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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Doug S · Jan 6, 2025

digitaldreamer said:
AirPrint implies WiFi. Does this feature still work over wired Ethernet? I'm out of the loop here.

Airprint is an IP protocol, so in theory it will work over any medium that delivers an IP connection whether wifi, ethernet, token ring or carrier pigeon.

On the printer side it works whether your printer is connected to the network via ethernet or wifi. Or at least it should, there may be some printers out there that have for some reason only allowed the wifi connection to handle the airprint protcol but hopefully they'd fix that with a firmware update at some point if customers complained (some of us prefer to connect things with wires if they are located somewhere where that is easy to do)

The printer has to be accessible from the AP you are connected wirelessly to. I seem to recall reading that one of the wireless router vendors had implemented airprint in the router itself, allowing it to support airprint to printers that don't themselves support airprint.

I'm kind of curious whether "airprint" that works fine on a Mac that's connected via wifi would continue to work if you shut down the wifi connection and connected it with ethernet to the same router. It would be kind of annoying if it didn't when there's no technical reason why not.

johnsonwax · Jan 6, 2025

joshua95 said:
Out of interest, is anyone feeling any limitations from 16GB RAM in any of their M series devices? The Apple tax on upgrading, and with non user-replacable hardware, is a lot more restrictive than my desktop.

You'll ask what I would be doing:

Light gaming, such as CIV 5/6

Productivity apps such as excel, SQL tools and light python

My daughter is seeing some in her gaming. My guess is that it's games that are both RAM hungry and throwing a decent bit at the GPU, because that 16GB is covering both CPU/GPU needs, and feels a bit more like a 12GB machine with a 4GB GPU. Civ 5/6 should be fine since the latter runs on the iPhone, but it's kind of hit and miss for her.

As for Excel/SQL/Python (which I was routinely working in before I retired) that would depend on the size of your datasets. Excel with large datasets isn't good at managing memory (or using additional cores) and part of the point of using SQL/python is that if you know what you're doing, you can manage any size dataset just fine. So as long as your datasets are under 8GB you should be fine.

johnsonwax · Jan 6, 2025

Doug S said:
I'm kind of curious whether "airprint" that works fine on a Mac that's connected via wifi would continue to work if you shut down the wifi connection and connected it with ethernet to the same router. It would be kind of annoying if it didn't when there's no technical reason why not.

AirPrint is built on top of Bonjour IP discovery, so it kind of depends on whether the printer presents a new network name on the ethernet or the same one. For my old HP printer (this was years ago) it presented a different name on ethernet so I needed to have a 'HP Wireless' and 'HP Wired' printer and choose depending on which interface was presenting, which was normally automatic because the Mac would skip the one that it couldn't see and default to the one it could.

Doug S · Jan 6, 2025

johnsonwax said:
AirPrint is built on top of Bonjour IP discovery, so it kind of depends on whether the printer presents a new network name on the ethernet or the same one. For my old HP printer (this was years ago) it presented a different name on ethernet so I needed to have a 'HP Wireless' and 'HP Wired' printer and choose depending on which interface was presenting, which was normally automatic because the Mac would skip the one that it couldn't see and default to the one it could.

Was that name built into the printer's firmware or was it assigned a different name because it had a different IP address when it was on wifi vs ethernet? While you can configure DHCP to give it the same IP either way, doing so means you'd have to in some way insure it wouldn't connect via wifi when plugged into ethernet.

I've always configured separate addresses for e.g. laptops that I might either plug in or use wirelessly on the same networking depending on the situation to avoid such hassles. I know dnsmasq (the DHCP implementation which AFAIK most wireless routers use) supports multiple MACs for an IP address. So if you always disabled one this would work fine and it'll assign that IP regardless of which MAC you use. But I have no idea what would happen if both were active - sure would be slick though if it could prefer the first one listed. Then if DHCP requests arrive from both MACs it would assign the IP to the first and ignore the second.

johnsonwax · Jan 6, 2025

Doug S said:
Was that name built into the printer's firmware or was it assigned a different name because it had a different IP address when it was on wifi vs ethernet? While you can configure DHCP to give it the same IP either way, doing so means you'd have to in some way insure it wouldn't connect via wifi when plugged into ethernet.

