M1 recap from the keynote

[leman]

As expected, only entry-level chips. MacBook Air, entry-level MacBook Pro 13", Mac mini (a welcome surprise). Few notes:

- USB4 (as expected), but only two ports
- Only up to 16GB RAM, unclear what specs and bandwidth
- Exact performance is difficult to quantify, but looks above Tiger Lake from the number quoted by Apple

Overall, an extremely impressive upgrade for the entry-level Macs. Looking forward to M1 Pro whatever for the 16" and the iMacs next year!

P.S. The battery life is insane

Edit: uneducated performance estimates (assuming highest-performance M1 variant)

- sustained power draw around 15Watt
- peak CPU performance (single-threaded) around new AMD Zen 3 CPUs
- sustained CPU performance (multi-threaded) around 6-core Intel i7 (or better)
- GPU performance better than max (30W) version of Tiger Lake, Nvidia MX450 or better level

 

[Takuro]

Overall, pretty much what people expected.

I am assuming when they say "Thunderbolt / USB 4" in the marketing materials, they really mean Thunderbolt 3.

I was surprised by the 16GB memory limitation though. Even for Apple which is stingy about such things, this was an opportunity to bump that a bit. But then again, I have no idea if that memory goes further on ARM than in x86.

I'm curious to see what the Geekbench scores look like as people get their hands on these next week, but either way, it's clear that the M1 isn't going to carry the rest of their product line beyond this initial launch. It's a chip squarely aimed at the low-end with iGPU's.

 

[leman]

I am assuming when they say "Thunderbolt / USB 4" in the marketing materials, they really mean Thunderbolt 3.

It's USB 4. Thunderbolt 3 was integrated into the USB standard.

Overall, pretty much what people expected. I was surprised by the 16GB memory limitation though. Even for Apple which is stingy about such things, this was an opportunity to bump that a bit. But then again, I have no idea if that memory goes further on ARM than in x86.

The memory resides on the SoC package, so getting more of it is going to be tricky technologically. No doubt we will see more RAM (possibly stacked) next year with M2/M1 Pro or whatever they are called.

I'm curious to see what the Geekbench scores look like as people get their hands on these next week, but either way, it's clear that the M1 isn't going to carry the rest of their product line beyond this initial launch. It's a chip squarely aimed at the low-end with iGPU's.

Exactly. Still, it's crazy. The MBA is now faster than any Tiger Lake laptop... and faster than the Ice Lake 13" Pro models

 

[darkmatter343]

I was surprised by the 16GB memory limitation though. Even for Apple which is stingy about such things, this was an opportunity to bump that a bit. But then again, I have no idea if that memory goes further on ARM than in x86.

I'm curious to see what the Geekbench scores look like as people get their hands on these next week, but either way, it's clear that the M1 isn't going to carry the rest of their product line beyond this initial launch. It's a chip squarely aimed at the low-end with iGPU's.

yeah, I'm also wondering if the 8GB and 16GB will go a lot further then with Intel Macs since it seems to be on the SoC now, and with greater efficiencies maybe more ram isn't necessary. I'm interested to know if the M1 on the MB Air and the M1 on the MBP are exactly the same, (minus the Air only have 7 GPU Cores) but things like Frequency, Cache, Etc...

Also, it'll be interesting to know how much a a difference the thermals make since the Air will obviously have a weaker cooling solution, IF the M1 chips are exactly the same in each. I imagine in the future Apple will have Frequency as an option to upgrade during purchase like back in the Power PC days.

 

[markiv810]

yeah, I'm also wondering if the 8GB and 16GB will go a lot further then with Intel Macs since it seems to be on the SoC now, and with greater efficiencies maybe more ram isn't necessary. I'm interested to know if the M1 on the MB Air and the M1 on the MBP are exactly the same, (minus the Air only have 7 GPU Cores) but things like Frequency, Cache, Etc...

I was thinking the same, is the processor M1 the same for Mac mini, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. What is the difference between these laptop/desktops announced in terms of specifications and performance per se.

