No, it is saying for integer performance the a13 is faster than the Ryzen and is 2% slower than the 9900k. Floating point performance does lag by 15%. For most everyday tasks, integer performance is more important.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Who's excited for an ARM Mac mini?
- Thread starter nick9191
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Which means some aspects of the below has problems.
Servers that are wireless only? Not going to work. Those same deployments driving keeping the case the same are also going to heavily drive that the Ethernet port stays. ( perhaps even pressure to have two). Zero is probably disconnected from reality.
RAM Memory in the SoC? Probably not.
First,
Not really on iPad 11
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad+Pro+11-Inch+Teardown/115457
Yellow versus Red highlights above. I can see where a bit on slippery slope on presumption because placed very close, but isn't. Nor does it scale. Current Mac Mini goes from 8 to 64GB . The next gen should scale to 128GB , but minitially needs to go to 64GB. ( also that apple is still going to slap giant mark ups on the RAM component costs so if shift to super high density RAM chips then won't be able to hold the current prices. And fewer are going to pay for even more expensive Minis. ) .
Similarly older iPad Pro
Orange ( RAM) Red (SoC).
iPad Pro 12.9" Teardown
We’ve been digging through the cornucopia of Apple’s fall lineup, and today, we're thankful to have the last morsel on our teardown table. We’re...www.ifixit.com
for the larger , higher clocked A series SoC, Apple hasn't historically put the RAM inside the SoC. Apple Silicon for the Mac is probably going to be clocked higher (higher TDP) and be larger still.
Even if did it the notion that would add other RAM elsewhere on the board to go past 16GB doesn't make much sense. You don't want two substantively different trace lengths between the "banks" of RAM your memory controller(s) is accessing. Usually you want the RAM chips symmetric if serving at the same "level" . On the laptops they are grouped in a block near each other.
PMIC probably won't integrate now either. Apple didn't buy Dialog's PMIC business until late 2018. Any Apple silicon chips rolling out in the next 6-10 months probably was already well into design by then. Pushing it into a multiple chip module probably wouldn't help all that much space wise ( or thermal wise).
Wi-Fi + Bluetooth. The iPhones don't do it. There is even more room in the desktops.
The PCH is slippery slope. Is Apple going to step up and do USB 4 / TB v4 intergration or 'punt' that to some third party?
There is something akin to conservation of mass here. You can chuck gobs and gobs of duties into ta SoC , but that is not necessarily going to make it smaller. Yes Apple is getting a process shrink but guess what their CPU+GPU core has to do more.
Need to drive 4-6 displays. (versus 1-2 for an iPad Pro). And enough GPU "horsepower" so that when driving that things don't start not to keep up. Similarly Much bigger I/O bandwidth issues to wrangle (PCI-e v3 lanes off to more than just a custom SSD. ). The system cache is probably going to substantively grow once add lots more compute units sharing the same unified memory resource. Better Virtualization support . etc.
[ I suspect the Developer Transition Kit with a A12Z is a much smaller board than the Mac Mini 2018's board. But DTK doesn't do I/O wise what the Mini does either. Similar with storage capacity in RAM or at rest storage. ]
There isn't going to be any M.2 connectors any more than there will be SATA connectors.
Apple certainly could blow gobs of space to solder the limited RAM onto the board, but the Mini could be a more competitive system if they didn't. (e.g., bigger or discrete GPU. )
The SoC and the RAM do not have to be next to each other. Look inside any PC, there is space between the DIMM connectors and the CPU (Intel or AMD), and they seem to be running fine at 4+Ghz clocks. The RAM is right next to the SoC for space/packaging reasons in the iPad, which is less of a consideration on the Mac Mini.
You are looking at the Mini SoC in isolation. Its not going to be a specific to the Mini, it is going to be a shared SoC with the entry level or midrange level SoC in the laptops. I can even see the consumer level Minis (using the entry level SoCs) being wireless only, and the server level Minis having Ethernet ports, (possibly using a higher end SoC) bringing us back to the Mini being a two model lineup, with the consumer unit getting no Etherent port, and no possiblity of going beyond 16GB, and the server going to 64GB or even higher, and having Ethernet ports (1 or 2) and opening up the possibility that the higher end SoCs will have more powerful iGPUs, or even opening up the possibility of dGPUs.
Apple already makes thier own PMIC (see: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+11+Teardown/126192). Putting that inside the SoC should not be an issue.
You are making a lot of assumptions based on the iPad 11, and the A9X. Those assumptions don't necessarily apply to a Laptop or Mac Mini. The off Soc RAM on the A12X may be an attempt to spread the heat generation over more surface area, due to the limited cooling of the iPads. The A13 SoC, as used in the iPhone 11 family, also has 4GB of RAM, but it is on SoC. Argument could be made that the A12X generates more heat due to its having 4 cores and 7 GPUs, vs. 2 Cores and 4 GPUs in the iPhone 11, but keep in mind that the initial AS Macs will be using 5nm process technology in a bigger chassis, whether it be a Mac Mini,or a laptop.