I've always configured separate addresses for e.g. laptops that I might either plug in or use wirelessly on the same networking depending on the situation to avoid such hassles. I know dnsmasq (the DHCP implementation which AFAIK most wireless routers use) supports multiple MACs for an IP address. So if you always disabled one this would work fine and it'll assign that IP regardless of which MAC you use. But I have no idea what would happen if both were active - sure would be slick though if it could prefer the first one listed. Then if DHCP requests arrive from both MACs it would assign the IP to the first and ignore the second.

So, the idea is that you get a name like 'hp-printer.local', and any of the .local IPs on your subnet are then discoverable. So long as the printer driver is looking for hp-printer.local it'll match up with the correct printer. It'll then do some kind of handshaking to make sure it's the same make and model that it was expecting, and some of that can be mitigated by putting that into the bonjour name so 'hp-3378.local' or whatever. What the actual IP is doesn't matter, because you have this local to your subnet DNS abstracting that shit away. The IP is never recorded, so it can be dynamic and it'll still work fine.

My recollection was that HP gave them different .local names depending on interface, possibly to allow you to address/block them differently so it gave something like hp-printer-wifi.local and hp-printer-ethernet.local, or something like that - and both could be active simultaneously, so it might have been a limitation of HPs internal software because you could have jobs coming in from identical DHCP IPs on each of those interfaces. There's always a lot of weird shit like that in enterprise equipment. But the intention of AirPrint was that you could plug in the printer, it'd broadcast it's .local address, your computer would see it on its periodic scans, do a handshake, it'd say it's a printer of this make and model and would prefer this printer profile, and your computer would reach into the CUPS database and tip up a new printer for that preferred make/model and bind it to that .local - no intervention needed by the user. And it works well in a consumer environment, but gets a little tricky in an enterprise environment particularly with wifi roaming across SSID and what is getting tunneled across that SSID space (at least, early in AirPrint/bonjour days when enterprise wireless was first being built out). Like I said, this was a while ago. It could be all of that is a thing of the past in new equipment.

Oh, but you could override the .local name so you could identify things as 'doug-s-hp-printer.local', etc. Convention where I worked was to lead with the room address and follow with the printer make/model. I'm not sure we ever tested if you could name both interfaces the same. Maybe. But if my memory is correct the default was they were differentiated based on which printer interface was broadcasting.

Eug · Jan 6, 2025

digitaldreamer said:
AirPrint implies WiFi. Does this feature still work over wired Ethernet? I'm out of the loop here.

Doug S said:
Airprint is an IP protocol, so in theory it will work over any medium that delivers an IP connection whether wifi, ethernet, token ring or carrier pigeon.

I'm kind of curious whether "airprint" that works fine on a Mac that's connected via wifi would continue to work if you shut down the wifi connection and connected it with ethernet to the same router. It would be kind of annoying if it didn't when there's no technical reason why not.

I suspect all AirPrint printers must support WiFi as an option, but AirPrint does not require WiFi to work. I use Ethernet for my AirPrint printers. WiFi is disabled. Also works with both DHCP and fixed IP addresses.

I don't think it works with carrier pigeons though, but I haven't tried it.

johnsonwax said:
My recollection was that HP gave them different .local names depending on interface, possibly to allow you to address/block them differently so it gave something like hp-printer-wifi.local and hp-printer-ethernet.local, or something like that - and both could be active simultaneously, so it might have been a limitation of HPs internal software because you could have jobs coming in from identical DHCP IPs on each of those interfaces. There's always a lot of weird shit like that in enterprise equipment.

With my printers (Samsung and HP), IIRC I can’t have WiFi and Ethernet active at the same time. The configuration settings do not allow it AFAIK. As far as I can tell, the local name is the same over WiFi or Ethernet.* These are SOHO printers though, not enterprise.

*I don't recall having to re-discover the printers when changing from Ethernet to WiFi or vice versa, but I'm a little fuzzy on that. However, in the Printers & Scanners settings on macOS there is no distinction by network connection. They are just listed by their model names.

