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:

Page 78 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 78 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

M1 Ultra discussion here:

Page 109 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 109 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

M2 discussion here:

Page 127 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 127 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

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:

Page 215 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 215 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

M4 Family discussion here:

Page 263 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 263 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

digitaldreamer · Sep 19, 2024

So, there isn't a flag a developer can set to tell the OS to run the following code on the Performance Cores, because I want the highest performance, then disable the flag, versus setting a flag to run code on Efficiency Cores, because I want the best battery life and this shouldn't be CPU intensive?

This brings me to wonder how the OS or the CPU determines what code is meant to run on what cores and at what frequencies.

DZero · Sep 19, 2024

I am thinking... if Apple goes in 2+6 core config in the next iPhone, how it will improve their performance? That combined with their IPC increase.

jdubs03 · Sep 19, 2024

DZero said:
I am thinking... if Apple goes in 2+6 core config in the next iPhone, how it will improve their performance? That combined with their IPC increase.

Using the spec2017 scores for p and e cores could potentially provide a proxy. But I don’t think there is enough information.
Going off a basic average with GB6 gives the A18 Pro a score of around 1380pts per core. S8G4 is somewhere around 1260pts per core. So someone can correct me if I’m off but for 2P+6E would be around 11000 in GB6. (I feel like this comparison is fair because both CPU’s have two performance cores.)

FlameTail · Sep 24, 2024

A18 Pro sets a new record in Geekbench6

iPhone17,2 - Geekbench

Benchmark results for an iPhone17,2 with an ARM processor.

browser.geekbench.com

3600 Single Core / 9300 Multi Core

poke01 · Sep 24, 2024

FlameTail said:
A18 Pro sets a new record in Geekbench6

iPhone17,2 - Geekbench

Benchmark results for an iPhone17,2 with an ARM processor.

browser.geekbench.com

3600 Single Core / 9300 Multi Core

That phone is running iOS 18.1, it seems like its scoring like iOS 17.7.

Even the A17 Pro scores 3000 now with 18.1, before with 18.0 it can only do 2800.

iPhone 15 Pro - Geekbench

Benchmark results for an iPhone 15 Pro with an Apple A17 Pro processor.

browser.geekbench.com

jdubs03 · Sep 24, 2024

That 9300 MT score is super high. I wonder the configuration of the phone/chip to get that high. Seems like the normal scores for 18.1 is around 8500 to 8600.

jdubs03 · Sep 24, 2024

Though to be fair, seems like this poster got a really good sample/+maybe using a freezer. But regardless, it looks like 18.1 gives a 5% boost in single-core and 6% boost in multicore. I wonder if 18.1 reverts the delay to core ramping?

From what I can tell it does look like the 8700 to 8800 scores were from pre-beta 18.1.5 or GA 18.0 where is the above ones are 18.1.5.

The Hardcard · Sep 24, 2024

jdubs03 said:
Though to be fair, seems like this poster got a really good sample/+maybe using a freezer. But regardless, it looks like 18.1 gives a 5% boost in single-core and 6% boost in multicore. I wonder if 18.1 reverts the delay to core ramping?

View attachment 108161
From what I can tell it does look like the 8700 to 8800 scores were from pre-beta 18.1.5 or GA 18.0 where is the above ones are 18.1.5.

The iPad scores in your screenshot are also high. Maybe someone changed the delay for some aspect of iOS 18 development and forgot to change it back for release.

Some Apple employee got to that part of the Geekerwan review and said, “Oops!”

Doug S · Sep 24, 2024

The Hardcard said:
The iPad scores in your screenshot are also high. Maybe someone changed the delay for some aspect of iOS 18 development and forgot to change it back for release.

Some Apple employee got to that part of the Geekerwan review and said, “Oops!”

There are other strategies than "have a fixed delayed value before ramping to full speed". Maybe it is smarter about recognizing patterns of demand for bursty loads like GB. Look at all the work as far as recognizing different access patterns for prefetch, and all the optimizations around branch prediction. And those are things where decisions have to be made in a matter of nanoseconds. You have a comparative eternity to make the "right" decision about when to ramp your P cores up and down, switch loads to E cores, and so forth.

We might need to do more measurement than just "time to ramp", and look at the full clock trend over a GB6 run before/after to figure out what it is doing differently (though we won't know why it is doing it differently) and maybe construct some sort of microbenchmark to try to determine what it is doing.

Or maybe @name99 will tell us, if he's read some hints about it in a patent lol

poke01 · Sep 24, 2024

Read a comment on reddit r/hardware saying the M3 Cinebench ST 2024 score is inflated, yeah that’s not true. It has slower memory than Lunar lake, lower clock and so the only option left is IPC difference. That’s probably what’s causing the high score, the massive IPC difference.

macOS also shouldn’t make a difference as it didn’t for previous Cinebench versions vs Windows.

okoroezenwa · Sep 25, 2024

poke01 said:
Read a comment on reddit r/hardware saying the M3 Cinebench ST 2024 score is inflated, yeah that’s not true. It has slower memory than Lunar lake, lower clock and so the only option left is IPC difference. That’s probably what’s causing the high score, the massive IPC difference.

macOS also shouldn’t make a difference as it didn’t for previous Cinebench versions vs Windows.

Was this the comment on r/hardware declaring the M3 performance as suspicious or was it a separate one?

poke01 · Sep 25, 2024

okoroezenwa said:
Was this the comment on r/hardware declaring the M3 performance as suspicious or was it a separate one?

