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Apple M1 Microarchitecture Research

dougallj.github.io

21–30 of 52 posts

Re: Apple M1 Microarchitecture Research

#21

Hats off to people who do this kind of work. However... *clears throat* I have real trouble using the term "research" for something like this, lumping it together with activities such as "research" in natural science, "research" in anthropology, or even journalistic "research". The difference to me is that this activity could be "done", or rather entirely avoided, if Apple didn't decide to keep it a secret. Mind you,…

There are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Getting to the bottom of all of them are research.

Re: Apple M1 Microarchitecture Research

#22

Hats off to people who do this kind of work. However... *clears throat* I have real trouble using the term "research" for something like this, lumping it together with activities such as "research" in natural science, "research" in anthropology, or even journalistic "research". The difference to me is that this activity could be "done", or rather entirely avoided, if Apple didn't decide to keep it a secret. Mind you,…

You are getting downvoted, but I agree with parts of your argument. The part that is perhaps missing is that reversing the microarchitecture or any complex system is generally not an end in itself. It is a prerequisite for more meaningful research. For e.g., building a simulator or finding side-channel vulnerabilities require a good understanding of the u-arch.

Re: Apple M1 Microarchitecture Research

#23

Hats off to people who do this kind of work. However... *clears throat* I have real trouble using the term "research" for something like this, lumping it together with activities such as "research" in natural science, "research" in anthropology, or even journalistic "research". The difference to me is that this activity could be "done", or rather entirely avoided, if Apple didn't decide to keep it a secret. Mind you,…

That's a weird take. Journalistic research, for example, also often involves bringing to light facts that some in-group already knows. The word research is a lot broader than what you claim; people talk about "researching" which television set to buy, and everyone understands what they mean. So your contribution here is "this guy is figuring out stuff that people at Apple already pretty much know". Err, thanks, Capta…

I mean, I read the parent comment more as "it's a shame that we, as a society, waste so much time figuring out stuff we already know but are unwilling to share".

Re: Apple M1 Microarchitecture Research

#24
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a weird take. Journalistic research, for example, also often involves bringing to light facts that some in-group already knows. The word research is a lot broader than what you claim; people talk about "researching" which television set to buy, and everyone understands what they mean. So your contribution here is "this guy is figuring out stuff that people at Apple already pretty much know". Err, thanks, Capta…

I mean, I read the parent comment more as "it's a shame that we, as a society, waste so much time figuring out stuff we already know but are unwilling to share".

I think it does say that, but it also says:

> I have real trouble using the term "research" for something like this, lumping it together with activities such as "research" in natural science, "research" in anthropology, or even journalistic "research".

Considering we're on "Hacker News" right now, and saying something like "hacking (in the reverse engineering sense) is research-like but not fundamental enough to be research" is bound to be a bit controversial.

It's a slippery slope anyways. Is researching anything that might have been known by someone at some point in time now not research? And it feels a bit like gatekeeping too.

Re: Apple M1 Microarchitecture Research

#25
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I read the parent comment more as "it's a shame that we, as a society, waste so much time figuring out stuff we already know but are unwilling to share".

I think it does say that, but it also says: > I have real trouble using the term "research" for something like this, lumping it together with activities such as "research" in natural science, "research" in anthropology, or even journalistic "research". Considering we're on "Hacker News" right now, and saying something like "hacking (in the reverse engineering sense) is research-like but not fundamental enough to be r…

Yeah, I'm not at all sure the distinction over terminology is terribly useful, but I do think GP's underlying point is interesting.

Re: Apple M1 Microarchitecture Research

#26

Hats off to people who do this kind of work. However... *clears throat* I have real trouble using the term "research" for something like this, lumping it together with activities such as "research" in natural science, "research" in anthropology, or even journalistic "research". The difference to me is that this activity could be "done", or rather entirely avoided, if Apple didn't decide to keep it a secret. Mind you,…

Reminds me of computer virus research in the 90's. "we've found the polymorphic encryption algorithm...". Ok? That's not akin to discover some function on a biological virus. It's just discovering other (even worse, contemporary) people's work. Just like a "reaction" YouTube video, it adds nothing new.

Re: Apple M1 Microarchitecture Research

#27

That’s an impressive piece of work. I would love to know how far this is from the information in the actual internal documentation. It’s very nice to have some excitement about a mainstream CPU architecture again.

Just a pain that due to Apple's policies on keeping a big margin and lack of sharing technology means that the rest of the industry won't benefit from this.

Still very hard to see not getting an M1 as my next laptop, especially if they continue to do sane things line remove the shitty touchbar.

Re: Apple M1 Microarchitecture Research

#28
post #27

That’s an impressive piece of work. I would love to know how far this is from the information in the actual internal documentation. It’s very nice to have some excitement about a mainstream CPU architecture again.

Just a pain that due to Apple's policies on keeping a big margin and lack of sharing technology means that the rest of the industry won't benefit from this. Still very hard to see not getting an M1 as my next laptop, especially if they continue to do sane things line remove the shitty touchbar.

Nuvia (former Apple M1 team members) was acquired by Qualcomm, so hopefully new laptop SoCs are on the way.

Re: Apple M1 Microarchitecture Research

#29
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a weird take. Journalistic research, for example, also often involves bringing to light facts that some in-group already knows. The word research is a lot broader than what you claim; people talk about "researching" which television set to buy, and everyone understands what they mean. So your contribution here is "this guy is figuring out stuff that people at Apple already pretty much know". Err, thanks, Capta…

I mean, I read the parent comment more as "it's a shame that we, as a society, waste so much time figuring out stuff we already know but are unwilling to share".

It's possible that he could have expressed these same thoughts without sounding like such a jerk, though.

Re: Apple M1 Microarchitecture Research

#30
It's interesting work. The results show a marked contrast with equivalent information for Intel (think uops.info, Agner Fog's work or even the Optimization Reference Manual).

Most obvious is separating general purpose register stuff from SIMD. If you have a mixed workload, this means M1 is much wider in that sense (although note that the SIMD registers involved are 128b as opposed to up to 512b).

Intel's execution ports tend to be special flowers - there's almost always stuff that can be done and can't be done on any given port. So, of the execution ports (0,1,5,6) each one tends to have some special flavor that the others don't share - and there are often complex "oh, you can only do 2 of those or 3 of these". There's a very small list of operations (generally logic and LEA) that can be done on all of 0,1,5,6.

By contrast, most of the M1 things, you can do across every unit that is capable of doing it. Want to do 4 SIMD math ops? Go for your life! It's certainly easier to remember and understand.

I imagine the counterargument on the Intel side is that it's unlikely you need that many of some given operation - so they are saving area to not make every port omni-capable. This works pretty well (right up to the point it doesn't).

It will be interesting to see how the comparison between Intel and Apple plays out in the near future. M1 is a tour de force of balanced design, but I wouldn't count Intel out - especially if they can get their process mojo back (a lot of M1's current advantage is being able to invest transistors in a balanced and sensible way across the entire pipeline due to a better process).

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