[leetcrew]

yes, it compiled the project in 35% less time. doesn't really matter much for such a small project, but imagine if on a larger project the intel part took an hour and the m1 did it in 39 minutes. that's a substantial speedup. of course, we might see different results after leaving the turbo window.

[cptskippy]

You're assuming that the scaling is linear though. What if there's a fixed 10 second ding on x86? That 39 minute compile on the m1 would only be 39:10 on the x86.

[coder543]

> What if there's a fixed 10 second ding on x86?

There isn't.

[jfrunyon]

And yet it is extremely unlikely that it's linear or anywhere near it.

[coder543]

What is "linear" in this context? If the Y-axis is performance, what is the X-axis? That statement doesn't seem to make much sense without any additional explanation.

If I run a benchmark for a program on the M1, that's a single data point. It's hard to call a single data point "linear", "quadratic", or anything else... and you can't really put multiple benchmarks on the X-axis, because they're measuring different things.

What would even make it (whatever "it" is) "extremely unlikely"? People have had over 6 months to run benchmarks on the M1. Surely you can find a concrete answer to your question that doesn't involve random speculation on internet forums?

Based on my own experiences, I have no reason to believe that the M1's performance starts tanking if you run it for longer than a few seconds, in case you're implying that the other processors will "catch up" if they have longer to get up to speed... why would they? That makes no sense either. Longer compilations are faster on M1 too, relative to my Intel hexacore MBP, from what I've seen in the past. I mean, obviously, right? Why wouldn't they be? Intel's processors change frequencies in milliseconds... it doesn't take them minutes to warm up.

The M1 isn't a silver bullet. AMD makes laptop processors that are more powerful. But the M1 is still really good for what it is, and those AMD processors consume notably more power than the M1 to achieve their performance.

[cptskippy]

> I have no reason to believe that the M1's performance starts tanking if you run it for longer than a few seconds

This statement speaks volumes about your bias. You're immediately on the defensive and assuming we're attacking the M1 rather than the assumptions made in a test and it's methodology.

No one was implying that the M1's performance would tank. I specifically conjectured that perhaps x86, not M1, might have a penalty.

The original assertion made was that all x86 compiles were ~30% slower than the M1, but the benchmark was a ~20 compile. What happens if the compile is hours?

If the penalty is ~30% linear then a 60 minute compile on M1 is 80 minutes on x86. But if there's just a 10 second warmup penalty on x86 the compile time might only be 60 minutes + 10 seconds.

The truth is probably somewhere in between.

[coder543]

> But if there's just a 10 second warmup penalty on x86 the compile time might only be 60 minutes + 10 seconds.

But that doesn't make any sense, as I previously asserted. That's just not how any of this works. x86 is not suffering a "penalty". It doesn't need time to "warmup". I already discussed my views (based on actual real world experience) on all of this, but you conveniently bypassed those statements.

> This statement speaks volumes about your bias. You're immediately on the defensive and assuming we're attacking the M1 rather than the assumptions made in a test and it's methodology.

It really doesn't speak volumes. The default position I've seen is for people to assume that new technology is just a gimmick, and that results are only being cherry picked. And that's exactly what you just said you were assuming ("the truth is probably somewhere in between"), so I was right to reach that conclusion. No one here (that I've seen) is claiming the M1 is the unequivocal performance champion in all things, but it does really well in some use cases that impress me as a developer.

If it's really just about test methodology, you would just look up other tests, or run your own. Putting out completely unfounded statements like "what if there's a fixed 10 second ding on x86?" doesn't move the conversation forward when the hardware and results are so readily available. It's just a way of attempting to cast doubt on results. There's little need for speculation at this point, but you continue to speculate in defense of your previous comment without apparently having any hands on experience with M1.

[jfrunyon]

The X-axis is complexity. Please go back and re-read the context of my comment.