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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[Doug S]

(proprietary codec licensing pools b0rked the long term potential of HEVC popularity and pretty much flatlined enthusiasm for VVC which already has multiple separate patent pools, it seems like the patent contributors will never learn their lesson - this is basically the reason AV1 exists in the first place)

True, but it isn't as if "open" codecs like AV1, AV2 and so forth are free from patent issues. They don't have pools because they try to avoid stepping on the patents of others, but that is essentially impossible if you want to implement a modern codec. You can avoid the patents you know about, but there are many you don't know about and won't find out about until the standard is published and in use. Because the patent holders have incentive to stay quiet until use becomes widespread enough (especially in hardware) to put the maximum squeeze on those found to be infringing.

 

[soresu]

True, but it isn't as if "open" codecs like AV1, AV2 and so forth are free from patent issues. They don't have pools

The point of AOM was to avoid the issue by having a counter MPEG where all founding members agree to contribute their own relevant patents for royalty free use under the AOM umbrella, and to contribute to a common legal defense fund to protect it.

(AOM is by itself a patent pool)

The problem is where you get nitpickers on the sidelines trying to find other patents that sound functionally a bit similar to some of the stuff that was actually invented for the codec development.

It's basically patent trolling pro max where they wait to see exactly how the codec works and then go shopping to find a bunch of patents they can use for an antagonistic pool to force AOM (or Google for VP9) into a settlement.

Regardless this hasn't yet impacted the actual rollout of the codecs AFAIK.

It's pretty much the tech world equivalent of mob 'protection'.

 

[Doug S]

The point of AOM was to avoid the issue by having a counter MPEG where all founding members agree to contribute their own relevant patents for royalty free use under the AOM umbrella, and to contribute to a common legal defense fund to protect it.

(AOM is by itself a patent pool)

The problem is where you get nitpickers on the sidelines trying to find other patents that sound functionally a bit similar to some of the stuff that was actually invented for the codec development.

It's basically patent trolling pro max where they wait to see exactly how the codec works and then go shopping to find a bunch of patents they can use for an antagonistic pool to force AOM (or Google for VP9) into a settlement.

Regardless this hasn't yet impacted the actual rollout of the codecs AFAIK.

It's pretty much the tech world equivalent of mob 'protection'.

A patent pool is useless against patent trolls, in fact I'm not sure why they'd even bother since no practicing entity is going to go up against that list of founding members. Now I'm not saying patent trolling isn't really slimy, but unless/until the patent system is fixed that's the reality we have to live with and AOM has no defense against them.

Because AOM won't be the one sued and forced into a settlement. It'll be the companies making the money distributing products and software using the patents. I have my guesses why Apple dragged their feet implementing an AV1 decoder in hardware, and I'll bet waiting to see who might pop up out the woodwork with lawsuits had a lot to do with that. I bet they never put an encoder in hardware; infringement is much more likely in encoding so that's just too much risk. Not that there's no risk with MPEG-LA, but the hope is that companies with legit patents will contribute them to the pools so the main danger is a company with some dusty patent everyone forgot about that goes bankrupt and gets bought up by an all lawyer NPE who make their (slimy) living on that kind of thing.

 

[FlameTail]

Samsung scores 2nm PFN orders, as TSMC preps GAA for iPhone 17 launch 2025

Samsung scores 2nm PFN orders, as TSMC preps GAA for iPhone 17 launch 2025

Samsung's recent announcement of securing a 2nm chip order from Japan's AI accelerator developer Preferred Networks (PFN) has sparked discussions about the actual production progress of rival TSMC's 2nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) process. This development highlights the intensifying competition in...

www.digitimes.com

Apple M5/A19 will be on TSMC N2?

 

[Doug S]

Samsung scores 2nm PFN orders, as TSMC preps GAA for iPhone 17 launch 2025

Samsung scores 2nm PFN orders, as TSMC preps GAA for iPhone 17 launch 2025

Samsung's recent announcement of securing a 2nm chip order from Japan's AI accelerator developer Preferred Networks (PFN) has sparked discussions about the actual production progress of rival TSMC's 2nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) process. This development highlights the intensifying competition in...

www.digitimes.com

Apple M5/A19 will be on TSMC N2?