 

[dugbug]

the performance boosts are unheard of (6x, etc. wow). I wonder what the active cooling does for the chip in terms of sustainment. Can't wait for the reviews to come out.

If we take their graphics #s at face value as comparing to the previous air what graphics chipset would it be comparable with?

 

[leman]

yeah, I'm also wondering if the 8GB and 16GB will go a lot further then with Intel Macs since it seems to be on the SoC now, and with greater efficiencies maybe more ram isn't necessary.

Kind of depends. If you need it for memory-intensive workloads, then not really. RAM is RAM after all. But with faster SSDs and hardware accelerated memory compression RAM absence is likely to be more painful.

I'm interested to know if the M1 on the MB Air and the M1 on the MBP are exactly the same, (minus the Air only have 7 GPU Cores) but things like Frequency, Cache, Etc...

They seem to be the same thing, just differently binned and differently cooled. The Pro should be capable of higher clocks etc.

I imagine in the future Apple will have Frequency as an option to upgrade during purchase like back in the Power PC days.

I don't think they will ever mention frequencies again. Apple CPUs run on much lower frequency than Intel or AMD (they are very wide architectures, which allows them to do much more work per clock). If you tell people to pay you premium for a 3.5ghz CPU, there is a good chance they will go for an (inferior) 5.0 ghz Intel chip instead.

 

[leman]

If we take their graphics #s at face value as comparing to the previous air what graphics chipset would it be comparable with?

I'd guess somewhere in the ballpark of Nvidia MX450 - GTX 1650 Max-Q, maybe a bit slower.

 

[Homy]

Intel UHD Graphics 630 in Mac Mini 2018: 3.150 GPixel/s, 25.20 GTexel/s, FP32 403.2 GFLOPS

M1 Mac Mini 2020: 41 GPixel/s, 82 GTexel/s, FP32 2.6 TFLOPS

A12Z FP32 1.1 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 560X 2.056 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300M 3.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300 4.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 580X 5.530 TFLOPS

 

[ascender]

I was also wondering if we need to re-calibrate our way of thinking about RAM now due to the other increases in speed across the board and the combination with Big Sur? ? So perhaps these new machines really are as powerful as they claim which means people won’t need to spend as much as previously?

Or if they are trying to make a clear ”fast” and “faster” tiering within the Pro lineup? So the 4 port 13” will be way faster than this one and offer 32GB+ RAM - a proper beast of a machine for video & audio pros?

 

[leman]

M1 Mac Mini 2020: 41 GPixel/s, 82 GTexel/s, FP32 2.6 TFLOPS

Where did you find this data?

 

[Homy]

Where did you find this data?

Got the same question in another thread, which makes me wonder if people watched the live stream.

 

[jel888]

Hi! As I listened to the the announcement and considering myself still a relatively new Apple Mac user (2010 with iPad, only since 2014 with MacBook Air and 2019 with iMAC), I of course thought, how can I upgrade to M1 having just bought an iMAC barely a year ago? And the MAC mini came to mind. I searched everywhere and can't find if I can use the Mac mini with my iMAC, but not just using the iMAC as a monitor, but using both "systems" (say like running Big Sur on one and eventually keeping the other at Catalina or whatever macOS runs best). Don't know if I should make this a separate question, but the idea really only came because of my excitement over the announcement. Thoughts?

 

[leman]

@Homy, ah, sneaky. I was looking for that screenshot, they only showed it for a split second

 

[bobmans]

What surprised me the most is that the memory is now part of the chip package. This probably marks the beginning of the end of user upgradable memory in any mac.

 

[Falhófnir]

Looks pretty much how I expected, macs grouped into performance tiers with a single processor to cover them (apart from I expected the Air/ mini to be separate to the Pro which would have shared a chip with the 24" iMac).

 

[leman]

What surprised me the most is that the memory is now part of the chip package. This probably marks the beginning of the end of user upgradable memory in any mac.

They'll probably keep it for the Mac Pro. Like 8 channel DDR5 or something.

