chip So Fast?

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday December 02 2020, @02:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-the-chips dept.

NPC-131072 writes:

A medium article

On Youtube I watched a Mac user who had bought an iMac last year. It was maxed out with 40 GB of RAM costing him about $4000. He watched in disbelief how his hyper expensive iMac was being demolished by his new M1 Mac Mini, which he had paid a measly $700 for.

In real world test after test, the M1 Macs are not merely inching past top of the line Intel Macs, they are destroying them. In disbelief people have started asking how on earth this is possible?

If you are one of those people, you have come to the right place. Here I plan to break it down into digestible pieces exactly what it is that Apple has done with the M1.

Related:
What Does RISC and CISC Mean in 2020?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Wednesday December 02 2020, @04:46PM (3 children)

    by ledow (5567) on Wednesday December 02 2020, @04:46PM (#1083291) Homepage

    More RAM doesn't necessarily make a computer go faster.

    And Mac RAM and units with large unit pre-installed are literally RIDICULOUSLY priced for what is a basic memory chip nowadays.

    The unit behind me has 128GB RAM and it didn't cost anywhere near $4000 brand-new.

    Also, the workload is always pathetically biased on M1 benchmarks. I'll believe it when I see it myself.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2020, @05:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2020, @05:08PM (#1083298)

    "More RAM doesn't necessarily make a computer go faster."

    We look for things. Things to make us go.
    We are not strong.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 02 2020, @11:02PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 02 2020, @11:02PM (#1083424) Journal

    More RAM doesn't necessarily make a computer go faster.

    I think that should be rephrased for clarity. More RAM always translates into a faster computer, up to the point that all your OS and applications fit into memory. Beyond that point, additional RAM gives you no benefit.

    Or, rephrased again, if you have enough RAM that you never use swap/virtual memory, more RAM will do you no good at all.

    Solid State Drives change the equation some, but you still don't want your machine constantly writing to swap space.

    • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday December 02 2020, @11:55PM

      by darkfeline (1030) on Wednesday December 02 2020, @11:55PM (#1083438) Homepage

      if you have enough RAM that you never use swap/virtual memory, more RAM will do you no good at all.

      Not true, due to the disk cache. Anyone who has built a DB machine would know this.

      $ free -h
                    total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
      Mem:           31Gi       3.6Gi        16Gi       1.1Gi        11Gi        26Gi
      Swap:            0B          0B          0B

      Look at that delicious 11 GiB cache. Disk IO would be significantly slower had I only 8 GiB of RAM, even if I'm technically only using 3 GiB.

      --
      Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!