Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

Eug · Nov 10, 2020

M1
5 nm
Unified memory architecture - LP-DDR4
16 billion transistors

8-core CPU

4 high-performance cores
192 KB instruction cache
128 KB data cache
Shared 12 MB L2 cache

4 high-efficiency cores
128 KB instruction cache
64 KB data cache
Shared 4 MB L2 cache
(Apple claims the 4 high-effiency cores alone perform like a dual-core Intel MacBook Air)

8-core iGPU (but there is a 7-core variant, likely with one inactive core)
128 execution units
Up to 24576 concurrent threads
2.6 Teraflops
82 Gigatexels/s
41 gigapixels/s

16-core neural engine
Secure Enclave
USB 4

Products:
$999 ($899 edu) 13" MacBook Air (fanless) - 18 hour video playback battery life
$699 Mac mini (with fan)
$1299 ($1199 edu) 13" MacBook Pro (with fan) - 20 hour video playback battery life

Memory options 8 GB and 16 GB. No 32 GB option (unless you go Intel).

It should be noted that the M1 chip in these three Macs is the same (aside from GPU core number). Basically, Apple is taking the same approach which these chips as they do the iPhones and iPads. Just one SKU (excluding the X variants), which is the same across all iDevices (aside from maybe slight clock speed differences occasionally).

EDIT:

M1 Pro 8-core CPU (6+2), 14-core GPU
M1 Pro 10-core CPU (8+2), 14-core GPU
M1 Pro 10-core CPU (8+2), 16-core GPU
M1 Max 10-core CPU (8+2), 24-core GPU
M1 Max 10-core CPU (8+2), 32-core GPU

M1 Pro and M1 Max discussion here:

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M1 Ultra discussion here:

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M2 discussion here:

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Second Generation 5 nm
Unified memory architecture - LPDDR5, up to 24 GB and 100 GB/s
20 billion transistors

8-core CPU

4 high-performance cores
192 KB instruction cache
128 KB data cache
Shared 16 MB L2 cache

4 high-efficiency cores
128 KB instruction cache
64 KB data cache
Shared 4 MB L2 cache

10-core iGPU (but there is an 8-core variant)
3.6 Teraflops

16-core neural engine
Secure Enclave
USB 4

Hardware acceleration for 8K h.264, h.264, ProRes

M3 Family discussion here:

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M4 Family discussion here:

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Eug · Sep 9, 2024

A18
3 nm (2nd gen)

6-core CPU (2p + 4e)
30% faster than A16
Same performance of A16 at 30% less power

5-core GPU
40% faster than A16
Same performance of A16 at 35% less power

Did not compare against A17 yet, because they were talking about the non-Pro iPhones which used A16.

Eug · Sep 9, 2024

A18 Pro (yes different from A18 chip)
3 nm (2nd gen)

6-core CPU (2p + 4e)
15% faster than A17 Pro
Same performance of A17 Pro 20% at less power

6-core GPU
20% faster than A17 Pro
Did not mention power utilization

The Hardcard · Sep 9, 2024

It appears to be different dies. The guy implied that only the Pro got SME, as well as larger caches and a different display controller.

poke01 · Sep 9, 2024

Apple lost the hardware SoC advantage. These are underwhelming updates.

Qualcomm should clear this next month. The NPU is still 35 TOPS with it only being faster due faster memory and new node.

mvprod123 · Sep 9, 2024

Eug said:
A18 Pro (yes different from A18 chip)
3 nm (2nd gen)

6-core CPU (2p + 4e)
15% faster than A17 Pro
Same performance of A17 Pro 20% at less power

6-core GPU
20% faster than A17 Pro
Did not mention power utilization

2x faster RT performance and new encoders

trivik12 · Sep 9, 2024

both chips use Armv9 instructions right? To me it looked underwhelming. even the NPU tops are just 37. That would lower than latest from Qualcomm for sure. I also expect 8 Gen 4 to crush A18 pro in GFX as well. Only CPU 1T benchmarks will be well behind Apple. If both chips are made on N3E, efficiency would be the metric that matters the most. I expect Apple to win due to verticle integration.

mvprod123 · Sep 9, 2024

poke01 said:
Apple lost the hardware SoC advantage. These are underwhelming updates.

