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Comment by yaktubi | Hacker News Reader

I’d like to point out that compiling stuff is usually disk/io intensive. Could this not just be that the Apple machine has a faster hard drive/memory?

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It doesn't. It has the same 4 lanes, PCIe 3.0 flash as everyone else.

They have an extremely heavily integrated flash controller. Part of it is what they bought from Annobit.

I know, but the flash controller isn't the slow part (usually ;) ).

It does for real world tasks, rather than benchmarks. The FTL plays a big part in real world, small access latency.

We still don't know how good is the FTL in the Apple controller; all the devices are still too new and haven't been dragged through the coal as all the other controllers. It is still in the "easy job" part of it's lifecycle, with brand new flash cells.

However, to quote @Dylan16807 from similar discussion few weeks ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26118415):

> The analog parts are the slow parts.

They've been using custom controllers for over a decade.

And the Annobit IP includes the analog parts as a large piece of their value add.

We are getting too deep into irrelevant things. We don't know how much of Anobit IP was used in M1 macs; they may own it, but they might not use it all. They purchase their NAND and it may be not compatible with the current gen, just like when it was not compatible with Samsung's V-NAND/3D TLC.

In practice, the I/O performance of M1-based Macs is comparable to random PCIE 3.0 NVMe drive. (I'm typing this comment on M1 MBP, I'm well aware how it performs).

PCIe 4.0 is the current standard.

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