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Very Interesting M1 Analysis
- Thread starter leons
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Hackintosh plus Big Sur 11.4 beta now supports AMD RX6000 dGPUs but not for beginners.
Just imagine if you had to write your own firmware and design your own motherboard, like we had to for the PowerPC x704
The ultimate hackintosh!
No they are not. Laptops and desktops offer different power budgets. Apple is using laptop power budget in the desktops with current generation of M1. That's understandable because they are coming from a tablet chip design (process, architecture etc.). They could have had a more powerful chip with similar architecture but they are not ready. You are not suggesting that in, say, 2023 Mac Pro and MaacBook Pro will use the same chip, are you? But why not to use a desktop processor (from Mac Pro) in MacBook?
Yes they are. That’s the whole point of the article. Intel has arbitrarily determined what laptop and desktop power budgets should be. But that’s ass-backward. A computer should be designed with a particular set of use cases and capabilities in mind. It should be designed to a performance budget. Not to a power budget. And apple has done that.
And, yes, I am suggesting that, in the future, high end MacBook pros will use the same chip as is used in, at least, something like an iMac Pro. A Mac Pro isn’t the only desktop mac - it’s more of a workstation mac. So, in the end, you will likely have something like:
lowest-end processor: iPad Pro, macbook air, low end MacBook pros, low end iMacs
middle processor: high end MacBook pros, high end iMacs, low end mac pro
highest end processor: high end mac pro
Each of these cpus is suitable for desktop use.
Another way of looking at it is that I am now able to buy a laptop with a desktop-class processor. No more needing to compromise on performance just for portability or battery life.
This isn’t meant to be a knock on the imac, as the M1 chip continues to offer better performance compared to other processors in this product category.
An all-in-one form factor means you get everyone in one tightly-integrated package, rather than having to shop for the accessories separately. Maybe I just don’t want to deal with a bunch of cables, and prefer a setup which is easy to deploy and takes up minimal space on my desk. There are a lot of advantages that don’t necessarily translate well to a spec sheet, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist or shouldn’t be considered.
If I weren’t already using the 27” 5k imac, I would be sorely tempted to pick up one of the newer iMacs. But having used the form factor since 2011, I am in love with it and don’t see myself doing back to a conventional desktop+monitor combo.
One caveat I have with this idea is that given how capital intensive processor design is, I am not convinced that Apple is willing to invest in creating a high-end processor just for a low-volume product like the Mac Pro.
From a cost-savings perspective, it makes sense to include the M1 in all the low end Macs and the iPad Pro to save the hassle of having to design the A14x chip. It’s just easier compared to having to come up with minor variants for each product and further mucking up your supply chain. And even then, these 5 product lines probably still won’t sell in sufficient quantities to fully amortise the R&D costs. But Apple is fine because they help to sell more expensive hardware with fairly decent profit margins.
I have a theory that the Mac Pro may end up using the same processor as the iMac Pro. What this means is that the Mac Pro may be to the iMac Pro what the Mac mini currently is to the iMac.
There may not be a Mac Pro in the sense of the term.
Keep in mind that it’s really not that capital intensive if you use the SOC design methodology. Same cores, just more of them.
All-in-one isn't such a disadvantage if we can have Target Display Mode though so we can buy new Mac mini down the road and keep the display.
Here's hoping for some surprise in next macOS.
But it’s a very capable processor, more so than many PC desktop processors at the moment. It’s like putting a 11th-gen Core i7 in every machine.
And the appeal of an all-in-one is that you get to declutter — you get a great screen built in, speakers built in, webcam built in, microphones built in. It’s a complete system. As soon as you go to a laptop with externals, you have to buy all that gear separately, and you get cables. So if you know you’re not going to be on the move, or you already have a machine for that like an iPad Pro, its a good option.
The commercial benefit for the strive for power efficiency pays off: One processor for iPad Pro to iMac. What is amazing is not that the iMac 24 uses the M1, it is that the Air and iPad can use the M1 without fans. The iPad Pro "feels" over overpowered while the iMac 24 feels underpowered. I wonder if that is an old-fashioned perception.
M1 low end? Hardly. In lack of other metrics, Geekbench score for single thread is 33% better and multithread 8% worse than the 10900k eight core in the recent iMac. For everyday use, I do not think it matters at all.
How the high end, an M1 "Pro" chip, will scale will be very interesting to follow.
