Just for clarity, Bloomberg were referring to the M1 having 12 total cores:
Apple will reportedly use 12-core 5nm ARM processor in a 2021 Mac
A song of Icestorm and Firestorm.
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Will there ever be a new large iMac (Pro)?
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Just for clarity, Bloomberg were referring to the M1 having 12 total cores:
A stands for Apple. Since they were their first major chips, they thought it was fun and clever marketing.
M stands for Macintosh (or Mac). So they’re meant specifically for macs.
A chips are not different from chips (not totally sure what you mean). Both the M-series and A-series use the same basic design. A14, A15, A16 just describes the generation. So A14 uses firestorm cores on the 5nm process. M1 also uses these same cores on the 5nm process.
Ha! Yeah something like that.
I meant to write “How are A chips different from M chips?” . . . so A14 design is basically the same as M1 design, so why do they have such different names? The 14th gen of A chips is the same as 1st gen of M chips??
Because of marketing! That’s all it is ?
But in all seriousness, the M-series has more specific Mac features included like thunderbolt controllers, higher ram capacity, Rosetta suppport, etc. but the CPU, GPU, and NPU core designs are the same as that years A-series.
To be clear, A14 only has 4 cores total, whereas the M1 has 8 cores. There are many differences, but the specific core design is the same. So one performance core on A14 is the same as M1. Though they will be clocked higher on the M1.
Last post about this (off) topic I also want to say sorry, I was a large part contributing to it getting out of control. I’d and it was big of you to apologize!You are right, I'm sorry. I have nothing against Homy btw, but I'll address him below. This got out of hands so I'm sorry for the drama
I might would have agreed with you and gotten in your wise if the video was over 20 minutes and it was actually for real just 95% filling out with fluff, 5 % about an quite old rumor that and full of advertising etc but at least in my region (North Europe) it didn’t. But we all have our different preferences about these sort of things and none has to like everything!
Anyway, it was big of you to say sorry about the argument getting a bit out of hand and I do as well, especially to those poor bastards thinking something big was going on seeing all these new posts.
Time to get back to obsessing about new Macs and the rumors leading up to it’s reveals!
As Jorbanead noted, Apple Silicon as a family all share a common foundation. The base SoC is the "A" series and it is developed for the iPhone model of that year, though it will also appear in other Apple devices (like the iPod Touch, AppleTV, iPad and HomePod). The first A-series SoC was the A4 released with the original iPad and also used in the iPhone 4.
Before the 2021 model, iPad Pros received an "X" version with more CPU and GPU cores (with a one-off "Z" version with an additional GPU core over the "X").
The M1 shares the core and GPU count we would see in an "A14X" along with additional hardware specific to supporting macOS and Mac hardware (USB4, TB3, etc.).
In addition to the A and M, Apple Silicon also includes the S (Apple Watch), T (TouchID on Intel Macs), W (Wi-Fi for the Apple Watch), H (Headphones) and U (Ultra-wide band location tracking).
(Apple also uses the "M" moniker for the Motion Coprocessor on the iPhone and the W1 handled Wi-Fi in the Beats Solo and original Air Pods before headphones moved to the dedicated H-series SoC and W2 and W3 became the Wi-Fi controller in the Apple Watch).
Apple silicon - Wikipedia
What do you think the "S" for Apple Silicon for Apple Watch stands for? Series? System?As Jorbanead noted, Apple Silicon as a family all share a common foundation. The base SoC is the "A" series and it is developed for the iPhone model of that year, though it will also appear in other Apple devices (like the iPod Touch, AppleTV, iPad and HomePod). The first A-series SoC was the A4 released with the original iPad and also used in the iPhone 4.
Before the 2021 model, iPad Pros received an "X" version with more CPU and GPU cores (with a one-off "Z" version with an additional GPU core over the "X").
The M1 shares the core and GPU count we would see in an "A14X" along with additional hardware specific to supporting macOS and Mac hardware (USB4, TB3, etc.).
In addition to the A and M, Apple Silicon also includes the S (Apple Watch), T (TouchID on Intel Macs), W (Wi-Fi for the Apple Watch), H (Headphones) and U (Ultra-wide band location tracking).
