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

861–870 of 1001 posts

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

#861

Post by kaba0 »

ajyotirmay wrote: post #811
stirlo wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple does nothing to improve front line technician procedures. I’m not a fan of planned obselence and waste but this is clearly wrong. They’ve spent loads of engineering effort designing a machine for their store that can replace and reseal and test iPhone screen replacements out back.

Sounds more like using a sword where a knife is needed.

So what’s your proposal? How big would a “phone” be with all those features that an iphone pro has? I am by no means an apple fanboy, but the same way a modern car engine can’t just be tweaked the way it was 50 years ago due to all the miniaturizations that are in large part due to efficiency gains, the same is just as true of phones.

But at the same time, a single chip with everything included will also make these phones pretty sturdy, where it either fails completely, or remain working for long years.

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

#862

Post by glandium »

theshrike79 wrote: post #823
DeathArrow wrote: post #820

I am not interested in Apple's ecosystem. While I stay with X86 I wonder if and when AMD and Intel will catch up. Or if another ARM chip maker will release a chip as good but without tying it to a proprietary system.

This is a chicken and egg problem. No one will bother to make an ARM chip for "PCs" if there is no OS to run on it. MS won't fully port Windows to ARM with a Rosetta-like layer unless there is an ARM computer to run it. Yes, Linux can run on anything, but it won't sell enough chips to make creating a whole new ARM computer line profitable.

MS has a full Windows for arm64 with a Rosetta-like layer already. It's been available for at least two years, although it only supported x86 at first (presumably because of the patents on x86-64). x86-64 was added recently (https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/12/10/introdu...)

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

#863

Post by kfprt »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #668
kfprt wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Nvidia buys ARM they'll flee like rats on a sinking ship. I'd bet on RISC-V.

Or we'll see Windows laptops with ARM Cpus and an RTX 4090.

Probably. It will be an expensive niche product though. Will probably sell about as well as the shield.

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

#864

Post by musicale »

growt wrote: post #832
ashtonkem wrote: post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm still a bit sad that the era of "general purpose computing" where CPU can do all workloads is coming to an end. You'd have to be extremely old to remember that era. Lots of stuff important to making computers work got split off into separate chips away from the CPU pretty early into mass computing, such as sound, graphics, and networking. We've also been sending a lot of compute from the CPU into the GPU as lat…

Does an Intel 286 without coprocessor count? C64? I remember those, but I wouldn't say I'm extremely old (just regular old).

The C64 was discontinued in 1994 but is technically still available in 2021 as the C64 Mini. ;-)

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

#865

Post by [deleted] »

barelysapient wrote: post #516
hajile wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In A15, Anandtech claims the Efficiency cores are 1/3 the performance, but 1/10 the power. They should be looking at (effectively) doubling the power consumption over M1 with just the CPUs and assuming they don't increase clockspeeds. Going from 8 to 16 or 32 GPU cores is another massive power increase.

I wonder if Apple will give us a 'long-haul' mode where the system is locked to only the energy efficient cores and settings. I us developer types would love a computer that survives 24 hours on battery.

[deleted]

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

#866

Post by simonh »

londons_explore wrote: post #851
modulusshift wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple put ProMotion in the built in display, so while it can ramp up to 120Hz, it'll idle at more like 24 Hz when showing static content. (the iPad Pro goes all the way down to 10Hz, but some early sources seem to say 24Hz for these MacBook Pros.) There may also be panel self refresh involved, in which case a static image won't even need that much. I bet the display coprocessors will expose the adaptive refresh funct…

It only takes a tiny animation (eg. a spinner, pulsing glowing background, animated clock, advert somewhere, etc), and suddenly the whole screen is back to 120 Hz refresh.

That's a useful tip for saving some battery actually, thanks.

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

#867

Post by simonh »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #181
londons_explore wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the GPU is never really idle. Even simple screen refresh blending say 5 layers and outputting it to a 4k screen is 190Gbits at 144 Hz.

Don't know much about the graphics on an M1. Does it not render to a framebuffer? Is that framebuffer spread over all 4 memory banks? Can't wait to read all about it.

The updates from the Asahi Linux team are fantastic for getting insights into the M1 architecture. They've not really dug deep into the GPU yet, but that's coming soon.

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

#868

Post by can16358p »

robertrbairdii wrote: post #46
can16358p wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will work but it will charge slower and probably won't charge when maxing out the juice off the SoC.

I think the 140w power adapter is to support fast charging, they mentioned charging to 50% capacity in 30 mins, I'd imagine power draw should be much less than 140w

Yeah, I don't know the peak power draw when everything's on 100% load, but I think (also thinking the efficiency of M1) 140W would keep charging even under highest load.

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

#869

Post by simonh »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #623
the_arun wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could we use M1 chips on non-apple boards? If yes, I wish Apple releases these for non mac os consumption. Eg. Running linux servers in the cloud.

Not a great fit. Something like Ampere altra is better as it gives you 80 cores and much more memory which better fits a server. A server benefits more from lots of weaker cores than a few strong cores. The M1 is an awesome desktop/laptop chip and possibly great for HPC, but not for servers. What might be more interesting is to see powerful gaming rigs built around the these chips. They could have build a kickass gam…

Why they didn't lean into that aspect of the Apple TV still mystifies me. A Wii-mote style pointing device seems such a natural fit for it, and has proven gaming utility. Maybe patents were a problem?

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

#870

Post by jsjohnst »

wlesieutre wrote: post #786
aetherspawn wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's with 2 connectors right? I have a Dell Precision 3760 and the one connector charging mode is limited to around 90W. With two connectors working in tandem (they snap together), it's 180W. The connectors never get remotely warm .. in fact under max charge rate they're consistently cool to touch, so I've always thought that it could probably be increased a little bit with no negative consequences.

Single connector, the 3.1 spec goes up to 5A at 48V. You need new cables with support for the higher voltages, but your "multiple plugs for more power" laptop is exactly the sort of device it's designed for. It was announced earlier this year, so not in wide use yet. PDF warning: https://usb.org/sites/default/files/2021-05/USB%20PG%20USB%2...

I’ve not seen any manufacturer even announce they were going to make a supported cable yet, let alone seen one that does. I might’ve missed it though. This will only make the hell of USB-C cabling worse imho.
Post reply on HN