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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andrewaggb - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
Pretty much. There's no reason to think the cores will be better on a chip with more of them. The only thing that is a possibility (certainly not a given) is that the clock speed will be substantially higher which should put Apple in the lead. That said, the previous review showed a very modest IPC improvement this time around even with huge reorder buffers and an 8-wide design. So I suspect apple's best course for improved performance is higher clocks but that always runs counter to power usage so we'll see. AMD and Intel will probably have to go wider to compete with Apple for single thread IPC in the long run.GPU-wise it's pretty decent for integrated graphics but if you want to play games you shouldn't be running Mac OS or using integrated graphics. It'll be interesting to see if Apple's market share jumps enough to pull in some game development.
Eric S - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
I’m don’t think any of these benchmarks are optimized for TBDR. Memory bound operations could be significantly faster if optimized for the chip. Many render pipelines could run 4X faster. I’m curious to see iOS graphics benchmarks run on this that are more representative. Of course I hope we see apps and games optimized for TBDR as well.Spunjji - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
@andrewaggb - Agreed entirely. The cores themselves aren't going to magically improve, and it's not clear from the meagre scaling between A14 at 5-10W and M1 at 10-25W that they can make them a lot faster with clock speed increases. But a chip with 12 Firestorm cores and 4 Icestorm cores would be an interesting match for the 5900X, and if they beef the GPU up to 12 cores with a 192bit memory interface and/or LPDDR5 then they could have something that's actually pretty solid for the vast majority of workloads.I don't think games are going to be moving en-masse from Windows any time soon, but I guess we'll see as time goes on.
Stephen_L - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
I feel very lucky that I didn’t use your mindset when I decided to buy AMD R5-1600X instead of an Intel i5 for my pc.Spunjji - Thursday, November 19, 2020 - link
@YesYesNo - you responded to a comment about how they *will* be releasing faster chips by talking about how they haven't done so yet. This is known. You're kind of talking past the people you're replying to - nobody's asking you to reconsider how you feel about the M1 based on whatever comes next, but it doesn't make sense to assume this is the absolute best they can do, either.andreltrn - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
This is not their High-end chip! This a chip for low-end devices such as fan-less laptops. They attacked that market first because this where they will make the most money. High end Pro won't go for a new platform until it is proven and that they are 100% sure that they will be able to port their workflow to it. They are starting with the low-end and follow up with probably a 10 or 12 core chip in the spring for the high-end laptop and the iMac.vlad42 - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
I just do not see Apple using any but a low power mobile chip for consumer devices.Think about it, about half the time we did not see Apple release a tablet optimized A#X chip for the iPad. In their recent earnings reports the combined iPad and Mac revenue is still only half that of the iPhone. By using the same chip for the iPad and all Mac machines, except the Mac Pro, maybe Apple will actually update the soc every year.
If apple were to provide a higher performing chip for consumer devices, then it would probably be updated only once every few years. Apple just does not make enough money from high end laptops and the iMac to justify dedicated silicon for those products without pulling an Intel and reusing the soc for far too many product cycles. Just look at the Mac Pros. The engineering resources needed to design the most recent x86 Mac Pro is a drop in the bucket compared to designing and taping out a new soc. Despite this, Apple has only been updating the Mac Pro lineup once every 5-7 years!
The problem, is that by the time they are willing to update those theoretical high end consumer chips, they will have been long since been made obsolete. Who in their right mind would purchase a "high end" laptop or an iMac if it is out performed by an entry level Air or an iPad or was lacking in important features (hardware codec support, the next stupid version of HDCP needed for movies/TV shows, etc.). Even worse for Apple is if their customers by a non-Apple product instead. Much of Apple's current customer base does not actually need a Mac. They would be fine with any decent quality high end laptop or any all-in-one with a screen that is not hot garbage.
Eric S - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
They are working on updates for the high end. I expect they will be amazing. At least two higher end chips are in late design or early production.Eric S - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
You are probably right in that they may only be updated every few years, but the same can be said of the Xeon which also skips generations.vlad42 - Tuesday, November 17, 2020 - link
But the Xeon chips are a bad example because Intel shot themselves in the foot through a combination of complacency, tying their next gen products too tightly to the manufacturing process and a shortage of 14nm capacity. We used to get new Xeons if not every year, then at least every time there was an architecture update.A better more recent comparison would be with AMD which has always updated the Threadripper lineup. Granted, we technically do not know if the Threadripper Pro lineup will be updated every year, but it very likely will be.