(Apple also uses the "M" moniker for the Motion Coprocessor on the iPhone and the W1 handled Wi-Fi in the Beats Solo and original Air Pods before headphones moved to the dedicated H-series SoC and W2 and W3 became the Wi-Fi controller in the Apple Watch).
Apple silicon - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I just need to ask, I have no experience in making chips or not even an understanding how it’s done.
Not saying it is what Apple is doing just asking but
Isn’t it possible for Apple to focus on creating a powerful version of a chip before they focus in efficiency etc? My question being; could Apple make, let’s say, a M2X-chip that they’ve been working on for the last few years and later focus on making the A15 and the M2-chips?
I understand that the logical thing would be to do it the other way around but just asking since I could see some benefits for them putting out the powerful Macs first and then the less powerful Macs and then of course in time for September launch the A15 chip.
With the semiconductor shortage maybe it would also be the most economical thing to do etc.
Also read a bit about it the scalability and just assume it goes both ways, scaling up and scaling down and figured maybe there the future for Apple products, releasing their high end products first and then scaling it down.
As I said I know very little about this area I’m just asking since it’s something I’ve thought about for a few weeks/months but not seen anyone talk about really.
Not saying it is what Apple is doing just asking but
Isn’t it possible for Apple to focus on creating a powerful version of a chip before they focus in efficiency etc? My question being; could Apple make, let’s say, a M2X-chip that they’ve been working on for the last few years and later focus on making the A15 and the M2-chips?
I understand that the logical thing would be to do it the other way around but just asking since I could see some benefits for them putting out the powerful Macs first and then the less powerful Macs and then of course in time for September launch the A15 chip.
With the semiconductor shortage maybe it would also be the most economical thing to do etc.
Also read a bit about it the scalability and just assume it goes both ways, scaling up and scaling down and figured maybe there the future for Apple products, releasing their high end products first and then scaling it down.
As I said I know very little about this area I’m just asking since it’s something I’ve thought about for a few weeks/months but not seen anyone talk about really.
"System on a Chip"
The A-series SoC always comes first because it is the "baseline" chip designed for the iPhone (which is the most important product). Apple then tweaks the number of cores and such for other applications (iPad Pro, Macs, etc.) based on their needs. So there will always be an A-series before an Ax-series or M-series.
David Sparks weighed in on the naming for the more powerful Mac SoC, claiming that he sees it not being named M2 because that could cause customer confusion if the next "efficiency model" for the MacBook Air and iPad Pro is named M3 (which is what I also argued up-thread). His opinion is Apple will introduce a new identifier for the "performance model" (like X1, X2, etc.) and leave M for the "efficiency model" used on the MBA and iPP.
Naming the Next Mac Apple Silicon - MacSparky
Yesterday we got reports from Asia that the successor to the M1 is now in production. I’d expect this is the chip for the next round of Mac upgrades (MacBook Pro, big iMac, upper-tier Mac mini). I’d also expect this looks a lot like the M1, except it has more performance and graphics cores...
www.macsparky.com
Generally speaking, no! Efficiency is what enables performance.
Since the X usually means the same kind of chip, but with more cores, you can’t build an M2X before having nailed the design of the M2.
Nonetheless new innovations in chip design can be introduced first with the A-line or M-line of chips. Whatever Apple decides to update first.
I understand it’s the way it’s done now but figured maybe they put together a new team with some of the usual members to get the Mac chips to catch up this or next generation and try break the connection between the A series and M series but they won’t do that if it will be too much of an economically disadvantage of course but that Apple has to “wait for iPhone” before releasing the new Mac chips just seems very odd to me.
I could however feel it would make sense to create the chips the way they’ve done but still manufacture the the more powerful chips first and then the low end Mac-chips and also iPhone chips in advance for the annual launch.
Of course I don’t expect the above to be the case because I’m rarely on point when it comes to Apple.
But just fun to speculate about it even if I’m totally wrong.
I just don’t see the point in keeping the momentum of “how it’s always been done” if there’s another way it could be done that maybe would be wise to gain the pro‘s trust and money if it doesn’t make less economical sense.
Though I’m sure most of us (and 95% of people using Mac’s in their profession) will be able to use whatever comes next from Apple in our daily lives whatever it may be if we needed to.
