Apple: M1 vs. M2

casperes1996

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For completeness, here's the other test; Unsurprising results, no fan spin at all, low heat, shorter test, so battery only moved 1-2 percentage points and CPU usage did briefly go to 450% but for the most part was 80-100%
 

casperes1996

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With Theorist9 sending a revised version with a delay so that the kernel start is factored out I got a score of 3.36 and scores ranging from 3.3 to 3.4 in a 4 run attempt
 

theorist9

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With Theorist9 sending a revised version with a delay so that the kernel start is factored out I got a score of 3.36 and scores ranging from 3.3 to 3.4 in a 4 run attempt
For others: When run that benchmark myself I add a pause statement so the kernel can completely reopen before the benchmark starts. I forgot to include that in the first version I sent to casperes1996 and Cmaier.
 

Cmaier

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For others: When run that benchmark myself I add a pause statement so the kernel can completely reopen before the benchmark starts. I forgot to include that in the first version I sent to casperes1996 and Cmaier.

I’m seeing similar results with the pause Added. Ranging from 3.29 to 3.4, with one crazy outlier (1.7) where three of the steps just hung for a long time.
 

theorist9

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The lure of the Mac Pro had mainly been about modularity. It will be interesting to see what flavor of expansion these new boxes provide. I doubt it will be RAM. M.2 slots, sure. Graphics cards? I dunno, but I tend to doubt it. Multiple cpu board slots? Maybe?

Will be interesting to see how they position these as something above the ultra, other than double the multi thread performance and double the maximum RAM.
I'm wondering what mix of PCIe expansion slots the AS Mac Pro will offer (if any at all). Here's what's on the 2019 Mac Pro. On the latter they had many uses—GPUs, Afterburner, general storage, RAID cards, audio processing cards, fibre channel cards, fibre networking cards, additional I/O ports, etc. Even if the AS Mac Pro doesn't accept additional GPU's, there's still all the other potential uses.

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theorist9

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Maybe none? Mpx, thunderbolt, m.2 or whatever? Not sure what you would put in a pcie slot that would actually work, but I suppose it’s possible.
I added an edit after you replied, but what about more I/O ports, more storage (like https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDACL8M264M/ ), RAID cards, audio cards, fibre channel cards, fibre networking cards, etc. ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210408 )? Essentially anything that would normally be off-chip anyways (unlike, e.g., the GPU), so it wouldn't need to be part of Apple Silicon's integrated architecture. In that case, wouldn't it just be a matter of the chip having enough I/O to accommodate those slots?
 
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Cmaier

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I added an edit after you replied, but what about more I/O ports, more storage (like https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/SSDACL8M264M/ ), RAID cards, audio cards, fibre channel cards, fibre networking cards, etc. ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210408 )? Essentially anything that would normally be off-chip anyways (unlike, e.g., the GPU), so it wouldn't need to be part of Apple Silicon's integrated architecture. In that case, wouldn't it just be a matter of the chip having enough I/O to accommodate those slots?
Sure, as long as drivers exist. But most of those things work fine with thunderbolt or mpx. So apple may just want to move past pcie
 

theorist9

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Sure, as long as drivers exist. But most of those things work fine with thunderbolt or mpx. So apple may just want to move past pcie
Sorry, I'm a bit confused. I thought the MPX modules on the Mac Pro plugged into its PCIe slots ( https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/mac-pro-mpx-modules-explained/ ). And that its TB likewise went through PCIe lanes. So, sure, these cards work fine on the current Mac Pro with MPX or TB, but it seems that's just saying they work fine with card->MPX->PCIe->CPU or card->TB->PCIe->CPU. I.e., on the Mac Pro, aren't you're still using PCIe to interface these with the CPU? Thus when you say Apple might want to move past PCIe, are you saying the AS Mac Pro might have MPX and TB that accesses the CPU directly w/o going thru PCIe?
 

throAU

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While it's fun to compare the latest and greatest CPUs, both M1-series and high-end x86, to the M2, that's not what the average user, who just wants a decent everyday computer, is using. I previously compared the leaked M2 benchmarks to the latest Mac Pro which uses a Cascade Lake Xeon W, from 8-cores to 28-cores. It's remarkable how the M2 nearly doubles the 8-core Mac Pro in single-core, and bests it in multi-core. However, very few PCs ship with Xeons, substantially fewer are Mac Pros.

This.

However the performance per watt is important, and given most modern CPUs race to sleep, beating a 28 Xeon inside of 15 watts means that when idle (i.e., most of the time on a typical end user desktop/notebook/tablet) your processor can spend SO much more time either partially or fully asleep. Which means less heat, less battery drain, etc.

:)

And of course when you DO need it to take up and do something it gets it done much faster then returns to sleep.
 

Cmaier

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Sorry, I'm a bit confused. I thought the MPX modules on the Mac Pro plugged into its PCIe slots ( https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/mac-pro-mpx-modules-explained/ ). And that its TB likewise went through PCIe lanes. So, sure, these cards work fine on the current Mac Pro with MPX or TB, but it seems that's just saying they work fine with card->MPX->PCIe->CPU or card->TB->PCIe->CPU. I.e., on the Mac Pro, aren't you're still using PCIe to interface these with the CPU? Thus when you say Apple might want to move past PCIe, are you saying the AS Mac Pro might have MPX and TB that accesses the CPU directly w/o going thru PCIe?
I was referring to the socket and not the interface.
 

theorist9

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I was referring to the socket and not the interface.
Ah, got it. But in that case I'd say regardless of whether the user would be plugging in cards via PCIe slots or MPX slots, it's effectively the same thing: With either approach, all these extra cards are neatly contained within the case, rather than needing to be external devices connected through cables. So that's really my question: Will the case design of the AS Mac Pro be like the 2013 Mac Pro's, where the expansion was mostly external (resulting in a very compact device), or like the 2019 Mac Pro's, where there was ample room for internal expansion?

My prediction is that the there will be some internal expansion—maybe half that currently available on the 2019 Mac Pro, since they probably won't have pluggable GPU expansion (and thus wouldn't need the slots for that) and, additionally, they'll want the case to be much smaller. At the same time, I don't think they'll go back to the 2013 design, where most expansion had to be done externally. I think many pro's didn't like that, because it led to a messier desk, and made the machine less convenient to move because you'd need to collect your external devices along with the machine. [Whatever the reason, the switch to accommodate internal expansion likely followed the guidance of the Pro Workflow Team Apple assembled.] Internal expansion will also provide additional product differentiation vs. the Mac Studio.
 
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