Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
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Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
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Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#2How does one identify which regions of a die-shot is the CPU or GPU? Are the structures on silicon easily recognizable from such pictures?
How far can someone with time and money go towards reverse engineering a chip from such pictures?
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#3How does one identify which regions of a die-shot is the CPU or GPU? Are the structures on silicon easily recognizable from such pictures? How far can someone with time and money go towards reverse engineering a chip from such pictures?
For very old chips reverse engineering is relatively easy; here's one example: http://www.righto.com/2020/04/inside-am2901-amds-1970s-bit-s... For modern chips you need an electron microscope and there are a lot of metal layers to deal with.
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#4How does one identify which regions of a die-shot is the CPU or GPU? Are the structures on silicon easily recognizable from such pictures? How far can someone with time and money go towards reverse engineering a chip from such pictures?
In short: educated guesswork. The lighter blocky regions in the die shot are recognizable as memory; a lot of the rest is based on recognizing duplicated or mirrored elements (like the two CPU1 cores) and making guesses based on their number, relative size, and what they're close to.
Identifying the GPU, for example, is based on recognizing that there are eight repeated elements within it, and matching that with the known fact that there are eight GPU cores.
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#5How does one identify which regions of a die-shot is the CPU or GPU? Are the structures on silicon easily recognizable from such pictures? How far can someone with time and money go towards reverse engineering a chip from such pictures?
I assume you could at least make an educated guess based on the layout and ratios of the area of the caches (assuming you know their topology and sizes) and therefore their proximity to non-cache stuff.
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#6Kind of sad to think about this - Why does marketing dept not actually show these and instead put up a cartoonized version of Apple's chips [1]? That's in every keynote. This is a rhetorical question, the real mystery is why does an average consumer want to see unreal things to convince them its cooler/better? You'd think seeing actual die shots would be more convincing to average consumer, but they love marketing that's untruthful, fake and exaggerated. Not the fault of the marketing department. This is what consumers want and this is what sells. Sad to think how shiny things sell and the whole luxury industry in general.
[1] https://www.apple.com/v/mac/m1/a/images/overview/chip_cpu__d...
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#7What is a "system cache" ? Is that an L3 cache?
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#8Kind of sad to think about this - Why does marketing dept not actually show these and instead put up a cartoonized version of Apple's chips [1]? That's in every keynote. This is a rhetorical question, the real mystery is why does an average consumer want to see unreal things to convince them its cooler/better? You'd think seeing actual die shots would be more convincing to average consumer, but they love marketing th…
As a technical consumer I don’t know why I would want to see the actual die shots - it really doesn’t tell me anything at all.
The graphics they put on slides or marketing sites aren’t supposed to be technical reference material, usually it’s just about conveying the idea of a SoC or performance improvements, or relative sizes, or whatever.
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#9Only a die-shot, it's disappointing that there's no comment or explanation. But the website advertises:
> A DFR report will be available to TechInsights subscribers on Apple's M1 disruptive chip architecture in January 2021.
So I assume the actual write-up is still a work-in-progress. Perhaps we just need to be patient and come back a month later.
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#10Kind of sad to think about this - Why does marketing dept not actually show these and instead put up a cartoonized version of Apple's chips [1]? That's in every keynote. This is a rhetorical question, the real mystery is why does an average consumer want to see unreal things to convince them its cooler/better? You'd think seeing actual die shots would be more convincing to average consumer, but they love marketing th…
Does it make a difference? The ones from the marketing department convey the message better and are pretty to look at. These are not as cool to average consumer.