Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers • Hacker News Board

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

#951

Post by anentropic » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

fabianhjr wrote: post #344

I am somewhat skeptical about total performance claims as many notebook manufacturers have been moving to ARM for efficiency and not total performance. Current top of the line for notebooks would be the Qualcomm 8cx (ARM, 7? Watts) and AMD 4800U (x86-64, 15 Watts TDP) from quick search around. Would be interesting to see independent reviewers benchmarking those 2 in comparison to Apple's first in-house processor. Her…

this has a pretty good analysis https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...

This is far from Apple's first in-house processor, and they were already way ahead of other ARM chips before the M1

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

#952

Post by xbar » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

hajile wrote: post #669

marta_morena_28 wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I am looking forward to compile time benchmarks for Chromium. I think this chip and SoC architecture may make the Air a truly fantastic dev box for larger projects.

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

#953

Post by CivBase » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

Corrado wrote: post #878

ChuckMcM wrote: post #489

I think Apple has done an amazing job of pulling off their own silicon. At Sun I got to be involved peripherally in the effort that created SPARC and it was way more work than I had suspected. So kudos to Apple's design, engineering, and QA teams! I am also noting that they have killed the "ARM SoC's will never match what Intel can do" story line. That always reminded me of the "Microcomputers will never be able to d…

I agree about the upgradability/repairability. However, if you look at like a cell phone maybe it makes more sense. No one has ever complained that you couldn't update the RAM or the CPU in a iPhone. In order to upgrade the hardware of your cell phone you have to purchase another one. I'm guessing Apple is looking at the Mac hardware in the same light. "Want more power? Buy a new laptop!" The more interesting questio…

> I'm guessing Apple is looking at the Mac hardware in the same light. "Want more power? Buy a new laptop!"

How often do phone users actually upgrade their phones for more power? I mostly use my computer to develop software, play video games, and edit media, and stream videos. I mostly use my phone to text, play music, and access the internet.

Almost every PC purchase I've ever made was driven by a need for better performance, but I've never upgraded my phone for that reason. I've upgrade my phone for a better screen, a better camera, a bigger battery, software support, new hardware features (4G, biometrics, USB-C, etc)... but never because I felt like I needed a faster processor or more system memory.

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

#954

Post by whywhywhywhy » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

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…

That quote has summed up whats going on at Apple for quite a while now. Under Tim Cook we've seen what was once a product line with each archetype having it's place and having meaningful difference and care put into it fragment into many different tiers designed to milk a few more hundred dollars while also trying to reduce the BOM at every step.

Long time Apple fans who would in the past have championed how much care and vision Apple puts into their products now champion how working this way is so important because apparently building shareholder value is something an end customer should care about.

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

#955

Post by whywhywhywhy » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 1:33 PM UTC

tiffanyh wrote: post #350

No FaceID, interesting. I thought they might use FaceID as a "Pro" only feature like they do on the iPads but nope, they also released an updated 13" MacBook Pro without FaceID.

I presumed they were holding all the good updates like Face ID, thinner bezels, modern webcam, 14 inch screen for this update to push adoption but yeah seems like we'll have another 6 months or a year for the 13" to resemble a modern laptop.

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

#956

Post by The_rationalist » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #438

The_rationalist wrote: post #323

How uncompetitive will their igpu be?

Perhaps you should wait until people get their hands on it before forming an opinion on it…

Did I state an assertion or did I ask a question?

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

#957

Post by anentropic » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 1:40 PM UTC

A part that seems interesting to me is the "unified memory" architecture

At first it seems like just a cost/power/size saving measure, like not having dedicated RAM in a discrete GPU

But the CPU-vs-GPU RAM distinction means there's a cost to moving work to the GPU as data has to be copied, leading to it only be used in cases where you can either do the whole work purely on the GPU or queue up batch jobs of work so that the cost of copying data can be amortised over the faster parallel GPU

They sort of hinted at it in the presentation, but the unified memory architecture potentially allows more flexible distribution of tasks between CPU and GPU and "Neural" cores, because the data doesn't have to be copied.

I wonder if this is then potentially something compilers will be able to do take more advantage of, automatically.

It will be interesting to see how useful the "Neural" cores are for non-ML workloads.

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

#958

Post by whywhywhywhy » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

cpmsmith wrote: post #879

Sutanreyu wrote: post #876

No PCIe, meaning no eGPUs. How did they look past that? Are there any M.2 slots in these or will they'll just be set in stone with the storage they have?

> No PCIe, meaning no eGPUs. How did they look past that? With ease, I imagine. eGPUs are niche at best, and user-serviceable hardware and GPU vendors are two of Apple’s least favourite things. Macs’ support for eGPUs, such as it is, has always struck me as a strange aberration. I say this as the owner of an eGPU, which I’ve given up any hope of using outside Boot Camp.

They're not niche at all when your presentation mentions Machine Learning work and has Cinema4D as one of the examples of pro-apps you'll be running on this machine.

Either it's a machine that will serve those professionals, in which case it needs to be able to access a real GPU somehow or it's not a machine for those "Pro"-fessionals, in which case why make it part of your sales pitch.

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

#959

Post by BooneJS » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

jagger27 wrote: post #560

BooneJS wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 high-power and 4 low-power cores.

At 9:15 of the keynote they claim that the "high-efficiency" cores are as powerful as the outgoing dual-core MacBook Air's cores. Seems pretty good to me.

Agreed, but I wish I knew the numbers behind those statements.

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

#960

Post by thrwyoilarticle » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #532

grecy wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's A series chips have been decimating the competition in phones for years now, what makes you think they can't do the same in this space?

The fact that, like in most industries, it's easy to catch up and very hard to beat once you do. It's very telling that Apple didn't compare their M1 with something like AMD Zen3.

Because Zen 3 has been out for a week