I think of John Carmack as the software equivalent of Roger Bannister, he of the first 4 minute mile. Yes, he is absolutely incredible, but once that magic is revealed to the world, it shows what is achievable and people can follow in his footsteps.
Of course, I'm over here with my poky 6 minute mile...
> But, the Intel MBP16 runs 6 & 8 core processors, and trying to theorycraft what performance the Icestorm cores in M1 will contribute gets difficult.
Anandtech's spec2006 benchmarks of the A14 [0] suggest the little cores are 1/3 of the performance of the big ones on integer, and 1/4 on floating point. (It was closer to 1/4 and 1/5 for the A13.) If that trend holds for the M1's cores, then that might help your estimates.
Of course, I'm over here with my poky 6 minute mile...