Macos has a built-in utility called powermetrics. I wanted to measure the power consumption of M1 chip’s CPU, GPU and DRAM module. M1 chip sustains the same amount of performance on battery power. Interesting observation I made about the Macbook was performance is not reduced when charger is taken off. I can already see the incredible power efficiency in work due to the heavy compilation workloads that I have to run constantly and the machine can still keep up in performance and the battery backup. Apple made sure to boast the power efficiency and performance per watts in their launch keynote with lots of data-points and graphs. Apple calls its approach a “Unified Memory Architecture” (UMA). DRAM is also on board and is shared between the CPU and GPU. M1 chips are SoC’s meaning package contains CPU and GPU and other coprocessors such as ML/NeuralNet processor. New Apple designed M1 chips are very power efficient. Idea behind power consumption monitoring of M1 Macbook

During long code compilations which run over 10 minutes I see fan ramp up to about 20-25% but that’s about it. Best thing about the new Mac is the silent operation. This mac easily lasts me 10-12 hours in same use-case scenario. My previous 2019 Intel Core i7 Macbook Pro used to last me 7-8 hours on average day. All the tools that I need for everyday development are available as native ARM binaries. But software support on ARM has come a long way. I was apprehensive about the move to ARM mac due to the initial software incompatibility due the new architecture. It has been absolute beast for my daily tasks and programming needs. I recently got the 2021 Macbook Pro 16 inch with M1 Pro chip. Monitoring power usage and efficiency of M1 Mac’s CPU/GPU Intro Idea behind power consumption monitoring of M1 Macbook.

Monitoring power usage and efficiency of M1 Mac’s CPU/GPU.

Monitoring power usage and efficiency of M1 Mac CPU/GPU

Mac cpu monitor