Zerene Stacker performance on ARM macs?

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Rashkh
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Joined: Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:31 am
Location: NYC

Zerene Stacker performance on ARM macs?

Post by Rashkh »

Has anyone compared stack speed between Intel and arm? I have an i9 9900k and am relatively happy with it but I need another rig in a second location and would like to get a Mac mini for the space and cost savings.

rjlittlefield
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Re: Zerene Stacker performance on ARM macs?

Post by rjlittlefield »

Rashkh, welcome to photomacrography.net.

I'm the fellow who wrote Zerene Stacker, and I answer all the support requests that come in by email.

Here is what I recently wrote to another fellow:
>Any comments on the Apple M1 for this sort of work? Is it much faster?

It's a great chip, but important to ask "faster than what?"

I recently purchased a Mac mini M1, intending to use it only as a development machine, to build and test an M1-native version of Zerene Stacker. But to my surprise, that little box is currently the fastest computer I own for image stacking. It handily outruns my 6-core 3.4 GHz Intel system, which is a bit dated i7-4930K. Following is a performance chart at https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cp ... Hz&id=2023 that is roughly consistent with my experience. That chart also shows that much higher performance is possible with some of the newer chips, especially AMD Ryzen, and the Ryzens have been reported to me as working well with Zerene Stacker.

The thing that really impresses me about the M1 is how little power it consumes, compared with its quite good performance. Running flat out, I measure power consumption of the Mac mini as only about 25 watts. I have never heard its fan run.
The performance chart at cpubenchmark.net also includes a line for "Intel Core i9-9900K @ 3.60 GHz". The benchmark value shown for that is 18,873, versus 14,736 for "Apple M1 8-core 3200 MHz".

Based on those general purpose numbers, I expect that the current M1 would be a step down in speed for you, but still a good match for your needs.

By the way, the performance that I describe above is for the M1-native version of Zerene Stacker. The Intel version of Zerene Stacker, run under Rosetta emulation, is significantly slower but even so is almost exactly the same speed as my i7-4930K system. Whoever wrote Rosetta did a great job.

--Rik

Edited to add... Here is a snapshot of that chart:
2021-04-08_9-01-35.jpg

Rashkh
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Apr 07, 2021 12:31 am
Location: NYC

Re: Zerene Stacker performance on ARM macs?

Post by Rashkh »

Awesome, thanks for the quick reply and the awesome program!

chris_ma
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Location: Germany

Re: Zerene Stacker performance on ARM macs?

Post by chris_ma »

ah, great, I was just looking for this info because I'm also in the process of deciding which way to go for my next computer system (most likely M1), so thanks Rashkh for starting this thread and thanks Rik for all the details. also good to know that there's a M1 native solution (I just see that it's been out for a while but I missed that).

I have a very brief hand-on with a MacMini and was also impressed by the low power consumption, so I'm looking forward to the more pro oriented machines. I really wish they released a mini tower with something like a 80W CPU and space for two PCIe SSD slots, but looking back at their history that's unlikely to happen :/
chris

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