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Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt

semianalysis.substack.com

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Re: Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt

#31

Post by HelixEndeavor »

floatboth wrote: post #12

This is Apple's "Zen+" style generation: a mild refresh when you don't need anything more (and that "more" needs more time to get ready). > These are performance gains are generally paltry despite a huge increase from 11.8B transistors to 15B. But all of those billions went into the Neural Engine. Look, Google is doing the same thing with Tensor SoC. Shoving more neural nets into the computational photography pipelin…

Precisely. I watched the live event, and like 80% of their time on the iPhone 13 range was spent on the new camera features (cinematic mode, sensor shift stabilization, native ProRes support, etc.)

They're reaching a point of seriously competing with entry level DSLR and mirrorless offerings for beginner filmmakers.

Re: Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt

#32

Post by HelixEndeavor »

giuliomagnifico wrote: post #3

> We believe Apple had to delay the next generation CPU core due to all the personnel turnover Apple has been experiencing I believe Apple has delayed new architecture for CPU simply because the actual one is powerful enough and they (correctly) want to take advantage of it in terms of large scale (and due to chip shortage/fabs sufferer). The new iPhone 13 Pro is very interesting but one thing leave me “meh”: the wei…

Pretty sure this is down to increased battery size.

Re: Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt

#33

Post by wil421 »

tharne wrote: post #24
musicale wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Was pay bad and didn’t Apple want to increase compensation A frustrating feature of large silicon valley companies is that if you leave the company and come back later you will typically have better compensation than if you had stayed. I could also imagine that the M1 team felt they weren't adequately rewarded after hitting a huge home run. Moreover, it's probably the best time to switch jobs, because their market…

> A frustrating feature of large silicon valley companies is that if you leave the company and come back later you will typically have better compensation than if you had stayed. Unfortunately, that's true of almost all large companies. It's one of the dumbest polices out there, but virtually every big corporation does it.

Yup, the first company I worked for even had a name for them “retreads”. The VP of my Org was a former director hired back as a VP. It was a well known path to get a better job.

Maybe I will be a retread one day but the other practices the company does leaves a very sour taste in my mouth.

Re: Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt

#34

Post by hardolaf »

musicale wrote: post #5
wsc981 wrote: post #4

> In 2019, Nuvia was founded and later acquired by Qualcomm for $1.4B. Apple’s Chief CPU Architect, Gerard Williams, as well as over a 100 other Apple engineers left to join this firm. More recently, SemiAnalysis broke the news about Rivos Inc, a new high performance RISC V startup which includes many senior Apple engineers. The brain drain continues and impacts will be more apparent as time moves on. Seems very shoc…

> Was pay bad and didn’t Apple want to increase compensation A frustrating feature of large silicon valley companies is that if you leave the company and come back later you will typically have better compensation than if you had stayed. I could also imagine that the M1 team felt they weren't adequately rewarded after hitting a huge home run. Moreover, it's probably the best time to switch jobs, because their market…

It's worse than that. Digital design engineers get screwed at almost every company. Basically only Google, and Facebook in their WA offices, are paying digital design engineers the same or better than software engineers categorically. This is despite there existing a global shortage of digital design engineers that is becoming worse every year as graduation rates continue to decline.

Re: Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt

#35

Post by jseliger »

MichaelRazum wrote: post #27
wsc981 wrote: post #4

> In 2019, Nuvia was founded and later acquired by Qualcomm for $1.4B. Apple’s Chief CPU Architect, Gerard Williams, as well as over a 100 other Apple engineers left to join this firm. More recently, SemiAnalysis broke the news about Rivos Inc, a new high performance RISC V startup which includes many senior Apple engineers. The brain drain continues and impacts will be more apparent as time moves on. Seems very shoc…

Aren't there some agreements that it forbids engineers to switch to a company and work on the same problem? I mean, somethink like this: Develop a cool chip with Apple (with all the help they provide), then move to a startup and build a clone, isn't this somehow forbidden? Or is it just to hard to put that into a contract? I mean guess same is somehow true for software developement.

California banning non-competes is a, if not the, primary reason the state is an innovation hotbed: https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/2/13/14580874/google-self....

It would be good to ban them, totally, nationally: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/biden-issues-executive-...

Re: Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt

#36

Post by wil421 »

Andys wrote: post #9

I was so excited by the M1 despite being a linux user. I couldn't wait any longer to upgrade my old workstation, so I went for an AMD 5950X instead and couldn't he happier. (Its extremely fast and powerful compared to an M1, at cost of greater power consumption of course.)

Were you able to find an OK graphics card? Looking to upgrade my i7-7700k to a Ryzen. The lack of GPU stock is keeping me away. I kinda regret selling my 2070 Super for $100 profit earlier this year but I expected to be able to find a newer replacement.

Re: Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt

#37

Post by MichaelRazum »

jseliger wrote: post #35
MichaelRazum wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there some agreements that it forbids engineers to switch to a company and work on the same problem? I mean, somethink like this: Develop a cool chip with Apple (with all the help they provide), then move to a startup and build a clone, isn't this somehow forbidden? Or is it just to hard to put that into a contract? I mean guess same is somehow true for software developement.

California banning non-competes is a, if not the, primary reason the state is an innovation hotbed: https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/2/13/14580874/google-self... . It would be good to ban them, totally, nationally: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/biden-issues-executive-...

Wow, that is cool. To be honest I don't see anything wrong with it, at least from a software-dev perspective and it may really widen the know-how and increase wealth. Just as a side note: I would see this a bit more critical if the guys would move to an other country and just take the know-how with them.

Re: Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt

#38

Post by zoover2020 »

wil421 wrote: post #33
tharne wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A frustrating feature of large silicon valley companies is that if you leave the company and come back later you will typically have better compensation than if you had stayed. Unfortunately, that's true of almost all large companies. It's one of the dumbest polices out there, but virtually every big corporation does it.

Yup, the first company I worked for even had a name for them “retreads”. The VP of my Org was a former director hired back as a VP. It was a well known path to get a better job. Maybe I will be a retread one day but the other practices the company does leaves a very sour taste in my mouth.

Aka boomeranging

Re: Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt

#39

Post by ca01an »

hardolaf wrote: post #34
musicale wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Was pay bad and didn’t Apple want to increase compensation A frustrating feature of large silicon valley companies is that if you leave the company and come back later you will typically have better compensation than if you had stayed. I could also imagine that the M1 team felt they weren't adequately rewarded after hitting a huge home run. Moreover, it's probably the best time to switch jobs, because their market…

It's worse than that. Digital design engineers get screwed at almost every company. Basically only Google, and Facebook in their WA offices, are paying digital design engineers the same or better than software engineers categorically. This is despite there existing a global shortage of digital design engineers that is becoming worse every year as graduation rates continue to decline.

Why is this the case? Looking at the posts on Blind, even Google and Facebook seem to pay their hardware engineers a bit less than their software engineers, probably because they know they can lowball them. It doesn't make any sense, unless the global shortage of software engineers is even worse.

Re: Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt

#40

Post by OldHand2018 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #18
llampx wrote: post #6

I would hold off on assuming that Apple gave their all to the iPhone chips. They still have the MacBooks and iPad Pros to announce.

Last time the latter were very strongly based on the former.

Yep: more cpu cores, more gpu cores, more memory, more thermal room allowing for a higher clock.

Who knows if they'll call it M2 or M1X.

The really interesting question is whether Apple can meet their No-More-Intel timeline. I'd bet they don't quite make it in time.

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