Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 1001 posts

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

#341

Post by gzer0 »

skohan wrote: post #290
neogodless wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "just" two more cores than the vanilla M1 Total cores, but going from 4 "high performance" and 4 "efficiency" to 8 "high performance" and 2 "efficiency. So should be more dramatic increase in performance than "20% more cores" would provide.

Is there a tradeoff in terms of power consumption?

> M1 Pro delivers up to 1.7x more CPU performance at the same power level and achieves the PC chip’s peak performance using up to 70 percent less power

Uses less power

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

#342

Post by neogodless »

pier25 wrote: post #284

Anyone can comment on what Intel and AMD are going to do now? Will they be able to catch up or will Qualcomm become the alternative for ARM laptop chips? (and maybe desktop chips too)

This exact question was asked a year ago when the M1 was announced.

In the year since, their laptop market share increased about 2% from 14 to 16%[0].

The reasons for this are:

1. When deciding on a computer, you often have to decide based on use case, software/games used, and what operating system will work best for those use cases. For Windows users, it doesn't matter if you can get similar performance from a Macbook Pro, because you're already shopping Windows PCs.

2. Performance for most use cases has been enough for practically a decade (depending on the use case.) For some things, no amount of performance is "enough" but your workload may still be very OS-dependent. So you probably start with OS X or Windows in mind before you begin.

3. The efficiency that M1/Pro/Max are especially good at are not the only consideration for purchase decisions for hardware. And they are only available in a Macbook / Macbook Pro / Mini. If you want anything else - desktop, dedicated gaming laptop, or any other configuration that isn't covered here, you're still looking at a PC instead of a Mac. If you want to run Linux, you're probably still better off with a PC. If you want OS X, then there is only M1, and Intel/AMD are wholly irrelevant.

4. Many buyers simply do not want to be a part of Apple's closed system.

So for Intel/AMD to suddenly be "behind" still means that years will have to go by while consumers (and especially corporate buyers) shift their purchase decisions and Apple market share grows beyond the 16% they're at now. But performance is not the only thing to consider, and Intel/AMD are not sitting still either. They release improved silicon over time. If you'd asked me a year ago, I'd say "do not buy anything Intel" but their 2021 releases are perfectly fine, even if not class-leading. AMD's product line has improved drastically over the past 4 years, and are easy to recommend for many use cases. Their Zen 4 announcement may also be on the 5nm TSMC node, and could be within the ballpark of M1 Pro/Max for performance/efficiency, but available to the larger PC marketplace.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/576473/united-states-qua...

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

#343

Post by jolux »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #264
mrtksn wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just today I got one 6s and one iPhone 7 screen repaired(6s got the glass replaced, the 7 got full assembly replaced) and battery of the 6s replaced at a shop that is not authorized by Apple. It cost me 110$ in total. Previously I got 2017 Macbook Air SSD upgraded using an SSD and an adapter that I ordered from Amazon. What’s that narrative that Apple devices are not upgradable or repairable? It simply not true. If a…

>Just today I got one 6s and one iPhone 7 screen repaired Nice, except doing a screen replacement on a modern iPhone like the 13 series will disable your FaceID making your iPhone pretty much worthless. >Previously I got 2017 Macbook Air SSD upgraded using an SSD and an adapter that I ordered from Amazon Nice, but on the modern Macbooks, the SSD is soldered and not replaceable. There is no way to upgrade them or repl…

> Nice, but on the modern Macbooks, the SSD is soldered and not replaceable. There is no way to upgrade them or replace them if they break, so you just have to throw away the whole laptop.

I mean, you can replace the logic board. Wasteful, sure, but there's no need to throw out the whole thing.

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

#344

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

mrtksn wrote: post #335
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how will the crafty HW people replace the SSD storage on my 2020 Macbok if it bites the dust?

By changing chips. There are already procedures for fun stuff like upgrading the RAM on the non-retina MacBook Airs to 16GB. Apple never offered 16GB version off that laptop but you can have it[0]. if there’s a demand there would be a response. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgEfMzMxX5E

You clearly don't have a clue how modern Apple HW is built and why stuff that you're talking about on old Apple HW just won't work anymore on the machines build today.

