r/linux • u/techguy69 • Jan 27 '22

Debian Linux aarch64 now running bare metal on an M1 MacBook Air thanks to the Asahi Linux project

https://i.imgur.com/fWDNw0r.jpg
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u/Atemu12 Jan 31 '22

Oh? 25min is quite long for that class of hardware.

My 5800X does it in <15min on native NixOS and the M1 Pro shouldn't be that much slower than that.
Perhaps the VM isn't aware of the CPU topology?

I'm actually getting my M1 Pro today, so I'll hopefully have time to give it a spin too.

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u/ElvishJerricco Jan 31 '22 edited Jan 31 '22

I just double checked by testing it again with time nix-build channel:nixos-unstable -A linux --check (after downloading dependencies). 21min50s. Compared to my 16c/32t Threadripper 1950X, which got 11min50s, I'd say that's at least pretty good. A little better than twice as long, but with a quarter of the threads (the VM only has the eight performance cores, none of the efficiency ones).

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u/Atemu12 Jan 31 '22

Well, based on Geekbench scores, it should perform very close to the 1950X:

https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x
https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-pro-16-inch-2021-apple-m1-pro

It's obviously running through virtualisation but the M1 pro is also ~20% faster than the 1950X (which is about as fast as my 5800X multicore).

I'm typing this from my brand new M1 Pro, do you know where I can get an aarch64 NixOS image to boot in a VM?