P.S. The error shown for this HP printer has nothing to do with AirPrint. It's because this printer is a POS, defective due to a known problem with this line of HP printers. What a piece of crap. I've probably put less than 5000 pages through this damn thing.

fkoehler · Jan 7, 2025

joshua95 said:
Happy new year all. Long time lurker since 2008...

I'm toying with the idea of getting a MacBook Air to replace my gaming PC (changing habits, and all).

That said, I'm conscious the current version is m3. How much of a step up is the m4 in a way that would improve the Air compared to the m3? I'm happy to wait if the m4 will benefit the Air (it seems to be more power efficient?).

Just dumped x86 and Linux after dumping windows a few years ago.
Mac Mini M4 at $550 seems to be working fine for me as I seem to have grown out of gaming in general. Plenty of vids showing it running relatively recent AAA games pretty well for when that itch strikes.

Not a Machead, but IIRC M4 Air isn't expected for 6 months or more maybe.
Others would have better infor. But M4 is definately a step up if you can wait, otherwise the M3 is prob. ok if its general non-gaming use.

jdubs03 · Jan 7, 2025

fkoehler said:
Just dumped x86 and Linux after dumping windows a few years ago.
Mac Mini M4 at $550 seems to be working fine for me as I seem to have grown out of gaming in general. Plenty of vids showing it running relatively recent AAA games pretty well for when that itch strikes.

Not a Machead, but IIRC M4 Air isn't expected for 6 months or more maybe.
Others would have better infor. But M4 is definately a step up if you can wait, otherwise the M3 is prob. ok if its general non-gaming use.

Just on a note about timing of the M4 MacBook Air. I would be surprised if they took until June or July to release it. That’s already halfway through the cycle to the M5 series. If I had to guess it’d be more like March or April.

Doug S · Jan 7, 2025

Eug said:
I don't think it works with carrier pigeons though, but I haven't tried it.

There's an RFC for IP over Avian Carriers (later updated to include QoS) and has been successfully implemented. Probably don't want to try it inside your house though, pigeons leave behind a lot of dropped packets.

mikegg · Jan 12, 2025

I just picked up an M4 Mini for $500. It's my first desktop computer in about 15 years. Just can't resist for the price.

Coming from an M1 Pro, I didn't think I would feel any difference in every day computing. I'm wrong. It definitely feels more responsive.

DZero · Jan 12, 2025

mikegg said:
I just picked up an M4 Mini for $500. It's my first desktop computer in about 15 years. Just can't resist for the price.

Coming from an M1 Pro, I didn't think I would feel any difference in every day computing. I'm wrong. It definitely feels more responsive.

USD 500 is hella cheap even if goes with 16 GB RAM, even with 256 GB of storage is OK. Still, there is a way to increase to 1 TB the storage??

name99 · Jan 12, 2025

DZero said:
USD 500 is hella cheap even if goes with 16 GB RAM, even with 256 GB of storage is OK. Still, there is a way to increase to 1 TB the storage??

Of course there is!
Plug in an SSD (basic USB3 up to TB5, your choice of speed/cost) and store most of your personal account on it.
You can set the library location for photos and music/videos to point to that drive, which covers most people's use cases. If you have large libraries of things like PDFs or projects you are working on, you can also place them on that external drive.

The main thing that might be an issue for some people is large video games? I don't play video games so I don't know how well (or stupidly) they are written to handle this sort of situation. They certainly COULD be written to handle it just fine, but I can't comment either way.

Eug · Jan 13, 2025

DZero said:
USD 500 is hella cheap even if goes with 16 GB RAM, even with 256 GB of storage is OK. Still, there is a way to increase to 1 TB the storage??

You can get good fanless USB 4 / Thunderbolt 3 NVMe enclosures for about US$60. I have two of the Colorii / Qwiizlab / Hagibis enclosures, one with a 4 TB Samsung 990 Pro and the other with a 4 TB Kioxia XG8. They max out at around 3450 MB/s.

Colorii Mc40 Usb 4.0 Ssd Enclosure Nvme 40gbps Hard Drive Case Aluminium For Mac Mini M4 - Buy Usb 4.0 Ssd Enclosure usb4 Enclosure mac Mini M4 Enclosure Product on Alibaba.com

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I got SSDs with DRAM because HMB is not supported in external enclosures (or in Macs in general).

