Rumored pro chip

[JouniS]

I am not sure how this follows... Higher-end Macs will use wide memory interfaces, they are likely to have have around 2-4x more memory bandwidth and larger caches than x86 machines of the same class. So they certainly won't be slower.

The base model will probably be faster than a comparably priced Intel / AMD system. However, the extra money you spend upgrading the memory could also be used for other upgrades. Then we are no longer comparing a $5k Mac to a $5k Intel/AMD but a $5k Mac with $4k memory to a $8k Intel/AMD with $1k memory.

What is much less clear is the memory capacity. If Apple continues on their path of using tightly integrated memory modules, I doubt that high RAM configurations are practically achievable.

That's what I've been worrying since the M1 release. In the work I do, the sweet spot for RAM has been 256 to 512 GB for around a decade. Now we are finally approaching the point where it would be cost-effective to have a good enough computer on my desk, but Apple may no longer want to sell computers to me.

 

[AgentMcGeek]

Samsung's new LPDDR5 has a density of 48Gb, so I wouldn't be too worried about memory capacity in the medium term. In the short term though, LPDDR4 will be limited yes.

 

[quarkysg]

Samsung's new LPDDR5 has a density of 48Gb, so I wouldn't be too worried about memory capacity in the medium term. In the short term though, LPDDR4 will be limited yes.

You mistook 48Gb for 48GB? At the moment, LPDDR5 seems to have lower density modules compared to LPDDR4X.

 

[AgentMcGeek]

Samsung does not mention the density on its LPDDR4, so I can't compare much just with this: https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/dram/lpddr4/

In any case, I expect DDR5 modules density to increase as the new gen takes off. But you're right, it's gonna take a few years.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Well, what he posted is true in some degree. Seeing what Apple has done with Arcade+, Apple isn't going to challenge the Market Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo competes in anytime soon.

While you may be right, judging it by what Apple’s doing with Apple Arcade doesn’t make sense. Arcade is merely “Pay your subscription and never worry about in app purchases for any of these games”. That’s it. There’s somewhere around zero percent chance that all the AAA games, brimming with their in app purchases would EVER be found on Apple Arcade as they’re NOT going to give up that revenue

 

[diamond.g]

And, again, that’s what the fine folks at RIM said back when.

And, as it turns out, there’s a lot more going on with Apple and its allocation of resources to AAA games than you know about.

Where are the first party games? We are coming up on a year of M1 and we have nothing so far…

 

[altaic]

Where are the first party games? We are coming up on a year of M1 and we have nothing so far…

Patience, man.

 

[EntropyQ3]

You’ll notice that Apple is advertising it as Unified Memory Architecture (or UMA) and has highlighted its unique characteristics several times.

UMA is not standard RAM.

Apple uses bog-standard LPDDR4x RAM-packages for the M1, which last time I looked cost $25 for 8GB on the presently inflated RAM spot market. I expect Apple to pay significantly below $20.

 

[AgentMcGeek]

Thanks for pointing it out. I’ve been doing some reading and I got confusing info.

On the one hand, we’ve got on this very forum some people looking at the RAM specifically, at a low level, and saying it’s custom. On the other, it seems Chinese engineers have managed to swap storage and RAM chips, which would indicate it’s not very different from the off the shelf versions.

I couldn’t find detailed analysis of the RAM though, like with x-ray and microscope. I’d be happy to retract my previous statements if it appears I was wrong.

 

[leman]

Apple uses bog-standard LPDDR4x RAM-packages for the M1, which last time I looked cost $25 for 8GB on the presently inflated RAM spot market. I expect Apple to pay significantly below $20.

The definitely do not use standard modules. LPDDR4X modules on the M1 package have significantly higher pinout and other dimensions than the industry-standard chips. It's most certainly custom modules built exact to Apple's specifications. Our resident chip designers have speculated that the additional pins allow Apple to run the RAM at lower voltages than mandated by JEDEC which would explain the incredibly low power consumption of these chips (under 1 watt under load, 0.3 watt in "normal" use and 1.5 watts!!! in memory stress tests).

