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

Post by JohnBooty » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:18 AM UTC

laurent92 wrote: post #802

heisenbergs wrote: post #765

The responses here seem to not really acknowledge what a rabbit apple has been pulling out of the hat. 2-3x the performance both from a CPU and GPU perspective, whilst being far more energy and thermally efficient. Of course this was kind of known and rumoured, but now we know. Finally real competition for intel. If only these chips were available to others. they are literally running laps around the competition. Cur…

Are servers important anymore? Seems to me that servers are made to automatically scale on AWS, and that is it. 8vCPU may be equivalent to 1x M1, it doesn’t really matter as long as you can have 4 of them.

Post by 3pt14159 » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:33 AM UTC

cheeze wrote: post #747

Aperocky wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a dev and I have the air as my personal, side-project computer, and I have already ordered the new one. I use vim to develop primarily in python/js. So my need for performance is super low.

Hah, this reminds me of college. I remember some of my first CS courses, everyone either had a brand new mbp or an ALIENWARE super beefy laptop. I had a 300 dollar 7" netbook. Turns out that unless you're doing deep learning, etc. (which you might as well just run remote IMO), a bottom of the line intel atom processor can handle the workloads that a CS program throws at it no problem. I mean, in reality you're doing…

Post by BSVogler » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:37 AM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #99

ojosilva wrote: post #28

Apple mentions TensorFlow explicitly in the ongoing presentation due to the new 16-core "Neural Engine" embedded in the M1 chip. Now that's an angle I did not expect on this release. Sounds exciting! Edit: just to clarify, the Neural Engine itself is not really "new": > The A11 also includes dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls a "Neural Engine". This neural network hardware can perform up to 600 billio…

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.

Post by rvanmil » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:50 AM UTC

myrandomcomment wrote: post #573

So there is an interesting trend here in the comments because HN is very developer focused. Everyone seems to say "well this does not work for my XXX because of RAM, etc." I would say yes, no surprises there! With this line up Apple is fine with that, because the Air and 13" are not targeted at you. This is the laptop for my wife or kids that use it for school, web, some music and video, nothing at a professional lev…

Post by tonyedgecombe » Wed, Nov 11, 2020, 7:58 AM UTC

Corrado wrote: post #878

ChuckMcM wrote: post #489

I think Apple has done an amazing job of pulling off their own silicon. At Sun I got to be involved peripherally in the effort that created SPARC and it was way more work than I had suspected. So kudos to Apple's design, engineering, and QA teams! I am also noting that they have killed the "ARM SoC's will never match what Intel can do" story line. That always reminded me of the "Microcomputers will never be able to d…

I agree about the upgradability/repairability. However, if you look at like a cell phone maybe it makes more sense. No one has ever complained that you couldn't update the RAM or the CPU in a iPhone. In order to upgrade the hardware of your cell phone you have to purchase another one. I'm guessing Apple is looking at the Mac hardware in the same light. "Want more power? Buy a new laptop!" The more interesting questio…