Re:How M1 Macs feel faster than Intel models: it’s about QoS
by kortex on Monday May 17, 2021 @01:08PM
(#27185697)
I dewelop machine learning data pipelines. My dev environment of choice is a Macbook running JetBrains suite, Alfred, BetterTouchTool, and an iTerm pane or 3 with Mosh and Tmux running on an Ubuntu Server. HID is a tricked out Ergodox EZ, right hand mouse, left hand Magic Trackpad. Prior to that I developed directly on Ubuntu 18/20, and windows well before that. The experience unparalleled. The OS/windowed desktop is smoother and less buggy than Gnome 3, more responsive than Win 7 or 10.
I'm talking a 16GB Intel i7 8-thread Macbook vs a 32 thread twin-socket 72GB RTX2080 beast running Ubuntu 20. The Mac crushes it in terms of feel, fit and finish. I haven't tried M1 yet but I bet it'll one-up my current Intel macbook. I'm quite eager to get one.
> Besides that, the M1 doesn't support most of the software that most engineers are using...
??? Other than CUDA, the macbook meets my needs 95% of the time. I'm mostly want for a native Docker networking experience a small minority of the time. I need a responsive GUI head to act as my development environment. All the heavy lift compute is done on servers/on-prem/in-cloud.
Only under super heavy memory demand. I close some browser tabs or IDE panes (I normally have dozens of both).
> - Abstracting execution makes it harder to package software, harder to run it, and harder to debug it when something goes wrong
Almost everything I do is containerized anyways, so this is moot.
I was squarely one of those "why would anyone use mac? It's overpriced, lock in, $typical_nerd_complaints_about_mac" until COVID happened and it became my daily driver. Now I can't go back.
> - MacPorts and Brew are both pretty miserable package managers compared to the industry standard options.
No snark intended - Like what? I'm not exactly blown away by Brew, but it's been generally on par with Apt(get). Aptitude is marginally better. There's not a single package manager that doesn't aggravate me in some way.
I'm talking a 16GB Intel i7 8-thread Macbook vs a 32 thread twin-socket 72GB RTX2080 beast running Ubuntu 20. The Mac crushes it in terms of feel, fit and finish. I haven't tried M1 yet but I bet it'll one-up my current Intel macbook. I'm quite eager to get one.
> Besides that, the M1 doesn't support most of the software that most engineers are using...
??? Other than CUDA, the macbook meets my needs 95% of the time. I'm mostly want for a native Docker networking experience a small minority of the time. I need a responsive GUI head to act as my development environment. All the heavy lift compute is done on servers/on-prem/in-cloud.
> - BSD-styled memory management causes frequent page faults and thrashes memory/swap
Only under super heavy memory demand. I close some browser tabs or IDE panes (I normally have dozens of both).
> - Abstracting execution makes it harder to package software, harder to run it, and harder to debug it when something goes wrong
Almost everything I do is containerized anyways, so this is moot.
I was squarely one of those "why would anyone use mac? It's overpriced, lock in, $typical_nerd_complaints_about_mac" until COVID happened and it became my daily driver. Now I can't go back.
> - MacPorts and Brew are both pretty miserable package managers compared to the industry standard options.
No snark intended - Like what? I'm not exactly blown away by Brew, but it's been generally on par with Apt(get). Aptitude is marginally better. There's not a single package manager that doesn't aggravate me in some way.