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Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

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Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#31

Post by heywoodlh »

Having an iPad Pro with an M1, I grow increasingly frustrated each year with how incapable my iPad is compared to my Macbook/Linux laptops. iPadOS still feels like iOS with some visual tweaks to the larger screen real estate. It’s absolutely not a laptop killer for a sysadmin or developer (unless your preferred language is Swift). Maybe it’s a laptop killer for creative professionals?

I think my iPad is an excellent thin client, however — but a Pro device should be more than just a thin client for me, imo.

Some things that would be a huge improvement for me:

1. Ability to do development locally

2. Virtualization (might circumvent the need to do local dev)

3. Install/build local applications

Apple seems determined to never allow anything outside of the App Store on i[Pad]OS, and with iPadOS being over four years old and still feeling like a giant iPhone, I don’t think I could recommend anyone should buy an iPad as a power user device.

Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#32

Post by hehdhdjehehegwv »

jayd16 wrote: post #29
jessriedel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a physicists (theory), and about a third of my work is “pencil and paper” calculations (and related notes) on the iPad Pro. I use it professionally ~20 hours per week.

I drink coffee at work. Does that make it Coffee Pro?

[dead]

Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#33

Post by BytesAndGears »

mirekrusin wrote: post #30
jessriedel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a physicists (theory), and about a third of my work is “pencil and paper” calculations (and related notes) on the iPad Pro. I use it professionally ~20 hours per week.

Maybe you should try remarkable tablet?

Why would they do that if their current system works?

Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#35

Post by jayd16 »

mikae1 wrote: post #14
barbariangrunge wrote: post #7

They need to stop calling these pro devices. They are barely functional for anything beyond casual use and artwork

There are professionals in artwork?

Art professionals usually don't use iPads although I'm sure some do. Most seem to prefer Wacom. Unlike, eg a laptop, portability isn't usually a major professional need for an art workstation.

Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#36

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Jam-O wrote: post #26
ZiiS wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole article hinges on them adding more inference power to the Neural Engine, but the is no benifit or plausable reason to burn weights into ROM.

iPhone/iPad 16GB RAM + 64GB hardware local LLM ROM. Apple can phrase it as both a benefit and a reason to upgrade and reduce its costs over suddenly bumping RAM by 400%.

Out of all the hardware manufacturers, Apple is the worst candidate to pin planned obsolescence on. Its devices are supported longer than its competitors, and they get better at lasting longer over the years.

Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#37

Post by wmf »

Jam-O wrote: post #26
ZiiS wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole article hinges on them adding more inference power to the Neural Engine, but the is no benifit or plausable reason to burn weights into ROM.

iPhone/iPad 16GB RAM + 64GB hardware local LLM ROM. Apple can phrase it as both a benefit and a reason to upgrade and reduce its costs over suddenly bumping RAM by 400%.

I don't know if mask ROM even exists any more or what its density would be. Realistically your choices are DRAM or flash and flash will probably never be fast enough to hold model weights.

The toolbox ROM was a great hack in 1984 though.

Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#38

Post by [deleted] »

heywoodlh wrote: post #31

Having an iPad Pro with an M1, I grow increasingly frustrated each year with how incapable my iPad is compared to my Macbook/Linux laptops. iPadOS still feels like iOS with some visual tweaks to the larger screen real estate. It’s absolutely not a laptop killer for a sysadmin or developer (unless your preferred language is Swift). Maybe it’s a laptop killer for creative professionals? I think my iPad is an excellent…

[deleted]

Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#39

Post by 1123581321 »

CSSer wrote: post #10
aurareturn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not completely insane. 1. N3B TSMC node used by M3 is reportedly low yielding. Apple likely wants to move away from it asap and move to N3E, which is the higher yielding node. 2. Rumors are that M3 Ultra is not planned due to low yields. M3 Max die shot does not have UltraFusion silicon. This supports the first theory. 3. Apple base the M chips on the A series cores. A18 Pro has already finished in design becaus…

Think that whole major, unpatchable security flaw thing could also play a part? I could see them wanting to put distance between themselves on that fast too.

M3s have a flag to disable the caching vulnerable to GoFetch on p-cores. M1s and M2s are the ones that have no mitigation besides running workloads on slower e-cores.

Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#40

Post by wvenable »

aurareturn wrote: post #15
retskrad wrote: post #6

At first I thought, it sounded crazy but then I realized that reports have told us that the M4 will be a key part of Apple’s reneweed AI strategy for 2024. The A18 and M4 in the iPhone 16 and the M4 MacBook Pros at the ens of this year will have much better neural engines to drive Apple’s WWDC 2024 AI features. Apple can’t leave the iPad Pro out to dry.

For the first time in a long time, consumer hardware is not even close to being fast enough for a new type of mass applications: GenAI. People have stopped caring about consumer chips because they have been "good enough" for a long time. Hardware is getting exciting again. We need significantly more compute, memory bandwidth, and memory capacity. There are huge bottlenecks everywhere.

For GenAI, I wonder if we need consumer hardware to be that powerful. Isn't this exactly what "the cloud" is for?
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