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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Meteor Late · Nov 12, 2024

jdubs03 said:
And no multi core!? Blasphemy.
I think that plus GB ST and MT with power figures = rad.

Because I've already seen MT figures, such as in Max Tech reviews.

jdubs03 · Nov 12, 2024

Meteor Late said:
Because I've already seen MT figures, such as in Max Tech reviews.

Right but was power consumption included? Granted Geekerwan had them (not curves).
Notebookcheck had power figures (not curves) listed for the M4P but not the M4.
Computerbase still doesn’t have anything listed.

The Hardcard · Nov 12, 2024

jdubs03 said:
Right but was power consumption included? Granted Geekerwan had them (not curves).
Notebookcheck had power figures (not curves) listed for the M4P but not the M4.
Computerbase still doesn’t have anything listed.

I can’t make the Notebookcheck’s efficiency numbers make sense. CB24 single thread of 177 at a claimed 6.5 watts (which seems low) for 11.1 points per watt. It seems like ther are factors I’m overlooking, or they are leaving out. And are those factors the same for the other chips?

Another take on the M4 Pro CPU:

jdubs03 · Nov 12, 2024

gdansk said:
That was my thought too. Well, maybe even M6. They made the M1 series too good for casual use.

I’ve been thinking about getting a M4 Pro Mini but I’ve been and remain on the fence. I worry about these dumbass tariffs being bandied about raising the prices here in the US. My i7-8700T should be good enough for the time being.

But I might pass and stay with my original plan of getting a MacBook Pro once it has Face ID. Looking like M6/M7 timeframe.
Thoughts?

The Hardcard said:
I can’t make the Notebookcheck’s efficiency numbers make sense. CB24 single thread of 177 at a claimed 6.5 watts (which seems low) for 11.1 points per watt. It seems like ther are factors I’m overlooking, or they are leaving out. And are those factors the same for the other chips?

Another take on the M4 Pro CPU:

Yeah that definitely doesn’t add up. Would make more sense if it was over 10 watts.

Eug · Nov 12, 2024

The NAND module in the Mac mini is upgradable. iFixit swapped a 256 GB and a 512 GB from two different machines and the swapped modules worked fine after running Configurator.

jdubs03 · Nov 13, 2024

jdubs03 said:
I’ve been thinking about getting a M4 Pro Mini but I’ve been and remain on the fence. I worry about these dumbass tariffs being bandied about raising the prices here in the US. My i7-8700T should be good enough for the time being.

But I might pass and stay with my original plan of getting a MacBook Pro once it has Face ID. Looking like M6/M7 timeframe.
Thoughts?

Yeah that definitely doesn’t add up. Would make more sense if it was over 10 watts.

Notebookcheck has the M4 Pro at 177.
The Verge has the M4 Pro at 179, the M4 Max at 182. (And the M4 at 172).
Geekerwan has the M4 Pro at 187, the M4 Max at 186. (And the M4 at 185).
Macworld got 173 for M4, and 174 for Pro.
Engadget got 172 for both the M4 and Pro.
Pcmag got 173 for both M4 and Pro.
Arstechnica got 172 for the M4, 180 for the Pro, 179 for the Max.
YouTuber The Tech Chap got 182 for the Max..

There may be some more other Youtubers out there. I didn’t check all of them.
Now just waiting on ComputerBase. Hah.

Perhaps some of the variance can be explained by not only the SKU, but the performance setting? I heard there’s a new higher performance setting maybe somehow that applied and don’t?

One thing I have noticed now after paying attention for these past few months is Geekerwan, typically has elevated scores, no matter the benchmark. I don’t know if he is doing the whole LN2/freezer testing with all the devices but it does make me wonder. Hopefully he doesn’t and it’s just normal room temperature. But idk on that.

It’s kind of funny; I remember discussing with someone here couple months ago saying that I thought 167-170 was about where I was thinking the result would be and they argued it was too high. 😂

Doug S · Nov 13, 2024

Eug said:
The NAND module in the Mac mini is upgradable. iFixit swapped a 256 GB and a 512 GB from two different machines and the swapped modules worked fine after running Configurator.

Apple sells them, you can get up to 4 TB, so you can upgrade your Mini well beyond the amount of storage Apple will sell it with. Not cheap though! Theoretically third parties could offer them, but there probably isn't enough of a market to make it worth their while.

