Apple M1 gives a glimpse of pro credentials as it shines in enterprise benchmark

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The Apple M1 chip continues to outperform expectations

M1 chip
(Image credit: Apple)

More impressive performance metrics are emerging regarding the new Apple M1 chip, suggesting that the latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro devices, both of which are based on the new processor, will make impressive business laptops.

Greg Smith of Crunchy Data wanted to test how the new M1 would perform when running the open-source database management solution PostgreSQL and just as with other benchmarks, the M1 outperformed expectations. Compared with previous MacBook Pro models, the 2020 M1 iteration came out clearly on top, delivering 32K single/92K all core transactions per second.

Smith also added two generations of AMD's Ryzen desktop hardware into his comparison, as well as some Intel mini-PCs. While the M1 was never going to outperform high-end desktop processors, it more than held its own, particularly when client numbers were towards the lower end.

Outperforming expectations

“If Apple can push the M1 design into larger amounts of memory and add a few more cores, it could be a fierce midsize server competitor,” Smith said. “That's not going to disrupt the big industry push toward hosting things on giant cloud systems, where data centers want >=48 processors for a server to be worth installing. There are cloud-scale ARM servers out there, and Apple's ARM instruction set Macs make developing for that platform easier. I'm looking forward to the competition of a four-way race between Intel, AMD, Apple, and the other ARM designers.”

There will be teething problems along the way for Apple, particularly as the business community gets used to its new processor. Compatibility issues are to be expected and it will be interesting to see how Apple responds to these, and how quickly.

M1 Macs may not be suitable for all businesses, but once a few of the kinks have been ironed out, developers will gain access to a seriously impressive piece of kit.

Via Crunchy Data

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Barclay Ballard
Barclay Ballard

Barclay has been writing about technology for a decade, starting out as a freelancer with ITProPortal covering everything from London’s start-up scene to comparisons of the best cloud storage services.  After that, he spent some time as the managing editor of an online outlet focusing on cloud computing, furthering his interest in virtualization, Big Data, and the Internet of Things.