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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

#121

Post by epolanski »

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…

> But no one exits that from Intel or AMD every year anymore.

I've been hearing that since Skylake, at every single processor generation that the gains are too modest. That's more than a decade at this point.

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

#122

Post by hx833001 »

tssva wrote: post #118
Gigachad wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Major car models are introduced every ~6 years with refreshes at 3 years.

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

#123

Post by adrian_b »

brigade wrote: post #93
inkyoto wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low level runtime optimisation that yields substantial performance gains in the user facing or system level software, ranging from cryptography through to data processing algorithms and very high throughput JSON parsing. Take OpenSSL as an isolated example. By simply fiddling with the C compiler flags to allow it to use NEON on M1, the sha256 calculation speed-up is 4x for 128 and 256 block sizes, with performance ga…

Yeah that's NEON. And there's instructions that literally calculate SHA256 so generalizing that is moot. My point was first, what real benchmarks are there of SVE2's benefits over NEON with mainstream CPUs that M2 would compete against? Unlike AVX-512, NEON was already pretty rich, so the new instructions have rather specialized usefulness. Because outside of servers where little cores don't exist, 256b ALUs in big c…

SVE2 does not increase the maximum speed. That depends only on the width and number of the ALUs, on the number of cores and on the clock frequency.

The purpose of SVE2 is to simplify the writing of the software that exploits the data parallelism, both when that is done manually and when that is done automatically by an autovectorizing compiler.

With SVE2 it should become much easier to deal with data structures where the sizes and the alignments are not multiples of the ALU width and it will also no longer be necessary to write many alternative code paths, to take advantage of any future better CPUs, like when optimizing for Intel SSE/AVX/AVX2/AVX-512.

There are still a majority of programs that do not utilize as frequently as possible the existing SIMD units. With SVE2, their number should diminish.

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

#124

Post by epolanski »

mrtksn wrote: post #109
otikik wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I worked in the service industry in UK for a few months for the richest and most privileged people out there. I got the chance to work in events where members of the royal family were present or events where the most famous and rich people in the world were the guests. My observation is, the assholes are everywhere but also the nice and polite people. I can't really generalize it for rich or poor, I did not see that…

> I can't really generalize it for rich or poor, I did not see that simple pattern.

My SO works as a consultant in a bank here in Rome, Italy.

She moved from a bank in the periphery to a very central one in the Parioli neighborhood.

There was a night and day difference between her old and new clients in wealth (with the Parioli ones being largely millionaires).

Old clients would treat her with the utmost respect and call her doctor, "dottoressa", and always listen to what she had to say. New ones were on average much more rude, pretending and overall uneducated. She would have to explain them that she couldn't activate them some service because she needed their signatures and they would go all mad and call her director or some friend in the bank.

They are on average much worse people and they're also much more money aware.

Another anecdote she recalled me was how some rich woman wanted to set up a bank account for a no profit to send money to some african country. Not only there was no way to explain her that it was not that easy to do such operations, especially for large sums because this would have to automatically trigger money laundering controls, she would just not listen and blame her, but the client was MAD she had to pay 8 euros commissions on 60k+ euros wire transfer, pretending it to be free because it was a "no profit".

Yes, there's good and bad people in each wealth tier, but rich people on average are much worse assholes. There's no comparison.

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

#125

Post by matthewmacleod »

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…

You can’t keep up a 20% increase in normal stuff every release for long.

But this chip is literally 18% faster “in normal stuff”

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

#126

Post by latexr »

theplumber wrote: post #92
otikik wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The more we automate the better. Computers don't ask to keep the change.

Instead, computers will keep the change without asking and point you to an unreachable (or unhelpful) customer support number. You’ll either give up on trying to recover your change or you’ll regret not having done it sooner, after spending more of your time and sanity than the money was worth.

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

#127

Post by skohan »

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.

Does anyone seriously think the performance of the M2 processor will have any meaningful impact on Apple's success?

They made a big splash with the M1 macbook air, which was at the time an incredible value, and the clear best laptop on the market in terms of price/performance hands down. Apple was able to get splashy headlines, and assert their silicon was not just competitive with, but better than Intel and AMD. That's the critical goal they had to reach to validate Apple Silicon as a valid contender in the market.

This year, they're iterating on the design, and getting the market to accept a 20% price increase on the macbook air, which is their mass-market product.

Does anything they do from here on out actually depend on them continuing to win in the semiconductor space? It's not as if these chips are competing for server slots, where winning comes down to raw numbers in terms of performance/Watt.

These macbooks are going to be absolutely fine for the foreseeable future for everything anyone needs a mac to do: video editing, coding, content consumption etc. run absolutely great on these devices which have excellent battery life and great user experience.

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

#128

Post by Gigachad »

tssva wrote: post #118
Gigachad wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The MacBook Pro M1+ Pro is just too much.

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

#129

Post by ParadisoShlee »

Excellent read into the realities of making a SOC.

Every SOC I continue to keep my eyes open for MTE being used in a mainstream ARMv8.5 processor... If we're to believe that M3 is marked to be using ARMv9 as well. Maybe 2024 is the year?

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

#130

Post by nickpp »

epolanski wrote: post #124
mrtksn wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in the service industry in UK for a few months for the richest and most privileged people out there. I got the chance to work in events where members of the royal family were present or events where the most famous and rich people in the world were the guests. My observation is, the assholes are everywhere but also the nice and polite people. I can't really generalize it for rich or poor, I did not see that…

> I can't really generalize it for rich or poor, I did not see that simple pattern. My SO works as a consultant in a bank here in Rome, Italy. She moved from a bank in the periphery to a very central one in the Parioli neighborhood. There was a night and day difference between her old and new clients in wealth (with the Parioli ones being largely millionaires). Old clients would treat her with the utmost respect and…

When working with money, the rich are also more likely to hit the countless rules and limitations the banking regulations impose on us "for our own good".

Just like as a programmer I am going mental when encountering absurd and ineffective account password rules lets say (one special char, one upper case, one non-letter, etc) while a lay person would just sigh and comply.

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