Apple's New M1 Computers

[Russ.Carpenter]

I hesitate to pose this question, because Ivo is making such impressive enhancements to StarTools. But, like many other astro imagers who use Mac computers, I am planning to upgrade my iMac. The current 27 inch iMac will be the last Mac to use an Intel processor. After that, the processors will be Apple chips. Generally, this will be a positive change for Mac people, because the M1 is very impressive. However, I worry that StarTools may not be compatible with the new Apple processor.

Ivo, would you mind taking a few minutes from your busy schedule and letting us know how you might deal with the M1 Apple computers? Thanks!

Russ

[admin]

Hi Russ,

The short answer is that, right now, too much is up in the air to make any promises or draw any conclusions.

From a practical point of view, and from what I have seen so far, I would personally stay far away from anything new (whether that be hardware or software) that Apple introduces for as long as practical (including Big Sur!) until maturity has ironed out the myriad of issues and bugs.

When it comes to Apple, it is not the new architecture that worries me. Making StarTools run on a completely different architecture such as ARM, is something I have a lot of experience with, and it is baked my approach to software development. I even wrote an article on my experiments getting StarTools to run on ARM/Android some 8 years ago.

By far my biggest worry when it comes to Apple, is its unilateral abolishing of standards, the poor stability/bugginess of its OS, tools and (some) hardware, its anti-competitive behavior, its poor (or non-existent) support of older hardware, and its increasingly aggressive exclusionary walled garden approach to software distribution.

All the aforementioned pose a much bigger threat to macOS as a viable platform for StarTools, as each of these make maintenance more onerous, costly, and/or reduces the serviceable market.

To be frank, macOS has been, by far, the most problematic (time consuming) OS to support, while having a comparatively small user base.

The announced M1 hardware looks "OK" on paper, however its non-expandability (16GB RAM soldered on the board, no eGPU possible) makes it hard to recommend, particularly as its integrated GPU core performance is lacklustre compared to many discrete solutions. My advice for the time being, would be to snap up any Intel i7 or i9 deals and stick with Catalina until it is no longer supported.

[admin]

First review I watched on M1 seems to confirm exactly what I surmised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQ6vX6nmboU

The hardware is OK (particularly the impressive CPU power in a mobile package), but for StarTools and graphics processing the GPU is rather weak, while connectivity and expandability is a definitely a step backwards vs the devices they replace.

This reviewer too recommends maybe waiting for one or two more generations down the line.

[Russ.Carpenter]

Hi Ivo,

Thanks for your thoughtful answer. I'm just grateful that you've supported Macs up to this point. I've had both Windows and Apples for more than 30 years now, and have ended up being more comfortable in that famous walled garden.

In the meantime, I'm going to take your advice and upgrade to the last Intel version. I noticed that other reviewers are advising the same thing.

Russ

[ppg677]

I just purchase StarTools and returned to Windows a few years back after being a Mac user for many years (I still use Mac for work).

With all due respect, the M1 chip is so good I might be going back and I personally would not advise on buying the latest Intel Mac. The performance-per-watt is especially astounding.

An excerpt from this writeup:

On Youtube I watched a Mac user who had bought an iMac last year. It was maxed out with 40 GB of RAM costing him about $4000. He watched in disbelief how his hyper expensive iMac was being demolished by his new M1 Mac Mini, which he had paid a measly $700 for. In real world test after test, the M1 Macs are not merely inching past top of the line Intel Macs, they are destroying them. In disbelief people have started asking how on earth this is possible?

https://erik-engheim.medium.com/why-is- ... 62b158cba2


I don't disagree with your statements of its walled garden approach to software. I do think Apple supports its iPhones far longer than the competition. Apple has been better about some standards than Microsoft. Etc.

[admin]

With all due respect, the M1 chip is so good I might be going back and I personally would not advise on buying the latest Intel Mac. The performance-per-watt is especially astounding.

Performance-per-Watt is sadly only applicable when battery longevity is a concern. The M1 iGPU's compute performance is - with this iteration - lacklustre and is bested even by this $60 solution. Upgradeability is non-existent.

What's more, its single core performance may be good, but with it only having 4+4 cores there are better choices for the money (particularly now that Intel systems may be discounted).

Will you be disappointed by purchasing an M1 system? No.
Can you do better for the purpose of number crunching and AP-oriented image processing? Yes.

[ppg677]

Thanks for the response.

I guess this discussion is two-fold:

1) Is buying first-generation M1-based products make sense, especially if you do Astrophotography?

2) What's the outlook for StarTools support of native M1 binaries?


(1) is a bit subjective based on overall wants/needs and you make good points. Looks like the M1 integrated GPU is about as good as my discrete 2017-vintage GTX 1050 that I'm currently using inside my small-form-factor PC (which has a dated 4-core i4570 CPU). My replacement will also be a small-form-factor something or other because I just don't like big PC boxes anymore with whirring fans.

Since you already have a port of StarTools to MacOS, I suspect (2) largely comes down to how much performance tuning/tweaking it takes. Are you just flipping compiler flags to generate AVX2 binaries or do you have hand-coded tunings? Etc.