Qualcomm should clear this next month. The NPU is still 35 TOPS with it only being faster due faster memory and new node.

They realized SME. Obviously, this will work in conjunction with ANE. At the event, it was said that Apple Intelligence is 15% faster than 15 pro.

mvprod123 · Sep 9, 2024

trivik12 said:
both chips use Armv9 instructions right? To me it looked underwhelming. even the NPU tops are just 37. That would lower than latest from Qualcomm for sure. I also expect 8 Gen 4 to crush A18 pro in GFX as well. Only CPU 1T benchmarks will be well behind Apple. If both chips are made on N3E, efficiency would be the metric that matters the most. I expect Apple to win due to verticle integration.

GFX is a joke lol. 3d mark steel nomad light is more believable.

poke01 · Sep 9, 2024

mvprod123 said:
They realized SME. Obviously, this will work in conjunction with ANE. At the event, it was said that Apple Intelligence is 50% faster than 15 pro.

True.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1833208691023352117

defferoo · Sep 9, 2024

poke01 said:
Apple lost the hardware SoC advantage. These are underwhelming updates.

Qualcomm should clear this next month. The NPU is still 35 TOPS with it only being faster due faster memory and new node.

do NPU TOPS really mean anything to the user? they're clearly delivering the NPU performance they need for Apple Intelligence and other ML models running on the system. nearly everything else in the user experience is driven by the CPU and the single core CPU speed is still WAY faster than the competition. I would not look at NPU TOPS as an indicator of any sort of advantage as it comes down to how much die space you want to throw at the problem.

on CPU side, 15% faster than A17 Pro at iso-power and 20% less power at iso-performance is quite good given they're moving from N3B to N3E which is only supposed to bring a 7% increase in perf or 9% improvement in power efficiency.

mvprod123 · Sep 9, 2024

I wonder what changes they made to the GPU architecture to achieve the increase. 2x RT better performance looks good. I think It's more than just a faster memory subsystem. There are no such changes in M4. So we expect much deeper changes in the M5, or perhaps the M4 Pro/Max/Ultra will receive these improvements.

mvprod123 · Sep 9, 2024

mvprod123 · Sep 9, 2024

mvprod123 said:
I wonder what changes they made to the GPU architecture to achieve the increase. 2x RT better performance looks good. I think It's more than just a faster memory subsystem. There are no such changes in M4. So we expect much deeper changes in the M5, or perhaps the M4 Pro/Max/Ultra will receive these improvements.

And finally, new video encoders.

Panino Manino · Sep 9, 2024

Eug said:
A18 Pro (yes different from A18 chip)
3 nm (2nd gen)

6-core CPU (2p + 4e)
15% faster than A17 Pro
Same performance of A17 Pro 20% at less power

I know their CPU cores are BIG as in LARGE, but I wish they would upgrade to 4P cores. They want these devices to be viable for gaming, and while I'm protbbly wrong I suspect just 2P is hurting performance, no matter how powerful these cores are.

poke01 said:
Apple lost the hardware SoC advantage. These are underwhelming updates.

Apple isn't directly competing with anyone, so it doesn't really matter?

Eug · Sep 9, 2024

Panino Manino said:
I know their CPU cores are BIG as in LARGE, but I wish they would upgrade to 4P cores. They want these devices to be viable for gaming, and while I'm protbbly wrong I suspect just 2P is hurting performance, no matter how powerful these cores are.

4 performance cores and improved gaming performance? That’s basically the M4.

jdubs03 · Sep 9, 2024

Qcom and Mediatek are definitely going to push its multi core advantage that’s for sure, could be 20% more on the high end; would be the first time they lose out in MT (for Qcom). Obviously won’t be close in single-thread. Will be interesting to see the graphics comparison too.

