Running Hashcat on the M1?

Hashcat is a SIMD-vectorized program.

I'd expect the M1 to be terrible at it: with 128-bit vectors and only 4-big cores.

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AMD has 256-bit vectors and 8-cores or 16-cores. Intel has fewer cores (10-cores or so) but 512-bit vectors on workstation processors. Consumer Intel (Laptops or Desktops) are usually only 256-bits per core, but that's still doubling up over M1.

Finally, GPUs are 32-wide x 32-bits aka 1024-bit (NVidia or AMD NAVI), or 64-wide x 32-bits aka 2048-bit (AMD GCN), and you can see why GPUs do so well on a massively-parallel program like Hashcat. Those 1024-bit or 2048-bit compute units are arranged 4x per Compute Unit / Workgroup Processor (AMD) or 2x per SM (NVidia), and then they offer 60, 70, 80, 100+ Compute Units / SMs per GPU (depending on chip specific details)

I can't vouch for the authenticity of this data, but a Google search shows someone allegedly benchmarking a macbook pro: https://v2ex.com/t/729284

By comparison with, say, my GTX 1060 (6GB), it appears to be around 4-5 times slower. Other benchmarks seem to confirm this.

I'm very impressed. My Quadro P600 is around 5 times slower than the M1, all while using more power by itself than the entire system.

Granted, that's a very slow (and generation old) discrete mobile GPU, but for what it is, I think the M1 makes a fine showing. It greatly outperforms my 8th gen Intel brick that weighs 5 pounds and needs a 110 watt power supply, so I'll probably cave and upgrade.

Not hashcat which is primarily GPU, but smhasher which is CPU only.

There it is as expected comparable to fast aarch64 phones with 2.5GHz, faster than 2GHz laptops. Neon is not as fast as AVX2, only comparable to AVX, and has no AVX512. Ie. 2x slower than a Ryzen with 2x higher clocks, but comparable to old Desktop CPU's.