Different OS, different storage, different filesystem are all fair as you can say you are testing the laptop as a whole, so what was preconfigured matters. Also generating totally different code (compiler outputting x86_64 vs aarch64) is fair, because that's part of a real-world task.

However, LLVM/clang vs GCC is too far and made the benchmark result completely nonsense. How can you make sure it isn't just that LLVM/clang is faster than GCC? Or even makefile detected clang so turned on different compiler flags.

Of course the parameters are different, but even if it were GCC or clang on both sides, the compiler back-end for arm64 vs x64 are also different. If we followed your argument to its logical conclusion, no cross-platform benchmarks should ever be performed since there will always be something different. I am approaching this from the perspective of the end user (how long does it take me to get a working p7zip executable?).

That said, I attempted to make the comparison as close as possible by timing the time it takes to cross-compile Hugo for Windows/x64 (taking care to run it once to load the sources into the package cache, while clearing the object file cache each time). Thus using the exact same Go 1.20.1 compiler, the same code generator back-end, the same platform source code being compiled, and the results are much closer:

- Mac Studio (M1 Ultra, 128G): 9.7s

- Macbook Air (M1, 16G): 16.7s

- HP DevOne (5850U, 64G): 18.7s

- HP Z2 Mini G4 (Xeon E-2176G, 32G): 20.7s

- Gigabyte Aorus 17G (i7-11800H, 64G): 16.5s

So you are right, somehow GCC's optimizer at the -O2 level is much slower on x64 laptops than x64 desktop or arm64. Not sure why compiling p7zip is so much faster on the Xeon than on the Ryzen or Aorus, gcc is 12.2 on both and the optimizer setting is -O2, no -march=native. The only explanation I can think of is thermal throttling, since both slow machines are laptops, and somehow GCC is triggering that in a way Go's compiler is not (nor apparently clang).

> test was biased against the Mac because the M1 MBA was running on battery power and the HP DevOne was plugged in

That does not matter at all for the M1 MBA. So no bias.

All you've accomplished then is to test LLVM vs GCC, not an M1 vs the 5850U.

Apple Silicon strength is in efficiency and low power draw, they're mostly slower than high end AMD/Intel chips (which admittedly, use a lot more power). In no world is the 5850U 5x worse than the M1, it's just absurd to suggest so.

When I run Docker containers on my M1 MBP, tasks are 15-20x slower than my Linux laptop. Obviously it would be ridiculous of me to suggest that therefore the M1 is 15x worse than my laptop's 2020 Intel chip.

See my revised comment above. Yes, GCC is much slower at compiling p7zip on x64 laptops specifically because it is apparently triggering thermal throttling, on both Intel or AMD. It builds much faster on my old Xeon where thermal throttling is much less of an issue, and of course on the M1s.