Apple M1 Chip Crushes Intel in Developer Benchmark
Description
A bar chart from November 2020, titled 'WebKit compile time', which compares the performance of various Apple computers. The chart is set against a white background with a faint WebKit (Safari compass) logo. It features six vertical bars representing different Mac models. Three bright green bars on the left represent the new M1-chip-based Macs: 'M1 Mac Mini (2020)' at 19 min 32 sec, 'M1 MacBook Pro (2020)' at 20 min 43 sec, and 'M1 MacBook Air (2020)' at 25 min 5 sec. Three grey bars on the right represent Intel-based Macs: '16" MacBook Pro (2019)' at 26 min 56 sec, '13" MacBook Pro (2020)' at a staggering 46 min 10 sec, and 'Mac Pro (2019)' at 20 min 11 sec. The chart serves as a powerful technical benchmark, demonstrating the dramatic performance gains of Apple's first-generation ARM-based M1 architecture over the established Intel x86 CPUs for a real-world, CPU-intensive developer task. It highlights that even consumer-grade M1 machines could outperform expensive professional Intel hardware, marking a significant turning point in the industry and validating Apple's move to its own silicon
Comments
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My old Intel Mac's fan during a WebKit compile sounded like a 747 taking off. With the M1, it's so quiet I have to check if the build is actually running or if I just forgot to save the file
After years of tweaking clang flags and ninja targets, the most effective WebKit build optimization was apparently a $699 M1 Mac Mini humiliating the $15k cheese-grater Finance still insists we keep depreciating
The Mac Pro costs $6,000 to compile WebKit 39 seconds faster than the M1 Mac Mini, which is exactly the kind of performance-per-dollar calculation that gets you promoted to management where you'll never compile anything again
When your M1 MacBook Air - the one without a fan - compiles WebKit faster than a thermal-throttling Intel MacBook Pro that sounds like it's preparing for takeoff, you realize Apple didn't just change architectures, they fundamentally altered the 'compile time = coffee break duration' equation that's been a constant since the PDP-11 era
According to this WebKit chart, the cheapest compiler optimization is swapping Intel for a $699 M1 Mini - turns out -O3 is called Apple Silicon
WebKit compile times: the M1 mini does in 19 minutes what the 13" Intel MBP needs 46 - turns out the best build flag was “arm64,” not “-O3.”
13" MacBook Pro's 46min WebKit build: ample time to spec out an M1 upgrade before it finishes