See this post for more details.

 

[leman]

On the one hand, we’ve got on this very forum some people looking at the RAM specifically, at a low level, and saying it’s custom. On the other, it seems Chinese engineers have managed to swap storage and RAM chips, which would indicate it’s not very different from the off the shelf versions.

They swapped RAM modules between two M1 packages... the modules themselves do not look like anything available on the market.

I couldn’t find detailed analysis of the RAM though, like with x-ray and microscope. I’d be happy to retract my previous statements if it appears I was wrong.

My post above this has a link where this is discussed in detail.

 

[diamond.g]

Patience, man.

That is the worse of it, folk here talk up Apples capability. I am full on expecting Ratchet and Clank levels of quality from something Apple has put their name on. Would maybe settle for something the scope of Infamous Second Son or Spider Man Miles Morales.

 

[altaic]

Apple uses bog-standard LPDDR4x RAM-packages for the M1, which last time I looked cost $25 for 8GB on the presently inflated RAM spot market. I expect Apple to pay significantly below $20.

I’d like to see a link to where I can buy some bog-standard 8+GB of LPDDR4X ram in a 7x14 mm 877BGA package. Even if you picked 2 of those 3, they don’t exist on the market. I did a quick take awhile ago in this post and I’d genuinely like to be proven wrong.

 

[altaic]

That is the worse of it, folk here talk up Apples capability. I am full on expecting Ratchet and Clank levels of quality from something Apple has put their name on. Would maybe settle for something the scope of Infamous Second Son or Spider Man Miles Morales.

Hey the great thing about being a gamer is that you can pass the time playing some classic Smash Bros if you’re looking to out some frustration. I wouldn’t hold my breath on a AAA title backed by Apple super soon, though. But, it may happen sooner than you might expect, considering how quickly they pivoted into AppleTV+ and full productions. 🤷‍♂️

 

[AgentMcGeek]

Thanks both! So it is a custom chip. I missed the nuance that the swapping happened between M1 chips. Then I guess my point stands. I’m curious how quick LPDDR5 is gonna catch up with its predecessor density wise, and how far Apple can go in the customisation.

 

[diamond.g]

Hey the great thing about being a gamer is that you can pass the time playing some classic Smash Bros if you’re looking to out some frustration. I wouldn’t hold my breath on a AAA title backed by Apple super soon, though. But, it may happen sooner than you might expect, considering how quickly they pivoted into AppleTV+ and full productions. 🤷‍♂️

I wait longer for my PS5 to wake from sleep than jumping in and playing some RC:Rift Apart. Believe it or not running around on the planets can be quite soothing with all the pretty and 0 loading. Game loading on PC has become a chore, I like flying around in MSFS 2020 but the 1-2 minute loads are irresponsible. I also catch myself yelling at my TV when playing God of War for the load screens.

 

[AgentMcGeek]

Don’t underestimate the incoming innovation of DX12 Ultimate. DirectStorage is gonna be a game changer on PC and consoles for loading assets and game levels. But as usual on PC, the hardware limitations are gonna be tough (you’ll need a PCIE3 NVME SSD and last-gen GPU). Something Macs won’t have to worry about.

 

[Andropov]

You’ll notice that Apple is advertising it as Unified Memory Architecture (or UMA) and has highlighted its unique characteristics several times.

UMA is not standard RAM. It’s one of the reasons the SOC is so efficient. Data doesn’t need to be copied around, it can be accessed by any subsystem all from the same place. For this to work though, you need high bandwidth, and that’s why the memory is custom designed with much more connection points than usual.

UMA and it’s RAM chips is critical to M1’s performance and efficiency. It’s not a weakness, it’s a strength that others will try to replicate.

What's unique about UMA and avoids needlessly copying data is the architecture, not the RAM chips themselves. Apple could have used standard LPDDR4X chips and still have almost the same performance. It's true that Apple is using custom RAM chips with much higher pin count (likely to reduce power consumption) but it's unclear (someone correct me if it isn't) if this results in significantly higher production costs for the RAM chips as to impact the price (obviously costs will be higher, but I don't know by how much).

