Apple’s new M1 Pro and M1 Max processors • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by threeseed » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

lisper wrote: 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…

I just used Apple's trade-in service for my 2014 MacBook Pro and received $430.

So there is another, quite lucrative, option besides discarding it.

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

#452

Post by modulusshift » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #423

slayerjain wrote: post #68

Based on the numbers it looks like the M1 Max is in the RTX 3070-3080 performance territory. Sounds like mobile AAA gaming has potential to reach new heights :D

It's not a function of capability. I spent $4,000 on a 2019 MBP, including $750 for a Vega 20. It plays Elder Scrolls Online WORSE than a friend's 2020 with INTEGRATED graphics. (I guess Bethesda gave some love to the integrated chipset, and didn't optimize for the Vega. It hitches badly every couple of seconds like it's texture thrashing.) Whatever AAA games that might have gotten some love on the Mac (and there are…

Well, Apple is selling M1 Macs like hotcakes, so it won't be too long until it'll be stupid not to support them. Also, texture thrashing isn't really an issue when you've got a shared CPU/GPU memory with 64 GB of space. Just cache like half the game in it lol

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

#453

Post by pram » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

cormacrelf wrote: post #209

nharada wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree this is very targeted towards the creative market (i.e. SD card port, etc), but I'm curious as a developer what you would have liked to see included that isn't in this release. I guess personally having better ML training support would be nice, since I suspect these M1 Max chips could be absolute monsters for some model training/fine-tuning workloads. But I can't think of anything design-wise really.

The big ticket items: Hardware-accelerated VSCode cursor animation. Dedicated button for exiting vim. Additional twelve function keys, bringing the total to 24; further, vectorised function key operations, so you can execute up to 12 "nmap :set background=dark" statements in parallel. Dedicated encode and decode engines that support YAML, TOML and JWT JSON. A neural engine that can approximate polynomial time registe…

Solid gold

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

#454

Post by hajile » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 8:42 PM UTC

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…

AMD showed with their Infinity Cache that you can get away with much less bandwidth if you have large caches. It has the side effect of radically reducing power consumption.

Apple put 32MB of cache in their latest iPhone. 128 or even 256MB of L3 cache wouldn't surprise me at all given the power benefits.

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

#455

Post by notSupplied » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

slayerjain wrote: post #68

Based on the numbers it looks like the M1 Max is in the RTX 3070-3080 performance territory. Sounds like mobile AAA gaming has potential to reach new heights :D

Elephant in the room is that an A15/M1 beefed up GPU is exactly the right chip for a Nintendo Switch/Steam Deck form factor device.

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

#456

Post by saijanai » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

gamacodre wrote: post #227

gamacodre wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why 1TB? 640GB ought to be enough for anything...

Huh, I guess that was as bad an idea as the 640K one.

How much per 8K x 10 bit color, video frame?

Roughly 190GB per minute without sound.

Trying to do special effects on more than a few seconds of 8K video would overwhelm a 64GB system, I suspect.

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

#457

Post by threeseed » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 8:43 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #243

Grustaf wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only makes sense if you presume people throw away their laptops when they replace them after "a few years". Given the incredibly high second hand value of macbooks, I think most people sell them or hand them down.

You're talking about selling working devices but parent was also talking about repairing them. Seems like a huge waste to throw away a $2000+ machine when it's out of warranty because some $5 part on it dies and Apple not only doesn't provide a spare but actively fights anyone trying to repare them, while the options they realistically will give you out of warranty being having your motherboard replaced for some insa…

Seems like a huge waste to throw away a $2000+ machine

There are other options besides throwing it away.

You can (a) trade it in for a new Mac (I just received $430 for my 2014 MBP) or (b) sell it for parts on eBay.

Or what if you're a klutz and spill your grape juice glass over your keyboard? Congrats, now you're -$2000 lighter since there's no way to take it apart and clean the sticky mess inside.

You can unscrew a Mac and clean it out. You can also take it into Apple for repair.

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

#458

Post by snowwrestler » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

ngngngng wrote: post #37

The benchmark to power consumption comparisons were very interesting. It seemed very un-Apple to be making such direct comparisons to competitors, especially when the Razer Blade Advanced had slightly better performance with far higher power consumption. I feel like typically Apple just says "Fastest we've ever made, it's so thin, so many nits, you'll love it" and leaves it at that. I'll be very curious to see those…

Apple used to do these performance comparisons a lot when they were on the PowerPC architecture. Essentially they tried to show that PowerPC-based Macs were faster (or as fast as) Intel-based PCs for the stuff that users wanted to do, like web browsing, Photoshop, movie editing, etc.

This kind of fell by the wayside after switching to Intel, for obvious reasons: the chips weren’t differentiators anymore.

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

#459

Post by patall » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

jbverschoor wrote: post #436

patall wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I am sitting at my 2011 Dell Latitude wondering what is so special about that. My sis had my 2013 Sony Duo but that's now become unusable with its broken, built-in battery. Yes, 5 to 8 years of service is nice, but not great or out of norm for a $1000+ laptop.

Because they run windows. If you look at android phones, you're looking at a few years only. Because of software

Parent is talking about laptops, I am talking about laptops, why are you talking about smartphones? Though I also had my Samsung S2plus from 2013 to 2019 in use, and that was fairly cheap. I do not know any IPhone users that had theirs for longer.

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

#460

Post by zamadatix » Mon, Oct 18, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

hydroreadsstuff wrote: post #374

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hope we will see this on more devices. This is a huge boon to performance. Might even forebode soldering RAM onto packages from here on out and forever. Steamdeck will probably have a crazy 100gb/sec ram b/w. twice of current laptops and desktops.

Steamdeck is 88 GB/s using quad channel.