Rigg · Jan 13, 2025

I recently helped a friend setup a base M4 mini for audio recording. I had him get the OWC Express 1M2 enclosure and a Western Digital Black SN770 2 TB to store his Logic Pro projects and sample libraries. I might have taken a shot on an MIC off-brand for my own system but I figured the OWC was a safer bet. It was on sale for $100 when he grabbed it. No complaints so far.

@Eug Thanks for the heads up about the sleep issue with USB3 drives a few pages back. I was on the fence about going with USB4 but this pushed me over.

These are great little machines. I don't need one, but I kind of want one now that I've played around with it. Micro Center is selling them for $500. Tempted.

fkoehler · Jan 13, 2025

So, also switched to MM, and seems to be some issues with speeds and feeds for external. Is it pretty much solved by simply going with a TB4, or do we still need to focus on manf. ?
No games, so the ~200GB should hold me for a while till this shakes out.
So far, experience has been rather cathartic. Aside the muscle memory of mousing top right to close windows, or lower-left to show desktop, I find myself simply using it and not wondering if this or that setting might net me a few percent better 'experience'.
The 'experience' of a fast and responsive UI is refreshing even if a little awkward still.
Weird that the Launch Pad is so basic though, can't sort by name, or preferred sorting?
But, no Win updates, no daily/hourly Linux update notification.
The Apple Tax seems cheap to cover a lot of the pain points Win/Linux saddles you with.

Eug · Jan 13, 2025

Rigg said:
I recently helped a friend setup a base M4 mini for audio recording. I had him get the OWC Express 1M2 enclosure and a Western Digital Black SN770 2 TB to store his Logic Pro projects and sample libraries. I might have taken a shot on an MIC off-brand for my own system but I figured the OWC was a safer bet. It was on sale for $100 when he grabbed it. No complaints so far.

@Eug Thanks for the heads up about the sleep issue with USB3 drives a few pages back. I was on the fence about going with USB4 but this pushed me over.

These are great little machines. I don't need one, but I kind of want one now that I've played around with it. Micro Center is selling them for $500. Tempted.

I believe that all the Thunderbolt 3 enclosures are the same chipset. The main concern is the physical design of the enclosure. A lot of the Thunderbolt 3 enclosures aren't well designed, so either run hot or need a fan. There are some that are better designed for fanless heat dissipation, but they seem to be in the minority IMO.

That's also true for most the USB 4 enclosures, and they actually run hotter in macOS than the Thunderbolt 3 enclosures, but better heatsink-like enclosure designs exist on the USB 4 side, specially that excellent OWC 1M2 and the Colorii / Hagibis / Qwiizlab ones I bought.

All the recent USB 4 enclosures also appear to use the same chipset, specifically the AS Media 2464PD. However, with the OWC 1M2, I believe they have disabled true Thunderbolt mode in firmware. With my Hagibis and Qwiizlab, normally they are identified in macOS as USB 4 devices when they are directly connected to the Mac, but I have noticed that when I hang them off a USB 4 / Thunderbolt 4 hub, they are identified as Thunderbolt 3 devices.

Why does that matter? Because macOS seems to handle power utilization in these enclosures better in Thunderbolt mode than it does in USB 4 mode. My enclosures with drives will idle at 3.6-4.1 Watts in Thunderbolt 3 mode, whereas they idle at 5.0-5.5 W in USB 4 mode. This 1-2 Watt power utilization difference at idle leads to an idle temperature a little below 40 C in Thunderbolt 3 mode, and a couple of degrees above 40 C in USB 4 mode, about a 3 C difference.

As for the SN770, it should work fine, but note that is a DRAM-less model. DRAM-less SSDs may run a bit cooler, but may perform more slowly for random read/writes. However, if your friend is satisfied with the performance, then that is all that matters.

BTW, both USB 4 and Thunderbolt support TRIM on macOS. USB 3 does not.

