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Re:The Apple M1, ARM/x86 Linux Virtualization, and Boinc by kristianp on Sunday January 10, 2021 @09:30PM (#25723588)
I haven't seen mention of the memory bandwidth of the M1 before. Why is it so much faster than its contemporaries? Double width data path?
Re:The Apple M1, ARM/x86 Linux Virtualization, and Boinc by dippersauce on Sunday January 10, 2021 @10:56PM (#25724270)
The unified architecture, combined with the speed of the modules (4266 MHz LPDDR4X), combined with the close physical proximity to the CPU cores likely all contribute to the M1's memory performance.

In Apple's own words:

“M1 also features our unified memory architecture, or UMA. M1 unifies its high‑bandwidth, low‑latency memory into a single pool within a custom package. As a result, all of the technologies in the SoC can access the same data without copying it between multiple pools of memory. This dramatically improves performance and power efficiency." [0]

[0] https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/

Re:The Apple M1, ARM/x86 Linux Virtualization, and Boinc by kristianp on Monday January 11, 2021 @02:08AM (#25725684)
Probably the speed of the modules, the mbw[1] tool does copies to do its measurement, so the close proximity and reduced copies in the OS wouldn't be factors.

[1] https://github.com/raas/mbw