OK, 8 cores, but big little config, so probably 4x A53 + 4x A72. So nothing revolutionary new here IMHO. Where is the 16 core A72 SoC we all want?
Apple designs their own cores.
Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
791–800 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#792Apple 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…
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.
Sure, inferencing doesn't need floating point instructions, so NVIDIA will stay the only real solution for desktop/laptop based model training for a long time.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#793Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a translation layer, so I'm hopeful everything will just work.
At what speed? As far as I understood, all the presented performance increases are for optimized apps. I guess this is also where Apple sees the primary customer base. For developers, scientists, etc., it would be interesting if it improves any of their typical use-cases – memory is one big limitation (I don't necessarily need 32GB on the laptop, that's what I use a workstation for, but after using my current Macbook…
Generally reasonable speeds.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#794Earlier quoted context omitted.
I expect this CPU is already faster than the i9 in most metrics.
What are you basing this on?
Not OP, but
> Apple claims the M1 to be the fastest CPU in the world. Given our data on the A14, beating all of Intel’s designs, and just falling short of AMD’s newest 5950X Zen3 – a higher clocked Firestorm above 3GHz, the 50% larger L2 cache, and an unleashed TDP, we can certainly believe Apple and the M1 to be able to achieve that claim.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#795Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can turn off boot security.
A locked bootloader is only part of the issue. The other part is most ARM SoCs don't have an enumerable bus, and thus require customized kernels to run Linux. As a result, they almost always require explicit Linux support from the vendor. There are millions of ARM devices out there that will never run Linux, or will only ever support an old and outdated fork of Linux, and will never have mainline support in the kerne…
I doubt Apple will do anything here, but there are always developers who care enough to make this happen.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#796Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that's for macOS binaries. Not for VMs.
"With the translation technology of Rosetta 2, users will be able to run existing Mac apps that have not yet been updated, including those with plug-ins. Virtualization technology allows users to run Linux" https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-announces-mac-t...
Virtualization of ARM Linux.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#797I'm very curious to see some real benchmarks. I have no doubt that they've achieved state of the art efficiency using 5nm, but I have a harder time believing that they can outperform the highest end of AMD and Intel's mobile offerings by so much (especially without active cooling). Their completely unit-less graph axes are really something...
If they could outperform AMD/Intel today, they would've offered 16" MBPs / iMacs / Mac Pros. Today, they have power-efficient chips, so they converted their low-end machines, and Mini so that companies porting their software can start migrating their build farms.
I don't see why they need to rush into the higher end. Let ARM chips prove themselves for consumer scale. Enterprise is going to be weary of the new tech and potential compatibility issues. Proving it in the consumer market makes far more sense, and they really get to flex the benefits in something like a macbook air. Fanless, silent, and huge battery life increases are really tangible upgrades.
A beefy chip in an MBP 16 will be exciting, and I'm sure they are working on that, but it will make far more sense once ARM is established in the "normal" consumer models.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#798How many years has the 13” MBP been stuck at 16GB RAM now? 7?
Like negative 2? There’s been models with more RAM than that for a while.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#799No 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…
> I am very disappointed to see the design is identical to what we currently have Yeah one possible explanation I can think of is that they're not 100% confident in how rollout will go, and they want to avoid the situation where people in the wild are showing off their "brand new macs" which are still going through teething issues. There's less chance of souring the brand impression of M1 if they blend into the produ…
Probably a good mix of both. No need to send out a completely new design along with the new chips, plus the designs are really not that outdated. In any case these are squarely targeted at the "average consumer" market - lower budget, keeps computers for a very long time, places significant value on the higher battery life.
Less reliant on perfect compatibility of enterprise software, which I am sure is something they want a little more time to sort out before committing their higher end lineup.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#800The responses here seem to not really acknowledge what a rabbit apple has been pulling out of the hat. 2-3x the performance both from a CPU and GPU perspective, whilst being far more energy and thermally efficient. Of course this was kind of known and rumoured, but now we know. Finally real competition for intel. If only these chips were available to others. they are literally running laps around the competition. Cur…
I think it's more of a X86 vs ARM battle and not particularly Apple vs Intel. AMD will suffer too. And Graviton, Nuvia, Ampere are all competing against X86 incumbents.