The path length issue for on SoC vs. off SoC is not insurmountable in any way. The A14 will be using large caches, and while there may be some impact on cache misses, it won't make much of a difference, and we are talking sub 5ns. differences (what ever the time to transit 10mm path distance divided by the speed of lignt (roughly) comes out to be. The timing difference could be easily made up by specifying a 5 or 10ns slower RAM speed for the on SoC RAM, but I don't even think that will be necessary.
Why does the new AS Mini need to drive 4-6 displays? Are people actually buying Mac Minis to do that now? I sort of doubt that. If you have 4 USB4/TB4 ports available anyway which every AS Mac Soc will, I suppose you could do it with them, but I wouldn't be surprised if Apple doesn't write their drivers that way.
The reason you shove as much as possible into the SoC is to cut costs, and to save board space. If you are Apple, and looking to design a clean sheet SoC, you put as much into the SoC as you can, eliminating potential external vendors that may create an issue (one of the reasons that Intel has been shown the door). Especially on the low end, having a motherboard that consists of the SoC, any external optional RAM, the SSD (in whatever form), the LCD Drivers (not needed on the Mini, but for the laptops), power supply/power management ICs, RF chips for Wf-fi and Bluetooth, and whatever protection circuits are needed for the USB4/TB5 and ethernet ports would make for a very, very low cost motherboard. For 16GB RAM specification, you don't even need the off SoC RAM.
Last edited:
For be it for me to tell anyone how to spend his money. However, you could be in for a very long wait for a design refresh. Consider the Mac Pro. In August 2006, Apple introduced the Intel-based Mac Pro in the Power Mac G5 cheesegrater form factor. Apple did not replace the Power Mac G5 form factor for more than seven years when it introduced the revolutionary "trash can" form factor in December 2013. It was another six years before Apple replaced with trash can Mac Pro form factor with the "Cheesegrater II" form factor in December 2019.
It is generally recognized that Apple has been working on the Apple Silicon for years. This means that the Cheesegrater II design language is part of Apple Silicon product plans. The design language includes the Pro Display XDR and the new rack mount Mac Pro. It is quite likely that Apple Silicon-based professional products unlike anything Apple sold in the past will sport the Cheesegrater II design language.
If you want a Mac Pro and you don't like Cheesegrater II styling, then history indicates that waiting past first year of Apple's product cycle is not a particularly clever strategy. The Cheesegrater II promises to be around for awhile. Consumer Mac designs have shorter lifecycles, but not that much shorter.
Just as long as Apple adds a Mac Pro Cube to the line-up...!
Or just a smaller CGv2, the mythical xMac...!!!
So long as they don't further decrease the number of ports from the 2018 model and keep removable/expandable memory, the form factor won't matter. It will also most definitely beat out the 8th Gen Intel CPUs in said 2018 model, so performance ought to not be a concern. Basically, the bar set for being happy with an Apple Silicon Mac mini (that isn't the DTK) is pretty low.
Soldered RAM and storage will be expected. Unfortunate, but expected. Apple already made it extra hard for users to access the current mini's RAM.
Imo what we will see is a Mac mini in the form factor close to an Apple TV, with just some USB-C ports and maybe an ethernet port (for the niche market using the mini as a server).
It won't, and will never be, the desktop Mac everyone is looking for.
While I don't disagree that they'll likely make the RAM non-removable, they made it a specific point to make it removable in 2018 after it not being removable in 2014 (much like every other Intel U-series Mac at the time) after listening to user feedback. When Apple listens to user feedback, typically their decisions to reverse course stick. It is for that reason that I'm pretty sure we're not going to see, at least the larger MacBook Pros, the return of the butterfly keyboard.
But they made it ultra difficult for a lay user to access it. I mean there's no reason, whatever engineering excuses Apple had, to engineer the current mini for user to basically disassemble the whole machine just to access the RAM (knowing the previous gens 2012 and older have the RAM extremely easy for users to access). It's like giving the finger to those user feedback.
Them ditching butterfly keyboard is mostly a cost issue, so they don't have to keep replacing it under their own repair program.
My 2015 iMac is seeing some issues and I would love to move to a modular system with a Mini as the base. I am not a fan of AIOs like the iMac. They are great as far as money vs what you get but I just don't like the idea of one thing going wrong and you lose use of your entire system. If they release a Mini this year on ARM I will invest/support it. If not I will be buying the latest Mac Mini and upgrade the unit when they do move it to ARM.
I want to see Apple return to "making" their own displays, and then have it set up so one could slot a Mac mini into the back of an Apple Display; iMac without the negatives...?
I would buy this combination today. However, after lusting after this sort of thing for the past five years I've about come to the conclusion that the "it will eat into iMac sales" argument carries the day within Apple. What little hope of seeing this I have left is tied to the ARM transition, and that's a very thin reed of hope.
