The 2020 Mac Mini Unleashed: Putting Apple Silicon M1 To The Test
by Andrei Frumusanu on November 17, 2020 9:00 AM ESTSPEC2006 & 2017: Industry Standard - ST Performance
Single-threaded performance of the new M1 is certainly one of its key aspects, where the new Firestorm cores definitely punch far above their power class. We had hinted in our preview A14 analysis article that the M1 may well be ending up as not only the top-performing low-power mobile CPU out there, but actually end up as the top-performing absolute performance amongst all CPUs in the market. The A14 fell short of that designation, but the M1 is an even faster implementation of the new Firestorm cores.
It’s to be noted that we’re comparing the M1 to the absolute best desktop and laptop platforms on the market right now, solely looking at absolute best single-threaded performance.
In SPECint2006, we’re now seeing the M1 close the gap to AMD’s Zen3, beating it in several workloads now, which increasing the gap to Intel’s new Tiger Lake design as well as their top-performing desktop CPU, which the M1 now beats in the majority of workloads.
Since our A14 results, we’ve been able to track down Apple’s compiler setting which increases the 456.hmmer by such a dramatic amount – Apple defaults the “-mllvm -enable-loop-distribute=true” in their newest compiler toolchain whilst it needs to be enabled on third-party LLVM compilers. A 5950X with the flag enabled increases its score to 91.64, but also while seeing some regressions in other tests. We haven’t had time to re-test further platforms.
The M1’s performance boost in 462.libquantum is due to the increased L2 cache, as well as the doubled memory bandwidth of the system, something that this workload is very hungry of.
In the fp2006 workloads, we’re seeing the M1 post very large performance boosts relative to the A14, meaning that it now is able to claim the best performance out of all CPUs being compared here.
In the overall score, the M1 increases the scores by 9.5% and 17% over the A14. In the integer score, the M1 takes the lead here, although if we were to account for the 456.hmmer discrepancy it would still favour the Zen3-based 5950X. In the floating-point score however, the Apple M1 now takes a large lead ahead, making it the best performing CPU core.
We’ve had a lot arguments about whether 2006 is relevant or not in today’s landscape. We have practical reasons for not yet running SPEC2017 on mobile devices, but given that the new Apple Silicon M1 runs on macOS, these concerns are not valid, thus enabling us to also run the more modern benchmark suite.
It’s to be noted that currently we do not have a functional Fortran compiler on Apple Silicon macOS systems, thus we have to skip several workloads in the 2017 suite, which is why they’re missing from the graphs. We’re concentrating on the remaining C/C++ workloads.
The situation doesn’t change too much with the newer SPECint2017 suite. Apple’s Firestorm core here remains extremely impressive, at worst matching up Intel’s new Tiger Lake CPU in single-threaded performance, and at best, keeping up and sometimes beating AMD’s new Zen3 CPU in the new Ryzen 5000 chips.
Apple’s performance is extremely balanced across the board, but what stands out is the excellent 502.gcc_r performance where it takes a considerable leap ahead of the competition, meaning that the new Apple core does extremely well on very complex code and code compiling.
In SPECfp2017, we’re seeing something quite drastic in terms of the scores. The M1 here at worst is a hair-width’s behind AMD’s Zen3, and at best is posting the best absolute performance of any CPU in the market. These are incredible scores.
In the overall new SPEC2017 int and fp charts, the Apple Silicon M1 falls behind AMD’s Zen3 in the integer performance, however takes an undisputable lead in the floating-point suite.
Compared to the Intel contemporary designs, the Apple M1 is able to showcase a performance leap ahead of the best the company has to offer, with again a considerable strength in the FP score.
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.
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Spunjji - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
@halo37253 I suspect you're largely correct based on what we're seeing in the benchmarks here.Of course, the answer to why Apple would do it is clear: they love vertical integration. They'll eventually be able to translate this into power/performance advantages that will be difficult to assail with apps written specifically for their platform.
mdriftmeyer - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
Apple will have to modify their future M1s to accomodate PCIe because a large portion of the Audio Video Professional world needs it--in fact we all rely on DMA over PCI for Thunderbolt to reduce latency, and nothing like throwing away a $5k-$25k stack of Audio Interface, Mic Pres and more just because Apple wants to drop that, or just simply dump Apple and move back to Windows and deal with DLLs. I hate Windows but I sure as hell won't drop expensive gear tied with Dante Ethernet and TB3 interfacing with various Audio Interfaces and rack mount hardware because Apple thinks the Pro market only needed the Mac Pro one off before dropping us off a cliff.No one in the world of Professional Music uses Logic Pro stock plugins and the average track has any where between 80-200 channel strips to manage one mix. If you think the M1 or its predecessors with this type of tightly joined unified memory system will satisfy people are just not familiar to how many resources making professional music or film production require.
