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Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

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Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#111

Post by briandear »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #104
barkingcat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1 mac pros were always going to come. Apple themselves announced that the next 2 years will be transition. I'd say if you purchased a Mac Pro, it's still the same. If you find yourself not having enough power, you bought the wrong machine to begin with (probably modern threadripper pro would be what you should have been looking for) If the computer satisfies all your performance needs, what use is it to "feel frustr…

> if you purchased a Mac Pro, it's still the same. If you find yourself not having enough power, you bought the wrong machine to begin with This is the reality really, if you actually wanted power then the Mac Pro just wasn't what you should have bought. Threadripper + Nvidia cards would take you way further for far less and with a clear sustainable upgrade path. Also really after the past 10 years of Apple's pro mov…

Those trash can pros are still great machines. They didn’t discontinue MacOS — that’s what matters.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#112

Post by andrewmcwatters »

headmelted wrote: post #84
tyingq wrote: post #46

It says the split for performance versus efficiency cores will be: - 20 total, 16 high performance, 4 efficiency - 40 total, 32 high performance, 8 efficiency Which is kind of interesting given that the 8 core M1 is split half/half at 4 high performance, 4 efficiency. Sounds like perhaps MacOS doesn't typically have more than 4 cores worth of low-priority work, regardless of the system size/workload?

This is what I would have expected - I suggested when the M1 was first mentioned that it might make more sense for the Mac Pro to just have a side wall of separate independent SOC stacks with independent on-thread memory that GCD could manage behind the scenes. This seems like a much more straight-forward way to throw more performance into the higher-end machines without making long-tail disruptions to the architectu…

> browsing the web, watching YouTube

I know people say this all the time, but the reality is modern web browsers are incredibly expensive processors.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#113

Post by matwood »

redm wrote: post #62
barkingcat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1 mac pros were always going to come. Apple themselves announced that the next 2 years will be transition. I'd say if you purchased a Mac Pro, it's still the same. If you find yourself not having enough power, you bought the wrong machine to begin with (probably modern threadripper pro would be what you should have been looking for) If the computer satisfies all your performance needs, what use is it to "feel frustr…

"what use is it to "feel frustruated" over something that was expected to come" 1) The details were all speculation. 2) There was no other option if you needed more horsepower. 3)_I'm happy with the current Mac Pro, but its going to be phased out of software support before its time, just like the Motorolla. So it's more about the software support being phased out than new hardware coming out.

> The details were all speculation.

It's not speculation to know that whatever computer is bought this year will be bested by what comes next year.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#114

Post by barkingcat »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #104
barkingcat wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

M1 mac pros were always going to come. Apple themselves announced that the next 2 years will be transition. I'd say if you purchased a Mac Pro, it's still the same. If you find yourself not having enough power, you bought the wrong machine to begin with (probably modern threadripper pro would be what you should have been looking for) If the computer satisfies all your performance needs, what use is it to "feel frustr…

> if you purchased a Mac Pro, it's still the same. If you find yourself not having enough power, you bought the wrong machine to begin with This is the reality really, if you actually wanted power then the Mac Pro just wasn't what you should have bought. Threadripper + Nvidia cards would take you way further for far less and with a clear sustainable upgrade path. Also really after the past 10 years of Apple's pro mov…

Yup exactly everyone bought the trashcan mac (I have one now myself - I love these buggers!) and then were disappointed with the lack of expansion/improvement.

Everyone then bought the current Mac Pro, but were disappointed that nothing else really fits into the slots aside from the things that Apple offered themselves (Nvidia cards won't work in the current Gen Intel Mac Pros.)

What makes anyone think the next Apple Silicon based Mac Pro will be any different?

Wanting a more modular mac pro is more like wishful thinking or wanting something to be different when reality is clearly saying something.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#115

Post by 988747 »

oneeach wrote: post #77
tyingq wrote: post #46

It says the split for performance versus efficiency cores will be: - 20 total, 16 high performance, 4 efficiency - 40 total, 32 high performance, 8 efficiency Which is kind of interesting given that the 8 core M1 is split half/half at 4 high performance, 4 efficiency. Sounds like perhaps MacOS doesn't typically have more than 4 cores worth of low-priority work, regardless of the system size/workload?

Consider the use cases. The Mac Pro is a desktop, always plugged in and used for the power. The M1 is on a laptop running on a battery where efficiency is more important to improve the battery life.

So why put efficiency cores in the desktop processor at all?

