Live data from Hacker News

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

semianalysis.substack.com

151–160 of 206 posts

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

#151
post #127

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.

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. Tha…

Also Apple has lots of knobs to turn due to the high degree of vertical integration. There is a lot of slack they can pick up in OS performance (e.g. process scheduler, memory management). So their overall benchmarks can continue to trend up even if the locus of improvement varies.

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

#152
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…

When M1 came out, I remember a lot of excitement around the past progress of performance in the A* core line; people extrapolated future performance and thought they were going to get +20% (ST) every 18 months on top of M1.

I think this expectation of sustained performance gains was a part of some of the more glowing reviews, rather than a narrow evaluation of M1 itself.

Anyway, it wasn’t a reasonable expectation. But I think people expected it anyway.

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

#153
post #13

Apple generally pay very poorly for quality of talent. I would love to live in world where 10x engineers are rewarded 10x. Right now it's 25% better pay than median.

If you want 10x pay you need to start your own company. No other way to get a 10x.

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

#154
post #109
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…

People in privileged positions often have the support of others like themselves. "Enablement" is probably a more accurate term.

There's an old family in my town that came from the kind of wealth that had each of their children for a few generations married into important or powerful families across the state. Today, the main family has no income other than from what they inherited, but they maintain their position and membership in society through being horrible to deal with. The center of the family is a vile gossip and has nothing but time to hear about everything that happens and think up ways to use it to her advantage.

They're notorious for showing up to functions uninvited, sitting at your table and ordering, and leaving before the bill comes. They hire the best local artisans and builders, complain to everyone about how shoddy the work is until they get extra for free, and then never pay, threatening to sue for imagined problems. When the grand children were in school, the family would try to walk into functions without tickets because "their child was performing", as if no one else's were.

When their daughter married a pro athlete, no one in town would build them a house, so they had to hire from other parts of the state. Their reasoning? No one in town was skilled enough to build them what they wanted.

They wrote a letter of complaint to the White House about a cavalcade driving through town during a family member's wedding reception and were sent an apology and a bottle of champagne by the POTUS. The family apparently sent back a letter letting him know that they didn't vote for them.

No one here even needs TV. Just hold a dinner party at a place they like and they'll show up and entertain for the cost of a few drinks and a meal.

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

#155
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…

People in privileged positions often have the support of others like themselves. "Enablement" is probably a more accurate term. There's an old family in my town that came from the kind of wealth that had each of their children for a few generations married into important or powerful families across the state. Today, the main family has no income other than from what they inherited, but they maintain their position an…

I think we can point out horrible people from all kind of backgrounds. Wealth can definitely amplify their impact on others.

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

#156

Why does the biggest and richest company in the world ever have to suffer from talent leaving because they don’t get paid enough? It just doesn’t make any sense.

So you claim that 10 well paid engineers are better than 15 average paid engineers?

Apple has enough money that they don’t have to reduce headcount to be able to afford higher salaries.

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

#157
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the process? I can’t make it work to avoid tax. I assume Apple’s debt is credit lines to fund inventory.

Repatriating cash earned outside the U.S. involves a hefty tax (afraid I don't recall the number). Occasionally the government offers a tax holiday to encourage companies to do so. So, rather than bring the money home at the high rate, Apple has been taking on debt for U.S. operations while waiting for (and perhaps lobbying for) another tax holiday.

And I hope you know that the phrase "repatriating" implies something false. The cash is not stuck in a box overseas. Even though Apple (and google and others) would transfer their profits to a company they set up overseas where there is a lower tax rate, that money ends up in banks and holdings in the US. The hitch, to Apple or Google, is those monies have restrictions on its use, eg, they can't use that pile of cash to build a factory or pay dividends. But what the can do is use that money as collateral for a nearly equivalent amount as a loan which is not so encumbered. It just becomes a game for them to avoid paying most taxes until they are able to get an administration / congress which gives them a tax holiday so they can convert all that deferred money back into normal cash holdings at a much lower tax rate.

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

#158
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve was notoriously and sometimes arbitrarily cheap. Apple retains some of that.

Yet they’ll buy their own quarry or glass factory…

Because it's cheaper...

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

#159
post #152
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…

When M1 came out, I remember a lot of excitement around the past progress of performance in the A* core line; people extrapolated future performance and thought they were going to get +20% (ST) every 18 months on top of M1. I think this expectation of sustained performance gains was a part of some of the more glowing reviews, rather than a narrow evaluation of M1 itself. Anyway, it wasn’t a reasonable expectation. Bu…

And yet, the M2 has 18% performance improvement in about 18 months. Presumably also single-threaded, since the CPU core configuration is the same as the M1. 18% is close enough to 20%.

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

#160
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that my overall browser performance might improve in a noticeable way because it is switching from NEON optimized Quicksort to SVE2 optimized Quicksort is simply laughable. On the other hand, switching to a processor fabbed on a better process node could easily have a noticeable impact on overall browser performance, or battery life while browsing, or both.

It is certainly not laughable to me. You have singled out Quicksort as the sole example of performance gains whereas I have used it as a single isolated example of very large performance gains that can be had. SIMD instructions have seen a lot of other mainstream use cases recently which also includes the memory copying or memcpy(3) optimisations amongst others. Your browser has a Javascript engine, and since it a Ja…

Forget Quicksort. What percentage of your CPU time is spent running SIMD-optimized implementations of anything? And what percent of those are upgraded to new SIMD instructions each year? And what real world percentage gains are they getting considering other constraints like memory bandwidth, power, etc? The answers to these questions, multiplied together, put a very small upper bound on the overall benefit of new instructions per year.
Post reply on HN