Apple introduces M4 chip • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#41

Post by eqvinox » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #23

praseodym wrote: post #10

"With these improvements to the CPU and GPU, M4 maintains Apple silicon’s industry-leading performance per watt. M4 can deliver the same performance as M2 using just half the power. And compared with the latest PC chip in a thin and light laptop, M4 can deliver the same performance using just a fourth of the power." That's an incredible improvement in just a few years. I wonder how much of that is Apple engineering a…

Potentially > 2x greater battery life for the same amount of compute! That is pretty crazy. Or am I missing something?

Sadly, this is only processor power consumption, you need to put power into a whole lot of other things to make an useful computer… a display backlight and the system's RAM come to mind as particular offenders.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#42

Post by giancarlostoro » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

Call me crazy, but I want all that power in a 7" tablet. I like 7" tablets most because they feel less clunky to carry around and take with you. Same with 13" laptops, I'm willing to sacrifice on screen real estate for saving myself from the back pain of carrying a 15" or larger laptop.

Some of this is insanely impressive. I wonder how big the OS ROM (or whatever) is with all these models. For context, even if the entire OS is about 15GB, in order to get some of these features locally just for an LLM on its own, its about 60GB or more, for something ChatGPT esque. Which requires me to spend thousands on a GPU.

Apologies for the many thoughts, I'm quite excited by all these advancements. I always say I want AI to work offline and people tell me I'm moving the goalpost, but it is truly the only way it will become mainstream.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#43

Post by Laaas » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

EduardoBautista wrote: post #13

The 256gb and 512gb models have 8gb of ram. The 1tb and 2tb models have 16gb. Not a fan of tying ram to storage. https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

The economic reasoning behind this doesn't make sense to me.

What do they lose by allowing slightly more freedom in configurations?

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#44

Post by samatman » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:52 PM UTC

EduardoBautista wrote: post #13

The 256gb and 512gb models have 8gb of ram. The 1tb and 2tb models have 16gb. Not a fan of tying ram to storage. https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

It's fairly absurd that they're still selling a 256gb "Pro" machine in the first place.

That said, Apple's policy toward SKUs is pretty consistent: you pay more money and you get more machine, and vice versa. The MacBooks are the only product which has separately configurable memory / storage / chip, and even there some combinations aren't manufactured.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#45

Post by fallat » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:52 PM UTC

krzyk wrote: post #35

cs702 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially > 2x greater battery life for the same amount of compute! That is pretty crazy. Or am I missing something?

Wait a bit. M2 wasn't as good as the hype was.

[flagged]

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#46

Post by daniel31x13 » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:52 PM UTC

Well at the end of the day the processors are bottlenecked by its OS. What real value does an iPad bring that a typical iPhone + Mac combo misses? (Other than being a digital notebook…)

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#47

Post by pier25 » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:52 PM UTC

This is great but why even bother with the M3?

The M3 Macs were released only 7 months ago.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#48

Post by DanHulton » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:52 PM UTC

simonbarker87 wrote: post #21

Seeing an M series chip launch first in an iPad must be result of some mad supply chain and manufacturing related hangovers from COVID. If the iPad had better software and could be considered a first class productivity machine then it would be less surprising but the one thing no one says about the iPads is “I wish this chip were faster”

I'm wondering if it's because they're hitting the limits of the architecture, and it sounds way better to compare M4 vs M2 as opposed to vs M3, which they'd have to do if it launched in a Macbook Pro.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#49

Post by fallat » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:53 PM UTC

Laaas wrote: post #43

EduardoBautista wrote: post #13

The 256gb and 512gb models have 8gb of ram. The 1tb and 2tb models have 16gb. Not a fan of tying ram to storage. https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

The economic reasoning behind this doesn't make sense to me. What do they lose by allowing slightly more freedom in configurations?

The reasoning is money. Come on.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#50

Post by gwd » Tue, May 07, 2024, 2:53 PM UTC

sroussey wrote: post #15

“The next-generation cores feature improved branch prediction, with wider decode and execution engines for the performance cores, and a deeper execution engine for the efficiency cores. And both types of cores also feature enhanced, next-generation ML accelerators.”

I wonder to what degree this also implies, "More opportunities for speculative execution attacks".