Maybe next year will be another solid step up on MT. But I’m not holding my breath. At least it’ll draw less power than the S8G4 and likely 9400/+.

johnsonwax · Sep 9, 2024

I wouldn't get too in the weeds on the NPU perf on mobile. Right now, nobody is quite certain how this space is going to sort out. Current NPUs may not even be that useful to the nature of AI models next year - things are changing quickly. What's happening on mobile is the OS or maybe OEM are loading models onto these devices that are going to be sized for the NPU, and these models have diminishing returns given more compute. I think it's pretty well established that 35TOPS is adequate for day to day constrained models, but not open-ended models.

The iPhone NPU was always sized to the computational photography/FaceID need - not AI, and Apple just this year got M series caught up to that. Apple has also been very clear that the real performance benefits will come from the unified, fast memory architecture and being able to leverage all compute units on that backbone - NPU, GPU, etc. The performance gain in A18 doesn't appear to come from sizing up the NPU, but speeding up access to compute and balancing across the die, which Apple is best suited to do.

This reminds me of the usual spec analysis that always tore iPhone down for having so much less memory than Android and then wondered why iPhone was so much faster - it's not as simple as the single metric for a company like Apple that can pull on every single lever to find performance, rather than the one or two that a developer can, or maybe even an OEM can.

Doug S · Sep 9, 2024

defferoo said:
do NPU TOPS really mean anything to the user? they're clearly delivering the NPU performance they need for Apple Intelligence and other ML models running on the system. nearly everything else in the user experience is driven by the CPU and the single core CPU speed is still WAY faster than the competition. I would not look at NPU TOPS as an indicator of any sort of advantage as it comes down to how much die space you want to throw at the problem.

Yes this exactly. I'm sure Android fans will try to claim superiority for Qualcomm based on NPU TOPS - after years of denying that benchmarks showing Apple blowing away Qualcomm SoCs had anything to do with the "real world".

If they needed more TOPS it would have been a trivial matter to increase the size of the NPU, which is a tiny portion of the die. They didn't, so they obviously think it is sufficient for the needs of Apple Intelligence.

The whole AI thing is overhyped anyway, it isn't as if smartphones bought this year advertising "AI" features will be a paradigm shift from before. For most of us, it probably won't change our experience at all. I'm going to be buying a 16 Pro Max, but AI has nothing to do with it.

jdubs03 · Sep 9, 2024

Spotted this. There are some back-and-forth about maybe staying on Wi-Fi 6E. Those fears have now been allayed.

iPhone 16 lineup adds support for faster Wi-Fi 7

Apple today introduced new iPhone 16 models, which will soon be available for pre-order. There are a lot of new...

9to5mac.com

I have a 14P, but as long as my battery life stays solid (after 2 years I’m at 90%) I won’t upgrade until the 17P/M at the earliest. Would like to hold out to the 18P/M ideally.
Aside from the lackluster increase in MT perf, the 16P/M looks like a solid phone.

The standard 16/Plus is a huge upgrade from the 15 though. Just in terms of features. The CPU seems like a normal perf upgrade (similar to the A17 Pro). But 8GB and WiFi7, that’s solid.

Eug · Sep 9, 2024

Doug S said:
I'm going to be buying a 16 Pro Max, but AI has nothing to do with it.

I'm still thinking about it, but I'm strongly leaning toward waiting for the 17 Pro Max, even though my 12 Pro Max is now 4 years old.

The main issue for me is that the 16 Pro Max gets no update to the telephoto lens and sensor, which has been criticized in the 15 Pro Max as a half-assed implementation. The 17 Pro Max is rumoured to get a big upgrade in the sensor, and a RAM upgrade too.

