Will the upcoming Macbook Pros use A14 or A15 cores?

[Wolff Weber]

Found this very interesting as well, even though it is sort of expected. We've also known that hardware was locked in for iPhones by June of the previous year (15 months or so in advance) based on info/decisions surrounding Qualcomm.

Planning the Apple Silicon roadmap back in 2018 must have been very difficult. They probably did want to launch the MBP and larger iMac chips by mid 2021, but Covid and other factors delayed it. A lot has changed since 2018 when they were designing these chips! Fascinating.

Yet Apple Silicon architecture appears to be a clean, logical approach to the PC inquest: reduced bottlenecks, efficient frontend, excellent single-core performance, great perf/watt…
Still waiting for that legendary Mxx while enjoying M1 MBA.

 

[deconstruct60]

Yet Apple Silicon architecture appears to be a clean, logical approach to the PC inquest: reduced bottlenecks, efficient frontend, excellent single-core performance, great perf/watt…

PC inquiest? That is just as much as iPad Pro inquest (and high end phone one).

reduced bottlenecks --- resolved in a way to save battery power would help iPads cover more performance spectrum.
efficient frontend --- saves bandwidth so LPDDR RAM is sufficient.
single core performance --- "race to sleep"
perf/watt --- basically covered in the above and

Even if Apple didn't have a Mac product line ( only had Phone, iPad , watch , AppleTV ), they would still likely be on the same basic path outlined above. The die size of the M1 had been used for A (much earlier on) and A_X processors (for last several iterations ) before.

Even Thunderbolt on iPad Pro. When it gets to the point recording 4K HDR ProRes files then will probably be a faster offload port. [ And if EU kills off Lightning, as have been threatening since before 2018, will need a USB Type-C infrastructure emdedded into phones and other iPads also. ]

The A10X and A12X were deployed and generating feedback in 2018. How they used a future process shrink to put a slightly scaled down version of that along with improved IMG, NPU cores , and display controller onto a smaller chip was a pretty straightforward path to get onto.

Still waiting for that legendary Mxx while enjoying M1 MBA.

Legend before it even ships in volume? A bigger die with a new, improved, internal interconnect to allow more building blocks to interact at a larger count scale. It should work. However, electing a number one draft pick the to hall of fame after playing one preseason game is rather premature.

 

[Wolff Weber]

PC inquiest? That is just as much as iPad Pro inquest (and high end phone one).

reduced bottlenecks --- resolved in a way to save battery power would help iPads cover more performance spectrum.
efficient frontend --- saves bandwidth so LPDDR RAM is sufficient.
single core performance --- "race to sleep"
perf/watt --- basically covered in the above and

Even if Apple didn't have a Mac product line ( only had Phone, iPad , watch , AppleTV ), they would still likely be on the same basic path outlined above. The die size of the M1 had been used for A (much earlier on) and A_X processors (for last several iterations ) before.

Even Thunderbolt on iPad Pro. When it gets to the point recording 4K HDR ProRes files then will probably be a faster offload port. [ And if EU kills off Lightning, as have been threatening since before 2018, will need a USB Type-C infrastructure emdedded into phones and other iPads also. ]

The A10X and A12X were deployed and generating feedback in 2018. How they used a future process shrink to put a slightly scaled down version of that along with improved IMG, NPU cores , and display controller onto a smaller chip was a pretty straightforward path to get onto.





Legend before it even ships in volume? A bigger die with a new, improved, internal interconnect to allow more building blocks to interact at a larger count scale. It should work. However, electing a number one draft pick the to hall of fame after playing one preseason game is rather premature.

Well, I am only seasoned enthusiast since ZX Spectrum era, not an engeneer, so I won’t discuss bottlenecks of AS compared to bottlenecks of x86 architecture.
And as non-native English speaker I could be misunderstood regarding ,legendary’ - I meant something long discussed but never seen yet, a kind of Yeti/Bigfoot/MokeleMbembe or whatsoever.
So You won’t discuss with me the highlights and drawbacks of system architecture, for me my MBA is just a proof of better PC engineering comparing to Wintel laptops and Intel Macs.
Regards.

 

[dgdosen]

Announcement tomorrow (Tuesday) for a 10/5 event? We'll soon know what's next for Apple Silicon.

 

[Jorbanead]

Announcement tomorrow (Tuesday) for a 10/5 event? We'll soon know what's next for Apple Silicon.

Confused. Today is Tuesday night in the US? It’s too late for an announcement for 10/5. In Europe, the education promotion ends Monday, October 11 which hints that the event will be on October 12.

 

[nquinn]

Confused. Today is Tuesday night in the US? It’s too late for an announcement for 10/5. In Europe, the education promotion ends Monday, October 11 which hints that the event will be on October 12.

Macbook announcements in 2 weeks would be amazing but I'm so disillusioned at this point I'll just be happy if it happens in 2021.

 

[Tagbert]

My hunch says 90% it will be A15 and 10% that it will A14.

If its an M2, then it will be an A15-based SoC, whereas if it is an M1X, then it will most likely be A14...

They wouldn't put an M2 in the new MBPs. if they use an A15-style core, the chips would have to be M2x or equivalent. They've already called the base line chips M# as in the M1, the next generation of that would then be M2. Assuming that get's a big brother with more cores , that is going to need a different designation and Apple has used 'x' for that in the past.

 

[Serban55]

Expect invitations on 5 of October for that October 12 event

 

[JPack]

A15 design was frozen 3 years ago in 2018:

Apple Starts Planning a Future iPhone's Cameras Around Three Years in Advance

Following the launch of the iPhone 13 models, Apple's vice president of camera hardware engineering Graham Townsend and vice president of camera...

www.macrumors.com

Frozen doesn't mean tape-out though. It takes many months to test and qualify and respin.

 

[quarkysg]

Frozen doesn't mean tape-out though. It takes many months to test and qualify and respin.

Yes, but that also means no new features or capabilities from then on.

 

[anshuvorty]

Expect invitations on 5 of October for that October 12 event

Doubt it.

Expect an event in late October, maybe 10/26.

 

[CWallace]

Somebody mentioned that Apple tended to release new Macs shortly after their "Back to School" promotion ended.

In the US, the 2021 BtS ended on Monday the 27th so in theory it could be "any given Tuesday" from this point.

I think the real driver will be when they feel they have enough stock on hand to support a launch without delivery dates quickly becoming back-ordered 30+ days like happened with the iPhone 13.