Microsoft Volterra vs Apple Mini — ARM PC DUEL

Web speed comparison

Microsoft Volterra versus Apple Mac mini — Image courtesy of Jakub Jirák

In the last couple of weeks, I had the opportunity to test a new devkit that Microsoft has prepared for developers. Yes, this is the Voltera project. Unfortunately, the device belongs to one of my customers, who didn’t want me to take pictures of it.

I will respect this wish, but I would still like to share how this device impressed me from a developer's perspective. I tried using the new Parallels version on a Mac to compare these devices and installed Windows for ARM. So let’s see how Voltera stood up to a native Windows installation for ARM against a Mac mini with a virtualized system.

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The tests I ran were related to the speed of web and python projects. I should mention one important thing at the beginning, the Voltera project is aimed at developers. In contrast, the Mac mini is aimed at the general public, from regular users to developers. Apple had a devkit for developers before the release of the Mac mini with M1, which was based on the A12 chip.

I tried a few benchmarks.