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

9to5mac.com

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

#851

Post by gbil »

lathiat wrote: post #846

For MacBook Air and MacBook Pro "Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display in millions of colours and: (Only) One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz". Mac Mini supports 2 displays, one via thunderbolt the same as above plus a second 4K display on the HDMI port only which I'm guessing internally uses the same output as the laptop displays. That’s a little disappointing - pro…

>Although I can imagine some USB video card of eGPU option fixing that issue (use case being docking the machine to my desk the majority of the time

seems like external GPUs are not supported https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/10/21559200/apple-m1-macboo...

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

#852

Post by saagarjha »

b20000 wrote: post #841
saagarjha wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple designs their own cores.

really, do you have a reference?

Uh, I guess I figured this to be fairly common knowledge so the easiest thing I can point to is Wikipedia, which names their custom cores: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A14. They’ve been designing these since the A6 in 2012 (“Swift”).

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

#853

Post by b20000 »

saagarjha wrote: post #791
b20000 wrote: post #705

OK, 8 cores, but big little config, so probably 4x A53 + 4x A72. So nothing revolutionary new here IMHO. Where is the 16 core A72 SoC we all want?

Apple designs their own cores.

read this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#ARMv8-A

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

#854

Post by sam0x17 »

person_of_color wrote: post #773
sam0x17 wrote: post #588

So real question -- is Apple aggressively marketing this as "Apple Silicon" instead of ARM just a marketing gimmick, or have they done something substantive that makes this no longer and/or more special than regular ARM processors?

Well, it IS different to a rebadged Cortex big.LITTLE solution. They use the architecture but reimplement the CPUs themselves. Further, they have a bunch of their own cores on their chip.

Gotcha, this is the first real information I've been able to find. Thanks!

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

#855

Post by simonh »

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.

The mini still does support 64GB of RAM.

They’re still selling the intel mini which supports up to 64GB, so that option has not been taken off the table if you need the RAM. This is just an additional option with a different trade off. Faster RAM but less of it.

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

#856

Post by saagarjha »

b20000 wrote: post #853
saagarjha wrote: post #791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple designs their own cores.

read this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#ARMv8-A

Uh, is there something specific I should be looking for? I’m familiar with ARMv8-A already.

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

#857

Post by windsurfer »

harrygeez wrote: post #844
0-_-0 wrote: post #767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Anandtech benchmark the A14 (what's in the latest iPhone) is 8% below the Ryzen 5950X. M1 is likely faster than that. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... Quote: "In the overall SPEC2006 chart, the A14 is performing absolutely fantastic, taking the lead in absolute performance only falling short of AMD’s recent Ryzen 5000 series. The fact that Apple is able to achieve this…

this is what that boggles my mind. Like are those benchmarks really comparable? I mean Intel and AMD have been doing this far longer than Apple and it seemed as if Apple just came in and bend the laws of physics that Intel and AMD have been limited by

Apple has been designing chips since the A4 in 2010. Samsung, TMSC, and other manufacturers with more experience actually build the chips for Apple, and this M1 is no exception being manufactured by TMSC.

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

#858

Post by [deleted] »

unethical_ban wrote: post #756
xienze wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Hmmm... What is the day 1 ability for, say, a systems programmer to run VSCode/golang development locally? It'd be neat to find out. The fact that they don't say doesn't tell me much, either it's "not a problem" or it's "such a problem we won't talk about it".

[deleted]

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

#860

Post by kmeisthax »

varispeed wrote: post #410
ameen wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the cooling let’s them tweak the CPU clocks accordingly? Wonder if we can hack the Mac mini with water blocks and squeeze higher clocks. The memory limitation makes it a dud though.

Wouldn't be surprised if the cooling solution was serialised and it had a detection whether the cooling is originally programmed for the particular unit like they do now with cameras and other peripherals (check iPhone 12 teardown videos). I bet that the logic would check the expected temperature for given binning and then shut down the system if it is too cool or too hot. Apple knows better than the users what hardw…

If Apple actually did that Louis Rossman would be out of a job.

No, not in the sense that the cooling lockout would make him unable to fix MacBooks - he clearly has the industry connections to get whatever tools he needs to break that lockout. Yes, in the sense that many Apple laptops have inadequate cooling. Apple has been dangerously redlining Intel chips for a while now - they even install firmware profiles designed to peg the laptop at 90C+ under load. The last Intel MBA had a fan pointed nowhere near the heatsink, probably because they crammed it into the hypothetical fanless Mac they wanted to make.

Apple actually trying to lock the heatsink to the board would indicate that Apple is actually taking cooling seriously for once and probably is engineering less-fragile hardware, at least in one aspect.

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