171–180 of 1001 posts
Now, if only Unreal Engine builds were available M1 native, I could get rid of my huge and heavy desktop entirely! Interestingly, some improvements to Rosetta were mentioned, extremely briefly.
Can the M1 MacBooks be used with Linux?
It's a work in progress. See https://asahilinux.org/blog/ for the latest updates.
> However, Apple is unique in putting emphasis in keeping hardware interfaces compatible across SoC generations – the UART hardware in the M1 dates back to the original iPhone! This means we are in a unique position to be able to try writing drivers that will not only work for the M1, but may work –unchanged– on future chips as well. This is a very exciting opportunity in the ARM64 world. We won’t know until Apple releases the M1X/M2, but if we succeed in making enough drivers forwards-compatible to boot Linux on newer chips, that will make things like booting older distro installers possible on newer hardware. That is something people take for granted on x86, but it’s usually impossible in the embedded world – and we hope we can change that on these machines.
Back then, more memory required higher density chips, and these were just vastly more expensive. It looks like the M1 Max simply adds more memory controllers, so that the 64GB doesn't need rarer, higher priced, higher density chips, it just has twice as many of the normal ones.
This is something that very high and laptops do: have four slots for memory rather than two. It's great that Apple is doing this too. And while they aren't user replaceable (no 128Gb upgrade for me), they are not just more memory on the same channel either: the Max has 400GB/s compared to the Pro 200Gb/s.
Do these new processors mean anything for those of us who need to run x86 VMs or is Apple Silicon still a no-go?
working with it would be a pain, however, if you absolutely need x86 better get an Intel mac (possibly used) or a PC
"Apple’s Commitment to the Environment" > Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to have net-zero climate impact across the entire business, which includes manufacturing supply chains and all product life cycles. This also means that every chip Apple creates, from design to manufacturing, will be 100 percent carbon neutral. But what they won't do is put the chip in an expan…
"Apple’s Commitment to the Environment" > Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to have net-zero climate impact across the entire business, which includes manufacturing supply chains and all product life cycles. This also means that every chip Apple creates, from design to manufacturing, will be 100 percent carbon neutral. But what they won't do is put the chip in an expan…
It’s interesting that the M1 Max is similar in GPU performance to RTX 3080. A sub $1000 Mac Mini would end up being the best gaming PC you could buy, at less than half the price of an equivalent windows machine.
This is about the processors, not the laptops, so commenting on the chips instead. They look great, but they look like they're the M1 design, just more of it. Which is plenty for a laptop! But it'll be interesting to see what they'll do for their desktops. Most of the additional chip area went into more GPUs and special-purpose video codec hardware. It's "just" two more cores than the vanilla M1, and some of the effi…
In this context the absence of the 27 inch iMac was interesting. If these SoC were not deemed to be 'right' for the bigger iMac then possibly a more CPU focused / developer focused SoC may be in the works for the iMac?
This is about the processors, not the laptops, so commenting on the chips instead. They look great, but they look like they're the M1 design, just more of it. Which is plenty for a laptop! But it'll be interesting to see what they'll do for their desktops. Most of the additional chip area went into more GPUs and special-purpose video codec hardware. It's "just" two more cores than the vanilla M1, and some of the effi…
In this context the absence of the 27 inch iMac was interesting. If these SoC were not deemed to be 'right' for the bigger iMac then possibly a more CPU focused / developer focused SoC may be in the works for the iMac?
Since these won't ship in non-Apple products, I don't see really the point. They're only slightly ahead of AMD products when it comes to performance/watt, slightly behind performance/dollar (in an Apples to apples comparison on similarly configured laptops), and that's only because Apple is head of AMD at TSMC for new nodes, not because Apple has any inherent advantage. I have huge respect for the PA Semi team, but t…
They design the SoCs in all iPhones and soon all Macs. They have the backing of a huge company with an unhealthy amount of money, and are free from a lot of constraints that come with having to sell a general-purpose CPUs to OEMs. They can work directly with the OS developers so that whatever fancy thing they put in their chips is used and has a real impact on release or shortly thereafter, and will be used by millions of users. Sounds much more exciting than working on the n-th Core generation at Intel. Look at how long it is taking for mainstream software to take advantage of vector extensions. I can’t see how that is wasting talent.
> The government really needs to look into splitting Apple up to benefit shareholders and the general public.
So that their chip guys become just another boring SoC designer? Talk about killing the golden goose. Also, fuck the shareholders. The people who should matter are the users, and they seem quite happy with the products. Apple certainly has some unfair practices, but it’s difficult to argue that their CPUs are problematic.