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Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

9to5mac.com

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Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#461

Post by derefr »

forgot-my-pw wrote: post #407
rewtraw wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you compare the M1 Air and Pro, the only difference seems to be the addition of the Touchbar, 10% better battery life, and a "studio" speaker/mic on the Pro. https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/ I assume the addition of a fan on the Pro gives it better performance under load, but there doesn't seem to be a hugely compelling reason to not just get the Air.

I'm confused of their new pricing scheme / spec tiers for Macbook Pros. There's no more core i7 for Macbook 13. You have to go to Macbook 16. I'd rather get a Dell XPS or other Core i7/Ryzen 7 ultrabooks. So now, spec-wise, Macbook Air and Macbook Pro are too close.

I'm guessing the MBP13 is now a legacy model, being refreshed more to satisfy direct-product-line lease upgrades for corporate customers, than to satisfy consumer demand.

Along with the MBP16 refresh (which will use the "M1X", the higher-end chip), we'll probably see the higher-end MBP13s refreshed with said chip as well, but rebranded somehow, e.g. as the "MacBook Pro 14-inch" or something (as the rumors go: same size, but less screen bezel, and so more screen.)

And then, next year, you'll see MBP14 and MBP16 refreshes, while the MBP13 fades out.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#462

Post by nottorp »

gen3 wrote: post #285
trixie_ wrote: post #261

So I guess Windows won't run on M1, so none of my Windows software/Steam games will work either. Will software developers start dropping support for Mac now that they'd need to maintain an ARM version as well? It's not clear how long Apple will support emulation with Rosetta before cutting it off. What's the Linux landscape look like for this chip? It's great that there's performance and battery life improvements, bu…

Windows has an arm build, so I wouldn't count it out entirely. Edit: Never-mind, it looks like they are not porting bootcamp.

Even if ARM Windows was supported by Apple, none of the games have ARM versions so it wouldn't help.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#463

Post by Jtsummers »

0x53 wrote: post #263
Jtsummers wrote: post #218

Out of curiosity, how many people are actually constrained by 16GB of RAM? What applications are you using it for that 16GB vs 32GB is actually a deal breaker for you? Thinking about your average end-users, like most of my family, 8 to 16GB is about all they need for their systems (and if software were better written they'd probably need less). So is this specific work like machine learning? Video and image processin…

I often use more than 16 GB of RAM. Generally, I have 3-4 Windows 10 VMs running which each take at least 4GB to be stable. So if I have 4 running that is all the RAM already.

I was running a Windows VM on my laptop earlier this year (before some of the telework issues got worked out). While, yes, you need at least 4GB/VM, by the time I had two running the issue wasn't RAM. Laptop CPUs just can't keep up with that workload IME. Not unless you get, maybe, the latest 16" MBP (if restricting ourselves to Apple's hardware).

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#464

Post by francoisLabonte »

greenpresident wrote: post #89

Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.

My guess is that they are using up to 2 HBM2 memory stacks (from the picture). Each is limited to 8GB . If they were to go to HBM2e in M2 they could get up to 2x24GB. The biggest advantage of HBM is lower power per bit as the signals are all on the package running at a lower frequency.

The memory market is getting fragmented with Nvidia having seemed to moved from HBM2 to GDDR6X (Micron being only supplier). LPDDR super low power (cell phones) and DDR4/5 for rest of market...

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#465

Post by Aperocky »

noncoml wrote: post #273
rewtraw wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you compare the M1 Air and Pro, the only difference seems to be the addition of the Touchbar, 10% better battery life, and a "studio" speaker/mic on the Pro. https://www.apple.com/mac/compare/ I assume the addition of a fan on the Pro gives it better performance under load, but there doesn't seem to be a hugely compelling reason to not just get the Air.

I think they got it wrong. I would pay money to NOT have the touchbar.

hahaha 2 times Air user, touchbar is a big NO.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#466

Post by smitty1110 »

greenpresident wrote: post #89

Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.

The choice to do on-package RAM makes it hard. They limited themselves to just two dies here, so maybe a real "pro-focused" machine can have 32 GB later. I guess those of us that need the extra ram will have to wait for Apple to release the M2 with DDR5 support and then re-evaluate our options. But for now these are a hard no for me.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#467

Post by sz4kerto »

"Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with prerelease Final Cut Pro 10.5 using a 55-second clip with 4K Apple ProRes RAW media, at 4096x2160 resolution and 59.94 frames per second, transcoded to Apple ProRes 422. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air."

This is relevant. This means that the performance increase vs Intel is using the extremely throttled 1.2 GHz i7 as the baseline.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#468

Post by vmchale »

WanderPanda wrote: post #228
jonplackett wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can probably out perform them, but only for a few seconds/minutes. That's why they put a fan in the pro.

Which actually sounds like a good fit for a dev machine, where you only compile once in a while, but do not sustain high loads

My compiles take like 8 minutes at worst.

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#469

Post by nottorp »

jamil7 wrote: post #403
Jtsummers wrote: post #218

Out of curiosity, how many people are actually constrained by 16GB of RAM? What applications are you using it for that 16GB vs 32GB is actually a deal breaker for you? Thinking about your average end-users, like most of my family, 8 to 16GB is about all they need for their systems (and if software were better written they'd probably need less). So is this specific work like machine learning? Video and image processin…

People running electron apps are likely constrained. Maybe with the ability to run iOS/iPadOS versions we can ditch things like the desktop version of Slack.

You think the iOS version of Slack is native?

Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

#470

Post by liminalsunset »

weystrom wrote: post #413
kevindong wrote: post #186

Completely unconfirmed speculation incoming: There's a solid chance that the logic board is exactly the same on all of the Macs announced today and the only difference is the cooling solution. If you play around with the Apple Store configurator, the specs are all suspiciously similar between every new Mac. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch https://w…

If you look at the power supplies it's 30 vs 60 Watts, definitely interested to see what kind of TDP Apple targets with these machines.

They've stated that they target 10W in the Air, the cooling system in the Pro is identical to the Intel so probably 28W ish, and the Mac Mini specs say maximum 150W continuous power, but that probably includes a few tens of watts of USB and peripherals.
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