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Apple introduces M4 chip

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Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#651

Post by _the_inflator »

klabb3 wrote: post #620
andsoitis wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending data up to the cloud for processing). Their primary business goal is to sell hardware. Yes, they’ve diversified into services and being a shopping mall for all, but it is about selling lu…

> but it is about selling luxury hardware. Somewhat true but things are changing. While there are plenty of “luxury” Apple devices like Vision Pro or fully decked out MacBooks for web browsing we no longer live in a world where tech are just lifestyle gadgets. People spend hours a day on their phones, and often run their life and businesses through it. Even with the $1000+/2-3y price tag, it’s simply not that much gi…

I disagree.

Apple is selling hardware and scaling AI by utilizing it is simply a smart move.

Instead of building huge GPU clusters, having to deal with NVIDIA for GOUs (Apple kicked NVIDIA out years ago because of disagreements), Apple is building mainly on existing hardware.

This is in other terms utilizing CPU power.

On the other hand this helps their marketing keeping high price points when Apple now is going to differentiate their COU power and therefore hardware prices over AI functionality correlating with CPU power. This is also consistent with Apple stopping the MHz comparisons years ago.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#652

Post by yazzku »

LtWorf wrote: post #614
rsp1984 wrote: post #457

Together with next-generation ML accelerators in the CPU, the high-performance GPU, and higher-bandwidth unified memory, the Neural Engine makes M4 an outrageously powerful chip for AI. In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending dat…

> This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy Is this the same apple whose devices do not work at all unless you register an apple account?

Some people really seem to be truly delusional. It's obvious that the company's "privacy" is a marketing gimmick when you consider the facts. Do people not consider the facts anymore? How does somebody appeal to the company's "privacy-first strategy" with a straight face in light of the facts? I suppose they are not aware of the advertising ID that is embedded in all Apple operating systems. That one doesn't even require login.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#653

Post by moritzwarhier »

andsoitis wrote: post #539
rsp1984 wrote: post #457

Together with next-generation ML accelerators in the CPU, the high-performance GPU, and higher-bandwidth unified memory, the Neural Engine makes M4 an outrageously powerful chip for AI. In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending dat…

> In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending data up to the cloud for processing). Their primary business goal is to sell hardware. Yes, they’ve diversified into services and being a shopping mall for all, but it is about selling lu…

> > In case it is not abundantly clear by now: Apple's AI strategy is to put inference (and longer term even learning) on edge devices. This is completely coherent with their privacy-first strategy (which would be at odds with sending data up to the cloud for processing).

> Their primary business goal is to sell hardware.

There is no contradiction here. No need for luxury. Efficient hardware scales, Moore's law has just been rewritten, not defeated.

Power efficiency combined with shared and extremely fast RAM, it is still a formula for success as long as they are able to deliver.

By the way, M-series MacBooks have crossed bargain territory by now compared to WinTel in some specific (but large) niches, e.g. the M2 Air.

They are still technically superior in power efficiency and still competitive in performance in many common uses, be it traditional media decoding and processing, GPU-heavy tasks (including AI), single-core performance...

By the way, this includes web technologies / JS.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#654

Post by edward28 »

tiffanyh wrote: post #301
TillE wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

It's on TSMC n3E which is a slightly less dense but better yielding than the previous n3B.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#656

Post by winwang »

hmottestad wrote: post #631
winwang wrote: post #553

I would want to know if the LPDDR6 rumors are substantiated, i.e. memory bus details. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/lpddr6-new-beginning-of... If M4 Max could finally break the 400GBps limit of the past few years and hit 600 GBps, it would be huge for local AI since it could directly translate into inference speedups.

The M4 has increased the bandwidth from 100 to 120 GB/s. The M4 Max would probably be 4x that at 480 GB/s, but the M4 Ultra would be 960 GB/s compared to M2 Ultra at 800 GB/s.

Dang. +20% is still a nice difference, but not sure how they did that. Here's hoping M4 Max can include more tech, but that's copium.

960 GB/s is 3090 level so that's pretty good. I'm curious if the Macbooks right now are actually more so compute limited due to tensor throughput being relatively weak, not sure about real-world perf.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#658

Post by thih9 »

praseodym wrote: post #10

"With these improvements to the CPU and GPU, M4 maintains Apple silicon’s industry-leading performance per watt. M4 can deliver the same performance as M2 using just half the power. And compared with the latest PC chip in a thin and light laptop, M4 can deliver the same performance using just a fourth of the power." That's an incredible improvement in just a few years. I wonder how much of that is Apple engineering a…

They mention just M2 and M4 - curious, how does M3 fit into that?

I.e. would it sit between, or closer to M2 or M4?

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#659

Post by wiseowise »

aurareturn wrote: post #530
themagician wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to being old! Watch a 20-year old creative work on an iPad and you will quickly change your mind. Watch someone who has, "never really used a desktop, [I] just use an iPad" work in Procreate or LumaFusion. The iPad has amazing software. Better, in many ways, than desktop alternatives if you know how to use it. There are some things they can't do, and the workflow can be less flexible or full featured in some…

I'm with you. I think HN (and conversational internet) disproportionally contains more laptop people than the public. A lot of of the younger generation does all their work on their phone and tablet and does not have a computer.

Majority of people don’t know what programming is and do shitton of manual things that can be automated by a simple bash/Python script, so what?

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#660

Post by jjtheblunt »

adrian_b wrote: post #391
MBCook wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not a neural processing unit. It’s a GPU. They said they had the fastest NPU in a PC. Not the fastest on earth (one of the nVidia cards, probably). Not the fastest way you could run something (probably a 4090 as you said). Just the fastest NPU shipping in a PC. Probably consumer PC. It’s marketing, but it seems like a reasonable line to draw to me. It’s not like when companies draw a line like “fastest car und…

Both Intel's and AMD's laptop CPUs include NPUs, and they are indeed slower than M4. Nevertheless, Apple's bragging is a little weird, because both Intel and AMD have already announced that in a few months they will launch laptop CPUs with much faster NPUs than Apple M4 (e.g. 77 TOPS for AMD), so Apple will hold the first place for only a very short time.

Why do you believe that? Announcements about future releases, by Intel and AMD, are not current future facts. If they deliver, then fine, but you speak like they're factual.
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