 

[Homy]

Hi! As I listened to the the announcement and considering myself still a relatively new Apple Mac user (2010 with iPad, only since 2014 with MacBook Air and 2019 with iMAC), I of course thought, how can I upgrade to M1 having just bought an iMAC barely a year ago? And the MAC mini came to mind. I searched everywhere and can't find if I can use the Mac mini with my iMAC, but not just using the iMAC as a monitor, but using both "systems" (say like running Big Sur on one and eventually keeping the other at Catalina or whatever macOS runs best). Don't know if I should make this a separate question, but the idea really only came because of my excitement over the announcement. Thoughts?

They are separate computers. You can use the mouse and keyboard with Mac Mini (not at the same time with iMac) but other than that you can't use iMac as monitor for Mac Mini. You have to buy a monitor for the Mac Mini and then you can do what you want with each computer.

 

[darkmatter343]

If you tell people to pay you premium for a 3.5ghz CPU, there is a good chance they will go for an (inferior) 5.0 ghz Intel chip instead.

Very true. Clock speed isn't everything, better not to lead consumers back in that direction.

 

[Falhófnir]

Intel UHD Graphics 630 in Mac Mini 2018: 3.150 GPixel/s, 25.20 GTexel/s, FP32 403.2 GFLOPS

M1 Mac Mini 2020: 41 GPixel/s, 82 GTexel/s, FP32 2.6 TFLOPS

Radeon Pro 560X 2.056 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300M 3.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300 4.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 580X 5.530 TFLOPS

Or for Nvidia reference a GTX 1050Ti is 2.1 TFLOPS, 1650 is 3.0. Impressive...

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Intel UHD Graphics 630 in Mac Mini 2018: 3.150 GPixel/s, 25.20 GTexel/s, FP32 403.2 GFLOPS

M1 Mac Mini 2020: 41 GPixel/s, 82 GTexel/s, FP32 2.6 TFLOPS

Radeon Pro 560X 2.056 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300M 3.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300 4.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 580X 5.530 TFLOPS

TFLOPS are always a tricky measure to translate to performance, but roughly in between a 560X and a 5300M makes sense. I'm assuming this is essentially the A14X GPU: if the A12X - A14X improvement mirrors that of the A12-14 in the iPad Air, this M1 GPU should be roughly equivalent to the 1650 Ti Max Q.

 

[KPOM]

I was thinking the same, is the processor M1 the same for Mac mini, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. What is the difference between these laptop/desktops announced in terms of specifications and performance per se.

The Pro and Mac mini have fans. The Pro also has a brlghter screen, TouchBar, and better speakers. But yes, I think the Air is a much better proposition than it was before.

 

[leman]

Looks pretty much how I expected, macs grouped into performance tiers with a single processor to cover them (apart from I expected the Air/ mini to be separate to the Pro which would have shared a chip with the 24" iMac).

I think what they announced is actually better than what we expected. Notice how they only replaced the low-end 13 MBP (which is more of an Air variant anyway). This means that higher-end Macs will be substantially faster.

We need to run the benchmarks of course, but if we assume that the "latest Intel CPU" is Tiger Lake (which it probably is), then we have the 10W Air being at least comparable to the 30W Tiger Lake. The higher-end 13" and 16" Macs will offer true desktop class performance then.

 

[moabal]

How does the new Mac Mini with M1 compare (performance wise) to a 2017 MacBook Pro with 2.8GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 and Radeon Pro 555 with 2GB of GDDR5 memory?

I am considering selling it as my computer is out of warranty. I no longer need a laptop.

Thanks

 

[jel888]

They are separate computers. You can use the mouse and keyboard with Mac Mini (not at the same time with iMac) but other than that you can't use iMac as monitor for Mac Mini. You have to buy a monitor for the Mac Mini and then you can do what you want with each computer.

I've read that you can use the iMAC monitor with the Mac mini and the keyboard and mouse, so that isn't an issue, what I don't know is can you have the iMac's drive also be set up as another Mac.