I could however feel it would make sense to create the chips the way they’ve done but still manufacture the the more powerful chips first and then the low end Mac-chips and also iPhone chips in advance for the annual launch.
Of course I don’t expect the above to be the case because I’m rarely on point when it comes to Apple.
But just fun to speculate about it even if I’m totally wrong.
I just don’t see the point in keeping the momentum of “how it’s always been done” if there’s another way it could be done that maybe would be wise to gain the pro‘s trust and money if it doesn’t make less economical sense.
Though I’m sure most of us (and 95% of people using Mac’s in their profession) will be able to use whatever comes next from Apple in our daily lives whatever it may be if we needed to.
The engineering team that creates A-series and M-series are the same team. It’s not that one team does A14 and then another team does M1. (They likely have smaller sub-teams but there is heavy overlap)
Think of it this way: creating the A14 is a bit like building a house. The A14 is a small house with a few features. As they build the house they may learn of a new material or technique to build the walls. They may realize the sizes of their rooms aren’t right. They may decide to demolish the whole house and start over because they learned of a new type of foundation that’s way better. Once they finish the house, they can move on to the bigger house: M1. Everything they learned from A14 can be used on the bigger house, but this time they don’t have to worry about changing room dimensions or even demolishing the whole house (which would cost a lot of money) and starting over.
Simply put, it’s much less risky and much quicker to design the simple version first because you can extrapolate everything you learned on the simple version to the more complex versions much faster. If you know the core design works on A14, you know it’ll work on M1.
It’s really just the smartest way to do it.
Thanks. Yes it’s kind of what I thought but at the same time I kind of come back to “but if you did that last year, what could possibly be so different this year? Why not move on to the big house from the start and have more rime tweaking it and then we could just built the small house as well but afterwards”..
But I assume this is hard to explain to someone that isn’t involved or have any previous knowledge about chip-designs. I guess I can understand it better I’d I think if it as a excel document. You really build the small house first then even if you’re working on the bigger house because what’s included in the big house is already in the small house (excel document/sheet)..: might be off here but so was just curious. I noticed someone mentioning having worked on chip designs before (I think it was this thread. Maybe it even was you?..) and figured I’d ask.
Thanks. Yes it’s kind of what I thought but at the same time I kind of come back to “but if you did that last year, what could possibly be so different this year? Why not move on to the big house from the start and have more rime tweaking it and then we could just built the small house as well but afterwards”..
But I assume this is hard to explain to someone that isn’t involved or have any previous knowledge about chip-designs. I guess I can understand it better I’d I think if it as a excel document. You really build the small house first then even if you’re working on the bigger house because what’s included in the big house is already in the small house (excel document/sheet)..: might be off here but so was just curious. I noticed someone mentioning having worked on chip designs before (I think it was this thread. Maybe it even was you?..) and figured I’d ask.
I’m certainly not smart enough to work in chip design ha! But I do find it fascinating.
So with my house analogy, each new year of chip is like building a totally different house in a different location. Every house has walls and floors and similarities, but each new house has a totally different architecture, so there may be some things that can carry over, but some things sort of need to be designed from scratch. Of course you learn each year new things that will help make the house better so each year the houses you make are better and better.
We could just start with the big house first. There’s nothing stopping us from doing it. It’s just less efficient and more expensive when you make mistakes and find better methods along the way. Easier, faster, and cheaper to adjust the small house and learn from that each year.
Also since the bigger house is bigger, it takes more time to build. We could just build the smaller house first, and sell it sooner (iphone) while we build the bigger house (MacBook Pro) that takes more time.
Can? Yes. This can happen in any order at any time in same sense that anything can happen.
Considering how much more important the iPhone is and how their annual chip design schedule is entirely about iPhone, no. The A15 is the priority. Once that is finalized, the M2 can be created. Once enough are manufactured for iPhone shipments, then manufacturing can begin for M2. There is no M2 before there is an A15, not figuratively or literally.
Any product being manufactured right now that has a 'new' chip for a soon-to-be released Mac is an M1 variant. I realize why this is confusing or off-putting to some people, because it is going to be common place for people to wonder "why would Apple update _x_ Mac now when there is new chip coming in only _x_ months".
