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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tkSteveFOX - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
Just imagine if they up the TDP to 40W on the next 3nm process next year?Perhaps the CPU part won't get big gains (let's face it, CPU is better than anything on the market up to 60W), but GPU should double the performance. By that time 95% of apps will be native as well, so M1 performance will gain another 10-20% additional performance in all scenarios.
mdriftmeyer - Saturday, November 21, 2020 - link
GPU double performance. That's delusional right there. Nothing in Apple's licensed IP will ever touch AMD GPU performance moving forward. Your claim the CPU is better than anything on the market up to 60W is also delusional.Enjoy 2021 when very little changes inside the M Series but AMD keeps moving forward. Being a NeXT/Apple alum I was hoping my former colleagues were wiser and moved to AMD three years ago and pushed back this ARM jump two more years.
ARM has reached its zenith in designs in the embedded space and that is the reason everything wowed is about Camera Lenses. Fab processes are reaching their zenith as well.
M1 is 12 years of ARM development by Apple's teams after buying PA Semi in 2008. It took 12 years with unlimited budgets to produce the M1. It's far less impressive than people realize.
Most of Apple's frameworks are already fully optimized after the past 8 years of in-house development. People keep thinking this code base is young. It's not. It's mature. We never released anything young back at NeXT or Apple Engineering. That hasn't change since I left. It's the mantra from day 1.
The architecture teams at AMD have decades more experience in CPU designs and nothing released here is something they haven't already worked on in-house.
Intel's arrogance is one of the greatest falls from the top in computing history. And it's only going to get worse for the next five years.
dontlistentome - Saturday, November 21, 2020 - link
Not sure when Intel will learn - they let the Gigahertz marketeers ruin them last time AMD had a lead, and this time it was the accountants. Wondering who screws them up again 15 years from now?corinthos - Monday, November 23, 2020 - link
Intel made so many mistakes and brought in outsiders who just didn't have the goods to set it on a good path forward. The board members who chose these folks are partially to blame. Larrabee was just one of the earlier warning signs.corinthos - Monday, November 23, 2020 - link
So are you saying that there's more limited growth opportunity for Apple going down the ARM path than people realize, and that the prospect of AMD producing competitive/superior low-powered processors is going to be much better?For now, it seems that for the power consumed, the M1 products have a leg up in power-performance over Intel or AMD-based competing products. Can Apple take that and scale it upwards to be competitive or even a leader in the desktop space?
I think about how there are some test results coming in already showing how a 2019 Mac Pro with a 10-core cpu and expensive discrete amd gpu and loads of ram being outshined by these M1's in some video editing workloads and wonder if a powerhouse desktop is such a good investment these days. That thing came out like a year ago and cost probably around $10K.
Focher - Tuesday, November 24, 2020 - link
From your post, I suspect you are not going to enjoy the next 2 years. Saying things like the code is already fully optimized is so ridiculous on its face, it’s hard to believe someone wrote it. If time led to full optimization, then what’s the magic time horizon where that happens? If you think Apple just played its full hand with the M1, you’ve never paid attention to Apple.blackcrayon - Tuesday, November 24, 2020 - link
I would think doubling GPU performance would be one of the easier updates they could make. More cores, more transistors with their existing design - the same thing they've done year after year to make "X" versions of their iPhone chips for the iPad. The M1 isn't at the point where doubling the GPU cores would make it gigantic and unsuitable for a higher end laptop or desktop. Unless you thought he meant "double Nvidia's best performance" or something which isn't going to be possible currently :)zodiacfml - Friday, November 20, 2020 - link
Coming back here just to leave a comment though the M1 truly leaves any previous Apple x86 product in the dust, it is far from the performance of a Ryzen 4800U which has TDP of 15W. The M1 is at 5nm while consuming 20-24W.The M1 iGPU is mighty though, which can only be equaled or beaten by next year/generation APU or Intel iGPU
thunng8 - Saturday, November 21, 2020 - link
The 4800u uses up to 50w running benchmarks and under load. You will never see a current gen Ryzen without active cooling. In laptops running benchmarks, the fans ramps up to 6000rpm while the m1 can run in the MacBook Air with no cooling with hardly any performance degradation. And there’s also the issue of battery life where the m1 laptop with a smaller battery can far outlast any Ryzen laptop.In short you cannot compare intel and AMDs dubious tdp numbers with the number measured for the m1.
BushLin - Saturday, November 21, 2020 - link
M1 and 4800U (in 15W mode) are consuming similar 22-24W power when the 4800U is showing better Cinebench performance, no denying the single thread advantage of the M1 though.If you've seen a 4800U anywhere near 50W, it won't have been in its 15W mode and running an unrealistic test like Prime95.
Just the facts Jack.