M1 Apple Silicon for Chess?

[Ckappe]

@Ckappe: thx for your benchmarks. Is there a certain reason that you only published the output of 16 threads but not 1, 2 and 4 (which would at least give some comparability)?

If you think lowering the number of threads would yield higher NPS, I would try it otherwise I don't see what it would bring in "comparability"

What exactly in

The M1 doesn't actually have the same number of cores because four of them are low-power ones meant for maximum battery life.

didn't you understand? But, don't bother, I won't ask or go into your postings/troll attempts anymore.

Ciao

acepoint

Just because it's a big-little architecture does not mean it has not got 8-cores, and it is also marketing as an 8-core CPU by Apple. Just because it's architectured differently (to save energy on low load) does not mean it is by any means "unfair" to compare it to other CPU architected differently, and can run all cores at higher clock. If you want to run a chess-engine at the max speed you have to use all 8-cores both the slower and the faster ones on the M1. I don't know what your problem is dude

[Ras]

Easy to disable and run on iGPU only if you don't want to use Nvidia.

I won't shell out money for Nvidia just for switching off their stuff. Nvidia is on my no-buy-list, though still behind Apple because Nvidia could afford to change their strategy. After all, making open source drivers in order to sell hardware does work nicely, as exemplified by AMD and also Intel.

I don't think the market is big for high-end CPU laptops only having a "sucky" GPU in general though (Apart from maybe Apple's carved Niché).

At Schenker's, the 4800H without additional GPU were a huge hit and the first ones to be sold out while those with additional Nvidia GPU were not. It was just that Tongfang (the ODM behind) was among the first ones to dare that move. I don't even have a discrete GPU in my desktop anymore.

I don't agree at all that "it should be scaled to the battery capacity"....

If the comparison is to be made between AMD and M1, it needs to be scaled because comparisons where more than one thing changes are meaningless.

[Ckappe]

Easy to disable and run on iGPU only if you don't want to use Nvidia.

I won't shell out money for Nvidia just for switching off their stuff. Nvidia is on my no-buy-list, though still behind Apple because Nvidia could afford to change their strategy. After all, making open source drivers in order to sell hardware does work nicely, as exemplified by AMD and also Intel.

I completely see your point. This said from an Open driver/source perspective Apple M1-based (and bionic) solutions are probably the worst we have in the industry today.

I don't think the market is big for high-end CPU laptops only having a "sucky" GPU in general though (Apart from maybe Apple's carved Niché).

At Schenker's, the 4800H without additional GPU were a huge hit and the first ones to be sold out while those with additional Nvidia GPU were not. It was just that Tongfang (the ODM behind) was among the first ones to dare that move. I don't even have a discrete GPU in my desktop anymore.

Yeah, it may well be that makers underestimate that market segment. Also from AMD's perspective, it would make sense to not promote competitor Nvidia GPUs. But I think their goal is foremost to replace Intel as a high-end alternative overall.

I don't agree at all that "it should be scaled to the battery capacity"....

If the comparison is to be made between AMD and M1, it needs to be scaled because comparisons where more than one thing changes are meaningless.

Aa M1 is proprietary and locked to very few select fixed configurations I don't see any valid point of such comparison. The comparison would only be valid if battery-size was an option that could be configured in compared laptop alternatives. in my view.

[Ras]

This said from an Open driver/source perspective Apple M1-based (and bionic) solutions are probably the worst we have in the industry today.

Correct, and that's only one out of many reasons why I don't even consider buying any Apple product, but that doesn't keep me from looking at them just out of curiosity on technical grounds.

Yeah, it may well be that makers underestimate that market segment.

It's huge. Basically any laptop that isn't designed for gaming or ML activities. Considering that this also comprises business laptops, it's probably the largest segment of them all.

Also from AMD's perspective, it would make sense to not promote competitor Nvidia GPUs.

AMD also has laptop graphics cards such as the RX 5600M which is nearly on RTX 2060 level in gaming. Obviously not for ML because AMD is light years behind on the software front. AMD is a junior rival for Nvidia as much as for Intel.

Aa M1 is proprietary and locked to very few select fixed configurations I don't see any valid point of such comparison.

One of the arguments is that otherwise, the winner will just be the AMD laptop with the largest battery that you can find - but that doesn't say anything about AMD vs. M1, only about what batteries are being offered. However, the thread revolves around M1 silicon, not M1 batteries.

But even then, it doesn't actually mean "oh ARM is so cool" because AMD is on 7nm while it's 5nm for Apple. The difference in the production process has nothing to do with x86 vs. ARM, after all.

[MikeB]

Benches for the Honey engines are different - one they have 96 positions, two the bench command is slightly different

bench 64 1 13 true -> will use NNUE
bench 64 1 13 false -> will use classical eval
...

Thx for the explanation. That was well hidden . So, if I got it right you can either do a classical or a nnue bench, but no mixed?

Ciao

acepoint

No mixed bench, I use the NNUE bench for PGO since that is most critical component of the code. Stockfish uses a mixed for PGO.

[Ckappe]

One of the arguments is that otherwise, the winner will just be the AMD laptop with the largest battery that you can find - but that doesn't say anything about AMD vs. M1, only about what batteries are being offered. However, the thread revolves around M1 silicon, not M1 batteries.

Airlines currently restrict battery-size for in-cabin use to 100Wh, so this will be a practical max for a laptop that can also be used for travel.

It's not a given that the fastest AMD with 99Wh-laptop would win against any other 99Wh featuring a current (or future) intel, Exynos, Apple, Qualcomm combination (if they existed for a practical comparative bench). I suspect a top-of-the-line Qualcomm snapdragon, Kirin, or Exynos with a 99Wh battery could compete with a 5900H in nodes-analyzed per charge, but those are usually not configured for high-performance use-cases. So it's not necessarily a given win for AMD over time, even if AMD has the edge today.

But my main point is that I think real-life configs are the important thing to test not a hypothetical combo or "what if scenario", not available for sale.

[towforce]

I haven't read the whole thread - is there a conclusion? Does a light laptop with an Apple M1 SOC get roughly the same amount of analysis on one charge as a laptop with a heavy battery and big power-hungry CPU? Or is it just too difficult to compare?

Edit: the post that appeared while I was writing this (see above) seems to indicate that in this particular game, a power-hungry AMD CPU with a heavy battery would be the winner.

[Milos]

Well..the 4900H supports iGPU

But you will not find a laptop that has the 4900H and iGPU only - not even as advertised model, let alone in one that you could actually order right now.

Just wait a month or two and take 5980HX based laptop. It's literally worlds apart from anything Apple has to offer. Like comparing a Ferrari to a Hyundai.

[BetaPro]

Well..the 4900H supports iGPU

But you will not find a laptop that has the 4900H and iGPU only - not even as advertised model, let alone in one that you could actually order right now.

Just take 5980HX based laptop. It's literally worlds apart from anything Apple has to offer. Like comparing a Ferrari to a Hyundai.

If by ferrari, you mean how it will catch fire, then sure.

[Milos]

Well..the 4900H supports iGPU

But you will not find a laptop that has the 4900H and iGPU only - not even as advertised model, let alone in one that you could actually order right now.

Just take 5980HX based laptop. It's literally worlds apart from anything Apple has to offer. Like comparing a Ferrari to a Hyundai.

If by ferrari, you mean how it will catch fire, then sure.

The only company notoriously infamous for having laptops catching fire is Apple. Cupertino sect members, aka isheep are really hilarious.