My suggestion would be: get used to it. Apple is not going to aggressively update the Mac line, and you will inevitably see iPhone chip architecture get way ahead of where Macs are at any given time. They are not going to keep pace. Not even close.
I actually highly doubt an M2 product will be released before the end of 2022.
So it looks like there are no good rumors regarding release timing of a bigger iMac?
As far as chip naming, I know it’s not ultimately important to a user, but it might tell us something about how different the Mac lines will be from each other going forward.
If all Macs get M(number) with no variants (ie. pro grade Macs get the newest chips and standard grade Macs just hand-me-down chips), then Macs would basically be adopting the iPad system where there isn’t too much difference between pro and standard lines performance wise, just incremental performance gains and bells and whistles.
This seems unlikely though because with Macs there aren’t as many bells and whistles, it’s mostly about differences in performance (and size). And there seems to be a bigger range of performance needs, as well as a much bigger range of thermal/performance potential due to the greatly varying sizes of Macs, from the MacBook Air to the Mac Pro.
So it seems more likely to me that Apple will continue with Intel’s system of maintaining multiple chip series appropriate for certain levels of Macs.
I think the higher performance Macs will use scaled up versions of the base M chip, so they might all use variants of the same name, like M1X (for MacBook pros and a larger iMac) and maybe an M1Z (for Mac Pro). But for marketing sake, they might just have all new prefix letters like P1 and R1. Considering Apple really likes to market their chips as selling points, I’d lean toward the latter. But I think it comes down to how different these chips series really are from each other.
As far as chip naming, I know it’s not ultimately important to a user, but it might tell us something about how different the Mac lines will be from each other going forward.
If all Macs get M(number) with no variants (ie. pro grade Macs get the newest chips and standard grade Macs just hand-me-down chips), then Macs would basically be adopting the iPad system where there isn’t too much difference between pro and standard lines performance wise, just incremental performance gains and bells and whistles.
This seems unlikely though because with Macs there aren’t as many bells and whistles, it’s mostly about differences in performance (and size). And there seems to be a bigger range of performance needs, as well as a much bigger range of thermal/performance potential due to the greatly varying sizes of Macs, from the MacBook Air to the Mac Pro.
So it seems more likely to me that Apple will continue with Intel’s system of maintaining multiple chip series appropriate for certain levels of Macs.
I think the higher performance Macs will use scaled up versions of the base M chip, so they might all use variants of the same name, like M1X (for MacBook pros and a larger iMac) and maybe an M1Z (for Mac Pro). But for marketing sake, they might just have all new prefix letters like P1 and R1. Considering Apple really likes to market their chips as selling points, I’d lean toward the latter. But I think it comes down to how different these chips series really are from each other.
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Thank you guys for explaining and thanks for the video link, I will take a look (edit: I actually did, wow really exciting! Might be my new time wasting focused for the rest of the week ).
I just want to point out I never meant that the iPhone chips should be prioritized/less focused on but I was just asking about a situation where Apple maybe wanted to make an extra big splash with a really high performance-chip for new Macs and with the chip shortage situation (not sure if the way it works but let’s say they have about 200 000 available chips to do whatever they want with the second part of the year) maybe they’d rather sell 200 000 Macs than 200 000 iPhones because of margins and the fact that scarcely iPhone stock seems to make it even more popular were scarcely Mac stock might just make people go elsewhere or buy used or whatever.
But of course it’s better to minimize the risks!
I guess I was just thinking that maybe the iPhone chips was less of a challenge and just standard work and that they could do a Mx(x?) without it affecting the engineering of the A15-chip.
Also I always assumed they had the next year’s chip ready around the same time as the current year’s iPhone launched and after that they might do some tweaking at most but actually often just went to work on the next year’s chip and therefore maybe had some extra time for doing something like a M2X even if the A15 wasn’t releases but if that isn’t the case of course they wouldn’t risk anything that isn’t necessarily.
