Genuine question, from someone that won’t upgrade from their M1 Air: what difference does it make for most users? Where would that extra 50GB/s be felt?
The M1 doesn't really benchmark in pure CPUs tests much higher that the Intel chips it replaced... it's was an incremental upgrade, not a generational upgrade; in other word, pure CPU benchmark increases would have been realized when/if the nextgen Intel chips were used.
Instead, most of the felt responsiveness on the M1 comes from the insane memory bandwidth. Everything from launching apps to task swapping to garbage collection events in various languages gets a boost from the lower latency and higher bandwidth.
Okay, I really don’t know why the M1 feels so amazingly responsive compared to my i7. But is 12.5% loss in memory bandwidth that important for these kinds of tasks? It seems really hard to saturate, say, 100GB per second!
> Instead, most of the felt responsiveness on the M1 comes from the insane memory bandwidth.
False. Extra bandwidth is there for and meaningfully improves the performance of the GPU, not the CPU. CPU can not even access all of that bandwidth in Apple M-series designs in the first place:
"While 243GB/s is massive, and overshadows any other design in the industry, it’s still quite far from the 409GB/s the chip is capable of. More importantly for the M1 Max, it’s only slightly higher than the 204GB/s limit of the M1 Pro, so from a CPU-only workload perspective, it doesn’t appear to make sense to get the Max if one is focused just on CPU bandwidth."
Furthermore, even within the bandwidth actually available, it's just a matter of fact that extra bandwidth barely if ever really makes a dent in CPU limited (as opposed to GPU limited) applications. See https://youtu.be/omumzW1AtGE?t=500 as an example of one of the studies on the overall subject.
> a boost from the lower latency
False. M-series systems have slightly _higher_ system memory to/from CPU latency, and drastically higher system memory to/from GPU latency (especially compared to other iGPU solutions).
See https://www.anandtech.com/show/16680/tiger-lake-h-performanc... for the same data for Intel i9-11980HK as a ballpark comparison point: 101 ns. Apple's results are basically inline with everything else in the industry, and are in fact slightly worse on latency.
"DRAM access takes more than 342 ns at the 128 MB test size. Going further sends latency beyond 400 ns, perhaps due to TLB misses. M2 Pro thus has higher DRAM access latency than AMD’s Phoenix, which has similar memory access latency to recent discrete GPUs."
You will see: DRAM latency from M2 Pro's iGPU is up to 475ns, while iGPU on AMD 7840HS peaks (on the bad side) at 270ns. M2 (non-Pro) does better than M2 Pro peaking at 330ns or so, still roughly 20% worse than AMD.
I'm sorry, but the exact negation of everything you said is in fact true.
I refuse to defend a trillion-dollar company; but Apple doesn’t prevent you from installing other browsers. It prevents installation of other browser engines. You can already use Chrome and Edge on iOS.
Good article as a rebuttal. One caveat: the comparison between high-speed and conventional rail is overshadowing the privatization/market forces of the operators themselves. HSR will be invariably more expensive to run because the energy costs are much higher, but a lot of that price tag is — I assume — the profit margin of the private company. Public rail can run at cost, but private can’t.
This is nonsense. I’ve had to deal with bills coming in my name because someone got hold of my credit card and address. It’s absolutely stressful and will make you feel helpless. What about people denied insurance because of their Amazon purchases? People with bad mental health being harassed because their data leaked? Doxxing, iCloud hack photo leaks, people affected by leaks of key government IDs, etc.; how are you even suggesting that one shouldn’t worry about their data getting in the wrong hands? What kind of happy feel-good reality do you live in… Ads are the least of one’s concerns when it comes to your personal data.
That’s not the point. Data being misused or falling into the wrong hands absolutely has a toll on you. If an abused credit card number hurt me that much while I was fighting depression, anything more sensitive can be even worse.
My god, yes. I had knee and ankle pain while running, then also while walking. Too much padding was allowing me to walk incorrectly. After being ‘prescribed’ flat, flexible, low-stack shoes, all the pain went away. My toes are more spread out and my abductors are thicker. Nice gains!
(Still, your mileage may vary, I included lots of exercise specifically for the transition. And still run in Altras.)
In Born To Run they cite a study that surprised it's own authors. The more expensive the running shoe, the higher the rate of injuries i.e. the better the damping the weaker the foot and legs. And another one that showed the impact on the leg is 7 times higher in running shoes than barefoot. On mobile may provide links later.
[edit] Unable to find the one i searched but found this article claiming a 2-3x times bodyweight impact on the legs when wearing shoes.
> A large majority (68%) of runners participating in the study experienced no new injuries after starting barefoot running. In fact, most respondents (69%) actually had their previous injuries go away after starting barefoot running.
I know! This and ‘Exercised’ are what got me running. Both excellent, evidence-based books. I run in Altras for the transition, but hope to eventually have the legs for running in something that qualifies for barefoot (rise/stack/flex).
This really isn’t helping. Cars are very safe at the moment, with the driver being the key factor in accidents. They are very safe at the current price point. GP was arguing we should keep fighting to keep them safe. That means we keep doing whatever it is we’re doing, which is making cars safe, at a reasonable cost.
People roll their cars on the highway and walk away these days. That wasn't a thing that happened in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and even 90s. Some people don't survive, but a vast majority do. You're instantly surrounded by airbags from all sides these days and have a sort of forcefield to absorb the energy of the crash so you don't have to. The same concept has safely dropped rovers onto other planets. Engines nosedive downward into the ground instead of back into the firewall and then into your legs, crumple zones take the impact and absorb the energy instead of transferring it through the solid steel bumper, solid steel frame, solid steal dashboard, solid steal steering column, and solid steel steering where, where your skull is next in line to absorb that energy which up to that point has hardly dissipated. In the 60s a fender bender often messed up people's necks for life, yet people today can often flip their car and walk away with scratches, never to complain about any life long issues stemming from the accident. Automatic collision detechion systems can notice a stopped object and apply the brakes faster than our meat cpus can even process the eyeball input and notice what is going on, and then dealing with the latency of brain to muscle signals and muscle speed and accuracy. When you're about to hit a brick wall at highway speeds, 250ms more of brakes on full can shed an insane amount of speed/momentum/energy. And let's not forget about all the people who text and drive who would rear end or cross the lane and hit someone head on if it wasn't for collision detection stopping them or lane keep yanking the car back into the lane it should be in. Cars are safer than they have ever been.
I’m guessing it’s arguable, but in the top 25 causes of accidents (in the US), I only found 2 that are linked to the car itself. Cars themselves seem fairly safe.
Indeed, in a car accident, the car itself is rarely to blame.
But that was not my point.
At the end of the day, no matter how well it's built, a car is a several tons lump of steel launched at significant speed. It's an inherently deadly machine.
Having a lapse of attention while driving a car? you might easily cause a someone to die.
Having the same lapse on a bike? you might cause some broken bones.
Having the same lapse while walking? you are good for some "Oh... I'm sorry".
