How to activate NEON for higher CPU for M1?

Sorry, no. Apple does not support overclocking, or provide any method for the user to make such modifications.

While the M1 produces much less heat than the previous Intel CPUs, there's still a limit to how much heat you can safely generate within a laptop.

Apps that require that much intensive CPU load would be much better served on a Mac Studio with an M1 Ultra CPU. The downside being it isn't very portable as you would also have to supply a mouse, keyboard and monitor.

It would also help a lot if the vendor of the app you're using would optimize their code for Apple's CPU.

Kaleidoskies wrote:

Um okay, well I was very upfront with my misunderstanding of this topic from the get go in my post so no surprise there. But your reply didn’t contribute anything to my question , thanks.

And how are you judging that? Because I said something bad about open source? I could have just as easily said something bad about 3rd party software.

… and I’m using Corel Painter, a professional digitally painting software that is made for MacBook M1, if anything I blame them more for their lack of customer support but still seeking answers here, no things I already know … just really wanting to figure this out

Speak of the devil. 😈 They are still selling that? That was cool software twenty years ago. I bought a copy myself. But today, there are many better options, especially for the iPad.

And I’d like to say I very much so am not judging Apple, lol. But this topic and the above answer had me questioning if I should go to a PC since my goal is to make the best of my app which needs higher CPU not fight over if Apple is great or if I’m not competent enough. I clearly do not understand and am trying

Perhaps you misunderstood. I was not saying you were incompetent. I was describing the developers of whatever software was asking for NEON on a Mac. It was a reasonable assumption that only some open source software would be demanding something like NEON that is very specific to ARM, but not necessarily to Apple Silicon. I placed my bet on open-source incompetence and your raised with Corel. Well-played.

Here's the problem. The M1 is called "Apple Silicon" for a reason. It isn't really an ARM. The whole ARM thing is mostly just a convenience for developers. It's a different chip that pretends it's ARM.

But wait, there's more. The M1 actually does support NEON instructions. Most Apple developers wouldn't know this or care. If a developer uses Xcode, Apple handles all those details. Most developers just write their code. If they want to be extra fast, they will use Apple APIs that transparently leverage special SIMD instructions like NEON. If that's not enough, they can even dive deeper into Apple Metal technology to do even more on the GPU.

But all that is something that most open source developers would never do. They would just use their normal GCC compiler and open source libraries and hope it works. It sounds like Corel is using those same kinds of techniques. Even back when Corel had Mac customers, they had reputation of being strictly PC, with the Mac as an afterthought. It only takes a couple of Google searches to discover that many open-source image and video libraries don't include NEON instructions for Mac builds by default. Those build scripts were designed for PCs and Linux. Any Apple support they have is hacked-in later. Because of a slight difference in how Apple identifies it chip ("arm64") vs. the "normal" way (aarch64), some libraries don't build with NEON support on the M1. It looks like Corel put more effort into that "brush accelerator" document than they did just researching the platform and figuring out how to do builds. Rather than do something like adding a "--enable-neon" argument to their build scripts, they've sold you an underpowered software package.

How to fix it? That's a harder question. Your original question was "How to activate NEON for higher CPU for M1?" The answer is that it is already activated. You just need software that uses it, which apparently Corel Painter chose not to do. Therefore, the correct answer to your question is "use some other software". I'm confident you will be pleased with the results.

FWIW, based on the screen shot you posted clearly there is something amiss. Under "Understanding the System Requirements" it states you do not have the recommended number of cores. An M1 MacBook Pro has 8 cores which if I remember my math, 8 is more than 4. 😎

Kaleidoskies wrote:

Is there a way to make the CPU faster? I’m shocked it’s not as good as I thought.

How are you judging this? Considering your original question, it sounds like you are trying to run some open-source junk on the internet. That's going to run poorly no matter what chip you use. Of course, the people who wrote it will simply blame your Mac. It is always easier to blame Apple that recognize their own incompetence. That's why blaming Apple is such a wildly popular strategy on the internet.

You're welcome.

Just to try and be fair to Corel, not that I have any reason to, there are a nearly infinite combination of software and hardware and if a fully working, bug-free app or OS is ever written I will know the apocalypse is soon to arrive.

🙂

Since NEON itself is a CPU, it's impossible to use since there's no way to swap out the Apple CPU in your M1.

There may have been a 10 core M1 MBP as well. I didn't check. In any case, short of a new more powerful M2 Mac you aren't going to go any faster. I would ignore the recommendations.

Okay I checked, there was a 10 core M1 MBP.

I've never used Corel Painter so I can't tell you one way or another. Lag could be the app's fault or it could be something else you have installed/running.