I just don’t think Apple has any problems sitting on the A-series chip for a couple of months/a year before it’s used in a product that is released, think I even read about it somewhere a lot of years ago. Apple has very little to loose on sitting on the performance and progress of the chip and Wuire much to gain on spreading the progress and leaps out instead of putting it all in the next iPhone (guess the same could be said about Macs as well but they do have more to prove in that area even if M1 was a good showstarter) since the iPhone is such a very popular product and have such a high satisfaction score and people tends to buy new ones very often even if their old phone is working fine.
If they however have the chip ready but hasn’t released the iPhone with that chip in I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t also get a M2 or M2X chip ready and release a Mac before the iPhone if they made enough progress and it’s ready for release (I’m assuming this is the point that makes this unlikely though).
Sure I agree that iPhone is their highest priority and it also makes them most cash but I just don’t see how that would affect the iPhone in any way though I believe it could however affect the Mac in a great way (especially in the middle of the transition!).
Just to clarify it’s not what I expect but I can’t say that I don’t have some small hope about it but I do understand the house analogy quite well now, I guess I just realized now that the thing I really was thinking and fantasize about was the fact if getting a little extra new and powerful chip in the next Mac! Though it doesn’t really matter to me as long as it have a little better graphics performance and an extra Thunderbolt port or two.
).I just want to point out I never meant that the iPhone chips should be prioritized/less focused on but I was just asking about a situation where Apple maybe wanted to make an extra big splash with a really high performance-chip for new Macs and with the chip shortage situation (not sure if the way it works but let’s say they have about 200 000 available chips to do whatever they want with the second part of the year) maybe they’d rather sell 200 000 Macs than 200 000 iPhones because of margins and the fact that scarcely iPhone stock seems to make it even more popular were scarcely Mac stock might just make people go elsewhere or buy used or whatever.
But of course it’s better to minimize the risks!
I guess I was just thinking that maybe the iPhone chips was less of a challenge and just standard work and that they could do a Mx(x?) without it affecting the engineering of the A15-chip.
Also I always assumed they had the next year’s chip ready around the same time as the current year’s iPhone launched and after that they might do some tweaking at most but actually often just went to work on the next year’s chip and therefore maybe had some extra time for doing something like a M2X even if the A15 wasn’t releases but if that isn’t the case of course they wouldn’t risk anything that isn’t necessarily.
I just don’t think Apple has any problems sitting on the A-series chip for a couple of months/a year before it’s used in a product that is released, think I even read about it somewhere a lot of years ago. Apple has very little to loose on sitting on the performance and progress of the chip and Wuire much to gain on spreading the progress and leaps out instead of putting it all in the next iPhone (guess the same could be said about Macs as well but they do have more to prove in that area even if M1 was a good showstarter) since the iPhone is such a very popular product and have such a high satisfaction score and people tends to buy new ones very often even if their old phone is working fine.
If they however have the chip ready but hasn’t released the iPhone with that chip in I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t also get a M2 or M2X chip ready and release a Mac before the iPhone if they made enough progress and it’s ready for release (I’m assuming this is the point that makes this unlikely though).
Sure I agree that iPhone is their highest priority and it also makes them most cash but I just don’t see how that would affect the iPhone in any way though I believe it could however affect the Mac in a great way (especially in the middle of the transition!).
Just to clarify it’s not what I expect but I can’t say that I don’t have some small hope about it but I do understand the house analogy quite well now, I guess I just realized now that the thing I really was thinking and fantasize about was the fact if getting a little extra new and powerful chip in the next Mac! Though it doesn’t really matter to me as long as it have a little better graphics performance and an extra Thunderbolt port or two.
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Nope. Most of us presume it will be announced at the same time as the Apple Silicon version of the 16" (and 14?") MacBook Pro as we presume it will use the same SoC.
Speaking only for myself, all I care about is:
- Retina display of at least 27"
- Can be configured with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD for $2999 or less
Apple M2 Chip: Everything You Need to Know
Apple in June 2022 unveiled the M2, its next-generation Apple silicon chip that followed the M1 chip. This guide highlights everything you need to...
www.macrumors.com
Their opinion is it could be the SoC in the 14/16" MacBook Pro and larger iMac.
Honestly you should just get a 24" iMac then. If you're not holding out for more than 8 cores or more than 16 GB of RAM (which I think a lot of people in this camp are), then I can't imagine the display is really that much of a deal breaker.
