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Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots

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Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots

#61

Post by kbumsik »

texse wrote: post #52
kbumsik wrote: post #19

Interesting to see the CPU isn't actually that big in the chip. What are the uncommented parts? Maybe peripheral interfaces?

It may be interesting to look at a more completely labeled die image (eg. a recent AMD laptop chip [1]). I/O controllers, various PHYs, the display pipeline and the media engine account for a significant fraction of chip. We also know the M1 has an integrated SSD controller, ISP and Thunderbolt which probably take a good chunk of room too. [1] https://potatopc.net/amd-renoir-die-annotation-raises-hopes-...

> We also know the M1 has an integrated SSD controller, ISP and Thunderbolt which probably take a good chunk of room too.

SSD controller and even Thunderbolt. That's the most integrated SoC I've heard of.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots

#62

Post by viktorcode »

userbinator wrote: post #38
soneil wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do have a shot on https://www.apple.com/mac/m1/ (the first non-logo image) which looks like it matches up (you'll need to rotate one by 180°). So it's not like they're hiding it or actively avoiding it. It apparently just doesn't suit their needs.

The degree to which they hype UMA (a term of art within the PC industry for decades ) on that page is amusing --- if Intel did the same sort of marketing for its integrated GPUs, they would almost certainly be laughed at.

From what I've read it seems to be different from Intel's UMA. It's cache-friendly single pool of memory directly accessible from different cores of the SoC: CPU, GPU, NPU etc. Since there's no division of RAM between different parts of the SoC, copying operations aren't needed.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots

#63

Post by dan1234 »

jeffbee wrote: post #56
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know what benefit they're getting by putting the memory on the chip to begin with? I had initially assumed there was some non-trivial performance advantage in it, but now people are saying not so much, so why did they do it? It seems weird to artificially limit the max memory if there was no advantage in it.

The benefit is they can charge you $200 for memory they bought from Samsung for $15. There’s no performance advantage to the user.

I’d love to know where you’re picking up LPDDR4X-4266 RAM for $15?

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots

#64

Post by simonh »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #12
madeofpalk wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

For some people yes, for others it’s a confusing jumble of fuzzy shapes that distract them from the pertinent information. I think Apple approach of providing simplified diagrams, and also illustrative die shots (yes, they did provide die shots, so the whole premise of this discussion is stupid) was perfectly fine.

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots

#65

Post by baybal2 »

dilippkumar wrote: post #2

How 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?

> How does one identify which regions of a die-shot is the CPU or GPU? Are the structures on silicon easily recognizable from such pictures?

Infrared camera

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots

#66

Post by [deleted] »

baybal2 wrote: post #65
dilippkumar wrote: post #2

How 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?

> How does one identify which regions of a die-shot is the CPU or GPU? Are the structures on silicon easily recognizable from such pictures? Infrared camera

[deleted]

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots

#68

Post by bullen »

deaddodo wrote: post #28
Waterluvian wrote: post #25

What's all the stuff that isn't annotated with a yellow rectangle?

This is a SoC, not a CPU. The majority of the non-annotated is glue logic, I/O, etc.

That's alot of glue! I would say ~50%! What is the system cache? nm, see question below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25547796

Re: Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots

#69

Post by bullen »

chrisseaton wrote: post #11
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #7

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.

I would really like to know where the L1 caches are for proportions!
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