I say theoretically because typically a SSD controller is programmed with intimate knowledge of the NAND chips it is interfacing with. I would guess that if you bought an m.2 SSD from whoever, and tried to remove and replace the NAND chips with NAND of identical capacity, it would seriously compromise performance/longevity or more likely would not work at all. Trying to replace Apple's NAND module with one that the SoC's controller isn't programmed for may be futile, so they'd have to use NAND chips identical to the ones genuine Apple NAND modules used. Even then the bridge chip is another wild card, I don't know if it is a standard part of some sort of something Apple would have to license.

poke01 · Nov 13, 2024

this a very good video. M4 Max close to 4080 super using much less power

FlameTail · Nov 13, 2024

Is the sL2 cache size of the P-core clusters in M4 Max known?

M1 M1 Pro M1 Max	4P	12 MB
M2 M2 Pro M2 Max	4P	16 MB
M3	4P	16 MB
M3 Pro M3 Max	6P	16 MB
M4	4P	16 MB
M4 Pro	5P	?
M4 Max	6P	?
Snapdragon X Elite	4	12 MB

poke01 · Nov 13, 2024

TB5 speeds between M4 Pro/Max.

You can now make full use of external Gen4 SSDs

Eug · Nov 13, 2024

Doug S said:
Apple sells them, you can get up to 4 TB, so you can upgrade your Mini well beyond the amount of storage Apple will sell it with. Not cheap though! Theoretically third parties could offer them, but there probably isn't enough of a market to make it worth their while.

I say theoretically because typically a SSD controller is programmed with intimate knowledge of the NAND chips it is interfacing with. I would guess that if you bought an m.2 SSD from whoever, and tried to remove and replace the NAND chips with NAND of identical capacity, it would seriously compromise performance/longevity or more likely would not work at all. Trying to replace Apple's NAND module with one that the SoC's controller isn't programmed for may be futile, so they'd have to use NAND chips identical to the ones genuine Apple NAND modules used. Even then the bridge chip is another wild card, I don't know if it is a standard part of some sort of something Apple would have to license.

I’m more concerned with the ability to upgrade / replace with OEM Apple drives, let’s say 6 years down the road when the included one dies, and this seems to make it relatively easy to do. The thing with the Mac Studio is that while this was possible, there were two drive slots in the machine and you had to have a matching pair. You could not mix drives even of the same capacity, as that would not work. With the Mac mini, there is only one drive slot, so this no longer an issue. I see this actually as a fortuitous small advantage over the Mac Studio.

BTW, since we are talking about this, a friend just recently had an Apple/Samsung OEM SSD die in their old Intel MacBook Air. This 2015-2017 era machine could accept third party NVMe SSDs, but depending upon the OS it was previously running it may sometimes require an OS upgrade to trigger a firmware update to enable NVMe support (which of course would be impossible with no functional drive). Also these third party drives don't make proper use of their ASPM low power modes with macOS, and thus typically have significantly higher idle power utilization thereby decreasing battery life. They also occasionally may have some small bugs depending upon the model. I happened to have an OEM drive lying around pulled from a MacBook Pro of that era, and I mailed it to him. It took 2 days for it to arrive by mail and 1 hour later, the machine was up and running with that original OEM drive. With OEM, there are no Hackintosh-like idiosyncrasies to worry about.

poke01 · Nov 13, 2024

Eug said:
I’m more concerned with the ability to upgrade / replace with OEM Apple drives, let’s say 6 years down the road when the included one dies, and this seems to make it relatively easy to do. The thing with the Mac Studio is that while this was possible, there were two drive slots in the machine and you had to have a matching pair. You could not mix drives even of the same capacity, as that would not work. With the Mac mini, there is only one drive slot, so this no longer an issue. I see this actually as a fortuitous small advantage over the Mac Studio.

BTW, since we are talking about this, a friend just recently had an Apple/Samsung OEM SSD die in their old Intel MacBook Air. This 2015-2017 era machine could accept third party NVMe SSDs, but depending upon the OS it was previously running it may sometimes require an OS upgrade to trigger a firmware update to enable NVMe support (which of course would be impossible with no functional drive). Also these third party drives don't make proper use of their ASPM low power modes with macOS, and thus typically have significantly higher idle power utilization thereby decreasing battery life. They also occasionally may have some small bugs depending upon the model. I happened to have an OEM drive lying around pulled from a MacBook Pro of that era, and I mailed it to him. It took 2 days for it to arrive by mail and 1 hour later, the machine was up and running with that original OEM drive. With OEM, there are no Hackintosh-like idiosyncrasies to worry about.

