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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BushLin - Wednesday, November 18, 2020 - link
8-core mobile zen 2 chips have been available for nearly a year now. By the time you can buy that unannounced product you speculate about, it'll be competing against 5nm zen 4 and would still be a toss up in performance against 7nm zen 2.Spunjji - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
You're both wrong.Zen 4 is due out in at least a year's time, possibly 18 months. I'll eat my hat if Apple haven't released their higher-end chip with larger cores by then.
That said, there's no reason to assume its CPU performance will be significantly higher than AMD's mobile Zen 3 designs. GPU will be for sure, but you're locked to a platform without access to decent games so that will limit the appeal to a certain audience.
So it's not "game over" for Zen 3 - especially as they don't directly compete - but BushLin's completely wrong about how an 8-core variant of this would stack up to Zen 2 and 3.
BushLin - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
So a 15W 8-core zen 2 beats a 15W 4+4 core M1 in multithreaded, close to real world tests; but a mythical 25-30W 8+4 CPU using the same design which hasn't scaled well from the additional watts it uses over the A14 chip is going to definitely, defiantly and majestically beat all comers, including zen 3? We'll see but random guy on the internet is probably just pulling stuff out of their ass.Spunjji - Monday, November 23, 2020 - link
@BushLin - Please check what I said again: "there's no reason to assume [M1's] CPU performance will be significantly higher than AMD's mobile Zen 3 designs". So no, I don't think it's going to "definitely, defiantly and majestically beat all comers, including zen 3" and you're kind of an ass for straw-manning me like that. Please don't.You keep making false comparisons with TDP too. Zen 2 is 15W at base clocks, but most of the tests seen so far take place largely within its turbo window of ~30W. Zen 3 Cezanne on 7nm will be in the same ballpark. A theoretical (not "mythical") 8+4 design should provide very similar performance in a very similar TDP, with the performance edge likely going to AMD. That indicates than Zen 4 on 5nm should likely be a superior option for both perf/watt and absolute performance, but we just don't know that yet as, in your terms, Zen 4 is still "mythical".
But sure, equally-random guy on the internet. We'll see when we see.
BushLin - Monday, November 23, 2020 - link
Both the M1 and 4800U are drawing more that 15W depending on workload, both settling around 22-24W after initial boost.mdriftmeyer - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
Zen 4 is out Nov 2021, announced Oct 2021. It's already known. Zen 4 is nearly complete in design back in September. What's coming with Zen 4 is the technologies of Xilinx --Neural Engine: Check, Machine Learning Accelerators: check, DSPs for focused A/D Convert Encode/Decode: Check.People the single biggest news of SV this year isn't ARM+Nvidia or Apple M1 series. It's Xilinx merging to become part of AMD.
The IP, 13k engineers and portfolio of best in breed products by Xilinx [run by former AMD] is massive.
And Apple nor Intel nor Nvidia saw this coming.
Zen 4 APU will be a 5w or less CPU, with specialized add-ons, a massive Infinity Fabric interconnect, RAM not constrained like Apple, 8, 12, 16 CPU cores in dual chiplets and RDNA 3.0 CU GPU.
Fall 2021 will be Zen 4 CPU, APU/RDNA 3.0 and RDNA 3.0 discrete GPUs with CDNA 2.0 M series Compute Processors expanding their footprint into HPC.
You'll see the Zen 4/CDNA 2.0 solutions on El Capitan Fall 2021/Spring 2022. Clearly, to win that $600 million contract AMD showed their plans 12 months ago.
From March 04, 2020 Press Release
AMD technology within El Capitan includes:
Next generation AMD EPYC processors, codenamed “Genoa” featuring the “Zen 4” processor core. These processors will support next generation memory and I/O sub systems for AI and HPC workloads,
Next generation Radeon Instinct GPUs based on a new compute-optimized architecture for workloads including HPC and AI. These GPUs will use the next- generation high bandwidth memory and are designed for optimum deep learning performance,
The 3rd Gen AMD Infinity Architecture, which will provide a high-bandwidth, low latency connection between the four Radeon Instinct GPUs and one AMD EPYC CPU included in each node of El Capitan. As well, the 3rd Gen AMD Infinity Architecture includes unified memory across the CPU and GPU, easing programmer access to accelerated computing,
An enhanced version of the open source ROCm heterogenous programming environment, being developed to tap into the combined performance of AMD CPUs and GPUs, unlocking maximum performance.
“This unprecedented computing capability, powered by advanced CPU and GPU technology from AMD, will sustain America’s position on the global stage in high performance computing and provide an observable example of the commitment of the country to maintaining an unparalleled nuclear deterrent,” said LLNL Lab Director Bill Goldstein. “Today’s news provides a prime example of how government and industry can work together for the benefit of the entire nation.”
Note the emphasis on Genoa Zen 4 processor core, not Genoa Zen 4 CPUs.
Spunjji - Monday, November 23, 2020 - link
@mrdriftmeyer - do you have a source for the 2021 claim? The last roadmap I'm aware of had a Zen 3 refresh on desktop in 2021 (likely on AM5) followed by Zen 4 some time in 2022.Seeing as the rest of your post appears to consist mostly of wild speculation and unsupportable assertions (e.g. the Zen 4 design is already locked in, it's NOT going to contain Xilinx IP) I'm not going to hold my breath.
tempestglen - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
BTW, M1 is a SoC, so please add GPU and RAM power of Zen3 during comparison.RedGreenBlue - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
Benchmarks are benchmarks. I love AMD but in the power envelope the M1 is better. Also consider that this chip maxes out at 3.2Ghz not 4+. It’s just simply that x86-64 is a hinderance to AMD and Intel. That’s the real reason Apple had to switch and knew it with Steve Jobs in 2011. Intel is supposedly working on an x86 replacement. Haven’t heard anything new about it in years. But if they’re still working on it, it was expected in 2020-2022.RedGreenBlue - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
This will also vastly improve their slim profit margins on macs too. Intel was charging such ridiculous prices for mediocre chips it was unbelievable. This is the best business model.