I posted something about that yesterday in the foundry thread. TSMC is entering risk production for N2 next week and accelerating the buildout of their N2 fabs, so it sure sounds like they are making a push to be ready for A19. I don't think Apple would take that risk if they weren't pretty confident this will happen.

TSMC apparently has yields over 80% already (that's typically their target to begin risk production) and I have to think that even if they don't quite reach 90% (their target for mass production) in time, Apple may be willing to eat the cost of a few months of wafers run in the mid to upper 80s versus 90 to get N2 for A19/M5. So depending on how things go during risk production TSMC might start "mass production" earlier than their usual target, but as Apple has already bought out all of TSMC's initial production of N2 per previous rumor TSMC can pretty much go forward according to Apple's schedule.

 

[igor_kavinski]

But I contend that Apple is a valid choice for a certain number of people based on technical hardware merits and operating system and software decisions. In fact, I think that if everyone was given the opportunity and wanted to take the time to learn and experience all of their options that Apple marketshare would go up at the current pricing. A slightly larger, but still minority marketshare to be sure.

Their marketshare would go even more up if they hired some Windows users, put some Windows UI themes in MacOS, enabled a Windows experience mode in their OS so things and features seem to work like Windows, offer hints to Windows users on how to find what they are looking for or just straight up allowed Bootcamp with Windows on ARM and developed drivers for that AND slashed their launch prices by at least 25% across the board PLUS made themselves content with charging only 30% higher margins for RAM/SSD upgrades. In what world does the price of a product increase by almost double when one doubles RAM/storage from 8/256 to 16/512? This is what infuriates me about Apple. They consciously exclude low income people from their ecosystem. As if poverty is some disease that they don't want to tarnish their brand with.

 

[poke01]

In what world does the price of a product increase by almost double when one doubles RAM/storage from 8/256 to 16/512? This is what infuriates me about Apple. They consciously exclude low income people from their ecosystem. As if poverty is some disease that they don't want to tarnish their brand with.

i agree, but people who are money conscious do not buy at MSRP.

For example,this deal for the M3 Pro 18GB for $1749 which is normally $1999.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1793624-REG/apple_mrx33ll_a_14_macbook_pro_with.html

This is just one example, Mac’s go on sale so often and now the 16GB models can be picked up best buy or Amazon. Before the launch of the M3 Air, you could only buy 16GB MacBook Airs from Apple. This was clearly done to push AI. The M4 models need ditch the 8GB RAM though, it’s too little in 2024.

PC Recovery Continues as the Market Grows 3% in the Second Quarter, According to IDC

IDC examines consumer markets by devices, applications, networks, and services to provide complete solutions for succeeding in these expanding markets.

www.idc.com

Mac’s sales went up YoY, I say they are doing fine.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Mac’s sales went up YoY, I say they are doing fine.

Ten times fewer units shipped than the other PC OEMs combined? Yeah right. Everything's so fine.

Guess that totally does not create an elite class of users.

 

[okoroezenwa]

Their marketshare would go even more up if they hired some Windows users, put some Windows UI themes in MacOS, enabled a Windows experience mode in their OS so things and features seem to work like Windows, offer hints to Windows users on how to find what they are looking for or just straight up allowed Bootcamp with Windows on ARM and developed drivers for that

lol, it probably won't move the needle in any meaningful way. The price reductions you mentioned are what would be required to move their marketshare forward, however it doesn't seem clear to me that they care about that. It seems to be more of your concern tbh.

Ten times fewer units shipped than the other PC OEMs combined? Yeah right. Everything's so fine.

Uh, yes, that is quite fine for a single OEM (that is what they are after all).

 

[FlameTail]

A Mac Pro with 1 TB of RAM will be very enticing for ML enthusiasts, such as the folks at r/LocalLLaMA.

It could be enabled by an M4 Ultra with LPDDR5X + 1024 bit memory bus, provided Apple uses the highest density packages.

 

[poke01]

Ten times fewer units shipped than the other PC OEMs combined? Yeah right. Everything's so fine.

Guess that totally does not create an elite class of users.

Apple is never going to beat Lenovo or Dell in terms of units shipped. Too many people and users rely on Windows.

But what they ship is impressive considering how niche Macs are.

 

[FlameTail]

Now what would be interesting to see is the profit share Apple has in laptops.

In smartphones, iPhones make up only about 20% of shipments, but Apple takes home >50% of the profit in the industry.

