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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jdubs03 · 2024-11-26T03:29:58-0500

Doug S said:
Until Intel's foundry is a real thing able to service Apple's volumes with the reliability Apple has become accustomed to from TSMC, that's the only realistic backup plan.

Oh I agree. If it were to come to that, it would be even more encouraging for Apple (and by extension others) to focus even more so on design improvements, such that there would still be some performance improvement. And in that case, what would likely happen is that the cutting edge IP would wind up making its way to Arizona. Not like it would be useful in a burning Taiwan.
Hopefully all this comes to pass though, which I think it will. I’m skeptical that China would make such a foolhardy move.

Irrespective of all that, Intel still needs to impress potential customers to get volume on their upcoming process nodes. And enough to further expand. I think they have a chance. But I’m not getting ahead of myself with optimism.

mvprod123 · 2024-11-26T06:31:06-0500

There are still no M4 Pro/Max die shots 😕

Doug S · 2024-11-26T17:28:07-0500

jdubs03 said:
Oh I agree. If it were to come to that, it would be even more encouraging for Apple (and by extension others) to focus even more so on design improvements, such that there would still be some performance improvement. And in that case, what would likely happen is that the cutting edge IP would wind up making its way to Arizona. Not like it would be useful in a burning Taiwan.

Well I assume if something happens with Taiwan that shuts down TSMC's production there (China invades or a 9.0 earthquake) it will happen far more quickly than the timescale where Apple could redesign anything. If that happened today and they lost access to N3 family nodes they'd have to re-use A16 for iPhone 17. There simply wouldn't be time to iterate that design in any meaningful way - maybe they could tweak the memory controllers to support LPDDR5X but there wouldn't be nearly enough time to try to e.g. port A18P's cores to it.

Even if China did like Russia where they started massing troops on Ukraine's border 3-4 months before they crossed so TSMC knew what was coming, I doubt that would be enough time to pack up and ship EUV scanners to the US and their other locations. Best they could do would be to redirect equipment orders destined for Taiwan, and speed up their timetable for new fab builds in the US and elsewhere.

jdubs03 · 2024-11-26T20:57:04-0500

Doug S said:
Well I assume if something happens with Taiwan that shuts down TSMC's production there (China invades or a 9.0 earthquake) it will happen far more quickly than the timescale where Apple could redesign anything. If that happened today and they lost access to N3 family nodes they'd have to re-use A16 for iPhone 17. There simply wouldn't be time to iterate that design in any meaningful way - maybe they could tweak the memory controllers to support LPDDR5X but there wouldn't be nearly enough time to try to e.g. port A18P's cores to it.

Even if China did like Russia where they started massing troops on Ukraine's border 3-4 months before they crossed so TSMC knew what was coming, I doubt that would be enough time to pack up and ship EUV scanners to the US and their other locations. Best they could do would be to redirect equipment orders destined for Taiwan, and speed up their timetable for new fab builds in the US and elsewhere.

Everyone would be hurting bad in the smartphone space.

Perhaps there would be some large scale rescue mission with cargo planes getting those EUV scanners out. If given enough heads up there should be enough time to evacuate the most important bits.

Doug S · 2024-11-27T00:40:05-0500

jdubs03 said:
Everyone would be hurting bad in the smartphone space.

Perhaps there would be some large scale rescue mission with cargo planes getting those EUV scanners out. If given enough heads up there should be enough time to evacuate the most important bits.

Somewhere on the internet there are some videos showing the packing, shipping and unpacking process for those things. A few months would not be enough lead time to make that happen. Maybe you could do a few, but there are only so many ASML employees who know how to do that - and they have probably never broken down and packed up one that's already operational to relocate it. It might not even be possible.

johnsonwax · 2024-11-27T03:53:14-0500

jdubs03 said:
Everyone would be hurting bad in the smartphone space.

Perhaps there would be some large scale rescue mission with cargo planes getting those EUV scanners out. If given enough heads up there should be enough time to evacuate the most important bits.

Yeah. Though, we saw a bit of what that might look like after the Japan tsunami. The day of the tsunami Apple packed up executives with cash to fly into Japan and pay suppliers to help their employees recover and reopen. That moved them to the front of the line as a customer and they saw relatively little disruption. In a global crisis, I wouldn't bet against Apple.

And while it can take months to set that equipment up that's because the stakes are low. If the Chinese navy is bearing down, I'm willing to bet they'd figure out how to get them out quickly, even if there was a risk of damage.

FlameTail · 2024-11-27T05:00:30-0500

Rumour:

Exclusive:

Apple M5 will be mass-produced by the end of 2025,
Apple A20 will be mass-produced in the second quarter of 2026.

Source: TrendForce

Both products are based on TSMC’s 2nm process.

Jukanlosreve

If M5 is mass produced at the end of 2025, that means no M5 products in 2025.

poke01 · 2024-11-27T05:57:47-0500

FlameTail said:
Rumour:

Jukanlosreve

If M5 is mass produced at the end of 2025, that means no M5 products in 2025.

If M5 is based on N2 but comes out in 2026 that’s not bad.

FlameTail · 2024-11-27T06:11:52-0500

poke01 said:
If M5 is based on N2 but comes out in 2026 that’s not bad.

Seems like it will have a definitive advantage over Snapdragon X Elite Gen 2, which will presumably use TSMC N3P.

Eug · 2024-11-27T10:30:16-0500

Apple throttles the CPU before the fan ramps up. However, if you manually increase fan speed, then CPU performance increases.

Power usage and clock speed

The effect of hardware ray tracing

digitaldreamer · 2024-11-27T12:30:13-0500

Eug said:
Apple throttles the CPU before the fan ramps up. However, if you manually increase fan speed, then CPU performance increases.

View attachment 112231

View attachment 112229

Power usage and clock speed

View attachment 112230

The effect of hardware ray tracing

View attachment 112232

View attachment 112233

Wow. That 20c M4 beats the 60c M2 in Cinebench 2024 GPU.

igor_kavinski · 2024-11-27T12:34:32-0500

digitaldreamer said:
Wow. That 20c M4 beats the 60c M2 in Cinebench 2024 GPU.

It's nothing to do with 20C vs. 60C. GPU performance advancements increase at a much faster rate than CPU so kinda expected.

digitaldreamer · 2024-11-27T12:39:30-0500

igor_kavinski said:
It's nothing to do with 20C vs. 60C. GPU performance advancements increase at a much faster rate than CPU so kinda expected.

But, more than 3 times improvement in 2 generations?

Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

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