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#116

Post by hu3 »

pokot0 wrote: post #95
slezyr wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really funny because he is correct, that fan does nothing. There is no heat pipe connecting CPU and fan.

Idk, I am no expert but I tend to believe that a design that is shipped to millions of customers and only a handful report problems is probably designed better than what the average youtuber or forum commenter can assess. Apple is known to remove elements from their design in order to optimize. That big and heavy heat pipe seems like a perfect element to remove. And maybe it is a mistake. That happened before and the…

They also shipped millions of faulty butterfly keyboards for years. So history tells me your confidence is misplaced.

> I am pretty confident that everything in that designed is planned pretty accurately.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#117

Post by agloeregrets »

headmelted wrote: post #84
tyingq wrote: post #46

It says the split for performance versus efficiency cores will be: - 20 total, 16 high performance, 4 efficiency - 40 total, 32 high performance, 8 efficiency Which is kind of interesting given that the 8 core M1 is split half/half at 4 high performance, 4 efficiency. Sounds like perhaps MacOS doesn't typically have more than 4 cores worth of low-priority work, regardless of the system size/workload?

This is what I would have expected - I suggested when the M1 was first mentioned that it might make more sense for the Mac Pro to just have a side wall of separate independent SOC stacks with independent on-thread memory that GCD could manage behind the scenes. This seems like a much more straight-forward way to throw more performance into the higher-end machines without making long-tail disruptions to the architectu…

Generally speaking, Apple's systems throw work like web browsing to the performance cores. Browsing the web is actually super intensive for very short periods of time, increasing performance of rendering makes the system feel snappier. They mastered this art in the iPhone as they had to learn how to make snappy feeling devices that also sipped power, the easiest way to do this is to be done with processing as fast as possible so you can get back to idling on just the E-cores.

The E-core magic trick is that they are always running and also exist to prevent thread stoppers, tasks that force you to pause high-priority work such as network requests, push notifications, or memory management. This enables a machine where the performance cores can pound away at tasks uninterrupted and your cache can stay dedicated to the task at hand, preventing situations where you may have to dump branches mid-process, increasing performance consistency. Mathematically, it works out to where the P cores are ~5.2W each and then the E-cores are less than that combined, allowing the system to idle on just e-Cores and spin up and dedicate P-Cores to the UI and UX intensive tasks, keeping the thermals low and performance high. In a situation like the Mac Pro, I would expect much, much hotter P-Cores too as the thermals will allow.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#118

Post by hajile »

martinald wrote: post #103
GeekyBear wrote: post #59

Will TSMC 3nm be the second die shrink in a row where Apple does the unconventional thing and takes a reduction in power/heat instead of a performance increase? >Compared to it’s N5 node, N3 promises to improve performance by 10-15% at the same power levels, or reduce power by 25-30% at the same transistor speeds. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16024/tsmc-details-3nm-proces... It would certainly help pack that many c…

Considering M1 only uses 20W max, you could add a lot of cores without any efficency savings and still be within the current Xeon 200W TDP envolope. Indeed 8 M1s to make 32perf/32efficency would only be 160W. I'm aware this is very rough, but I also imagine even 8 M1s are a fraction of the cost of one Intel Xeon W chip, so much more margin for Apple. Not good times for Intel.

Cores aren't the real picture here.

AMD's high-end cores have a quarter-gig of cache. That uses a lot of power no matter how you slice it. AMD's Infinity Fabric interconnect uses 30-50% of total chip power. Apple will have similar communications overhead too. Adding more memory lanes increases power consumption as does adding more PCIe lanes and other IO.

It definitely remains to be seen if their chips are significantly faster when scaled up. In any case, they wouldn't have to beat AMD or Intel to count it as a success. Simply not being terrible would be enough.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#119

Post by aequitas »

988747 wrote: post #115
oneeach wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider the use cases. The Mac Pro is a desktop, always plugged in and used for the power. The M1 is on a laptop running on a battery where efficiency is more important to improve the battery life.

So why put efficiency cores in the desktop processor at all?

It still nice to reduce power consumption and heat production when running idle.

Re: Apple Readies MacBook Pro, MacBook Air Revamps

#120

Post by xu_ituairo »

redm wrote: post #45

As someone who just invested in a Mac Pro late last year, I'm a bit frustrated. I wanted years for a modular design that I could keep and upgrade over a longer time only to find out I'll be forcefully phased out within 2 years.

They announced the planned transition to ARM in June of last year. Did you know about that before your purchase?
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