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Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
621–630 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#622Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#623No 32GB options on any of the models announced today is a shame. Or not I guess as it means I won't be buying anything today M1 looks impressive, hopefully it scales as well to higher TDPs. Pretty much what I expected today with all the low power models getting updated. With no fan I expect the Air will throttle the CPU quickly when using the high performance cores. Calling it an "8-core CPU" is a little cheeky IMHO…
> Or not I guess as it means I won't be buying anything today Honestly, people who don't use their computers as Facebook machines or have very specific things they want to do with the ML engine should probably stay away from Arm Macs for a couple years. There's bound to be plenty of software that doesn't work or doesn't work well, Docker will have ~limited usefulness until more and more people publish Arm images, etc…
I didn't watch the event, but if you have an Intel MacBook, will everything keep working as it is now? Even when upgrading to Big Sur?
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#624Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any option in Euros is about 30% more expensive than buying the same in the US or Hong Kong (which is pretty crummy, but possibly related to taxes and the cost of doing business in the EU). EDIT: I don't mean VAT/sales tax, I've considered sales taxes in the comparison, but also exchange rates of $1.18/1€. The difference is almost exactly 30%. It looks like the cost of doing business in the EU is much higher, and/or…
Maxed out Mac Mini is $1699 pre tax in US and €1917 in Ireland. That's €1558 pre VAT price, or $1838 including mandatory 2 year warranty. $139 is NOT 30% difference.
1917€ would be about $2262, and $1699 pre-tax would be about $1699*1.095=$1860 with tax, or about $402 more expensive.
I'm comparing retail pricing in France (with a 2-year EU warranty) to business pricing in the US (with a 1-year warranty). That comes out to 1949€ including VAT in France, or about $2299 USD, vs $1749 USD including Los Angeles/CA sales tax with business pricing.
About 31% more.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#625"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…
Also unclear what they even meant when comparing performance to the “highest selling PC”, I’m not even sure if analysts could tell you what the top PC on the market is
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#626Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Pro is quoted as 2.8x the 1.7 GHz i7. Not Intel's fastest chip but, if these benchmarks are correct, that's a big speed bump and the higher end Pro's are to come. How fast does it have to be in this thermal envelope to get excited about?
How many cores does that have, and how many cores does the i7 have though?
4 + 4 vs 4 hyperthreaded I think. Not sure I follow the point though.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#627Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't see how something that tiny can compete in any meaningful way with a giant nVidia type card for training. I'd imagine it's more for running models that have been trained already, like all the stuff they mentioned with Final Cut.
Isn't it better to rent a cloud with as many GPUs as necessary for a time needed to train the model? I don't know state of things in ML.
Curious to hear responses to this too..
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#628Earlier quoted context omitted.
You skipped the keynote parts where they say faster 2x, 4x, 8x... and they say faster than every other laptop CPU and faster than 98% of laptops/PCs in their class sold last year? They said it several times. But I agree... let's wait for the benchmarks (btw. iPads already overturns nearly all laptop CPUs)
> You skipped the keynote parts where they say faster 2x, 4x, 8x... and they say faster than every other laptop CPU and faster than 98% of laptops/PCs in their class sold last year? They said it several times. The important part there is "in their class". I'm sure the Apple silicon will impress in the future, but there's a reason they've only switched their lowest power laptops to M1 at launch. The higher end laptops…
That's not what they said during the keynote.
They said the Macbook Air (specifically) is "3x faster than the best selling PC laptop in its class" and that its "faster than 98% of PC laptops sold in the last year".
There was no "in its class" designation on the 98% figure. If they're taken at their word, its among every PC laptop sold in the past year, period.
Frankly, given what we saw today, and the leaked A14x benchmarks a few days ago (which may be this M1 chip or a different, lower power chip for the upcoming iPad Pro, either way); there is almost no chance that the 16" MBPs still being sold with Intel chips will be able to match the 13". They probably could have released a 16" model today with the M1 and it would still be an upgrade. But, they're probably holding back and waiting for a better graphics solution in an upcoming M1x-like chip.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#629Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That’s what “binned differently” means btw.
Re: Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
#630Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Isn’t that what “binning” means?