I would definitely go with an AMD Ryzen CPU.
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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Like Ryzen AI 9 series?
Something like that. That's the latest one yeah.
Your asking 2 things that don't generally go together. Thin and powerful cpus.
You can get laptops with desktop processors, but they won't be thin. You can get thin laptops, but they will be smaller core counts, lower clock speeds, and thermally limited.
From what it sounds like you need, you'll need to sacrifice some thinness to get the multicore performance you want. Go AMD and look for something maybe last generation to keep the price down.
Latest macbooks pro are ones of the most powerfull laptops on market and they are pretty thin. As long it is not 4kg gaming laptop Im ok with it. Could you be more specific about models?
Laptop processors don't touch desktop processor performance though.
If you want maximum performance, it's going to be a desktop processor, hands down, no discussion.
The downside is, it becomes bulky due to cooling and power needs. The most powerful laptops will be gaming laptops with desktop processors.
https://www.originpc.com/gaming/laptops/eon17-x/ This is an example of a 7lb beast of a laptop using a high end cpu.
If you want the maximum performance in a traditional laptop, for example one that meets your budget, then the following applies to AMD:
Look at the cpu model. Beside Ryzen 3 5 7 etc, the last letter in the model name, represents the product series. If it’s U, it means that this processor is built for thin-and-light laptops; The HS series is for higher performance model with slimmer chassis and HX is right for those most powerful laptops in the world.
You can pick two things cheap, fast, light but not all 3. It's all a sliding scale of performance to price to size.
What are you going to do with it that requires multicore perf?
Rust, docker, nix etc. you got me. I want to maximize my productivity at work
If you want fast nix evals and docker builds, you absolutely do care about per-core performance.
I have little experience with Rust but, while I do know that it parallelises quite well, I also believe that there are still many single-threaded operations on the critical path though such as linking.
I think for your purposes, you'll do well with any 8-core AMD Zen4 that can draw more than 45W or any 4+n core Zen5. The latter would be a bit more efficient but practically the same perf in code compilation.
Intel is not competitive currently and ARM is still not quite there yet.
Is this the budget your job allowed you, or are you spending your own money to be more productive?
Not my own
For software engineering, memory is more often the limit. L1, L2, ram.