Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

9to5mac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

731–740 of 1001 posts

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

#731

Post by rbanffy »

hajile wrote: post #669
marta_morena_28 wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is undoubtedly why they launched the Mac Mini today. They can ramp up a lot more power in that machine without a battery and with a larger, active cooler. I'm much more interested in actual benchmarks. AMD has mostly capped their APU performance because DDR4 just can't keep the GPU fed (why the last 2 generations of consoles went with very wide GDDR5/6). Their solution is obviously Infinity Cache where they add…

With the DRAM this close, it can probably be very fast. Did they say anything about bus or bandwidth?

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

#732

Post by rbanffy »

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.

My daughter loves it. It's her emoji keyboard

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

#733

Post by coayer »

mark-r wrote: post #691

So Apple will be shipping 5nm chips while Intel is barely able to produce 10nm? Must hurt to be Intel right now.

I don't think that it's an apples-to-apples comparison between TSMC's and Intel's processes. I believe Intel's 10nm is closer to TSMC 7nm, but you're right, they're behind either way.

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

#734

Post by karpodiem »

rewtraw wrote: post #246
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 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.

Surely they have different clock rates, but Apple isn't referencing clock rates in their marketing material for Macs with M1 chips.

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

#735

Post by reader_mode »

lumberingjack wrote: post #696
acchow wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably beat AMD/Intel on perf/power efficiency, which is why it makes sense for MBA and 13" MBP. The smaller machines are also likely held back by cooling solutions, so if you have Intel beat on power efficiency in a tiny form factor, you can boost your clock speed too.

We don't even have new Zen 3 mobile chips yet if they are anything like the New Desktop parts we just got last week then everything Apple just put out is FUBAR.

I'm hoping Zen 3 delivers because 4000 mobile chips shows great promise but is not available in anything premium (MacBook pro level) and has supply issues.

That being said Apple has an advantage in that they control the entire stack and on the power efficiency side of things they have experience with mobile CPU design, they can do stuff like heterogeneous cores and can optimise for it throughout the stack, I think it would be challenging for x86 to do the same.

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

#736

Post by Aperocky »

beervirus wrote: post #641
Aperocky wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use external drives. They're cheaper and way larger.

And slower. And one bumped cable away from corrupted data. No thanks, not for my boot drive.

NAS is a very established solution that is not expensive at all to set up at home.

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

#738

Post by 00deadbeef »

arrrg wrote: post #601
modeless wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 only launched their lower performance machines today. Air, mini, two port Pro. So that’s the context to interpret the Ram they offer.

The context is the Mac Mini previously supported 64GB of RAM. In fact it was a pretty powerful machine, with options for a six core i7, 10Gb Ethernet, and as I said 64GB RAM. Now it's neutered with GigE and 16GB RAM, despite having much better CPU and GPU performance.

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

#739

Post by 00deadbeef »

whynotminot wrote: post #115
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.

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)

I don't want my SSD being killed by being used as a swap device, especially as it's not replaceable anymore. My 16GB MBP can write 200-300GB a day if I'm pushing it hard. It doesn't bother me too much because I can just replace it with a bog standard NVMe drive. But if I'm going to buy a new Mac, I want lots of RAM.

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

#740

Post by hocuspocus »

surfcao wrote: post #737

So what to do if a powerful working machine is needed now, buy the current MBP 16" or go to thinkpad? Disappointed they didn't even upgrade the intel CPU on MBP 16" to the newer version.

What newer version are you thinking about?

Intel 11th gen H series are nowhere near available.

Post reply on HN