You are right about Apple needing to make their embedded gpu powerful enough to compete with the favored ones now preferred by renderers because hardware accelerated gpu rendering outperforms cpu rendering. But your statements about multi-core are false: the M1 contains 4 high-performance and 4 low-power CPU cores, and any app that can multi-thread will use all of them with no change. It is only SketchUp itself that is unchangeably single-core, not renderers.
Also, to compare performance one really has to run comparisons of the same task using Apple Silicon and some alternative. Because everything is on a single chip and because the CPU and GPU transparently share memory, there is less overhead moving data around and coordinating the units on Apple Silicon than on a PC with an bus-based graphics adapter. I’m not saying that will overcome the disadvantage of fewer GPU cores than, for example, CUDA units in an NVidia card, only that the difference may be less than one might speculate based on raw numbers.
Pre-release rumors claim that the next versions of Apple Silicon will have 12 or perhaps 16 hgh-performance cores and also an enlarged gpu. Time will tell…
Apple claims they are doing it a different way, and multiple tech reviewers have repeated the claim. Not being a chip engineer, I won’t pretend to know the difference.
“ M1 unifies its high‑bandwidth, low‑latency memory into a single pool within a custom package. As a result, all of the technologies in the SoC can access the same data without copying it between multiple pools of memory . This dramatically improves performance and power efficiency.”
“Apple is using high-bandwidth memory here. The memory is closer to the CPU (and other components), and it’s just faster to access than it would be to access a traditional RAM chip connected to a motherboard via a socket interface.”
“… because all the aspects of the processor can access all of the system memory, there’s no performance hit when the graphics cores need to access something that was previously being accessed by a processor core. On other systems, the data has to be copied from one portion of memory to another—but on the M1, it’s just instantly accessible.”
One of @monospaced quotes makes a key point about memory sharing between CPU and GPU: with Integrated Graphics, only the GPU elements are placed on the same chip with the CPU. The shared RAM is still on separate chips on the motherboard, and in a PC often in sockets.
In Apple Silicon, everything is on the same chip (SoC = “System on a Chip”).
Additionally, the benchmarks speak for themselves. The M1 absolutely destroys any Intel integrated chip in existence. In graphics and processing power, with fewer cores and memory and power usage. So the integrated memory of the M1 is simply superior in every way than intels version. No more explanation necessary beyond the performance increase shown.
Both my iMac and MacBook Pro went down that I use daily to produce production fitment drawings and production line workflow documents. Both went down. Only M1 available was the base MacBook Pro from Costco. Working against a deadline I sprinted out the door, to my local Costco. Grabbed the machine, came back to work. And within an hour I was up and running and blowing my mind. SketchUp, Layout, and Affinity drawing tools. Fastest workstation I have ever owned. Did I also mention silky smooth flying to do tasks that would have, and did chunk my iMac from a graphics standpoint. For example, needing to fly into a model to make a tricky adjustment while someone is watching over your shoulder. I would hesitate to do that on my other machines. Not this little guy. Fly in. Select, move, push pull, and done. Faster than my bosses MacBook Pro 16" fully loaded laptop. To get this speed I would have spent $5k on a windows laptop. Well maybe not, still might be slow. Spent the summer on Windows 10 running Advanced Steel, Revit, and Inventor. So glad to be back on the best tooling around. SU and Big Sur. Now don’t get me wrong… there are some issues that still need to be worked out with some plugins. Some issues where models exported out of Inventor “apple chunk wheel” bad. But BAM I love this little beast. Looking forward to that 16 MBP M2 in the Summer.
Really ? That’s quite a statement. (Is this Opposite Day or Bizzaro World?) Still wondering how this might affect decisions for rendering, as I was expecting my next computer would need to be a PC.
Mostly I do not need to render. But for kicks and giggles I fired up my Ambient Occlusion Fx and notices a few things. 1. All 8 processors went to 100%. 2. It did not lock up my MacBook, and I could do other things, like read and send and email. In the past this was near impossible. (Late model 2015 fully loaded iMac) 3. Its fast. Fast enough that I am thinking. Oh wow I should do more of this for my bosses.
3D Space Mouse Wireless. Some caveats to get it to work smoothly and reliably. 1. The wireless USB dongle causes unreliable flying inside of SU. If the MacBook goes to sleep. You have to close SU and re-open. Sometimes it just will not work until you re-boot. 2. However. If you plug in your charging USB cord and bypass the wireless dongle then it is dam smooth flying. Upon the laptop going to sleep, it often still works upon waking. If it does stop, closing SU works, with out needing to reboot. This has been my experience.
My corded 3Dconnexion space mouse works fine with SU21 on M1 Mac mini (lowest spec). SU windows on the other hand (‘trays’ for Tags, Components, Outliner and toolsets that I have open on a second monitor) switch between the 2nd and 3rd screen as they feel like it after waking from sleep.
