
First Benchmarks Surface for Apple's ARM-Based Developer Transition Kit - rbanffy
https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/29/first-benchmarks-surface-for-apples-arm-based-developer-transition-kit/
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coldcode
It's also benchmarks of a slightly slowed down version of a chip intended for
an iPad Pro, assembled to support development of porting to a new processor.
As they stated in the keynote (or one of the sessions) it's not indicative of
an actual Mac chip performance. So it's interesting, but not all that
revealing.

~~~
savoytruffle
It's curious that it's possibly downclocked from the latest iPad Pro, although
only a very little bit and that may not even be accurate reporting by
GeekBench running in emulation. But of course the Intel mac mini in the same
box has the famous pretty large fan. And the DTK still has the large vent
opening on the back. So there is probably the same fan assembly in there — a
first for an A_ series device.

~~~
rbanffy
It's entirely possible the opening is there because they didn't want to build
a completely new back panel

~~~
savoytruffle
The port layout is a little bit different (there are fewer USB-C shaped ports
and HDMI is moved over). So it's different from the for-sale Intel mac mini
anyway. They can certainly use the large aluminum housing from the current
2018 model mini. The plastic back-plate is pretty small anyway.

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messe
> Interestingly, the Geekbench submissions report that the Developer
> Transition Kit (which resembles a Mac mini) is a four-core machine. The A12Z
> chip actually has eight cores, four high performance and four low-power
> efficiency cores.

My guess as to why this is, is that Apply locks Rosetta to run only on the
high performance cores.

~~~
eyesee
I think they need to do this as there is no support for asymmetric CPU cores
on Intel or macOS prior to Apple Silicon.

~~~
gumby
The wwdc session on the silicon says they are symmetric (have the same
instruction set) unlike the usual big.LITTLE implementation.

That being said presumably Rosetta 2 _will_ be pegged to the faster cores
(your app can do hunting as to what sort of load it might create/need).

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Aloha
That's decidedly impressive considering it's non native code too, and shows
how much further the art has moved.

~~~
rbanffy
Do we have numbers to compare with the Snapdragon-based Windows laptops?

edit: we do: [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Qualcomm-s-Snapdragon-8cx-
amas...](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Qualcomm-s-Snapdragon-8cx-amasses-
respectable-score-on-Geekbench-and-closes-in-on-Intel-s-
Core-i5-8250U.434104.0.html)

~~~
zuhsetaqi
These are Geekbench 4 results which are not comparable to Geekbench 5

~~~
rbanffy
You can still compare Geekbench 4 scores with x86 machines running the same
version. This gives an idea of how performant a Snapdragon is emulating an
x86.

With that, we have something to compare the A12 with.

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Symmetry
Interesting to see the differences in sub-task scores between this[1] and a
regular iPhone 11[2]. Though it's hard to tell what might be memory bandwidth
and what might be translation overhead.

[1][https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2732510](https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2732510)

[2][https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1000620](https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/1000620)

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dstaley
Does the DTK support running iOS apps? If so you could, in theory, run the iOS
version of Geekbench to get performance numbers outside of Rosetta.

~~~
djrogers
Or you could simply look at the geekbench numbers for the iPad Pro, which uses
the same SOC.

~~~
sp332
Since the power and thermal envelope is a lot higher, it's probably noticeably
faster than the iPad Pro.

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sitkack
I also doubt that this is the hardware that will ship to customers. Customer
hardware will be 50-100% faster at least.

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lykr0n
geekbench is no where near a good measure of performance. Give the phoronix
test suite a run and then let's talk.

~~~
jmole
geekbench is exactly what people refer to when they claim the iPad Pro is just
as fast as a MacBook: [https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/12/ipad-pro-vs-
macbook-air...](https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/12/ipad-pro-vs-macbook-air-
vs-macbook-
pro/#:~:text=The%20%E2%80%8CiPad%20Pro%E2%80%8C%20earned%20a,multi%2Dcore%20score%20of%203621.&text=The%20%E2%80%8CMacBook%20Air%E2%80%8C%20earned%20a,multi%2Dcore%20score%20of%202350).

~~~
Symmetry
It also does well enough on Spec to make that plausible. Though the processor
on a MacBook is has a clockrate much slower than the design sweet spot. If
Intel had targeted 1.1 GHz operation for their Core processors they'd have
much shorter pipelines and cache latencies.

[https://www.anandtech.com/show/15813/arm-
cortex-a78-cortex-x...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/15813/arm-
cortex-a78-cortex-x1-cpu-ip-diverging/4)

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jFriedensreich
I wonder why apple is so persistent with using that awkward "apple silicon"
wording more importantly why all blogs and journalists just copy it. Whats
wrong with saying arm macs, apple chips, apple CPUs etc? Is anyone alse
feeling weird about it?

~~~
sp332
Apple Silicon is the brand of the chip, like Intel Xeon.

~~~
Someone
More like “Intel Inside”, I would think. It separates their hardware from that
of other companies, not from future versions of their hardware.

I don’t see them moving to new names or to “Apple Silicon v2” when hardware
advances.

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ksec
This begs the question, if Geekbench developers have the DTK? Since this is
not iOS there is nothing that prevent them from releasing an update now on ARM
platform.

~~~
soneil
I believe the NDA forbids benchmarking. That doesn't mean it's not going to
happen, but it might hurt Geekbench's case for releasing it. Or even receiving
a dev unit.

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akmarinov
Just a note that the SoC in that mini is the same as the now two, going on
three year old iPad Pro.

~~~
Tagbert
The A12x came out in fall of 2018, so coming up on 2 years

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mromanuk
> Note that these tests are running under virtualization, using Apple’s
> Rosetta technology

totally unreliable info, but interesting.

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
> totally unreliable info, but interesting.

How is this "unreliable"?

Native benchmarks wouldn't be very interesting, since this is the same
processor we see in the iPad Pro. What's interesting is how Apple will handle
the transition from Intel to ARM, so measuring Rosetta's virtualization
capabilities is absolutely what we should be focused on until we actually get
access to genuine Apple Silicon desktop chips.

~~~
messe
> Native benchmarks wouldn't be very interesting, since this is the same
> processor we see in the iPad Pro.

Not necessarily. They might be interesting. The processor might have active
cooling and be less thermally limited in the Mac Mini form factor. In which
case Apple might have clocked it slightly higher.

~~~
DonaldPShimoda
That's a good point that I hadn't previously considered. Thanks for bringing
it up! You're absolutely right!