Performance-wise the A14 in the 12 Pro Max is totally fine for a phone (Geekbench 6 ~ 2200/5300), and I too don't give a damn about the AI upgrades at this point. And even if I did, I'd be able to use my iPad Pro M4 for that anyway.

I'm a little worried about Apple modem rumoured for next year's iPhones though. Will it be able to keep up with Qualcomm's offering?

jdubs03 said:
Spotted this. There are some back-and-forth about maybe staying on Wi-Fi 6E. Those fears have now been allayed.

iPhone 16 lineup adds support for faster Wi-Fi 7

Apple today introduced new iPhone 16 models, which will soon be available for pre-order. There are a lot of new...

9to5mac.com

I have a 14P, but as long as my battery life stays solid (after 2 years I’m at 90%) I won’t upgrade until the 17P/M at the earliest. Would like to hold out to the 18P/M ideally.

Heheh. My home WiFi is still 802.11ac. I have 6 Apple AirPort Extremes around my large oddly-shaped house, so I'm not inclined to upgrade the entire WiFi network as it would not provide much meaningful functional improvement in my house and would cost a lot to upgrade.

Battery life is only 82% but I'll get the battery service anyway in the near future as the plan is to pass down the phone to our kid next year.

My wife is on the 14 Pro Max, but I think she can stick with that for a few more years too.

I'm a little worried about Apple modem rumoured for next year's iPhones though. Will it be able to keep up with Qualcomm's offering?

poke01 · Sep 9, 2024

Eug said:
I'm a little worried about Apple modem rumoured for next year's iPhones though. Will it be able to keep up with Qualcomm's offering?

Next year only the SE and the iPhone will/air will using Apples modem. The Pros will stick with Qualcomm.

jdubs03 · Sep 9, 2024

Eug said:
I'm still thinking about it, but I'm strongly leaning toward waiting for the 17 Pro Max, even though my 12 Pro Max is now 4 years old.

The main issue for me is that the 16 Pro Max gets no update to the telephoto lens and sensor, which has been criticized in the 15 Pro Max as a half-assed implementation. The 17 Pro Max is rumoured to get a big upgrade in the sensor, and a RAM upgrade too.

Performance-wise the A14 in the 12 Pro Max is totally fine for a phone (Geekbench 6 ~ 2200/5300), and I too don't give a damn about the AI upgrades at this point. And even if I did, I'd be able to use my iPad Pro M4 for that anyway.

Heheh. My home WiFi is still 802.11ac. I have 6 Apple AirPort Extremes around my large oddly-shaped house, so I'm not inclined to upgrade the entire WiFi network as it would provide much meaningful functional improvement in my house and would cost a lot to upgrade.

Battery life is only 82% but I'll get the battery service anyway in the near future as the plan is to pass down the phone to our kid next year.

My wife is on the 14 Pro Max, but I think she can stick with that for a few more years too.

That’s a lot of Airport Extremes! Makes sense though, you could always upgrade incrementally too. I have gigabit Fios but can’t really access the high speed 6Ghz band that I’d like to. But that’s just first-world problems.

82% for a 4 year old device is pretty solid. I hope mine will be around that in 2 years but I suspect it’ll be in the mid to high 70s.
I see no need to upgrade until that happens. And I hope that’s not until the 18 series (waiting for under display FaceID).
I could just replace the battery (I think for free), but I’d have to go without the phone for a few days. Might not be the worst thing in the world!
But it’d be nice to have the newest design.

poke01 said:
Next year only the SE and the iPhone will/air will using Apples modem. The Pros will stick with Qualcomm.

Yeah that’s the word going around. They’re using those as an introduction and then plan to phase in the in house modem for the Pros afterward, 18/19 series. Full phase in completion with the 19? As long as it can perform like the X80/85/90 I’m fine with that.

iPhone 16 battery life: How much better is it? - 9to5Mac

This detailed article covers iPhone 16 battery life (including iPhone 16 Pro) and how much better it is than iPhone 15, 14, and 13.

