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Comment by Recurecur | Hacker News Reader

This is a silly take, primarily because it's centered on a single benchmark, Lightroom image import.

Image import is generally I/O bound, so not a good fit for CPU comparisons.

The GPU issue is relevant, we'll see how the M2 does there. Will Apple need a discrete GPU to compete?

All that said, the M1 is most impressive in terms of performance/Watt. We'll see how the M2 holds up against Threadripper/Epyc once the Mac Pro refresh is done and it's benchmarked with many CPU/GPU bound pro workloads.

The M2 should be nice for Macbook Pros though. Looking forward to it!

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primarily because it's centered on a single benchmark, Lightroom image import.

It's not a very interesting article but it specifically talks about the relative non-importance of that particular benchmark, beside the results being largely a wash:

I sorely miss the benchmark I saw in some other publication but can’t find now, where they measured the interactive performance when you load up a series of photos on-screen. These import & export measurements are useful, but frankly when I do that kind of thing I go read email or get a coffee while it’s happening, so it doesn’t really hold me up as such.

To date, I haven’t heard anyone saying Lightroom is significantly snappier on an M1 than on a recent Intel MBP. I’d be happy to be corrected.

One mans new cpu that’s as fast as the highest end Intel chips at the entry level is another persons not snappier. This is the Louis C. K. thing about Internet on a flipping plane not working perfectly and people being super entitled to nice things!

The highest end Intel chips are really middle of the pack AMD chips, which is the other competitor the M1 is really competing against. All in all its much more of a wash.

The other silly thing is that it's presenting the M1 as a big change that they could do again, while it's the result of a series of incremental improvment on the iPhone, and a big change with vertical integration on the laptop that they can't "do again".

I read the article as arguing the low hanging fruit are picked, and that performance can't quite make another leap. Can't bump up clock speed because it'll use more power or because the CPU design won't support it.

There isn't evidence that Apple's team has run out of architectural improvements however, so I do think performance gains are still out there. Plus there's always the possibility of going to smaller semiconductor processes.

I think he’s actually making the point you are: that a step that large is probably impossible at this point in time.

Not that I would have expected the step function they did manage to pull off either…

>Will Apple need a discrete GPU to compete?

I can already hear the talking heads now

"Most users don't need that power(but apparently they need the power of the m1?)"

If I know Apple, it will be medium end at extraordinary prices. Post purchase Rationalization will cause users to praise it regardless.

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