On the edge of Apple Silicon memory speeds
Get picks like this daily. Today's launch numbers, the top launches, AI and tech news, and a daily opportunity pick, straight to your inbox.
Want to reach these readers? Sponsor an issue.
I have developed open source CLI-tool for Apple Silicon macOS. It measures memory speeds in different ways and also latency. It can achieve up to 96-97% efficiency on read speed on M4 base what is advertised as 120GB/s. All memory operations are in assembly.I would really appreciate for results on different CPU's how benchmark works on those. I have been able to test this on M1 and M4.command : 'memory_benchmark -non-cacheable -count 5 -output results.JSON' (close all applications before running)This will generate JSON file where you find sections copy_gb_s, read_gb_s and write_gb_s statics.Example M4 with 10 loops: "copy_gb_s": { "statistics": { "average": 106.65421233311835, "max": 106.70240696071005, "median": 106.65069297260811, "min": 106.6336774994254, "p90": 106.66606919223108, "p95": 106.68423807647056, "p99": 106.69877318386216, "stddev": 0.01930653530818627 }, "values": [ 106.70240696071005, 106.66203166240008, 106.64410802226159, 106.65831409449595, 106.64148106986977, 106.6482935780762, 106.63974821679058, 106.65896986001393, 106.6336774994254, 106.65309236714002 ] }, "read_gb_s": { "statistics": { "average": 115.83111228356601, "max": 116.11098114619033, "median": 115.84480882265643, "min": 115.56959026587722, "p90": 115.99667266786554, "p95": 116.05382690702793, "p99": 116.09955029835784, "stddev": 0.1768243167963439 }, "values": [ 115.79154681380165, 115.56959026587722, 115.60574235736468, 115.72112860271632, 115.72147129262802, 115.89807083151123, 115.95527337086908, 115.95334642887214, 115.98397172582945, 116.11098114619033 ] }, "write_gb_s": { "statistics": { "average": 65.55966046805113, "max": 65.59040040480241, "median": 65.55933583741347, "min": 65.50911885624045, "p90": 65.5840272860955, "p95": 65.58721384544896, "p99": 65.58976309293172, "stddev": 0.02388146120866979 },Patterns benchmark also shows bit more of memory speeds. command: 'memory_benchmark -patterns -non-cacheable -count 5 -output patterns.JSON'Example M4 from 100 loops: "sequential_forward": { "bandwidth": { "read_gb_s": { "statistics": { "average": 116.38363691482549, "max": 116.61212708384109, "median": 116.41264548721367, "min": 115.449510036971, "p90": 116.54143114134801, "p95": 116.57314206456576, "p99": 116.60095068065866, "stddev": 0.17026641589059727 } } } }"strided_4096": { "bandwidth": { "read_gb_s": { "statistics": { "average": 26.460392735220456, "max": 27.7722419653915, "median": 26.457051473208285, "min": 25.519925729459107, "p90": 27.105171215736604, "p95": 27.190715938337473, "p99": 27.360449534513144, "stddev": 0.4730857335572576 } } } }"random": { "bandwidth": { "read_gb_s": { "statistics": { "average": 26.71367836895143, "max": 26.966820487564327, "median": 26.69907406197067, "min": 26.49374804466308, "p90": 26.845236287807374, "p95": 26.882004355057887, "p99": 26.95742242818151, "stddev": 0.09600564296001704 } } } }Thank you for reading :)
HN · launched Jan 17, 2026 · 5 upvotes (top 90%) · 0 views
Niche: hardware and system benchmarking tools · 36 launches, 3 in the last 7 days ▼ -40% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 36 launches in hardware and system benchmarking tools →
Could you build this?
No Benchmarking low-level memory latency and bandwidth near theoretical hardware limits requires hand-written ARM64 assembly, cache-line eviction tricks, and deep knowledge of Apple Silicon microarchitecture.
What it would actually take: Building this requires hand-crafted ARM64 assembly routines utilizing NEON/AMX vector instructions, unrolled load/store loops, memory barriers (`dmb`, `isb`), and hardware performance counters via macOS kernel APIs or `mach_time`. The hard part is avoiding CPU pipeline stalls, tuning cache prefetchers, managing virtual-to-physical address mappings, and understanding the specific memory controller topologies of M-series chips. This demands specialized microarchitecture and low-level systems programming expertise.
Discussion
No comments on this launch.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 304 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #293 of 305 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 74 days after the earliest competitor.
- I shrank DeepSeek V4 Flash to 57GB and it wrote a compiler on my Mac · hn · 2026-08-16 · 21 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Mac LLM Calculator · ph · 2026-10-06 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- ThermPort · ph · 2026-10-06 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- 2benches · ph · 2026-10-09 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Shoehorn, a library to quantize an LLM to fit your Mac's VRAM · hn · 2026-08-14 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- I got tired of btop not seeing my Mac's chip, so I built siltop · hn · 2026-10-17 · 17 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Voltyn · ph · 2026-10-06 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Open-source engine running Gemma 4 26B in 2 GB RAM on any M-series Mac · hn · 2026-07-29 · 919 upvotes · similarity 0.43
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.