Yeah that was my mistake in the bit that Fomalhaut quoted. Made a joke and mixed up Z80 and ZX80. Though I guess the joke somewhat still worked
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M1X worst case scenario
- Thread starter JMacHack
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“No one will need more than 637KB of memory for a personal computer. 640KB ought to be enough for anybody,”
-Bill Gates allegedly
I mean that’s of course still substantially more than 1k but in modern standards both are minuscule. There are microcontrollers running all sorts of things still though on very little RAM. The Arduino UNO has just 2K of RAM and is used for all sorts of things, like blinking LEDs… Most people use them for blinking LEDs, at least initially
I have a computer on my desk which I still use maybe once or twice a week. I bought it around 1976 or 1977. 224 eight-bit words of program memory and 26 registers. The magtape read/write stopped working a few decades ago.
Yup. I see them in museums from time to time too.
Only other option would be the HP-97.
I really wanted one but then HP came out with the HP-41C. Used it all through college.
Looks like the successor to the HP-67. A lot more capacity and flexibility. I never knew about this model though there's an HP-48 around the house somewhere. One of the reasons why I like to use the HP-67 is that I like to work in the dark and the LED display means that I don't need additional lighting as with an LCD display. I have the app on my phone and iPad but I do like to use real buttons when doing calculations.
So you just use the computer as a calculator - or if you prefer the term - computer?
Can't really imagine any other use for it than somewhat simple mathematical calculations.
So you just use the computer as a calculator - or if you prefer the term - computer?
Can't really imagine any other use for it than somewhat simple mathematical calculations.
I use it as a calculator but the proper term is computer as that's what it is.
To add a a few additional takes on what could be the M1X worst case scenario (in addition to what others have said before):
1. hotter and louder than the performance increase justifies
2. heavy performance throttling under load
3. disappointing real-world performance increase from the extra CPU/GPU cores
4. lack of ports or 3rd screen support
Not strictly M1X problems, but the machines it goes in are key too:
5. poorly redesigned laptops with major issues (e.g. something akin to a butterfly keyboard or stage light)
6. new features that don't work as intended, either buggy software or hardware problems
7. limited availability and high price
I'm pretty confident Apple won't muck this up, but I would also be surprised if M1X wows in quite the same way as M1 did.
I think the most likely areas of disappointment will be price and heat/noise, but mostly price.
1. hotter and louder than the performance increase justifies
2. heavy performance throttling under load
3. disappointing real-world performance increase from the extra CPU/GPU cores
4. lack of ports or 3rd screen support
Not strictly M1X problems, but the machines it goes in are key too:
5. poorly redesigned laptops with major issues (e.g. something akin to a butterfly keyboard or stage light)
6. new features that don't work as intended, either buggy software or hardware problems
7. limited availability and high price
I'm pretty confident Apple won't muck this up, but I would also be surprised if M1X wows in quite the same way as M1 did.
I think the most likely areas of disappointment will be price and heat/noise, but mostly price.
A lot depends on how you use it.
My office usage uses about 10% CPU on average of an M1. Sometimes it spikes to 70% when doing video work but that's infrequent for me. I can always move the video work to my Windows desktop too. My professional stuff runs on the Windows desktop but I would like it on the road for the few times when I travel. That would probably use about 30% of an M1 (much higher on startup). I do this with my 2014 or 2015 MacBook Pro 15s and then fans are pretty noisy when I am remote.
I would actually be fine with an M1X with the M1 CPU cores - I don't think that I will need the 8 performance cores. But I want all of the other things in the M1X MacBook Pros. I would guess that most people are in my shoes - where the CPU of the M1 is enough. It is around the high-end in laptops these days and a lot of applications have moved to the cloud.
I get headache just from reading your suggestion. The system you are proposing would be so confusing and so clutter that its not going to work at all.
Apple will want to simplify the line so at most we will have just 2 chips and then only difference would be in core counts.
M-light,medium,hardcore
So I guess M and MX (or P) would most likely be simplified enough for marketing to work
But yeah, the whole naming scheme is messed up.
iPhone is about to get A15 chip and M2 is based on A15 but we get M1X next month? And then M2 for mobile devices and then M2X when?