I'm talking about 2020 devices where you can't just "change the chips" and hope it works like in the 2015 model from the video you posted.

Modern Apple devices aren't repairable anymore.

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

#345

Post by julienb_sea »

klelatti wrote: post #117
bla3 wrote: 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…

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?

I doubt they are going to make different chips for prosumer devices. They are going to spread out the M1 pro/max upgrade to the rest of the lineup at some point during the next year, so they can claim "full transition" through their quoted 2 years.

The wildcard is the actual mac pro. I suspect we aren't going to hear about mac pro until next Sept/Oct events, and super unclear what direction they are going to go. Maybe allowing config of multiple M1 max SOCs somehow working together. Seems complicated.

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

#346

Post by rpmisms »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #17

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…

This is a poorly considered take, no offense to you. I think you're failing to consider that Apple traditionally drives innovation in the computing market, and this will push a lot of other manufacturers to compete with them. AMD is already on the warpath, and Intel just got a massive kick in the pants.

There's other arguments against Apple being as big as it, but this isn't a good one. Tesla being huge and powerful has driven amazing EV innovation, for example, and Apple is in the same position in the computing market.

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

#347

Post by Tuna-Fish »

hydroreadsstuff wrote: post #300

How do they get 200/400GB per second RAM bandwidth? Isn't that like 4/8 channel DDR5. 4/8 times as fast as current Intel/AMD CPUs/APUs? (E.g. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/201837/... with 45.8GB/s) Laptop/desktop have 2 channels. High-end desktop can have 4 channels. Servers have 8 channels. How does Apple do that? I was always assuming that having that many channels is prohibitive in terms of…

It's LPDDR5, which maxes out at 6.4Gbit/s/pin, on a 256bit/512bit interface.

It's much easier to make a wider bus with LPDDR5 and chips soldered on the board than with DIMMs.

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

#348

Post by mrtksn »

jolux wrote: post #343
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just today I got one 6s and one iPhone 7 screen repaired Nice, except doing a screen replacement on a modern iPhone like the 13 series will disable your FaceID making your iPhone pretty much worthless. >Previously I got 2017 Macbook Air SSD upgraded using an SSD and an adapter that I ordered from Amazon Nice, but on the modern Macbooks, the SSD is soldered and not replaceable. There is no way to upgrade them or repl…

> Nice, but on the modern Macbooks, the SSD is soldered and not replaceable. There is no way to upgrade them or replace them if they break, so you just have to throw away the whole laptop. I mean, you can replace the logic board. Wasteful, sure, but there's no need to throw out the whole thing.

People also replace IC’s all the time. Heat it, remove the broken SSD chip, put the new one, re-heat.

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

#350

Post by znwu »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #125
bla3 wrote: 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…

Really curious if the memory bandwidth is entirely available to the CPU if the GPU is idle. An nvidia RTX3090 has nearly 1TB/s bandwidth, so the GPU is clearly going to use as much of the 400GB/s as possible. Other unified architectures have multiple channels or synchronization to memory, such that no one part of the system can access the full bandwidth. But if the CPU can access all 400GB/s, that is an absolute game…

Not sure if it will be available, but 400GB/s is way too much for 8 cores to take up. You would need some sort of avx512 to hog up that much bandwidth.

Moreover, it's not clear how much of a bandwidth/width does M1 max CPU interconnect/bus provide.

--------

Edit: Add common sense about HPC workloads.

There is a fundamental idea called memory-access-to-computation ratio. We can't assume a 1:0 ratio since it was doing literally nothing except copying.

Typically your program needs serious fixing if it can't achieve 1:4. (This figure comes from a CUDA course. But I think it should be similar for SIMD)

Edit: also a lot of that bandwidth is fed through cache. Locality will eliminate some orders of magnitudes of memory access, depending on the code.

Post reply on HN