Does Bitwig use/utilise the now named "Performance cores" on M5 Pro/Max?

[JJ303]

Trying to find confirmation if Bitwig use the now named "Performance cores" on M5 Pro/Max or if they are seen as "Efficiency cores" by Bitwig and not utilised?

Would be appreciated if anyone could confirm the behaviour, or if anyone that use Bitwig on a M5 Pro/Max would be kind and confirm using the CPU history in Activity Monitor (Clicking on CPU graph at bottom to vies all Core usage)?


Reason to try confirming is that I have to get a new Mac and not sure if beneficial or even worse choosing M5 Pro/Max over a M4 Pro/Max.
This as if Bitwig cannot us the now named "Performance cores" on M5 Pro/Max, then:
- M4 Pro 14-core will have 10 "Performance cores" that Bitwig can utilise
- M5 Pro 15-core will only have 5 "Super cores" that Bitwig can use



Some info:
It’s said that the "Efficiency cores" on M4 and prior are not utilised by Bitwig, only the "Performance cores”.
Now on M5 Pro/Max there are no "Efficiency cores" but rather "Super cores" and "Performance cores”, the worry is that Bitwig now see the M5 Pro/Max "Performance cores” named Cores as the old "Efficiency cores”.

I have seen tests on showing that both Ableton and Logic Pro are able to utilise the now named "Performance cores" on M5 Pro/Max, while those DAW's were not able to use the "Efficiency cores" on M4 and earlier. But I have not found any sources that confirm for Bitwig.

I have contacted Bitwig Support but they were not able to confirm at this point. Please note that I find Bitwig support one of the best, so no blame on them here.

Thank you all

[fde101]

Just to clear something up, the performance cores of the new M5 chips are *not* renamed efficiency cores. With the M5 chips Apple introduced a third type of core, called the Super Core, so there are now three types of cores in the M5 ecosystem: efficiency, performance and super.

The base M5 chip provides efficiency and super cores with no performance cores. The pro/max chips provide performance and super cores with no efficiency cores.

[JJ303]

Thank you for the input fde101,

It is correct that the Performance Cores on M5 chips are not renamed efficiency Cores, they are also not same as the Performance Cores on prior M chips to what I understand.

The M5 Performance Cores has a new architecture. However it is difficult to find exactly what changed, but it is for example stated to be less amount of wide decoder compared to prior M models Performance Cores.
Even Apple describe them as "all-new performance cores, optimised for power-efficient, multithreaded workloads".

The worry is that Bitwig will not be able to utilise the Performance Cores on the M5 chips, and that a change in code by Bitwig is required before Bitwig will be able to utilise them.

Even Bitwig support have pointed to that there are reports that the Performance Cores on the M5 are being seen as Efficiency Cores and not being used but unable to confirm them self.


I'm consider going head first and just get a MacBook Pro 5 (M5 Pro) and hope for the best, this as I need to get a new laptop urgently (hence my post).

[JJ303]

I can sadly confirm that Bitwig does not utilise the Performance Cores on the M5 chip. This after testing on a MacBook Pro M5 Pro that has 6 Super Corers and 12 Performance Cores.
Bitwig only utilise the Super Cores.

This most likely means that Bitwig will have less CPU headroom on the M5 compare to for example the M4 as depending on model the M4 will have more cores that Bitwig can utilise.
To compare:
M4 Pro 14 Core have 10 cores that Bitwig can utilise
M5 Pro 18 Core have 6 cores that Bitwig can utilise

[Tj Shredder]

Did you report it to Bitwig? They might hire you as alpha tester for getting all cores to run…
In general how does Bitwig behave performance wise on these super cores?

[JJ303]

I have reported to Bigwig support and they will look in to try to utilise the "Performance" Cores on the M5 chip in addition to the Super cores in a future update.
I'm unable to do further testing as returned the MacBook Pro M5 Pro (18 cores) and got a MacBook Pro M4 Pro (14 cores) instead, and happy I did.

I however did some testing between my different machine.
(Devises on each track: Stepic > ANA 2 (Default not "int" patch) > ValhallaSupermassive > FF C3 > Bitwig Tool)
MacBook Air M1 (10 cores) [4 Performance / 6 Efficiency]: 57 tracks
MacBook Pro M5 Pro (18 cores) [6 Super / 12 "Performance"]: 130 tracks
MacBook Pro M4 Pro (14 cores) [10 Performance / 4 Efficiency]: 195 tracks (Run out of RAM, not CPU, and looked like I could push the CPU quite a bit further)

I did not have the possibility to go back and redo the test with less RAM heavy chain on M5, but result is that I currently get at least 50% more CPU performance out of the M4 Pro (14 cores) compared to the M5 Pro (18 cores), also saved some $$$.

I also fell better with the M4 Pro Even if Bigwig manage to address the "Performance" cores on the M5 Pro in future update as I will worry less with the M4 CPU architecture where all the utilised cores will be of the same type instead of a possible mix of Super/Performance cores utilised on the M5 Pro.

[Murphys_Law]

I got this info directly from Bitwig support. At the moment, Bitwig only uses Super cores (that were previously named performance cores in pre-M5 chips). They are considering testing the new performance cores of the M5 pro/Max in future releases but there’s no guarantee that it will be possible. For the efficiency cores, according to their tests, they are unsuitable for real time performance that Bitwig requires.