That's really quick go live... Apple M1  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2020, 07:09:17 am
content: They just recently announced Apple Silicon and a few months later you can buy a first Mac BookPro and Mac MiniIs it iPad CPU on steroids?It looks like they have finally gluedmemory on Minis too and some bizarre to 16GB max limit.The base model is cheaper that used to be on Intel, so let's see performance and battery life on books.Wonder if you will able run virtual x86 guests on these machines.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2020, 09:19:30 am
content: 18 Years Ago26 years ago (updated to 2020) Apple Introduced the First PowerPC Macs, but when Apple moved from m68k to PowerPC, they had to rely on Motorola and IBM, and it was like a going ahead with the handbrake on, so I see in what it's happening now like the fist step into emancipation of silicon, a transition from x86 to "Apple-Arm" where chips are now designed and produced by the same company who makes the final products and the operating system.It could also be an exclusive control of the supply of or trade in a computer service (mostly for digital makers?), but for sure it's a 360 degree process of being set free from all the legal and economic restrictions imposed by the old rusty legacy who still go around with Intel x86, which actually *is* the biggest monopoly game ever seen in the last 30 years.The announced products using the new Apple M1 are two laptops, the Bookair and the BookPro, and a mini desktop computer, the Apple mini; they are expected to be able to run the same applications that now run on the iPhone and iPad, and this means that a product like Finalcut will be soon released for Apple M1, making these products the perfect all-included ecosystem for video making.edit:18 years ago -> 26 years ago

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2020, 10:57:39 am
content: Quote from: olkipukki on November 11, 2020, 07:09:17 amIt can use a *lot* more power if it wants to. We will see. I'll have a Mac Mini on either next Friday or the Monday after and will report my findings.QuoteThe RAM is inside the CPU package.Of course they can put more in future packages, that's just what they're offering now.The bandwidth and access times could be massively better than with external SODIMMs!! See HBM2 etc.QuoteWith a JIT, of course. With emulating a machine with 16 registers on a machine with 32 registers, a slowdown of 2x or less vs native code should be possible.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2020, 11:05:58 am
content: Quote from: DiTBho on November 14, 2020, 09:19:30 amThere are a number of confused things in this message but I'll just address this one.I bought a PowerMac 6100 in March 1994. By my arithmetic that's 26.7 years ago, not 18 years.The first Intel Macs were introduced in January 2006, which I make as 14.8 years ago.18 years is closer to Intel Mac introduction than to PowerPC Mac introduction.

author: DiTBho
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 14, 2020, 02:47:45 pm
content: Quote from: brucehoult on November 14, 2020, 11:05:58 amProbably I remembered the "18 years" from fromthispost written in 2012 (and for certain things, I am still living in 2012); anyway, the meaning of my post marginally depends on it

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 21, 2021, 06:32:14 am
content: Here we go...24" iMac M1 in seven colours that starts with no USB at allfor a basic setup and USB 4 support for extra $$$Also, iPad Pro M1 that literally MacBook Pro with a touch screen and without keyboard (?!)

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2021, 01:56:31 am
content: Quote from: olkipukki on April 21, 2021, 06:32:14 amLol, base model has 2 Thunderbolt/USB 4.0 ports, and higher configs add 2 additional USB 3.1 ports.So just about everything you said there is entirely wrong.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2021, 03:06:16 am
content: I'm really loving my 16 GB / 1 TB M1 Mini, to the point that my 32 core 128 GB ThreadRipper Linux machine now only gets turned on when I actually need all that.The thing is *snappy*.Virtually everything I was doing in Linux work fine on MacOS, with a bit of help from HomeBrew. Some open source projects initially didn't build for MacOS on arm64 -- even if they worked fine on both Linux on arm64 and MacOS on amd64 -- but that's changing pretty quickly. Rosetta 2 is a pretty seamless fallback for things that work on MacOS on amd64. With 16 GB RAM there's enough room to run a VM with arm64 Ubuntu with a decent amount of memory allocated to it.There is a project to run arm64 Linux natively on the M1 machines that is making good progress. Current it's booting with USB serial console and GPU reverse-engineering has progrssed to the point of being able to display an accelerated spinning cube. USB HID support and networking should be working pretty soon I think, but they've been concentrating on getting all necessary kernel patches upstreamed ASAP so that it'll all Just Work in the next Linux kernel release. Some of the patches are already in the recent release I think. Drivers for peripherals is something that can then be worked on at leisure, and in parallel by many people.

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2021, 09:52:23 am
content: Quote from: Someone on April 22, 2021, 01:56:31 amThat's true.Not sure where I got this idea - iMac w/o USBPardon for the misleading

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2021, 11:44:57 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on April 22, 2021, 03:06:16 amIf you don't mind to ask you, what is point?It looks like your primary dev related to Linux and no dependencies on any Mac apps.Did you just miss old good days in Apple world?

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2021, 12:50:19 pm
content: Didn't see this. Quick update on my mini I bought when it came out.Sent back two weeks ago as there were RAM problems causing display corruption and kernel crashes. Amazon refunded the full purchase price. I suspect there may be a reliability problem with these. Time will tell if I got an outlier machine or not.Also the USB on them is crap. USB 3.2 gen 1 = yep. USB 3.2 gen 2 = nope. That means it kills off a huge amount of decent NVMe bridges and throws the cost of a thunderbolt storage bridge on the pricing. Also bluetooth keyboard connection problems galore - so much trouble with that and lagging out and disconnecting. And on top of that, the only reliable display connection is a USB-C to displayport one.Also the new iMac pricing is insane. It's got the same guts as a £684 mac mini but costs £1449 for a fucking 8gb / 256gb machine with a 24". Nope! My intel 10400 desktop which mostly runs as a hypervisor with 64gb of RAM is only very slightly slower on measured benchmarks that concern me (compiling / running programs) and cost £530 total. For 64Gb!!!. God knows how much that'd cost when they release a "professional" device down the line. I reckon a suitable iMac will be around the £3000 mark whereas a suitable PC stack top to bottom will be £1500-1600.I'm out.

author: aandrew
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2021, 12:52:42 pm
content: Quote from: olkipukki on April 22, 2021, 11:44:57 amI'm not @brucehoult, but do something similar.I have worked with, on, and around Linux since the late 90s. I've had Linux desktops, laptops and even tried some very, very early tablets (Linux on DragonBall, remember that?!). I've written quite a few Linux device drivers over the years. I design lots of embedded hardware that runs Linux. For the last 8ish years, my primary system has been a Mac. The answer is pretty simple too: The Linux desktop has always been a bit of a pain in the ass. Whether it's been sound, wake/sleep/hibernation, bluetooth, wifi or a myriad of other much smaller but no less annoying issues, it's never really been completely smooth. OSX has a few warts too, especially in the last few OS versions, but it's still miles ahead of Linux on the desktop.When I need actual, honest-to-God Linux, I have virtual machines running either locally on VMWare Fusion or on a very old but awesome Dell blade server in my furnace room. I do have an x86 system running Linux natively which gets used when I just can't use virtualization for what I need, but it honestly doesn't get much use.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2021, 01:10:56 pm
content: Quote from: olkipukki on April 22, 2021, 11:44:57 amAn Apple PC could be seen as getting a Unix machine with a nice user interface?

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 22, 2021, 01:17:08 pm
content: It's a Unix machine and a nice user interface. The two rarely meet