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Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP

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Re: Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP

#111

Post by davidgould »

gnicholas wrote: post #85
Jyaif wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a downsides to paying a lot: * you attract/retain more people that are interested in money/status. * the employees become entitled. Also, just like Apple's customers are OK with paying a premium price because it's Apple, employees are OK with paying a premium price to be an employee of Apple (by accepting lower salaries).

Economists call it 'psychic income'; it's often cited as a reason why salaries for teachers are not higher.

John Kenneth Galbraith called this phenomenon "convenient social virtue".

Re: Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP

#113

Post by prvc »

tyrfing wrote: post #70
MBCook wrote: post #44

Thanks to being based on their phone chips Apple came out of the gate with the M1 and cleaned everyone’s clock on performance-per-watt while putting in good to great numbers in general (as a CPU). But their rate of improvement on the A series has been slowing on general tasks. They’re on the same process node, and only increased frequency a bit. Is it really that surprising that performance didn’t take a massive jump…

> They’re on the same process node, and only increased frequency a bit. It's going from N5 to N5P, chosen by Apple over N4. > But no one [expects] that from Intel or AMD every year anymore. That's not accurate, a minor performance upgrade after almost 2 years is the exact thing Intel has gotten a lot of flack for in recent years. The fact that people are willing to defend it is really exclusive to Apple and their unb…

>It's going from N5 to N5P, chosen by Apple over N4.

Any info as to why?

Re: Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP

#114

Post by chippiewill »

uluyol wrote: post #108
tyrfing wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They’re on the same process node, and only increased frequency a bit. It's going from N5 to N5P, chosen by Apple over N4. > But no one [expects] that from Intel or AMD every year anymore. That's not accurate, a minor performance upgrade after almost 2 years is the exact thing Intel has gotten a lot of flack for in recent years. The fact that people are willing to defend it is really exclusive to Apple and their unb…

Intel got criticized for minor improvements year after year. It's important to look at these on 5+ year timescales, since the improvements aren't evenly spread out. Especially since gains often depend on manufacturing process improvements.

Yeah, I'm not personally surprised by there not a massive jump in an 18 month span.

It looks as though Apple are gearing up for armv9 and smaller process node for the next round of chips which would be more of the "large jump" people are expecting. I think as long as Apple alternate the big jumps with the small jumps then they're not doing anything different from anyone else.

They needed to deliver M2 to show they're not resting on their laurels. If M3 is a similar kind of improvement then that's when to be worried.

Re: Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP

#115

Post by chippiewill »

sushicat wrote: post #58
GeekyBear wrote: post #55

From Anandtech's deep dive into the performance and efficiency cores in the A15, which are reused here in the M2. Performance Cores: >Apple A15 performance cores are extremely impressive here – usually increases in performance always come with some sort of deficit in efficiency, or at least flat efficiency. Apple here instead has managed to reduce power whilst increasing performance, meaning energy efficiency is impr…

This is a really great article from Anandtech with benchmarks and analysis, it explained a lot of things. > The overall performance gains are quite disappointing when you factor in the raw cost increase that comes with this new M2 and the fact that it has been nearly 2 years since the M1’s introduction. Also the logic of article in the title is little weird to me. M1 was introduced in the same year as A14, they use t…

> Though I'm curious why Apple didn't use A16's core in M2.

Probably the smaller process node. There's low capacity and low yields for the first year or two of the smaller node. It might not be an issue for the base-level M2s, but they'll be expected to update the Pro/Max/Ultra line up as well in the next 8 months which have much larger die sizes and they'd end up throwing away most of the wafer.

Re: Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP

#116

Post by Gigachad »

jsiaajdsdaa wrote: post #102
Gigachad wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech journalism needs a dramatic story. So every product is either world changing or a complete failure.

To their credit, with many billions on the line, products do have a bit of a tendency to be a failure if all they can do is tread water.

Not if the rest of the market is the same. Most products get yearly updates that are completely unremarkable. No one gets hyped up for the next year edition of a car.

Re: Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP

#117

Post by silvestrov »

otikik wrote: post #73
riffraff wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad used to tell a story when as a kid he worked at a gas station. Guy shows up with a Ferrari, asks for a full tank, pays with a large note and my dad asks him to keep the change. The guy replied - boy, I got a lot of money Really, a lot. You know how I got them? I never gave anything away for free. Hand that change over.

That just illustrates that a lot of rich guys are entitled assholes. The correlation between assholery and driving an expensive car in particular has been studied. https://youtu.be/1EHhFwGeQLc

This could be self-selecting: entitled assholes with money buy Ferraris while non-asshole rich people drives normal cars.

How would you know that the person in the normal family car is rich?

Re: Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP

#118

Post by tssva »

Gigachad wrote: post #116
jsiaajdsdaa wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To their credit, with many billions on the line, products do have a bit of a tendency to be a failure if all they can do is tread water.

Not if the rest of the market is the same. Most products get yearly updates that are completely unremarkable. No one gets hyped up for the next year edition of a car.

M1 to M1+ would be like the release of the next year edition of a car. M1 to M2 would be like the release of the next generation of a car. A lot of people get hyped up for the release of the next generation of a car.

Re: Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP

#119

Post by adrian_b »

uluyol wrote: post #108
tyrfing wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They’re on the same process node, and only increased frequency a bit. It's going from N5 to N5P, chosen by Apple over N4. > But no one [expects] that from Intel or AMD every year anymore. That's not accurate, a minor performance upgrade after almost 2 years is the exact thing Intel has gotten a lot of flack for in recent years. The fact that people are willing to defend it is really exclusive to Apple and their unb…

Intel got criticized for minor improvements year after year. It's important to look at these on 5+ year timescales, since the improvements aren't evenly spread out. Especially since gains often depend on manufacturing process improvements.

Actually the reason why Intel got criticized is not that their improvements were minor because Intel could not do better than that.

When studying the evolution of Intel CPUs over many years, it is obvious that most of the time they could have done greater improvements, but as long as their competition was weak they delayed the improvements that they could have done in a single year over 2 or 3 yearly CPU generations, in order to minimize their manufacturing costs, therefore maximizing their profits.

Only during the many years that have passed between Skylake and Alder Lake, Intel was no longer able to implement all the improvements that they would have wanted, due to the failures in the development of the new CMOS processes, so they were forced to make random minor improvements because greater improvements were impossible and they did not have a good Plan B as an alternative to the erroneous Plan A, which was every year that the next year will be the year when the Intel "10 nm" CMOS process will become competitive.

Re: Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP

#120

Post by cyberpunk »

riffraff wrote: post #69
TylerE wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things don't become the "est" anything by being wasteful.

My dad used to tell a story when as a kid he worked at a gas station. Guy shows up with a Ferrari, asks for a full tank, pays with a large note and my dad asks him to keep the change. The guy replied - boy, I got a lot of money Really, a lot. You know how I got them? I never gave anything away for free. Hand that change over.

If someone asked to keep my change I would say no too.

Why the fsck? Is it normal to beg during work where you’re from?

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