Well I certainly wouldn't mind if you could just use your outdated iMac as a monitor, but it seems Apple has put a stop to that. Having to buy a new monitor every time you need a new computer is bad for your economy, it's bad for the environment and it's annoying. I plan to continue using my 23" Cinema HDs with my next computer, which I think will be an AS Mac mini.
Me, of course. I want to see if it is a myth that ARM cannot compete with x86 , or if this meme is gonna be further cemented, possibly forever.
Not super excited. The mini is such a constrained package. More interested in a system that supports nVidia or AMD level GPUs and 2 (or more) 4 or 5 k monitors. Being tiny is not a requirement for a desktop/deskside system for me. Prefer it to be a slightly bigger package that has enough Power Supply, cooling, and fans to prevent overheating and run cool and nearly silent even under high loads. If I hear the fans from 12 inches away in a quiet room it is too loud!
Also, let me expand the memory and SSD with something generic I can buy off Amazon.
Also, let me expand the memory and SSD with something generic I can buy off Amazon.
Last edited:
Besides the SSD expansion, the Mini does all of what you’ve just mentioned with an eGPU. They don’t run loud and although they get hot it doesn’t restrain them or damage them in any way. I’ve heard the fans on my 2018 i5 Mac Mini maybe one or two times. Or maybe you just need to build an ITX PC lol.
I watched a video on how to add RAM into a 2018 Mac mini. It's not that hard. It isn't just "twist off the bottom and there you go", but it's still not that bad. Plus, they realize that most users won't bother to do it.
Also, them ditching the butterfly keyboard was PR more than cost. Their keyboards were known for being terrible and you had people outright not buying Mac laptops (which are at least 75% of Mac purchases made today); they HAD to do something about it. Why they staggered the releases of the notebooks to add in the better keyboard is beyond me. But if you look at review sites and videos for each Mac model, you'll see them now recommending people to buy them again. With the butterfly keyboards, there was no way in hell that I was recommending that anyone buy a MacBook Pro. And I know that I'm far from alone there.
It is hard considering you have to deal with thin cables and connectors that can break easily.
Mac mini Late 2018 Memory (RAM) Replacement
Learn how to upgrade or replace the memory in your 2018 Mac mini with this RAM replacement guide. The mini can support up to 64 GB of RAM, using...
www.ifixit.com
Personally, one shouldn't be tearing the whole computer apart just to get access to RAM (that is also put under a "RAM shield" for no reason). To me, that passes the ridiculous line, considering that Apple used to make it ultra easy in the past. Thus I bet they will solder everything this time around with Apple Silicon Macs.
Two products; Apple Mac mini & Apple Display, when combined make an iMac...!
The negatives are on the traditional AIO iMac side; computer dies, monitor useless; monitor dies, computer in giant display shell...
Apple does not support Nvidia, so wanting that is a No-Go...
Wishing for a larger enclosure in a Mac mini thread, come on dude...
Expand the memory or storage? This is Apple bruh, another No-Go...
Really sounds like you just want to gripe, go build an ITX PC...
It is hard considering you have to deal with thin cables and connectors that can break easily.
Mac mini Late 2018 Memory (RAM) Replacement
Learn how to upgrade or replace the memory in your 2018 Mac mini with this RAM replacement guide. The mini can support up to 64 GB of RAM, using...
Personally, one shouldn't be tearing the whole computer apart just to get access to RAM (that is also put under a "RAM shield" for no reason). To me, that passes the ridiculous line, considering that Apple used to make it ultra easy in the past. Thus I bet they will solder everything this time around with Apple Silicon Macs.
I can also attest to the fact that replacing the RAM is actually pretty simple. You may be missing the point on the RAM accessibility though. How accessible the RAM is is actually perfect for Apple because you please the “we want to have access” crowd while not losing money from the majority of customers. 99% of people will see that RAM upgrade on the Mac Mini and think “hell no, I’ll pay the $200 to Apple”. But the users who want to be able to upgrade aren’t those people and they will take it apart to upgrade it.
Apple pleases the upgrade crowd without risking their fat RAM profits from the majority of people. I am hesitant for the ARM Mini, even though I really want one, because I think you’re right about them soldering the RAM but it’s not a certainty.
You're right from Apple's point of view. Although you have to wonder the amount of time Apple spent in intentionally engineering the new mini for the RAM to be that convoluted to access (oh and let's add a "RAM shield" on top of that...). It's like somebody in Apple engineering was just bitter.
Nonetheless, my personal view is that RAM and the storage drive from a desktop computer have to be user accessible. I can excuse the need to solder everything on a laptop (although I remember how Apple pride themselves how they made the drive and RAM user accessible on older Macbooks/powerbooks), but it's not an excuse on a desktop where space is not a premium.