Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

[Eug]

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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[A///]

Come on apple!

 

[Ajay]

Stupid PDT time zone (well for an east coaster).

 

[igor_kavinski]

3 hours away for me

 

[Eug]

M2 Ultra Mac Studio and Mac Pro
M2 Ultra called the "Final member of the M2 family". Hmm...

24-core / 76-core
192 GB

 

[trivik12]

So far nothing on M3. Probably not today. Its too early. Most probably late this year or early next year.

 

[jpiniero]

Starts at $6999 for the Mac Pro? Haha.

 

[Mopetar]

Starts at $6999 for the Mac Pro? Haha.

Basically paying for PCI slots and a fancy case. What's it cost for a studio with an M2 Ultra?

 

[Heartbreaker]

Basically paying for PCI slots and a fancy case. What's it cost for a studio with an M2 Ultra?

Quite disappointing. I thought they would figure out some way to have more Ultra chips connected together.

While the death of the Mac Pro has been announced many times, this may be the final blow.

The only reason to get this over a Studio, is for PCIe slots, and from what I read so far it doesn't look like GPUs will work. Most shops I expect will just stick with Ultras, unless they have some niche PCIe cards, and even then they will probably start looking for Thunderbolt options to replace those cards.

 

[Eug]

Basically paying for PCI slots and a fancy case. What's it cost for a studio with an M2 Ultra?

US$3999 if it reflects M1 Ultra Mac Studio pricing.

P.S. M2 iMac not even mentioned. No M2 Pro iMac either of course.

 

[trivik12]

how much memory did Intel Mac Pros supported. 192GB for a Pro machine is not that great.

 

[jpiniero]

how much memory did Intel Mac Pros supported. 192GB for a Pro machine is not that great.

1.5 TB officially

 

[gdansk]

how much memory did Intel Mac Pros supported. 192GB for a Pro machine is not that great.

Up to 1.5TB of memory in the old Intel versions. But it depends how you look at it. 192GB isn't a lot for a CPU but it is a lot for the GPU.

 

[igor_kavinski]

What??? Same cheese grater design???

How lazy of you, Apple!

Could have added some rotating wheels and remote controlled locomotion to that hunk of metal for ease of moving around.

 

[Mopetar]

View attachment 81379


US$3999 if it reflects M1 Ultra Mac Studio pricing.

If I were a company selling some kind of expensive accelerator card I'd eye making an external version. Most people really only need one, maybe two cards and if they'll pay me an extra $500 for the stand-alone external version so they can save $3,000 on their Mac that's a tempting offer.

Maybe Apple will find a different way to segment and differentiate the two products, but the Studio kind of kills the Pro as far as I'm concerned.

P.S. M2 iMac not even mentioned. No M2 Pro iMac either of course.

Maybe they're coming later and Apple wants them to have their own event, or they're not refreshing them until the M3 drops. Given how little of an upgrade M2 was over M1, I can't really see a good reason for updates here unless they had a better screen or something else to make them more exciting.

 

[Heartbreaker]

Maybe Apple will find a different way to segment and differentiate the two products, but the Studio kind of kills the Pro as far as I'm concerned.

Same. I remember when people were jealous of the Mac Pro capability of upgrading RAM/GPU (and even CPU).

Now it's none of that. It will be almost exclusively for housing some specialty PCIe cards, and that seems like a very tiny niche, that will shrink with the cost savings moving those external with Thunderbolt.

 

[Ajay]

how much memory did Intel Mac Pros supported. 192GB for a Pro machine is not that great.

Yeah, pretty skimpy. Too bad Apple couldn't design some kind of denser/stacked memory for the Pro.

If I were a company selling some kind of expensive accelerator card I'd eye making an external version. Most people really only need one, maybe two cards and if they'll pay me an extra $500 for the stand-alone external version so they can save $3,000 on their Mac that's a tempting offer.

I guess we'll have to wait and see. Depends on what sort of accelerator cards are in the works. Maybe they'll even have their own DRAM to deal with the issue of limited DRAM on the Pro (maybe with disk direct to PCIe streaming like with PC GFX cards.

 

[Heartbreaker]

Mac Pro was mentioned as an afterthought (kind of all it deserves).

This is the Vision Pro keynote. It looks like an impressive piece of gear.

It has an M2 SoC and a new R1 processor for handling all the camera and sensor inputs.

Edit:
Woa! $3500!

 

[Saylick]

Mac Pro was mentioned as an afterthought (kind of all it deserves).

This is the Vision Pro keynote. It looks like an impressive piece of gear.

It has an M2 SoC and a new R1 processor for handling all the camera and sensor inputs.

Edit:
Woa! $3500!

This is literally what Meta tried to accomplish but couldn't.

 

[A///]

I questioned initially why the event was a digital replay and not a live event but then i remembered the booing from the 2019 event when they announced the pricing of the 2019 mac pro.

the entire event was a big ad that said we'd rather make phones than computers now piss off.

 

[A///]

Apple M2 Ultra with 24-core CPU, 76-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine
192GB unified memory
8TB SSD storage
Stainless steel frame with wheels
Magic Mouse + Magic Trackpad
Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad - US English
Final Cut Pro
Logic Pro

comes out to $12,847.98 before sales tax.

 

[Muadib]

Nm, I just went to the Apple Store and priced out the Studio.

 

[A///]

Is your total for the Mac Pro or the Studio?

The mac pro. the studio is about 3 and change grand cheaper. im not ordering it. i maxed it out. iirc it's cheaper than intel but you're sol on a lot of aspects about it.

 

[Muadib]

I agree but I guess that they couldn’t do that combo cpu thing.

 

[A///]

I agree but I guess that they couldn’t do that combo cpu thing.

unification on the soc has its benefits and its cons. there's a few cons with the mac pro, but it's too early to tell how apple may address the problems in future. what you order is what you get, and the 192 gb ignoring the speed and latency benefits of the design is shared over the entire system and is anemic compared to the 1.5 tb on the 2019 for ram alone whereas new xeons are 3 tb.

if you don't give a hoot about power, get a dual socker epyc 96 core board and go wild with it. 6tb a socket, 12 tb total dunno if it pools or holds separately, be able to use high end nvidia gpus for scientific work, a100, h100, a6000, whatever random names jensen's company gives them. dunno em don't care enough to learn.

 

[Muadib]

This is literally what Meta tried to accomplish but couldn't.

Time will tell, but I don't see Apple accomplishing it either.