Thunderbolt 5 enclosures are now available for much faster speeds, but I think for most people they're overkill (and they are expensive).

fkoehler said:
So, also switched to MM, and seems to be some issues with speeds and feeds for external. Is it pretty much solved by simply going with a TB4, or do we still need to focus on manf. ?
No games, so the ~200GB should hold me for a while till this shakes out.
So far, experience has been rather cathartic. Aside the muscle memory of mousing top right to close windows, or lower-left to show desktop, I find myself simply using it and not wondering if this or that setting might net me a few percent better 'experience'.
The 'experience' of a fast and responsive UI is refreshing even if a little awkward still.
Weird that the Launch Pad is so basic though, can't sort by name, or preferred sorting?
But, no Win updates, no daily/hourly Linux update notification.
The Apple Tax seems cheap to cover a lot of the pain points Win/Linux saddles you with.

See above regarding external drives. Take a good look at the case design. IMO, a lot of them aren't very well designed. Basically metal cases with poor heat dissipation if no fan is included. I much prefer ones designed as heatsinks with decent sized fins for fanless heat dissipation.

Rigg · Jan 13, 2025

Eug said:
As for the SN770, it should work fine, but note that is a DRAM-less model. DRAM-less SSDs may run a bit cooler, but may perform more slowly for random read/writes. However, if your friend is satisfied with the performance, then that is all that matters.

This was an oversight on my part. It didn't dawn on me that HMB is not supported with external enclosures. I was just looking for a good bang for the buck drive for him. I hadn't done an NVME external drive previous to this and I should have done some more homework. The SN770 should be fine for him though. I have an unopened 2TB 990 Pro laying around if it becomes an issue. I probably should've just hooked him up with that to begin with.

Eug · Jan 13, 2025

Rigg said:
This was an oversight on my part. It didn't dawn on me that HMB is not supported with external enclosures. I was just looking for a good bang for the buck drive for him. I hadn't done an NVME external drive previous to this and I should have done some more homework. The SN770 should be fine for him though. I have an unopened 2TB 990 Pro laying around if it becomes an issue. I probably should've just hooked him up with that to begin with.

For the older Macs in which you can still install NVMe drives internally, AFAIK, HMB doesn’t work for those either.

Gideon · Jan 14, 2025

mikegg said:
I just picked up an M4 Mini for $500. It's my first desktop computer in about 15 years. Just can't resist for the price.

Coming from an M1 Pro, I didn't think I would feel any difference in every day computing. I'm wrong. It definitely feels more responsive.

Yeah I envy you, at that price I'd also consider it for toying around. Here the cheapest ones I can find cost 700-750€. Considering I'd probably have to buy an external enclosure + SSD, the value starts diminishing quickly. It would be a very good deal if i needed a new mac desktop, but in reality I most certainly don't, considering I have a M1Pro 14" 32GB MBP

mvprod123 · Jan 14, 2025

name99 · Jan 14, 2025

fkoehler said:
So, also switched to MM, and seems to be some issues with speeds and feeds for external. Is it pretty much solved by simply going with a TB4, or do we still need to focus on manf. ?
No games, so the ~200GB should hold me for a while till this shakes out.
So far, experience has been rather cathartic. Aside the muscle memory of mousing top right to close windows, or lower-left to show desktop, I find myself simply using it and not wondering if this or that setting might net me a few percent better 'experience'.
The 'experience' of a fast and responsive UI is refreshing even if a little awkward still.
Weird that the Launch Pad is so basic though, can't sort by name, or preferred sorting?
But, no Win updates, no daily/hourly Linux update notification.
The Apple Tax seems cheap to cover a lot of the pain points Win/Linux saddles you with.

Launchpad is for the true amateur, people who want an iPhone like experience.

Most users either go directly to the Apps folder (Command-Shift-A in Finder) or bring up Spotlight (Command-Space anywhere) and type in the app name.
I guess in a few years we'll have some people mainly launching apps via bringing up Siri and saying "open <appname>"

Eug · Jan 22, 2025

New rumour is suggesting the iPad 11th generation is getting A16 with 6 GB RAM. This makes some sense to me, and 6 GB was actually my prediction before all the AI hoopla. Furthermore, Apple is currently making A16 in Arizona. The only iDevices that use A16 are Apple 14 Pro/Pro Max (which have been discontinued) and iPhone 15/15 Plus.