9to5mac.com

Looks like some solid increases in battery life for the 16P/M. Probably why performance didn’t increase as much.

iPhone 16 USB-C Still Limited to USB 2, No Change for 16 Pro Either

Apple began transitioning to USB-C instead of Lightning with the launch of the iPhone 15 lineup, and USB-C is also used for charging for the iPhone...

www.macrumors.com

This is a let down for the standard/plus 16. USB 3 has been out for so long idk why they’re cheaping out with such an old and slow port. For the Pros next year should have USB 4 or that’ll be disappointing.

SpudLobby · Sep 9, 2024

Doug S said:
Yes this exactly. I'm sure Android fans will try to claim superiority for Qualcomm based on NPU TOPS - after years of denying that benchmarks showing Apple blowing away Qualcomm SoCs had anything to do with the "real world".

If they needed more TOPS it would have been a trivial matter to increase the size of the NPU, which is a tiny portion of the die. They didn't, so they obviously think it is sufficient for the needs of Apple Intelligence.

The whole AI thing is overhyped anyway, it isn't as if smartphones bought this year advertising "AI" features will be a paradigm shift from before. For most of us, it probably won't change our experience at all. I'm going to be buying a 16 Pro Max, but AI has nothing to do with it.

AI is a big deal but locally it’s overrated IMHO at least in the way people are going nuts.

I’ll be buying a 16 Pro and likewise, AI has nothing to do with it at this stage. ChatGPT’s app is enough and better for most of my needs.

What I do care about isn’t really features in the discrete sense as much anymore, but QoL improvements in heat & thermals, battery life, display brightness. All linked in many ways obviously and coming from three years ago it should be a huge upgrade. Exactly what I wanted to see from Apple overall, maybe minus the display size increase.

ikjadoon · Sep 9, 2024

Apple put up their typical vague % perf claims, but these allow for some nice YoY comparisons:

SoC	CPU Relative Perf (per Apple.com)
A14 (iPhone 12 / 12 Pro)	100.0%
A15 (iPhone 13 / 13 Pro)	~114.3% (+14% YoY)
A16 (iPhone 14 / 14 Pro)	~123.1% (+7.7% YoY)
A17 Pro (iPhone 15 Pro)	~139.1% (+13% YoY)
A18 Pro (iPhone 16 Pro)	160.0% (+15% YoY)

SoC	GPU Relative Perf (per Apple.com)	GPU Relative Perf per Core
A14 (iPhone 12 / 12 Pro) - 4C	100.0%	25
A15 (iPhone 13 / 13 Pro) - 5C	~133.3% (+33% YoY)	26.67 (+6.7% YoY)
A16 (iPhone 14 / 14 Pro) - 5C	~142.9% (+7.2% YoY)	28.58 (+14.3% YoY)
A17 Pro (iPhone 15 Pro) - 6C	~166.7% (+17% YoY)	27.78 (-3% YoY)
A18 Pro (iPhone 16 Pro) - 6C	200.0% (+20% YoY)	33.33 (+20% YoY)

I could also try to equalize by frequency, but I'm too lazy for that atm. Some of the maths may be off, as how did the A17 Pro only gain +17% perf with +20% more cores? Or maybe the maths is right and the hexa-core design was bottlenecked by something else.

jdubs03 · Sep 9, 2024

So I use T-Mobile and they’re saying you can upgrade at no cost to a 16Pro according to this:

First iPhone 16 Carrier Deals Include iPhone 16/16 Pro For Free, $1,000 Off iPhone 16 Pro Max

Apple today announced the latest lineup of iPhones, including the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max. Pre-orders for these devices begin September 13, and if you plan on ordering from a cellular carrier in the United States, there will be plenty of options for...

forums.macrumors.com

But you have to use the Go5G plan which is $24/mo higher than Magenta Max (which is what I use probably stupidly). So not quite no cost. Basically does cover the trade in value of the phone however.
Seems like these promotions happen every year though.

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