Teardown: Identifying Apple M1's distinct circuit blocks
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: Teardown: Identifying Apple M1's distinct circuit blocks
#2This article does not appear to do what the title claims. It mostly rounds up news from other sources.
Has anyone done the actual analysis of what the dedicated logic cores on the M1 are? I'm always curious what kinds of work Apple dedicates hardware to.
Re: Teardown: Identifying Apple M1's distinct circuit blocks
#3This article does not appear to do what the title claims. It mostly rounds up news from other sources. Has anyone done the actual analysis of what the dedicated logic cores on the M1 are? I'm always curious what kinds of work Apple dedicates hardware to.
I agree, the article contains nothing new, most regurgitates or links to other articles. Despite the large chip image at the head of the article there is no discussion or description of the silicon.
Re: Teardown: Identifying Apple M1's distinct circuit blocks
#4This article does not appear to do what the title claims. It mostly rounds up news from other sources. Has anyone done the actual analysis of what the dedicated logic cores on the M1 are? I'm always curious what kinds of work Apple dedicates hardware to.
Is it really possible to get such analysis if you're not a macos developer? From a layman point of view, I would take a list of instructions executed during common case OS usage and then extract the most common patterns (basically compression) and put them into silicon. These wouldn't be easy to understand if you don't know exactly what the OS is doing and how. I mean of course you need some cleanup and well thought-out design for future software development, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the future, to get the full experience of a new OS you will also need to update the hardware.
Re: Teardown: Identifying Apple M1's distinct circuit blocks
#5This article does not appear to do what the title claims. It mostly rounds up news from other sources. Has anyone done the actual analysis of what the dedicated logic cores on the M1 are? I'm always curious what kinds of work Apple dedicates hardware to.
Is it really possible to get such analysis if you're not a macos developer? From a layman point of view, I would take a list of instructions executed during common case OS usage and then extract the most common patterns (basically compression) and put them into silicon. These wouldn't be easy to understand if you don't know exactly what the OS is doing and how. I mean of course you need some cleanup and well thought-…
Looking at the die shot, the CPU, GPU, and NPU jumps out, if you've seen a bunch of other die shots before, and combine that with the core counts that Apple announced. For less obvious blocks, engineers with the right specialties might be able to make a guess. Otherwise thermal imaging would allow some guesses when running targeted algorithms.
Re: Teardown: Identifying Apple M1's distinct circuit blocks
#6Are there any home made methods to take picture of the chips like this? What tools would you use to sand the top of the chip? What type of microscope would work?
Re: Teardown: Identifying Apple M1's distinct circuit blocks
#7This article does not appear to do what the title claims. It mostly rounds up news from other sources. Has anyone done the actual analysis of what the dedicated logic cores on the M1 are? I'm always curious what kinds of work Apple dedicates hardware to.
Is it really possible to get such analysis if you're not a macos developer? From a layman point of view, I would take a list of instructions executed during common case OS usage and then extract the most common patterns (basically compression) and put them into silicon. These wouldn't be easy to understand if you don't know exactly what the OS is doing and how. I mean of course you need some cleanup and well thought-…
"There are no secrets in silicon"
A determined enough team of people with sulfuric acid and electron microscopes could work out exactly what is going on inside the chip.
(not that anyone would actually do this - maybe Intel? But at least in principle, the information is accessible to non-Apple folks)
Re: Teardown: Identifying Apple M1's distinct circuit blocks
#8Are there any home made methods to take picture of the chips like this? What tools would you use to sand the top of the chip? What type of microscope would work?
For regular ICs I put them in a test tube with nitric acid and heat it to extract the die. Then to image the die you'll need (in order of preference) an electron microscope, or a metallurgy microscope, or a regular bio microscope.
Re: Teardown: Identifying Apple M1's distinct circuit blocks
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it really possible to get such analysis if you're not a macos developer? From a layman point of view, I would take a list of instructions executed during common case OS usage and then extract the most common patterns (basically compression) and put them into silicon. These wouldn't be easy to understand if you don't know exactly what the OS is doing and how. I mean of course you need some cleanup and well thought-…
Looking at the die shot, the CPU, GPU, and NPU jumps out, if you've seen a bunch of other die shots before, and combine that with the core counts that Apple announced. For less obvious blocks, engineers with the right specialties might be able to make a guess. Otherwise thermal imaging would allow some guesses when running targeted algorithms.
The die shot image comes from the eetimes page they link to.
Re: Teardown: Identifying Apple M1's distinct circuit blocks
#10Are there any home made methods to take picture of the chips like this? What tools would you use to sand the top of the chip? What type of microscope would work?
The process of removing a chips encapsulation is called Decapping if you're looking for a search term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decapping