Apple will want to simplify the line so at most we will have just 2 chips and then only difference would be in core counts.
M-light,medium,hardcore
So I guess M and MX (or P) would most likely be simplified enough for marketing to work
But yeah, the whole naming scheme is messed up.
iPhone is about to get A15 chip and M2 is based on A15 but we get M1X next month? And then M2 for mobile devices and then M2X when?
If you think that is messed up, look at Intel or AMD ?
In all seriousness, the consumer does not need to know what is based on what. A naming scheme that communicates the performance level and the generation is more than sufficient.
Or nVidia. The most popular video cards are three and four years old because they can't make enough of the new ones.
I have no idea what chip is in my watch. The watch came out in 2018, though, and there's a new model of the watch. So I assume I have an older CPU. Does it matter? No. I'm using an iPhone 7+. I plan to upgrade on Friday. If I'm good with a five-year-old CPU, I'm sure that I'd be fine with a one-year-old CPU. And I'm using a six-year-old CPU on my MacBook Pros and a Late 2009 iMac.
You weren't able to get Ryzen 5900X and 5950X CPUs unless you were willing to pay several hundred dollars above MSRP to someone you never heard of last year. So many people bought Zen 2 or 5800X CPUs.
You can't always get what you want.
I am more and more inclined to believe that Apple is moving back to the four-corner "Consumer" and "Professional" matrix that Steve Jobs introduced on his original return. Some will actually have the "Pro" name and others will be considered "professional" based on their qualities.
I think at worst we will have three classes of M-Series SoCs:
M - Baseline model designed to "consumer" products
MX - Upgrade model designed for "professional" products
MZ - Top-end model designed for the Mac Pro (essentially the "Xeon" of the M-series)
We know "M" exists and it's pretty clear so will "MX". And instead of a special SoC for the Mac Pro, it could just be a super-high core count version of "MX".
I think at worst we will have three classes of M-Series SoCs:
M - Baseline model designed to "consumer" products
MX - Upgrade model designed for "professional" products
MZ - Top-end model designed for the Mac Pro (essentially the "Xeon" of the M-series)
We know "M" exists and it's pretty clear so will "MX". And instead of a special SoC for the Mac Pro, it could just be a super-high core count version of "MX".
I agree, it’s a product matrix that makes sense and it seems like they are returning back to it.
Not sure I subscribe on the names, but I agree in principle.
Rumors are actually in favor of this. The leaks suggest that Mac Pro will use advanced chipset technology to stich together multiple „MX“ chips into a larger SoC.
I think this is actually the biggest risk of the newer macbooks. The M1 was wildly popular because of how quiet and cool it was running @ 10w TDP.
The new 14/16" models are going to be screaming fast, but undoubtedly will be running at higher TDP's with support for double the cores and more gpu cores.
Past intel macbooks ranged from 28w TDP (13" high end) to 45w (16"), and I think the new M1X models will likely be around that 28w range, meaning they may run as hot as the older intel 13" laptops.
I hope I'm wrong! You can of course run them in lower power modes, but that sort of takes away the purpose of buying a higher end machine.
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There is the GPU in the 16s as well.
I am glad that the 16s are thicker than the 15s were.
I have a 2015 with dGPU and it runs notably hotter than my 2014 with only iGPU.
There have been innovations in fans and heat pipes that have been shown in high-power laptops the past two years and hopefully Apple can use some of the new techniques to keep things cool.
Na, I wouldn’t worry about that. Intel‘s TDP are mostly marketing numbers, they do not reflect real power dissipation over most of relevant scenarios. Remember how people were complaining that the Air with a 7W Intel CPU didn’t have proper cooling? Well, the same air with M1 somehow runs perfectly fine.
The larger Apple chassis is perfectly capable of dissipating 60-80 watts of power. Intel 16“ runs how not because of the slim chassis but because the Intel CPU starts heating up any time you look at it. The Apple Silicon ms Hines won’t have that problem.
To be fair to Intel, their TDP numbers actually sort of do reflect power usage... Under specific circumstances.
No AVX workloads
Base clock only, and as long as there's headroom for it it'l not run at base
Do they have PL2 on mobile chips? I was shocked the first time I saw those thing where TDP doesn't seem to mean anything at all.