On a Mac Pro, where the RAM may not fit on-package, I don't think there would be any disadvantage (other than the increased latency if the chips have to be moved out of the package) that would prevent Apple from offering any amount of RAM.

My point being: Apple's physical RAM chips are not some kind of weird or super-performant chips. The architecture is.

 

[AgentMcGeek]

My assumption was that having the chip on package and with a higher pin count allowed for lower latency and higher bandwidth, which intuitively (to me) sound critical for the UM architecture to really shine.

I can see how slow RAM could quickly become a bottleneck for the whole system.

But maybe that assumption is misplaced.

 

[diamond.g]

My assumption was that having the chip on package and with a higher pin count allowed for lower latency and higher bandwidth, which intuitively (to me) sound critical for the UM architecture to really shine.

I can see how slow RAM could quickly become a bottleneck for the whole system.

But maybe that assumption is misplaced.

It is an interesting balancing that Apple has achieved. GPU's need all the bandwidth (lets ignore TBDR for a second) and are not very latency sensitive. CPU's are almost the opposite, very latency sensitive and don't need all the bandwidth.

 

[quarkysg]

My assumption was that having the chip on package and with a higher pin count allowed for lower latency and higher bandwidth, which intuitively (to me) sound critical for the UM architecture to really shine.

I can see how slow RAM could quickly become a bottleneck for the whole system.

But maybe that assumption is misplaced.

If I’m not wrong, the higher pin counts for the M1 LPDDR4X modules are meant for grounding. This will allow lower voltage for the data signals as it reduces noise, thus achieving lower power consumptions. The signal rate is still the same for standard LPDDR4X modules. It is still 4267 MT/s.

 

[leman]

My assumption was that having the chip on package and with a higher pin count allowed for lower latency and higher bandwidth, which intuitively (to me) sound critical for the UM architecture to really shine.

No, the performance/latency is identical to other systems (e.g. Tiger Lake with LPDDR4X). This has been measured by anandtech and others and the results are fairly clear. The only difference is power consumption (@quarkysg has a great explanation above).

It is an interesting balancing that Apple has achieved. GPU's need all the bandwidth (lets ignore TBDR for a second) and are not very latency sensitive. CPU's are almost the opposite, very latency sensitive and don't need all the bandwidth.

And the memory controller behaves similarly to what you'd expect from a GPU (very high memory parallelism + latency hiding).

 

[JMacHack]

“We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent PC gaming system. iPhone guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in.”

I know that there’s a lot of hubris in what I said. Still, Apple has shown no understanding of “PC gaming culture” in its entire history.

I’ve stated it in other threads, “PC gamers” are actively hostile to Apple. Even if they reached out a little, they would not make any headway.

And to Apple “reaching out” would be offering Apple Arcade subscriptions at a discount.

 

[diamond.g]

I know that there’s a lot of hubris in what I said. Still, Apple has shown no understanding of “PC gaming culture” in its entire history.

I’ve stated it in other threads, “PC gamers” are actively hostile to Apple. Even if they reached out a little, they would not make any headway.

And to Apple “reaching out” would be offering Apple Arcade subscriptions at a discount.

They need to force the market. Buy Ubisoft, "remaster" the games for Mac/iOs/tvOS. Basically pull a Microsoft/Zenimax.

Increase the price of Apple Arcade and include these games as apart of the service (ala GamePass). Use all this "epic pro hardware" in a datacenter to accelerate running these games in the cloud and bundle it with the top tier iCloud subscription (ala xCloud).

 

[quarkysg]

Increase the price of Apple Arcade and include these games as apart of the service (ala GamePass). Use all this "epic pro hardware" in a datacenter to accelerate running these games in the cloud and bundle it with the top tier iCloud subscription (ala xCloud).

Apple may change the Apple Arcade model where it may include additional payments for premium games, to attract larger game developers. I think there are many ways for Apple to entice game developers to release games for macOS. Buying one may not be the most optimum use of their investment dollars.