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Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

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Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#191
post #105

"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…

All of my Apple laptops (maybe even all their products) see about 5 to 8 years of service. Sometimes with me, sometimes as hand-me-downs. So they’ve been pretty excellent at not winding up in the trash.

Even software updates often stretch as far back as 5 year old models, so they’re pretty good with this.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400GB/s available to the CPU cores in a unified memory, that is going to really help certain workloads that are very memory dominant on modern architectures. Both Intel and AMD are solving this with ever increasing L3 cache sizes but just using attached memory in a SOC has vastly higher memory bandwidth potential and probably better latency too especially on work that doesn't fit in ~32MB of L3 cache.

The M1 still uses DDR memory at the end of the day, it's just physically closer to the core. This is in contrast to L3 which is actual SRAM on the core. The DDR being closer to the core may or may not allow the memory to run at higher speeds due to better signal integrity, but you can purchase DDR4-5333 today whereas the M1 uses 4266. The real advantage is the M1 Max uses 8 channels, which is impressive considering t…

> The DDR being closer to the core may or may not allow the memory to run at higher speeds due to better signal integrity, but you can purchase DDR4-5333 today whereas the M1 uses 4266.

My understanding is that bringing the RAM closer increases the bandwidth (better latency and larger buses), not necessarily the speed of the RAM dies. Also, if I am not mistaken, the RAM in the new M1s is LP-DDR5 (I read that, but it did not stay long on screen so I could be mistaken). Not sure how it is comparable with DDR4 DIMMs.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

57 billion transistors? a 5950x has under 20 a 3060ti has under 20 are they counting the RAM?

Does either have a 10 core CPU or large cache memory?

Yes, the 5950X has 16 big CPU cores and 64 MB of L3 cache.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#194
post #82

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…

I'm going to sound dumb for this, but how difficult do any of you think it would be to make a computer with 2 M1 chips? Or even 4?

I think the problem would be how one chip can access the memory of the other one. The big advantage in the M1xxxx is the unified memory. I don't think the chips have any hardware to support cache coherency and so on spanning more than one chip.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#196
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Apple took a subtle, not so subtle stand: power consumption has to do with environmental impact.

Apple almost single-handedly made computing devices non-repairable or upgradable; across their own product line and the industry in general due to their outsized influence.

Single handedly?

>According to iFixit, the Surface Laptop isn’t repairable at all. In fact, it got a 0 out of 10 for repairability and was labeled a “glue-filled monstrosity.”

The lowest scores previously were a 1 out of 10 for all previous iterations of the Surface Pro

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/251046-ifixit-labels-s...

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#197
I wish that we could compare Intel/AMD at the 5nm process to these chips, to see how much speedup is the architecture vs the process node.

Also, all of the benchmarks based on compiling code for the native platform are misleading, as x86 targets often take longer to compile for (as they have more optimization passes implemented).

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe its a typo and they mean the Magsafe3 connector? I though the USB-C standard was limited to 100 watts.

They may have a usbC -> magsafe 3 connector. It lets you just replace the cable when it inevitably breaks instead of the whole brick.

That's exactly what it is.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#199
post #82

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…

I'm going to sound dumb for this, but how difficult do any of you think it would be to make a computer with 2 M1 chips? Or even 4?

They're not meant to go together like that -- there's not really an interconnect for it, or any pins on the package to enable something like that. Apple would have to design a new Mx SoC with something like that as an explicit design goal.

Re: Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

#200

For me, think about that memory bandwidth. No other CPU comes even close. A Ryzen 5950X can only transfer about 43GB/s. This thing promises 400GB/s on the highest-end model.

No consumer CPU comes close. Just saw an article about the next-gen Xeon's with HBM though that blows even this away (1.8TB/s theoretically), but what else would one expect from enterprise systems. Getting pretty damn excited about all the CPU manufacturers finally getting their asses into gear innovation-wise after what feels like a ridiculously long period of piss-warm "innovation".

Thanks to Apple in this case for taking a holistic approach to making a better computer.
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