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Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

9to5mac.com

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Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#311

Post by navanchauhan »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #248
ojosilva wrote: post #28

Apple mentions TensorFlow explicitly in the ongoing presentation due to the new 16-core "Neural Engine" embedded in the M1 chip. Now that's an angle I did not expect on this release. Sounds exciting! Edit: just to clarify, the Neural Engine itself is not really "new": > The A11 also includes dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls a "Neural Engine". This neural network hardware can perform up to 600 billio…

Yeah, I was confused at that implication. I don't think these are designed for training! (If they are or can be, I'm interested)

> (If they are or can be, I’m interested)

Exactly. Currently I am training my models using Google Colab and then exporting the model to run on my MBP. Would be interesting if I could do it locally

Another interesting thing is that ( if this is for training ) this will become the only accelerated version of Tensorflow for macOS as: - No CUDA drivers for latest macOS - AMD ROCHm only supports Linux runtime

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#312

Post by lagadu »

Jtsummers wrote: post #218

Out of curiosity, how many people are actually constrained by 16GB of RAM? What applications are you using it for that 16GB vs 32GB is actually a deal breaker for you? Thinking about your average end-users, like most of my family, 8 to 16GB is about all they need for their systems (and if software were better written they'd probably need less). So is this specific work like machine learning? Video and image processin…

I'm not in the market for Apple stuff but if I were, developing locally: SQL server drinks all the memory you throw at it and then some. Occasionally spinning up a VM.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#313

Post by hanche »

ValentineC wrote: post #112
akritrime wrote: post #92

So, all of these new Macs have the same SOC across the board? Or will there be slight differences like the Macbook pro will have a higher-binned soc or maybe the Mac mini and Macbook air will have fewer graphics core?

The cheaper MacBook Air has a 7-core GPU instead of an 8-core one.

I wonder if the Air gets the chips with one faulty GPU core? They could just disable the faulty one and use the remaining seven. Edit: Whoops, I see I was not alone thinking that thought.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#314

Post by driverdan »

mlindner wrote: post #219
jeffbee wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quite as insulting as their $800 2TB SSD.

I mean if it's SLC chip, that can explain the price.

The fastest drive available today is the WD SN850: https://shop.westerndigital.com/en-us/products/internal-driv...

The consumer price for 2TB is $450. $800 is absurd.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#315

Post by wincy »

grecy wrote: post #268
kevindong wrote: post #186

Completely unconfirmed speculation incoming: There's a solid chance that the logic board is exactly the same on all of the Macs announced today and the only difference is the cooling solution. If you play around with the Apple Store configurator, the specs are all suspiciously similar between every new Mac. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch https://w…

I noticed the slides kept saying "Up to" 8 GPU cores. That left me wondering if there are different variants of the M1 with different core counts. (Note: It always said 8 CPU cores)

My guess is maybe this is a yields thing for Apple Silicon? They use the same chips for Air and Pro, but shut off a faulty gpu core that didn't pass QA? Or a temperature thing.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#316

Post by ghaff »

jonplackett wrote: post #125
twoodfin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rumors were it was just behind the initial rollout (though those rumors missed the new Mac mini, AFAIK). Signs point to another event in January, I'd expect it there with a heftier SoC.

Yeah, strangely no-one predicted the mini, despite them already making a tonne of them for developers. Bit of a no brainer really.

Yes, but they seemed pretty ambivalent about the mini for a long time. Probably easier from a SKU perspective though than coming out with new iMac versions. (Even if iMacs overall outsell Minis--which I'm guessing they do--individual models may not.)

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#317

Post by scep12 »

kevindong wrote: post #186

Completely unconfirmed speculation incoming: There's a solid chance that the logic board is exactly the same on all of the Macs announced today and the only difference is the cooling solution. If you play around with the Apple Store configurator, the specs are all suspiciously similar between every new Mac. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch https://w…

This would make sense given the pricing, too.

For example, the $1,249 air is very similar to the $1,299 pro. The MBA has a bigger SSD, but the MBP has a bigger battery, isn't throttled (i.e. has a fan), and also has the touchbar (which may be controversial, but for the sake of comparison, remember that it comes with a manufacturing cost).

It seems reasonable that these are priced similarly. Of course, the machine I want is the MBP with the bigger SSD and no touchbar :)

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#318

Post by ebg13 »

mmastrac wrote: post #8

When they say "[faster than the] latest PC laptop chip", what exactly do they mean? Intel? AMD? EDIT: added [faster than the]

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-unleashes-m1/ down at the bottom says:

“World’s fastest CPU core in low-power silicon”: Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM measuring peak single thread performance of workloads taken from select industry standard benchmarks, commercial applications, and open source applications. Comparison made against the highest-performing CPUs for notebooks, commercially available at the time of testing."

So, "Comparison made against the highest-performing CPUs for notebooks, commercially available [one month ago]". I guess there could be wiggle room on interpreting "highest-performing", but this seems pretty good.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#319

Post by mouldysammich »

TkTech wrote: post #223
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know how you interact with these cores as a developer/user? Say if I'm running some C code with OpenMP parallelism, can I bind it to three of the fast cores?

With ARM, yes, and you can also selectively turn on and off cores. For example when travelling with my pinebook pro I turn the big cores off to drastically improve battery life. However it's up to Apple to expose this functionality, and we all know how much control apple wants you to have of the computers you "license" from them.

WRT the pinebook, i didnt know it could do that. can it be done at runtime or do you have to change it at boot time?

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#320

Post by etempleton »

grecy wrote: post #268
kevindong wrote: post #186

Completely unconfirmed speculation incoming: There's a solid chance that the logic board is exactly the same on all of the Macs announced today and the only difference is the cooling solution. If you play around with the Apple Store configurator, the specs are all suspiciously similar between every new Mac. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch https://w…

I noticed the slides kept saying "Up to" 8 GPU cores. That left me wondering if there are different variants of the M1 with different core counts. (Note: It always said 8 CPU cores)

According to Apple's website the Macbook Air appears to only have 7 active GPU cores. I suspect that chips in the Air may be binned separately and may or may not support the higher clock speeds even with the active cooling of the Mac Mini and Macbook Pro.
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