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Key values in the press release: - Up to 1.5x the CPU speed of iPad Pro's previous M2 chip - Octane gets up to 4x the speed compared to M2 - At comparable performance, M4 consumes half the power of M2 - High-performance AI engine, that claims 60x the speed of Apple's first engine (A11 Bionic)
Doesn't it mean "1.5x speed in rare specific tasks which were hardware optimized, and 1x ewerywhere else"?
I’m far from an expert in Apple silicon, but this strikes me as having some conservative improvements. And in-depth info out there yet?
It surprised me they called it an M4 vs an M3 something. The display engine seems to be the largest change I don't know what that looked like on previous processors. Completely hypothesizing but could be a significant efficiency improvement if its offloading display stuff.
Key values in the press release: - Up to 1.5x the CPU speed of iPad Pro's previous M2 chip - Octane gets up to 4x the speed compared to M2 - At comparable performance, M4 consumes half the power of M2 - High-performance AI engine, that claims 60x the speed of Apple's first engine (A11 Bionic)
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”
To me it just feels like a soft launch. You probably have people (like myself) trying to keep up with the latest MacBook Air who get fatigued having to get a new laptop every year (I just upgraded to the M3 not too long ago, from the M2, and before that... the M1... is there any reason to? Not really...), so now they are trying to entice people who don't have iPads yet / who are waiting for a reason to do an iPad upg…
> M4 makes the new iPad Pro an outrageously powerful device for artificial intelligence. Isn’t there a ToS prohibition about “custom coding” in iOS? Like, the only way you can ever use that hardware directly is for developers who go through Apple Developer Program, which last time I heard was bitter lemon? Tell me if I’m wrong.
Well, this is the heart of the "appliance" model. iPads are appliances . You wouldn't ask about running custom code on your toaster or your blender, so you shouldn't ask about that for your iPad. Also all the common reasons apply: Security and Privacy, Quality Control, Platform Stability and Compatibility, and Integrated User Experience. All of these things are harmed when you are allowed to run custom coding. (discl…
"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…
Apple usually massively exaggerates their tech spec comparison - is it REALLY half the power use of all times (so we'll get double the battery life) or is it half the power use in some scenarios (so we'll get like... 15% more battery life total) ?
> M4 makes the new iPad Pro an outrageously powerful device for artificial intelligence. Isn’t there a ToS prohibition about “custom coding” in iOS? Like, the only way you can ever use that hardware directly is for developers who go through Apple Developer Program, which last time I heard was bitter lemon? Tell me if I’m wrong.
As with any Apple device — or honestly, any computing device in general — my criteria of evaluation would be the resulting performance if I install Linux on it. (If Linux is not installable on the device, the performance is zero. If Linux driver support is limited, causing performance issues, that is also part of the equation.) NB: those are my criteria of evaluation. Very personally. I'm a software engineer, with a…
https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/ttsshm/asahi_li...
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”
My guess is that the market size fit current yields.
It's suspected that the fast release for M4 is so TSMC can move away from the horrible-yielding N3B to N3E.
Unfortunately, N3E is less dense. Paired with a couple more little cores, an increase in little core size, 2x larger NPU, etc, I'd guess that while M3 seems to be around 145mm2, this one is going to be quite a bit larger (160mm2?) with the size hopefully being offset by decreased wafer costs.
This is great but why even bother with the M3? The M3 Macs were released only 7 months ago.
Probably they had some contractual commitments with TSMC and had to use up their N3B capacity somehow. But as soon as N3E became available it’s a much better process overall.