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Mac Studio is Literally Off The Charts

M1 Ultra destroys an Intel Xeon based machine costing over 3 times more. The M1 Ultra in the Mac Studio is literally off the charts, in these tests done by Craig A. Hunter.

M1 Ultra destroys an Intel Xeon based machine costing over 3 times more. The M1 Ultra in the Mac Studio is literally off the charts, in these tests done by Craig A. Hunter in his 2022 Mac Studio (20-core M1 Ultra) Review. Unlike so many other benchmarks in reviews, Craig used what looks to be a very intense Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) benchmark that might be used by NASA that measured GigaFlops (GFlops) comparing the Mac Studio’s M1 Ultra to several Intel Core and Xeon processors.

About the Benchmarks

I do a lot of writing as an engineer, but it’s technical writing. It’s all about documenting facts and data in a direct manner, in tables and charts, without much emotion or creativity. So when I get to review new pro Macs, I always look for some sort of inspiration, some sort of creative hook that leads me to an interesting theme.

Craig A. Hunter – 2022 Mac Studio (20-core M1 Ultra) Review

Interesting, indeed !!!!

Craig used a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) benchmark measuring GigaFlops (GFlops). See FLOPS on WikiPedia.

…looking at parallel performance of the NASA USM3D CFD solver as it computes flow over a classic NACA 0012 airfoil section at low speed conditions. To get these results, I ran USM3D for 500 iterations, starting with a single core and going up to as many cores as a machine can provide.

Craig A. Hunter – 2022 Mac Studio (20-core M1 Ultra) Review

Now, I have no idea what any of that means – I’m just a computer engineer and Agile wizard – but it sounds pretty freakin’ cool !!!

Off The Charts

Now let’s take a look at what happened when I repeated this test for the Mac Studio and plotted results on the same chart. All of a sudden the previously generous upper limit of 100 GFlops on the vertical axis, which all the machines labored towards with diminishing returns, is not even remotely suitable. Performance of the Mac Studio is actually off the chart here. Before it went off the chart, the Mac Studio’s 6-core performance caught up to the full 28-core performance of the Mac Pro and then surpassed it.

Craig A. Hunter – 2022 Mac Studio (20-core M1 Ultra) Review

Keep your eyes on the red line that blasts right off the top of the chart. The M1 Ultra destroys an Intel Xeon based Mac Pro costing over 3 times more. Check out Apple’s M1 Max MacBook Pro Should Not Be Comparable To Xeon – Intel Should Be Scared.

Mac Studio 2022 Gflops Comparison – Off The Charts

Amazing Picture

If we rescale (by double!) the vertical axis to fit here, a pretty amazing picture emerges:

Craig A. Hunter – 2022 Mac Studio (20-core M1 Ultra) Review
Mac Studio 2022 Gflops Comparison – Rescale by Double

I suspect that the M1 Ultra in the Mac Studio is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

[the Mac Pro is last to get Apple Silicon]

Just think about what it means if the Mac Pro scales up performance from here. I’ll probably need to double that vertical axis again. That would be a good problem to have.

Craig A. Hunter – 2022 Mac Studio (20-core M1 Ultra) Review

Intel, AMD and Qualcomm are in very very big trouble…

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