2016 MacBook Pro: Grep

Mac wish list • all 2016 MacBook pro models at B&H Photo • all 15" Apple MacBook Pro 2016 models • all 13" Apple MacBook Pro 2016 models. MPG gets credit if you buy through those links.

This test uses grep at the command line in Terminal. Grep is single-threaded, using only one CPU core. Its performance is thus sensitive to how fast the CPU core is, provided that the SSD can read data fast enough and/or if the data is cached.

Results

Uncached means that the system was rebooted, then grep run after the system was quiescent; data is thus not yet cached. Cached is the best of several subsequent invocations; OS X has all the HTML source files in the file system cache for those subsequent invocations.

The test was repeated several times, with consistent results. It is a good example of how performance expectatations/assumptions are no substitute for actual measurement.

Surprisingly the 2016 MacBook Pro is scarcely different from the 2013 MacBook Pro, disappointing given the 3 year gap. Note that this is the fastest possible 2016 MacBook Pro

Neither MacBook Pro can match the 2015 iMac 5K, but both are still much faster than the 2013 Mac Pro, cached or uncached.

* Models of the 2013 Mac Pro built in 2015 or so or later may might have somewhat faster SSDs. The 3.3 GHz 8-core Mac Pro used for this test is faste than any model that can be purcahsed at Apple.

Speed of grep textual search

Test machine notes

All systems are/were the fastest available in their category. All running macOS Sierra 10.12.1.

• Fully-loaded 2016 MacBook Pro with 2TB SSD, 16GB, fastest GPU.
• 2013 MacBook Pro with 512GB SSD, 16GB, the fastest GPU.
• 2013 Mac Pro, 3.3 GHz 8-core, 64GB, 1TB SSD, D700 GPU. Faster than any Mac Pro sold by Apple.
• 2015 iMac 5K, 4.0 GHz, 64GB, 1TB SSD, fastest GPU.