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Apple introduces M4 chip

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Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#301

Post by tiffanyh »

TillE wrote: post #261
haunter wrote: post #130

I love when Gruber is confidently wrong https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/04/28/m4-ipad-pros-gu...

> or Apple’s silicon game is racing far ahead of what I considered possible Gruber's strange assumption here is that a new number means some major improvements. Apple has never really been consistent about sticking to patterns in product releases.

This is a major improvement (over the M3).

It's on a new fab node size.

It also have more CPU cores than it's predessor (M3 with 8-core vs M4 with 10-cores).

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#302

Post by make3 »

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…

(A H200 is a five digits datacenter GPU without a display port, it's not what they mean by PC, but your general point still stands)

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#303

Post by hot_gril »

makeitdouble wrote: post #253
bitwize wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, does it matter? Michelin-starred restaurants not only have top-tier chefs. They have buyers who negotiate with food suppliers to get the best ingredients they can at the lowest prices they can. Having a preferential relationship with a good supplier is as important to the food quality and the health of the business as having a good chef to prepare the dishes. Apple has top-tier engineering talent but they…

Qualcomm is also with TSMC and their newer 4nm processor is expected to stay competitive with the M series. If the magic comes mostly from TSMC, there's a good chance for these claims to be true and to have a series of better chips coming on the other platforms as well.

This info is much more useful than a comparison to restaurants.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#304

Post by MBCook »

philistine wrote: post #141
izacus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) ?

Quickly looking at the press release, it seems to have the same comparisons as in the video. None of Apple's comparisons today are between the M3 and M4. They are ALL comparing the M2 and M4. Why? It's frustrating, but today Apple replaced a product with an M2 with a product with an M4. Apple always compares product to product, never component to component when it comes to processors. So those specs are far more impr…

It’s an iPad event and there were no M3 iPads.

That’s all. They’re trying to convince iPad users to upgrade.

We’ll see what they do when they get to computers later this year.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#305

Post by ipqk »

slashdev wrote: post #72

I've got a Mac Pro paperweight because the motherboard went. It's going to the landfill. I can't even sell it for parts because I can't erase the SSD. If they didn't solder everything to the board you could actually repair it. When I replace my current Dell laptop, it will be with a repairable framework laptop.

hopefully at least electronics recycling.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#306

Post by imtringued »

treesciencebot wrote: post #113

~38 TOPS at fp16 is amazing, if the quoted number if fp16 (ANE is fp16 according to this [1] but that honestly seems like a bad choice when people are going smaller and smaller even at the higher level datacenter cards so not sure why apple would use it instead of fp8 natively) [1]: https://github.com/hollance/neural-engine/blob/master/docs/1...

For reference. The llama.cpp people are not going smaller. Most of those models run on 32 bit floats with the dequantization happening on the fly.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#307

Post by ant6n »

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…

I’ve got an iPad mini. The main issue is the screen scratches. The other main issue is the screen is like a mirror, so it can’t be used everywhere to watch videos (which is the main thing the iPad is useful for). The third main issue is that videos nowadays are way too dark and you can’t adjust brightness/gamma on the iPad to compensate.

(Notice a theme?)

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#308

Post by mlsu »

philistine wrote: post #141
izacus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) ?

Quickly looking at the press release, it seems to have the same comparisons as in the video. None of Apple's comparisons today are between the M3 and M4. They are ALL comparing the M2 and M4. Why? It's frustrating, but today Apple replaced a product with an M2 with a product with an M4. Apple always compares product to product, never component to component when it comes to processors. So those specs are far more impr…

They know that anyone who has bought an M3 is good on computers for a long while. They're targeting people who have m2 or older macs. People who own an m3 are basically going to buy anything that comes down the pipe, because who needs an m3 over an m2 or even an m1 today?

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#309

Post by brigade »

ttul wrote: post #233
dhx wrote: post #158

M2's Neural Engine had 15TOPS, M3's 18TOPS (+20%) vs. M4's 38TOPS (+111%). In transistor counts, M2 had 20BTr, M3 25BTr (+25%) and M4 has 28BTr (+12%). M2 used TSMC N5P (138MTr/mm2), M3 used TSMC N3 (197MTr/mm2, +43%) and M4 uses TSMC N3E (215MTr/mm2, +9%).[1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process#%225_nm%22_proces... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_nm_process#%223_nm%22_proces...

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!

It would also blow through the iPad’s battery in 4 minutes flat

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#310

Post by SllX »

mort96 wrote: post #286
akshayt wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But the word they used isn't "NPU" or "neural engine" but "AI PC"??? If I build a PC with a ton of GPU power with the intention of using that compute for machine learning then that's an "AI PC"

On paper you’re absolutely correct. AI PC is marketing rubbish out of Wintel. Apple’s doing a direct comparison to that marketing rubbish and just accepting that they’ll probably have to play along with it.

So going by the intended usage of this marketing rubbish, the comparison Apple is making isn’t to GPUs. It’s to Intel’s chips that like Apple’s, integrate, CPU, GPU, and NPU. They just don’t name drop Intel anymore when they don’t have to.

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