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Apple introduces M4 chip

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Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#681

Post by w1nst0nsm1th »

asow92 wrote: post #332

Why are we running these high end CPUs on tablets without the ability to run pro apps like Xcode? Until I can run Xcode on an iPad (not Swift Playgrounds), it's a pass for me. Hear me out: I don't want to bring both an iPad and Macbook on trips, but I need Xcode. Because of this, I have to pick the Macbook every time. I want an iPad, but the iPad doesn't want me.

I love and hate Apple as almost everyone else and have an iPad for 'consultation' only (reading, browsing, video), but on Android, you have IDEs for games dev (Godot), real android apps IDE (through F-Droid), Python, Java and C/C++ IDE (through Android Store) which are close enough of the Linux way...

So the iPad devices could handle that too if Apple allowed it...

Once Apple will enforce the European Union requirement to allow 'sideloading' on iPad, maybe we will be able to have nice things also on it.

That could also be a good thing for Apple himself. A lot of people in Europe have a bad opinion of Apple (partly?) because of the closed (walled) garden of iPad/iOS and other technology/IP which make their portable devices apart of the Android ecosystem.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#682

Post by timpetri »

tweetle_beetle wrote: post #645
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…

I wonder if BYOE (bring your own electricity) also plays a part in their long term vision? Data centres are expensive in terms of hardware, staffing and energy. Externalising this cost to customers saves money, but also helps to paint a green(washing) narrative. It's more meaningful to more people to say they've cut their energy consumption by x than to say they have a better server obselesence strategy, for example.

That is an interesting angle to look at it from. If they're gonna keep pushing this they end up with a strong incentive to make the iPhone even more energy efficient, since users have come to expect good/always improving battery life.

At the end of the day, AI workloads in the cloud will always be a lot more compute effective however, meaning lowered combined footprint. However, in the server based model, there is more incentive to pre-compute (waste inference) things to make them appear snappy on device. Analogous would be all that energy spent doing video encoding for YouTube videos that never get watched. Although, it's "idle" resources for budgeting purposes.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#683

Post by dyauspitr »

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…

The iPads skipped the M3 so they’re comparing your old iPad to the new one.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#684

Post by idontpost »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #186
EduardoBautista wrote: post #13

The 256gb and 512gb models have 8gb of ram. The 1tb and 2tb models have 16gb. Not a fan of tying ram to storage. https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

If these things will ever get MacOS support it will be useless with 8 GB of Ram. Such a waste of nice components.

[dead]

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#685

Post by wiseowise »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #54

I always wonder how constraining it is to design these chips subject to thermal and energy limitations. I paid a lot of money for my hardware and I want it to go as fast as possible. I don't want my fans to be quiet, and I don't want my battery life to be 30 minutes longer, if it means I get more raw performance in return. But instead, Apple's engineers have unilaterally decided to handicap their own processors for n…

> I don't want my fans to be quiet, and I don't want my battery life to be 30 minutes longer

I agree with you. I don’t want fans to be quiet, I want them completely gone. And with battery life too, not 30 minutes, but 300 minutes. Modern chips are plenty fast, developers need to optimize their shit instead of churning crapware.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#686

Post by moneywoes »

hehdhdjehehegwv wrote: post #630
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…

As a privacy professional for many, many years this is 100% correct. Apple wouldn’t be taking billions from Google for driving users to their ad tracking system, they wouldn’t give the CCP access to all Chinese user data (and maybe beyond), and they wouldn’t be on-again-off-again flirting with tailored ads in Apple News if privacy was a “human right”. (FWIW my opinion is it is a human right, I just think Tim Cook is…

any private guides for todays smartphone user?

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#687

Post by ironmagma »

dyauspitr wrote: post #679
tweetle_beetle wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if BYOE (bring your own electricity) also plays a part in their long term vision? Data centres are expensive in terms of hardware, staffing and energy. Externalising this cost to customers saves money, but also helps to paint a green(washing) narrative. It's more meaningful to more people to say they've cut their energy consumption by x than to say they have a better server obselesence strategy, for example.

Why would it be green washing? Aren’t their data centers and commercial operations run completely on renewable energy?

If you offload data processing to the end user, then your data center uses less energy on paper. The washing part is that work is still being done and spending energy, just outside of the data center.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#688

Post by dyauspitr »

NorwegianDude wrote: post #365
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…

Of course a GPU from Nvidia is also a NPU. People are spending billions each month on Nvidia, because it's a great NPU. The fact is that a GPU from Nvidia is a much faster NPU than a CPU from Apple. It is marketing as you say, but it's misleading marketing, on purpose. They could have simply written "the fastest integrated NPU of any CPU" instead. This is something Apple often does on purpose, and people believe it.

At that point you could just call a GPU a CPU. There are manful distinctions to be made based on what the chip is used for exclusively.

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#689

Post by ycsux »

Everyone seems as confused as I am about Apple's strategy here. I wasn't sure the M4 existed, now it can be bought in a format noone wants. How will this bring in a lot of revenue?

Re: Apple introduces M4 chip

#690

Post by royaltjames »

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…

Yes this began with the acquisition of xnor.ai. Absolutely amazing what will be done (and is being done) with edge computing.
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