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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

#161

Post by awill »

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…

AMD, releases CPUs every 2 years, so it's still impressive that in just 1 year Apple can have these gains.

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

#162

Post by eigen »

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.

2015 Sky Lake i5-6600K single core 1092 [1]

2017 Kaby Lake i5-7600k single core 1157 [2]

2017 Coffee Lake i5-8600k single core 1206 [3]

2018 Coffee Lake i5-9600k single core 1233 [4]

2020 Comet Lake i5-10600k single core 1307 [5]

16% improvement over 5 years, average 4.6% improvement per release, range from 2.2% to 6% per step. didn't realize that they released 2 Coffee Lakes.

[1] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-i5-6600k

[2] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-i5-7600k

[3] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-i5-8600k

[4] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-i5-9600k

[5] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-core-i5-10600...

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

#163

Post by boringuser1 »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#164

Post by boringuser1 »

highwaylights wrote: post #107
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…

Get that performance from where though? The big M1 numbers came from getting ahead of the rest of the market on 5nm TSMC, and critically from packing everything into the SOC so physical distances were reduced by multiple orders of magnitude (which has already been the case for the A series). That’s been done now, so the low hanging fruit is gone there. Performance gains from here should be expected to be identical to…

No post body was provided.

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

#165

Post by yieldcrv »

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

anybody would say something snarky if the clerk asks you if they dont have to give you the rest of your money back

summer child labor conscript: your total is $15 and your change is $85, lemme keep that

you: ….. uhhhh you kidding me?

audience: rich people are assholes!

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

#166

Post by UncleEntity »

imwillofficial wrote: post #84
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

Quoted post unavailable.

> I know! People shouldn’t feel entitled to their own change! It’s such a dick move.

Back when I was driving cabs I just assumed whatever they handed me was mine and if they wanted the change they had to ask for it. Mostly worked but plenty of times I gave them their change back and got no tip.

My absolute favorite was this guy taking a girl out to the fancy part of town and making a big deal about giving me a bunch of money then as soon as she was out of earshot asking for the change. Guess you gotta pay for those overpriced drinks somehow.

Some people just don’t ever tip and when the non-tipping profile groups collide in a single person but they do leave a tip it messes with your mind a bunch.

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

#167

Post by ece »

drawingthesun wrote: post #34

A few comments here about how Apple is losing a lot of top talent to rival Rivos, a stealth startup. What would Rivos business model be? I’m genuinely interested seems interesting to me. Would they be positioning themselves as the next Qualcomm? Or perhaps sell a superior chip to Apple at some point?

They could open up documentation and invite others to build an ecosystem around a RISC-V socket and variety of motherboards. I don't know what their plans might be, but this is the kind of RISC-V ecosystem I'd like to see, like early-x86.

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

#168

Post by edgyquant »

otikik wrote: post #99
imwillofficial wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The assholery part here is not about who keeps the change. It’s about telling a gas station boy “that’s how you got rich”. What makes you rich is first of all being born rich, which most rich people tend to ignore. On the few cases were we are really talking about people with humble beginnings, it’s all about making your time count. If the guy was really rich, the time it would take the boy to get inside, take 2 doll…

The majority of wealthy Americans were not born rich. Almost half of Americans own stock and a significant portion of retired Americans are millionaires.

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

#169

Post by kemotep »

chippiewill wrote: post #114
uluyol wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would agree. Third times the charm an all that. Looking at AMD, with Zen 1 that was a huge leap but their second generation Zen+ was quite small in comparison. Zen 2 showed the path forward and Zen 3 showed they could continue to deliver performance with their methods. I would hold Apple Silicon to the same test (as well as Intel’s dedicated GPUs), M3 or whatever the third iteration is will be the true test of Apple’s vision.

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

#170

Post by smoldesu »

highwaylights wrote: post #107
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…

Get that performance from where though? The big M1 numbers came from getting ahead of the rest of the market on 5nm TSMC, and critically from packing everything into the SOC so physical distances were reduced by multiple orders of magnitude (which has already been the case for the A series). That’s been done now, so the low hanging fruit is gone there. Performance gains from here should be expected to be identical to…

> and critically from packing everything into the SOC so physical distances were reduced by multiple orders of magnitude

I don't think that reduces chip power so much as it reduces latency. Apple's "power" here comes entirely from using the 5nm node and refining a stupid-high IPC.

> it’s AMD who might actually see similar jumps on the low end if they go the Apple route and move everything to the package

No? Again, making everything an SOC has advantages/disadvantages, but your raw performance metrics are almost never significantly influenced by distance of the components (unless the distance is significant enough). AMD's real advantage will be jumping ahead 1.5 generations at TSMC, and then later it will be an architectural change (eg. big.LITTLE). I think Apple is the only one interested in shipping computers with SOCs.

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