Clarification: I think the M1, M2, M3 will be indicator of chip generation and not not performance level indicator within each generation.
M1 low end? Hardly. In lack of other metrics, Geekbench score for single thread is 33% better and multithread 8% worse than the 10900k eight core in the recent iMac. For everyday use, I do not think it matters at all.
How the high end, an M1 "Pro" chip, will scale will be very interesting to follow.
Clarification: I think the M1, M2, M3 will be indicator of chip generation and not not performance level indicator within each generation.
And that's why they get to now say that they're selling more M1 Macs than Intel Macs. It's win-win-win-win for Apple from both roll-out and marketing point of view:
They get to sell a lot of Macs because lower-end Macs are sold in higher quantities.
Lower-end machines are sufficient for devs to update their software for the M1, so that more software is available when Macs aimed at arguably the more picky customers become available.
They get to blow the competition out of the water multiple times, since each time they release a new M1 Mac performance goes up (on M1 Macs released so far this is due to differences in cooling capacity - none, 1 fan, 2 fans; next step up will probably be in performance potential).
Customers who are incapable of waiting longer (due to their upgrade situation or low impulse control) will buy a lower-end M1 Mac now, and a higher-end M1 Mac later to replace it with. More sales.
...or you actually need a new computer and has made an informed decision based on the current M1 performance. I likely buy an 24 iMac because it does what it is supposed to do right now and for a foreseeable future 3-5 years.
At any rate the versatility of the M1 is simply amazing.
Absolutely, and that case was covered by the "lower-end Macs are sold in higher-quantities" point right at the beginning. They sell well because let's be honest, they match (and exceed) the needs of most Apple customers.
The last point covers those who make the decision for reasons other than "this is exactly what I need".
To create a high-performance M1X, you simply need many more CPU and GPU cores. This makes for a much larger and more expensive chip, unless you can produce the chip on a smaller than 5nm lithography process. TSMC’s 4nm Fab might be ready in Q4 2021.
AMD’s threadripper has 64 cores and it’s using a less advanced process compared to the M1. I think Apple will be just fine adding more cores to the M1 with the 5nm process. They should be going the chiplet route.
Doubling the number of CPU and GPU cores would much-less-than-double the size of the die, which would much-less-than-double the cost of the chip. The chip would be neither “much larger” nor “much more expensive.”
Chiplets are a disadvantage unless absolutely necessary because the reticle won’t support putting everything on the same die. First CPU i ever designed, finished in 1996, used “chiplets” (nobody called it that back then, of course). The only reason we did it that way was because we couldn’t fit the transistors in a single reticle. We wished we didn’t have to do it that way.
The M1 has 8 cpu-cores, 8 gpu-cores, 16 neural-cores, 8 or 16 GB memory and other stuff, all in all 16 billion transistors. AMD threadripper has 19.2 billion transistors and costs literally thousands of euros! ?????
The new era of Apple Silicon gives me vibes of the PPC era and before. You got an iMac with a G3, a Powermac with a G3, a Powerbook with a G3, and an iBook with a G3, and so on until the Intel era.
Maybe it’s another case of “what’s old is new again”? Who knows. Maybe they’ll differentiate models with clockspeed increases or something.
Maybe it’s another case of “what’s old is new again”? Who knows. Maybe they’ll differentiate models with clockspeed increases or something.
I think the CPU cores will all be in the same die, while the GPU cores will be chiplets for the highest end Mx SoC.
I think the margins for Threadripper would be extremely high as it’s a low volume product. The M1 packs a lot more functionalities as well, although most are simpler and specialized processing units. M1 has comparatively larger caches as well. My reply merely states that the M1 node process shouldn’t be a limiting factor for scaling.
The GPU will indeed be a discrete chip for the highest end product. Not clear if it will be in-package or not. Definitely not a “chiplet” though.
Apple is definitely heading towards a place where the iPhone, iPads and Macs will share a common microarchitecture, and core designs for CPU/GPU/ML and other blocks. The difference will probably be Core counts - as in more cores on the higher end lines.
I expect the next group of Macs to have something like 8 Performance 8 Efficiency and at least double the GPU core counts, as the Apple Silicon microarchitecture is EXTREMELY scalable.
I expect the next group of Macs to have something like 8 Performance 8 Efficiency and at least double the GPU core counts, as the Apple Silicon microarchitecture is EXTREMELY scalable.