Apple introduces M4 chip • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#271

Post by dijit » Tue, May 07, 2024, 4:04 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #44

EduardoBautista wrote: post #13

The 256gb and 512gb models have 8gb of ram. The 1tb and 2tb models have 16gb. Not a fan of tying ram to storage. https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

It's fairly absurd that they're still selling a 256gb "Pro" machine in the first place. That said, Apple's policy toward SKUs is pretty consistent: you pay more money and you get more machine, and vice versa. The MacBooks are the only product which has separately configurable memory / storage / chip, and even there some combinations aren't manufactured.

Real creative pros will likely be using a 10G Thunderbolt NIC to a SAN; local video editing is not advised unless it’s only a single project at a time.

Unless you are a solo editor.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#272

Post by imtringued » Tue, May 07, 2024, 4:04 PM UTC

kkielhofner wrote: post #252

ttul wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An NVIDIA RTX 4090 generates 73 TFLOPS. This iPad gives you nearly half that. The memory bandwidth of 120 GBps is roughly 1/10th of the NVIDIA hardware, but who’s counting!

TOPS != TFLOPS RTX 4090 Tensor 1,321 TOPS according to spec sheet so roughly 35x. RTX 4090 is 191 Tensor TFLOPS vs M2 5.6 TFLOPS (M3 is tough to find spec). RTX 4090 is also 1.5 years old.

Yeah where are the bfloat16 numbers for the neural engine? For AMD you can at least divide by four to get the real number. 16 TOPS -> 4 tflops within a mobile power envelope is pretty good for assisting CPU only inference on device. Not so good if you want to run an inference server but that wasn't the goal in the first place.

What irritates me the most though is people comparing a mobile accelerator with an extreme high end desktop GPU. Some models only run on a dual GPU stack of those. Smaller GPUs are not worth the money. NPUs are primarily eating the lunch of low end GPUs.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#273

Post by akshayt » Tue, May 07, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

NorwegianDude wrote: post #264

> M4 has Apple’s fastest Neural Engine ever, capable of up to 38 trillion operations per second, which is faster than the neural processing unit of any AI PC today. I always wonder what crazy meds Apple employees are on. Two RTX 4090s is quite common for hobbyist use, and that is 1321 TOPS each, making two over 69 times more than what Apple claims to be the fastest in the world. That performance is literally less tha…

They are referring to integrated npus in current cpus like in the intel cote ultra.

They explicitly mentioned in the event that the industry refers to the neural engine as a NPU

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#274

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 07, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

NorwegianDude wrote: post #264

> M4 has Apple’s fastest Neural Engine ever, capable of up to 38 trillion operations per second, which is faster than the neural processing unit of any AI PC today. I always wonder what crazy meds Apple employees are on. Two RTX 4090s is quite common for hobbyist use, and that is 1321 TOPS each, making two over 69 times more than what Apple claims to be the fastest in the world. That performance is literally less tha…

[deleted]

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#275

Post by syntaxing » Tue, May 07, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

NorwegianDude wrote: post #264

> M4 has Apple’s fastest Neural Engine ever, capable of up to 38 trillion operations per second, which is faster than the neural processing unit of any AI PC today. I always wonder what crazy meds Apple employees are on. Two RTX 4090s is quite common for hobbyist use, and that is 1321 TOPS each, making two over 69 times more than what Apple claims to be the fastest in the world. That performance is literally less tha…

Definitely misleading but they’re talking about “AI CPU” rather than GPUs. They’re pretty much taking a jab at Intel.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#276

Post by ranyefet » Tue, May 07, 2024, 4:06 PM UTC

ramboldio wrote: post #3

if only macOS would run on iPad..

Just give us support for virtualization and we could install Linux on it and use it for development.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#277

Post by talldayo » Tue, May 07, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

NorwegianDude wrote: post #264

> M4 has Apple’s fastest Neural Engine ever, capable of up to 38 trillion operations per second, which is faster than the neural processing unit of any AI PC today. I always wonder what crazy meds Apple employees are on. Two RTX 4090s is quite common for hobbyist use, and that is 1321 TOPS each, making two over 69 times more than what Apple claims to be the fastest in the world. That performance is literally less tha…

Watching this site recover after an Apple press release is like watching the world leaders deliberate Dr. Strangelove's suggestions.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#278

Post by mason55 » Tue, May 07, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

DanHulton wrote: post #48

simonbarker87 wrote: post #21

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”

I'm wondering if it's because they're hitting the limits of the architecture, and it sounds way better to compare M4 vs M2 as opposed to vs M3, which they'd have to do if it launched in a Macbook Pro.

Eh, they compared the M3 to the M1 when they launched it. People grumbled and then went on with their lives. I don't think they'd use that as a reason for making actual product decisions.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#279

Post by GeekyBear » Tue, May 07, 2024, 4:07 PM UTC

philistine wrote: post #237

praseodym wrote: post #10

"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…

Actually, TSMC's N3E process is somewhat of a regression on the first-generation 3nm process, N3. However, it is simpler and more cost-efficient, and everyone seems to want to get out of that N3 process as quickly as possible. That seems to be the biggest reason Apple released the A17(M3) generation and now the M4 the way they did. The N3 process is in the A17 Pro, the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max. The A17 Pro name seems t…

The signs certainly all point to the initial version of N3 having issues.

For instance, Apple supposedly required a deal where they only paid TSMC for usable chips per N3 wafer, and not for the entire wafer.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/report-apple-is-savi...

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#280

Post by teaearlgraycold » Tue, May 07, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

sulam wrote: post #152

giancarlostoro wrote: post #42

Call me crazy, but I want all that power in a 7" tablet. I like 7" tablets most because they feel less clunky to carry around and take with you. Same with 13" laptops, I'm willing to sacrifice on screen real estate for saving myself from the back pain of carrying a 15" or larger laptop. Some of this is insanely impressive. I wonder how big the OS ROM (or whatever) is with all these models. For context, even if the en…

If your back is hurting from the ~1lb extra going from 13" to 15", I would recommend some body weight exercises. Your back will thank you, and you'll find getting older to be much less painful. Regarding a small iPad, isn't that the iPad mini? 8" vs 7" is pretty close to what you're asking for.

I highly recommend doing pull-ups for your posture and health. It was shocking to me how much the state of my spine improved after doing pull-ups as a daily exercise.