However, Gurman continues to state that it will get A17 Pro and 8 GB RAM, specifically because of AI. I would love for that to be true, but I'm just skeptical the iPad will make that big of a jump from iPad 10th generation, which is A14 and 4 GB RAM. iPad 9th generation is A13 and 3 GB RAM.

I'm still irritated though that my M4 iPad Pro only got 8 GB RAM. What makes it even worse is that some shipped with 12 GB RAM, but with 4 GB deactivated. For most of my usage, 8 GB RAM is fine, but it doesn't leave much breathing room for the occasional times I would use video editing software and the like.

Doug S · Jan 22, 2025

Eug said:
New rumour is suggesting the iPad 11th generation is getting A16 with 6 GB RAM. This makes some sense to me, and 6 GB was actually my prediction before all the AI hoopla. Furthermore, Apple is currently making A16 in Arizona. The only iDevices that use A16 are Apple 14 Pro/Pro Max (which have been discontinued) and iPhone 15/15 Plus.

However, Gurman continues to state that it will get A17 Pro and 8 GB RAM, specifically because of AI. I would love for that to be true, but I'm just skeptical the iPad will make that big of a jump from iPad 10th generation, which is A14 and 4 GB RAM. iPad 9th generation is A13 and 3 GB RAM.

I'm still irritated though that my M4 iPad Pro only got 8 GB RAM. What makes it even worse is that some shipped with 12 GB RAM, but with 4 GB deactivated. For most of my usage, 8 GB RAM is fine, but it doesn't leave much breathing room for the occasional times I would use video editing software and the like.

The only reason they would use A17P is if Apple has a big stockpile of them they need to run through. Otherwise it would use A18 (non P) since that's cheaper.

Wouldn't A16 with 8 GB be able to support Apple Intelligence? I haven't really paid attention to the changes they've made in the NPU over time but AFAIK the capability of A16's NPU is pretty similar to A17/A18's NPU, so if it hits the 8 GB mark it should be able to support it.

Eug · Jan 22, 2025

Doug S said:
Wouldn't A16 with 8 GB be able to support Apple Intelligence? I haven't really paid attention to the changes they've made in the NPU over time but AFAIK the capability of A16's NPU is pretty similar to A17/A18's NPU, so if it hits the 8 GB mark it should be able to support it.

If the claimed speeds for the NPU are reflective of what AI needs (and if Apple's claimed NPU specs are comparable generation to generation) then A16 would likely be fine, but Apple has already explicitly stated in its support documents that A17 Pro or better is required. I suspect it may indeed be because A17 Pro is matched to 8 GB whereas A16 is matched to 6 GB in existing iDevices. So perhaps A16 with 8 GB RAM could be OK, but as we all know, Apple sometimes doesn't base its support for something based on tech capabilities alone. They also make marketing decisions to exclude some more than capable iDevices.* If they decide to cheap out, they might just go the A16 / 6 GB route and forego AI this time around, even if A16 with more RAM could technically support it. IOW, since they've already explicitly stated A17 Pro is required, there is a good chance they'll stick to that for marketing reasons, even if A16 would work.

*For example, our 7th generation iPad with 2.34 GHz quad-core A10 and 3 GB RAM has iPadOS 18 support, but our iPad Pro 10.5" with 2.38 GHz hex-core A10X and 4 GB RAM does not. Why? Simply because the iPad Pro is older.

BTW, I personally would be fine with A16 / 6 GB without AI support, especially if it means they keep prices affordable. I'm replacing an iPad Air 2 with A8X and 2 GB RAM. That thing runs like molasses with iPadOS 15.

However, I personally hope their marketecture department did decide to support AI with the next iPad, not because I want AI, but because I'd prefer to have 8 GB RAM rather than 6 GB RAM for obvious reasons. So, I'm hoping the A16 / 6 GB rumour is wrong, but I'm not convinced it's wrong like some of the pro-AI pundits are claiming. In fact, and I'd say there is a good chance the A16 / 6 GB rumour is accurate.

poke01 · Jan 25, 2025

https://twitter.com/x/status/1883276535643455790

when M4 ultra?

Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

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