Apple sells NANDs modules on their repair program for the Studios.

Eug · Nov 13, 2024

poke01 said:
Apple sells NANDs modules on their repair program for the Studios.

Yes I'm aware. However, over time with old machines there develops a used part market, and it would be nice to be able acquire these through that used market, because they're significantly cheaper than new. It'd be harder to do that with the Mac Studio because you'd have to get paired drives, and in that case many times it might just make more sense and give you peace of mind to pay for new ones from Apple directly. However, for the Mac mini, it seems it will be feasible to get used drives for this purpose with less fuss, as there is no need to worry about getting a matching pair.

Doug S · Nov 13, 2024

Eug said:
I’m more concerned with the ability to upgrade / replace with OEM Apple drives, let’s say 6 years down the road when the included one dies, and this seems to make it relatively easy to do. The thing with the Mac Studio is that while this was possible, there were two drive slots in the machine and you had to have a matching pair. You could not mix drives even of the same capacity, as that would not work. With the Mac mini, there is only one drive slot, so this no longer an issue. I see this actually as a fortuitous small advantage over the Mac Studio.

I think it will turn out the Studio can have them replaced as easily as the Mini - i.e. Apple didn't have that Configurator thing set up for it at the time, or the person who identified that issue didn't try it.

The "matching pair" thing is likely due to the two being used as a single drive, obviously you can't remove or replace one NAND when the volume spans both. If you use the Configurator then reformat and reinstall the OS I'll bet it works just fine.

So I'm sure down the road there will be some "used" NANDs available from scrapped Minis, Studios and Pros. The question will be "how used" - you have to hope the person selling it was able to get that information off it (and is being truthful) If you have light use as far as writes go then so long as a used NAND works it'll be fine, but if you beat it on you wouldn't want to buy one that SMART says has only 6% of its life remaining. Though most SSDs will work long after that, at least the ones that don't go into a read-only mode once the limit is hit like Crucial MX/BX.

Eug · Nov 13, 2024

Doug S said:
The "matching pair" thing is likely due to the two being used as a single drive, obviously you can't remove or replace one NAND when the volume spans both. If you use the Configurator then reformat and reinstall the OS I'll bet it works just fine.

I'm just going by what dosdude1 said. (He's the guy upgraded his M4 Mac mini from 256 GB to 1 TB by soldering on new NAND.) He states that if say you wanted to upgrade your Mac Studio with a 4 TB drive, you can't just take two single 2 TB drives and put them together, because it will not work. You must find a two 2 TB drives that were previously paired in a 4 TB Mac Studio to be able to transfer those drives over. Those single 2 TB drives are pre-programmed at the factory to only ever work as single 2 TB drives, and that programming supposedly cannot be changed. Similarly, that pair of 2 TB drives to make a 4 TB drive can only ever be used paired like that to make a 4 TB drive.

ie.
Paired 2 TB drives --> You can move them to a new machine to make a 4 TB drive.
Two single 2 TB drives --> They cannot be combined to make a 4 TB drive.
Paired 2 TB drives --> They cannot be split to make two 2 TB drives.
One single 2 TB drive --> It can be moved to another machine as a single 2 TB drive.

The other issue is the port configuration varies from model to model and you can't reverse the NAND card locations, potentially adding confusion.

So I'm sure down the road there will be some "used" NANDs available from scrapped Minis, Studios and Pros. The question will be "how used" - you have to hope the person selling it was able to get that information off it (and is being truthful) If you have light use as far as writes go then so long as a used NAND works it'll be fine, but if you beat it on you wouldn't want to buy one that SMART says has only 6% of its life remaining. Though most SSDs will work long after that, at least the ones that don't go into a read-only mode once the limit is hit like Crucial MX/BX.

I hear ya, but so far with my limited experience on the used market with OEM Apple drives, I've been doing OK. For example, one OEM SSD I got had 13% wear, while another I got had 33% wear.

Eug · Nov 13, 2024

GPU Benchmark and power utilization:

Cinebench and power utilization:

Clockspeed with multi-core:

Note that with extended CPU load, the M4 would throttle from 3.94 GHz to 3.71 GHz. But then he set the fan to run at max all the time, and the M4 no longer throttled below 3.94 GHz.

