What is a "system cache" ? Is that an L3 cache?
It's L3, but I think it's called 'system cache' because it is also used for the bus that loads memory from RAM into the GPU.
Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
11–20 of 114 posts
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#12Kind 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.
Because it's more real, and more inspiring to look at real technical material.
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#13Kind 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…
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Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#14What is a "system cache" ? Is that an L3 cache?
The system-level cache isn't an L3 cache specific to the CPU only, it's common across all the blocks in the SoC.
It is used by the GPU, neural engines,... in addition to the CPU itself.
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#15What is a "system cache" ? Is that an L3 cache?
I know nothing about chips, but I guess it's probably the last-level CPU cache but the GPU shares it as well, similar to Intel iGPU, so they decided to call it "system cache".
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#16Kind 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.
The inquiry I am making is more general - infantilization of consumers and the idea of dumbing things down for consumers like they're blobs of meat with cash to spare.
You don't need to see the cartoonized version of it either. May be its easier as a schematic to explain? Not sure. A list of M1's features would work equally well. I think its just marketing pizzaz.
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Because it's more real, and more inspiring to look at real technical material.
> Because it's more real
Why is more real better for this purpose?
Isn't a big idea of diagrams that they aren't real so can be simpler and easier to understand? Otherwise we'd just use photos or actual schematics.
> more inspiring
Most people just need to get the info so they can get on with their job and day and get home to their kids. They aren't looking to be inspired right now. That's fine.
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#18Kind 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…
Get real - which consumer ever really cares about die shots?
I'm a rather technical folk and even I don't care.
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#19Interesting to see the CPU isn't actually that big in the chip. What are the uncommented parts? Maybe peripheral interfaces?
Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The inquiry I am making is more general - infantilization of consumers and the idea of dumbing things down for consumers like they're blobs of meat with cash to spare. You don't need to see the cartoonized version of it either. May be its easier as a schematic to explain? Not sure. A list of M1's features would work equally well. I think its just marketing pizzaz.
They are simplifying the presentation for educating a wider audience of non-ECEs.
This is not a new phenomenon in human communication.
But we’re all just blobs of meat, that’s true. Maybe one day Apple will better tailor their marketing to sentient Bitcoin algorithms.