Apple M1: 192KB I-Cache, 128KB D-Cache, 12MB L2 Cache AMD Ryzen 9 5950X: 32KB I-Cache, 32KB D-Cache, 8MB L2 Cache Isn’t this difference huge? What am I missing here?
TSMC 5nm versus 7nm. Process advantages win most chip fights.
Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
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Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#562Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
M1 chip page shows that 10 watts is the thermal envelope for the Air
So I get the whole performance-per-watt spiel, but if they're targeting the same 10W as with Ice Lake Y-series[1], it's gonna be hot during continuous workloads like screen sharing, since they've seemingly decided to get rid of even the "chassis fan" they've had on 2019 Air.
[1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/196596/...
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#563Completely 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 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 recently got an Air after using a MBP13.
Aside from the loud fan and slow performance which should be fixed in this release, my biggest complaint is that they only have the usbc plugs on one side of the laptop.
Really obnoxious when the outlet is in a difficult spot.
Unclear whether the new MBP13 also has this problem...
Edit: the new M1 MBP13 has both usbc ports on the same side. No option for 4 (yet). Ugh.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#564Completely 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…
At Apple's volume and level of system integration, it doesn't make sense to do assembly sharing at that level between different models. Presumably the SoC package is the same between the different products, but binned differently for the Air, Pro, and Mini. The actual logic boards would be custom to the form factor.
Not just that. At 5nm there will also be yield problems. I.e they will put the best yield into high end and the worst yield into low end.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#565Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#566Would this basically be APU but with an ARM core?
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
SSD performance with their integrated IO controller might close the gap here, the same way that pretty fast storage on their iPhones makes the lack of RAM there not so debilitating. But yeah, agreed that not having a 32GB option is somewhat disappointing. (sent from my MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM)
This is an interesting line of inquiry. In the gaming console world, a similar principle has been explicitly espoused by Sony in the decision to only go with 16GB of RAM (a smaller factor increase than any previous generation) for the Playstation 5, as the speed of its custom SSD architecture should in theory make that 16GB go a lot further than it would have with a more traditional design.
PS5 shares memory with the GPU, doesn't it?
Which is different to just using RAM to load games.
I play modern games with RX 5700XT 8GB video card and 8GB RAM machine without issues.... So maybe there's not much need for more memory...
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#568The onboard graphics performance seems to be impressive (1050Ti - 1060 range). I wonder if Valve and Epic will start compiling games for ARM. This MacBook could be my first gaming laptop, who would have thought
Unity and Unreal already run on iOS so tons of games built on those engines should work well.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#569"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 42…
Sorry to ask, what is the "Fabric" module in their architecture? Also, is the "Neural Engine" some neural network specific processor?
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#570Max 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.
Wow, that's actually a pretty big limitation. I guess it's tough to do 64 GB with their on-package unified memory. I wonder if they're working on a version with discrete memory and GPU for the high end? They'll need it if they ever want to get Intel out of the Mac Pro.
They must be... there's no chance they're wiping out their Intel lineup with machines that max at 16GB of RAM. Especially not for the Mac Pro.