BiblioMaker on Mac based on Apple silicon processor
Apple announced in 2020 that its Mac computers would be gradually equipped with processors named "Apple silicon" based on ARM architecture (as for the iPhone and iPad) to replace Intel processors.
The first Apple silicon processor for its entry-level Macs (MacBook Air, Mac mini, iMac with 24" screen) is called M1. And already, this model is much more efficient than Intel processors in its energy consumption: with the same power, the energy consumption is lower (laptop batteries last longer) and with the same energy consumption, their power is much higher.
Micro Consulting conducted tests with an iMac equipped with an M1 processor and compared the response times of one of its programs in three different environments:
MacBook Pro with an Intel i7 processor and 16 GB of RAM
iMac 24'' with a M1 processor and 8 GB of RAM, in Intel "Rosetta" emulation mode
iMac 24'' with a M1 processeur and 8 GB of RAM, in native mode
The data file contained 2 million records in a table and 1.2 million records in a linked table. The size of the data file was about 9 GB.
The results are amazing: the same operations take 30% and sometimes more than 50% less time between the Mac with an Intel processor and the one with an M1 processor when the program is running natively. And even in Intel emulation mode (if the program is not optimized for the M1 processor), all operations take less time than on a real Intel processor.
Some examples :
Sequential search in a non-indexed text field in 2 million records:
Mac Intel : 88 seconds
Mac M1 Intel mode : 66 seconds
Mac M1 native mode : 37 seconds
Apply command in a text field for 3 millions records:
Mac Intel : 172 seconds
Mac M1 Intel mode : 166 seconds
Mac M1 native mode : 112 seconds
Import in a blank datafile of 5'000 records containing about thirty fields with creation of linked records:
Mac Intel : 11 seconds
Mac M1 Intel mode : 10 seconds
Mac M1 native mode : 6 seconds
These tests show that the M1 processor is much faster than an Intel processor: if you are going to buy a Mac in the near future, we can only recommend that you choose a model with an Apple silicon processor, even if your applications have not been optimized for this processor.
BiblioMaker 7.1, scheduled for spring 2022, will be available as a native Apple silicon version and will also run on Intel processors.
