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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

#661

Post by jacquesm »

marta_morena_28 wrote: post #564
nrp wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Apple's volume and level of system integration, it doesn't make sense to do assembly sharing at that level between different models. Presumably the SoC package is the same between the different products, but binned differently for the Air, Pro, and Mini. The actual logic boards would be custom to the form factor.

Not just that. At 5nm there will also be yield problems. I.e they will put the best yield into high end and the worst yield into low end.

That's now how yield works. Yield is the number of functioning chips that you pull out of a wafer.

I think what you are trying to refer to is frequency binning.

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

#662

Post by antipaul »

hybridtupel wrote: post #615
satysin wrote: post #165

No 32GB options on any of the models announced today is a shame. Or not I guess as it means I won't be buying anything today M1 looks impressive, hopefully it scales as well to higher TDPs. Pretty much what I expected today with all the low power models getting updated. With no fan I expect the Air will throttle the CPU quickly when using the high performance cores. Calling it an "8-core CPU" is a little cheeky IMHO…

Also just two ports on a PRO model. C‘mon there is plenty of room on both sides. Maybe lets it look elegant but then the cable mess will be on the desk, thanks.

This MBP refresh replaces the lower-end MBP which also only had 2 ports.

This is a small detail that is easy to miss.

The "higher-end" MBPs with 4 ports are only availabe with the intel CPUs for now

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

#664

Post by PeterisP »

vbezhenar wrote: post #613
jonplackett wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see how something that tiny can compete in any meaningful way with a giant nVidia type card for training. I'd imagine it's more for running models that have been trained already, like all the stuff they mentioned with Final Cut.

Isn't it better to rent a cloud with as many GPUs as necessary for a time needed to train the model? I don't know state of things in ML.

I agree with the parent poster that it's probably more about inference, not training.

If ML developers can assume that consumer machines (at least "proper consumer machines, like those made by Apple") will have support to do small-scale ML calculations efficiently, then that enables including various ML-based thingies in random consumer apps.

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

#665

Post by twoodfin »

ghaff wrote: post #316
jonplackett wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I think they're targeting a more powerful SoC at the iMac, or at least they didn't want to announce new iMacs without being able to replace the whole range.

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

#667

Post by jll29 »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #275
293984j29384 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8GB and 16GB configurations seem more than enough..

For pro users, the fact that 32GB isn’t even an option is pretty surprising

I should wait for a 64 GB option. I've already got 16 GB on all my older laptops, so when buying a new gadget RAM and SSD should have better specs (you feel more RAM more than more cores in many usage scenarios).

It was surprising to see essentially the same form factor, the same operating system and not much to distinguish the three machines presented (lots of repetition like "faster compiles with XCode").

BTW, what's the size and weight of the new Air compared to the MacBook (which I liked, but which was killed before I could get one)?

Seeing two machines that are nearly identical reminds me of countries with two mainstream political parties - neither discriminates clearly what their USP is...

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

#668

Post by Miraste »

nottorp wrote: post #469
jamil7 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People running electron apps are likely constrained. Maybe with the ability to run iOS/iPadOS versions we can ditch things like the desktop version of Slack.

You think the iOS version of Slack is native?

It is:

https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/931599784137363459?lang=e...

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

#669

Post by hajile »

marta_morena_28 wrote: post #564
nrp wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Apple's volume and level of system integration, it doesn't make sense to do assembly sharing at that level between different models. Presumably the SoC package is the same between the different products, but binned differently for the Air, Pro, and Mini. The actual logic boards would be custom to the form factor.

Not just that. At 5nm there will also be yield problems. I.e they will put the best yield into high end and the worst yield into low end.

This is undoubtedly why they launched the Mac Mini today. They can ramp up a lot more power in that machine without a battery and with a larger, active cooler.

I'm much more interested in actual benchmarks. AMD has mostly capped their APU performance because DDR4 just can't keep the GPU fed (why the last 2 generations of consoles went with very wide GDDR5/6). Their solution is obviously Infinity Cache where they add a bunch of cache on-die to reduce the need to go off-chip. At just 16B transistors, Apple obviously didn't do this (at 6 transistors per SRAM cell, there's around 3.2B transistors in just 64MB of cache).

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

#670

Post by dawnerd »

ksec wrote: post #195

The M1 is basically what would Apple would call A14X / A14Z if it was on iPad Pro. So they decided to reuse the A14X / M1 across all three products. And the only differentiation are their TDP cooling. The MacBook Air is 10W TDP, and both Mac Mini and MacBook Pro are likely ~35W range. The did mention MacBook Air's SSD performances is now twice as fast, so this isn't exactly an iPad Pro with Keyboard. That is great ex…

> But for MacBook Pro, You are essentially paying $300 more for a Fan and Touch Bar.

More than that. Better screen. Bigger battery. Better speakers. Better mics (although I don't know how much I would buy this one as 'studio quality' is silly). A "USB Power Port". The fan will make the MBP perform without throttling a lot longer than the air.

The price difference is minor for all that IMO.

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