It was the one about how M3 scores really high in cb 2024 because of "other reasons"

name99 · Sep 25, 2024

Doug S said:
There are other strategies than "have a fixed delayed value before ramping to full speed". Maybe it is smarter about recognizing patterns of demand for bursty loads like GB. Look at all the work as far as recognizing different access patterns for prefetch, and all the optimizations around branch prediction. And those are things where decisions have to be made in a matter of nanoseconds. You have a comparative eternity to make the "right" decision about when to ramp your P cores up and down, switch loads to E cores, and so forth.

We might need to do more measurement than just "time to ramp", and look at the full clock trend over a GB6 run before/after to figure out what it is doing differently (though we won't know why it is doing it differently) and maybe construct some sort of microbenchmark to try to determine what it is doing.

Or maybe @name99 will tell us, if he's read some hints about it in a patent lol

Not yet! But the patents sometimes lag release by two years or more :-(

You are right; this does seem like the sort of thing that could be varied depending on the situation. Meaning it could be subject to a patent -- but when that becomes public???

Nothingness · Sep 25, 2024

name99 said:
Not yet! But the patents sometimes lag release by two years or more :-(

And sometimes patents don't fully match the implementation or are part of an implementation that never got released.

Doug S · Sep 25, 2024

poke01 said:
It was the one about how M3 scores really high in cb 2024 because of "other reasons"

When Apple started scoring higher than x86 in Geekbench a few years ago some people claimed it was because Geekbench was biased towards Apple. Sad to see that Cinebench has been similarly compromised! Why oh why won't Apple stop bribing benchmark developers to bias their benchmarks

jdubs03 · Sep 25, 2024

Haters are gonna hate. It’s a truism as old as time.

okoroezenwa · Sep 26, 2024

Doug S said:
When Apple started scoring higher than x86 in Geekbench a few years ago some people claimed it was because Geekbench was biased towards Apple. Sad to see that Cinebench has been similarly compromised! Why oh why won't Apple stop bribing benchmark developers to bias their benchmarks

I wonder if similar will soon start about Blender, given that the 4.2 update reduced Nvidia GPU scores on the benchmark charts but Apple's GPUs increased their scores.

igor_kavinski · Sep 26, 2024

jdubs03 said:
Haters are gonna hate. It’s a truism as old as time.

I don't hate Apple. They've done great. It's just their insistence on being the company for the rich rather than the common folk, that often causes me to lose it. That and the MacOS is crap. I don't know why they don't create a Mac version of Windows. Even just for pissing off Microsoft would be great.

igor_kavinski · Sep 26, 2024

okoroezenwa said:
I wonder if similar will soon start about Blender, given that the 4.2 update reduced Nvidia GPU scores on the benchmark charts but Apple's GPUs increased their scores.

Apple's GPUs most likely have a lot of untapped potential, mostly because there aren't that many serious developers pushing them to eke the maximum performance out of them. Now if game developers took the Mac platform more seriously than Apple itself does, that COULD change...

Which just prompted a thought in my head:

Apple Management: Create the best, most powerful GPU architecture ever!
Apple engineers: DONE!
Apple Management: Now market it!
Apple Marketing: Uhhh Ummm well, we could certainly use them for better and faster and higher res video editing!
Apple Management: Any other ideas???

*crickets chirping*

poke01 · Sep 26, 2024

okoroezenwa said:
I wonder if similar will soon start about Blender, given that the 4.2 update reduced Nvidia GPU scores on the benchmark charts but Apple's GPUs increased their scores.

now that would be even more silly. Blender is open source you see the change commits.

igor_kavinski · Sep 26, 2024

poke01 said:
now that would be even more silly. Blender is open source you see the change commits.

We also don't know if the Nvidia GPU driver versions were kept constant in arriving at the conclusion that the new Blender is reducing performance.

The Hardcard · Sep 26, 2024

igor_kavinski said:
I don't hate Apple. They've done great. It's just their insistence on being the company for the rich rather than the common folk, that often causes me to lose it. That and the MacOS is crap. I don't know why they don't create a Mac version of Windows. Even just for pissing off Microsoft would be great.

There are virtual machines for Windows on Mac. Solutions that let your preferences trample on my preferences are bad. I’m not a Mac graybeard, I’m a Nextstep luster. I was very happy when it became the foundation for Macs and I still am. I support you having Windows in ways that mean I don’t have to deal with it.

igor_kavinski · Sep 26, 2024

The Hardcard said:
I support you having Windows in ways that mean I don’t have to deal with it.

Is it possible for MacOS to look like Windows 7 with a complete theme change or something? I would be fine with that too I guess. Certainly better than ugly vanilla MacOS UI.

name99 · Sep 26, 2024

Nothingness said:
And sometimes patents don't fully match the implementation or are part of an implementation that never got released.

Oh wow? Really? I had no idea!!!
/s

There's a Myanmar proverb: "Don't teach the crocodile where the water is"...

Nothingness · Sep 26, 2024

name99 said:
Oh wow? Really? I had no idea!!!
/s

There's a Myanmar proverb: "Don't teach the crocodile where the water is"...

Given how you spend your time quoting patents to "explain" Apple uarch on RWT, it makes sense to doubt you knew that.

Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

Lifer

Junior Member

Senior member

Golden Member

Diamond Member

Platinum Member

Golden Member

Golden Member

Senior member

Platinum Member

Platinum Member

Member

Platinum Member

Senior member

Diamond Member

Platinum Member

Golden Member

Member

Lifer

Lifer

Platinum Member

Lifer

Senior member

Lifer

Senior member

Diamond Member