Let's not even talk about 3D Modeling for F/X in Films or full blown PIXAR style film shorts, never mind full length motion pictures. Working in 8k and soon 16k film to have real-time scrubbing will demand new versions of the Mac Pro's Afterburner and upgraded Xeons [or if they were smart, Zens] but definitely not M series SoCs.
Spunjji - Monday, November 23, 2020 - link
@mrdriftmeyer - I don't see that any of the requirements you've mentioned here would preclude Apple producing an M1 successor that would be capable of fulfilling them. In particular you mentioned 8K video scrubbing, which the M1 can already do better than the average Xeon. I doubt they'd throw away the audio market entirely over this switch - I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the next chips look like.varase - Wednesday, November 25, 2020 - link
Most people are looking at these first Apple Silicon Macs wrong - these aren't Apple's powerhouse machines: they're simply the annual spec bump of the lowest end Apple computers with DCI-P3 displays, Wifi 6, and the new Apple Silicon M1 SoC.They have the same limitations as the machines they replace - 16 GB RAM and two Thunderbolt ports.
These are the machines you give to a student or teacher or a lawyer or an accountant or a work-at-home information worker - folks who need a decently performing machine who don't want to lug around a huge powerhouse machine (or pay for one for that matter). They're still marketed at the same market segment, though they now have a vastly expanded compute power envelope.
The real powerhouses will probably come next year with the M1x (or whatever), rumored to have eight Firestorm and four Icestorm cores. Apple has yet to decide on an external memory interconnect and multichannel PCIe scheme, if they decide to move in that direction.
Other CPU and GPU vendors and OEM computer makers take notice - your businesses are now on limited life support. These new Apple Silicon models can compete up through the mid-high tier of computer purchases, and if as I expect Apple sells a ton of these many will be to your bread and butter customers.
In fact, I suspect that Apple - once they recover their R&D costs - will be pushing the prices of these machines lower while still maintaining their margins - while competing computer makers will still have to pay Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and nVidea for their expensive processors, whereas Apple's cost per SoC goes down the more they manufacture. Competing computer makers may soon be squeezed by Apple Silicon price/performance on one side and high component prices on the other. Expect them to be demanding lower processor prices from the above manufacturers so they can more readily compete, and processor manufacturers may have to comply because if OEM computer manufacturers go under or stop making competing models, the processor makers will see a diminishing customer base.
I believe the biggest costs for a chip fab are startup costs - no matter what processor vendors would like you to believe. Design and fab startup are _expensive_ - but once you start getting decent yields, the additional costs are silicon wafers and QA. The more of these units Apple can move, the lower the per unit cost and the better the profits.
The real threat to OEM computer and processor makers are economic - and that fact that consumer publications like Consumer Reports will probably _gush_ over the improvements in battery life and performance.
Most consumers are not Windows or macOS or ChromeOS fanboys - the just want a computer which is affordable and has decent build quality and gets the job done. There are aspirational aspects of computer purchases, and M1 computers shoot waaayyy above their peers. This can mean a potential buyer _doesn't_ have to buy way up the line for capabilities he or she may want sometime during their ownership window, and these computers will last a long long time and will not suffer slowdowns due to software feature creep.
Eric S - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
Remember that this is designed to be Apple’s lowest end Mac chip. Their Intel i3. Wait until the big chips come out next year.BushLin - Wednesday, November 18, 2020 - link
... Your speculation may or may not be correct but next year will see 5nm zen 4 which is actually announced rather than rumors.jospoortvliet - Wednesday, November 18, 2020 - link
Sure, and 3nm m2. Different generation with different processes etc. But today, M1 has the best single core and at lower power comes close to octacores despite only 4 fast and 4 slow cores. I wish I could buy it with Linux on it...dysonlu - Sunday, February 21, 2021 - link
"makes we wonder why Apple is so willing to fracture their already pretty small Mac OS fanbase"You have it upside down. It is exactly BECAUSE it has a small fanbase that it can afford to do this kind of migration. (The large and heterogenous "fanbase" in Windows is the big achilles' heel for Microsoft when it comes to making any significant change.) There will be very little "fracture" of Apple's fanbase, if any at all. The fans will gladly move to Mx CPUs given the advantages over Intel.
adriaaaaan - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
People are giving apple too much credit here, this is only impressive because of the process advantage which has nothing to do with apple.People are forgetting that Mac's have a tiny market share and that's not likely to change any time soon. You wouldn't knows it because journos tend to use Mac's therefore they think everyone does.
If anything I hope this kicks AMD into gear they are still releasing gcn designs. Let's see who's boss when they release 5nm rDNA 2
Spunjji - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
"this is only impressive because of the process advantage"False. A crap core on a high-tech process will still produce bad results; you only have to look at the last bunch of Zhaoxin CPUs based on the old Via tech.
If this were just about process node you'd expect to see lower power but with limited performance. As it is, they manage both extremely low power *and* very competitive performance. Beating Intel is no small feat, even in their current incarnation.