Ray Tracing:

jdubs03 · Nov 13, 2024

Eug said:
GPU Benchmark and power utilization:

View attachment 111557

View attachment 111556

Cinebench and power utilization:

View attachment 111559

View attachment 111561

Clockspeed with multi-core:

View attachment 111560

Note that with extended CPU load, the M4 would throttle from 3.94 GHz to 3.71 GHz. But then he set the fan to run at max all the time, and the M4 no longer throttled below 3.94 GHz.

Ray Tracing:

View attachment 111558

View attachment 111562

Wow. Multi core performance over the M2 is 69% and at ~6% less power. That’s wild.

poke01 · Nov 14, 2024

Apple M4 Mac Mini With macOS vs. Intel / AMD With Ubuntu Linux Performance Review - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

phoronix M4 review, keep in the tests it loses against the HX 370 use either Rosetta 2 or don't have NEON support. M4 excels when the test is fully supported.

Meteor Late · Nov 14, 2024

These are heavily multithreaded tests, the vast majority of them at least, so of course a CPU with 4 P cores and 6 fairly weak E cores without HT is going to not be that good, even considering the Rosetta + non Neon optimizations. How would Lunar Lake look in that test? we all know the answer and the reason why it's not there of course.

mvprod123 · Nov 14, 2024

https://twitter.com/x/status/1857208745014776215

Eug · Nov 14, 2024

@johnsonwax

This is somebody's solution:

They kept the "valley" to cup the base of the Mac mini, but made it out of fins instead of a solid piece, in order to aid ventilation.

I can still see this causing issues with the WiFi (and Bluetooth?) though.

johnsonwax · Nov 14, 2024

jdubs03 said:
I’ve been thinking about getting a M4 Pro Mini but I’ve been and remain on the fence. I worry about these dumbass tariffs being bandied about raising the prices here in the US. My i7-8700T should be good enough for the time being.

So, one wrinkle in the tariff situation is that shipments valued under $900 don't need to be inspected by customs. This has a number of consequences:
1) Packages under $900 can be delivered very quickly and inexpensively from China.
2) Packages under $900 can contain, lets say, ingredients to make fentanyl and not be too concerned about being caught at the port (customs _can_ inspect the package, but isn't required to and at several million packages a day, is exceedingly unlikely to be inspected)
3) Packages under $900 can't be assessed for tariffs if they are not inspected.
4) Because of 3) US retailers are basically guaranteed to have to pay tariffs as they are never going to buy less than $900 of a product, while Chinese companies can sell products through Amazon's storefront and so long as Amazon is only doing the logistics, not have their customers have to pay the tariffs.

My guess is that even if the tariffs do arrive (very likely) that there will be storefronts that allow you to buy products under $900 with little chance of having to pay the tariff. These things are not easy to implement to achieve the desired goals, and these people are not particularly competent.

Apple has already moved a lot of their assembly to India, and they can reserve their Chinese assembled goods for other markets and ship to the US from markets where tariffs aren't being applied.

Eug · Nov 14, 2024

johnsonwax said:
Apple has already moved a lot of their assembly to India, and they can reserve their Chinese assembled goods for other markets and ship to the US from markets where tariffs aren't being applied.

I noticed that some of the recent Macs people are receiving are coming from Vietnam. I knew they were making iPhones in Vietnam, but I hadn't realized they were making Macs there too. My Mac mini came from China though. And my USB-C audio jack dongle came from the local Apple warehouse in my area.

johnsonwax · Nov 14, 2024

Eug said:
@johnsonwax

This is somebody's solution:

View attachment 111605 View attachment 111604

They kept the "valley" to cup the base of the Mac mini, but made it out of fins instead of a solid piece, in order to aid ventilation.

I can still see this causing issues with the WiFi (and Bluetooth?) though.

This is not a particularly difficult problem to solve, though. Have the fin area be plastic instead of metal, etc. Someone will get it sorted. It's beyond me why anyone would desire USB-A ports. You're paying for technical debt.

Eug · Nov 14, 2024

johnsonwax said:
This is not a particularly difficult problem to solve, though. Have the fin area be plastic instead of metal, etc. Someone will get it sorted. It's beyond me why anyone would desire USB-A ports. You're paying for technical debt.

That company is making it out of aluminum. It will be interesting to see how it goes, cuz the previous Mac mini already had Bluetooth reliability issues, which I'm guessing were fixed in the current M4 Mac mini. Hopefully, adding this hub doesn't undo the fix.

P.S. I just added an ancient USB 2.0 (!) hub to my USB 4 / Thunderbolt 4 hub. I had one in the back of my drawer, and I needed USB-A ports for a few legacy low bandwidth peripherals.

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