 

[poke01]

A Mac Pro with 1 TB of RAM will be very enticing for ML enthusiasts, such as the folks at r/LocalLLaMA.

It could be enabled by an M4 Ultra with LPDDR5X + 1024 bit memory bus, provided Apple uses the highest density packages.

I think the M4 Mac Studio with 256GB of memory is going to be very popular for that group

 

[poke01]

iPhones make up only about 20% of shipments,

That includes the junk Androids. In the $700+ segment Apples smartphone share is much higher. That’s where the profits are.

 

[The Hardcard]

Their marketshare would go even more up if they hired some Windows users, put some Windows UI themes in MacOS, enabled a Windows experience mode in their OS so things and features seem to work like Windows, offer hints to Windows users on how to find what they are looking for or just straight up allowed Bootcamp with Windows on ARM and developed drivers for that AND slashed their launch prices by at least 25% across the board PLUS made themselves content with charging only 30% higher margins for RAM/SSD upgrades. In what world does the price of a product increase by almost double when one doubles RAM/storage from 8/256 to 16/512? This is what infuriates me about Apple. They consciously exclude low income people from their ecosystem. As if poverty is some disease that they don't want to tarnish their brand with.

Why does Apple infuriate you when you are already provided with everything you complain that Apple doesn’t provide? I remain confused by this. You have two foundries producing three different architectures placed on multiple motherboards sold by five major manufacturers plus multiple smaller ones. Each of the five major manufacturers have myriad models with hundreds of SKUs. so many choices available in person and online.

I haven’t seen you call for anything from Apple that is not readily available from Lenovo, HP, or Asus. What would an Apple laptop with a Windows UI and lower priced upgrades give you that you can’t already have today ordering on Amazon?

Apple has chosen to maintain a high R&D budget and finance it by maintaining margins pretty much across the line. and I think it has resulted in a much smoother progression of computing advancements, then is provided elsewhere. But of course, that is a matter of taste.

I can see it making you angry. If it was something you didn’t like, but were forced to deal with. But you don’t have to deal with Apple. So why be mad?

 

[The Hardcard]

A Mac Pro with 1 TB of RAM will be very enticing for ML enthusiasts, such as the folks at r/LocalLLaMA.

It could be enabled by an M4 Ultra with LPDDR5X + 1024 bit memory bus, provided Apple uses the highest density packages.

A Mac Pro doesn’t give the machine learning community, anything a Mac Studio can’t provide. I think the Mac Pro is just there for people who have legacy add in cards. I think the only mainstream use for PCIe slots going forward is high end discrete graphics. I’m not aware of anything else in the normal consumer user space that can’t be better served by Thunderbolt 5.

 

[johnsonwax]

Their marketshare would go even more up if they hired some Windows users, put some Windows UI themes in MacOS, enabled a Windows experience mode in their OS so things and features seem to work like Windows, offer hints to Windows users on how to find what they are looking for or just straight up allowed Bootcamp with Windows on ARM and developed drivers for that AND slashed their launch prices by at least 25% across the board PLUS made themselves content with charging only 30% higher margins for RAM/SSD upgrades. In what world does the price of a product increase by almost double when one doubles RAM/storage from 8/256 to 16/512? This is what infuriates me about Apple. They consciously exclude low income people from their ecosystem. As if poverty is some disease that they don't want to tarnish their brand with.

Ok. To start, Apple mostly doesn't give a redated about their marketshare, not really.

Apple's goal for the last 25 years has been to take all of the margin from a market, not the share. Pretty much every broad market has a margin distribution which skews heavily from the discount end of the market to the premium end of the market. Basically, 80% or so of the available margins come from the top end of the market, because those are the people who have the discretionary spending to provide those margins.

The reason that Apple cares about margins is pretty simple: it provides Apple with the margin opportunity to invest in new tech (because your R&D opportunity is a function of your margins), and denies their competitors the margin opportunity to keep pace with them. This is why Android has 80% of global marketshare and Apple has 90% of global smartphone profits. Apple isn't interested in the 80% of the market they don't pursue - there's no additional money that comes out of that group to pay for, say, access to TSMC 2nm node. That's a break-even market that incurs a lot of risk on the company and could provide economies of scale, but they aren't economies that Apple needs. It's not like Apple could ship leading processors in those devices anyway because TSMC is already struggling to meet Apple's volume, so it's not like Apple could be shipping the same devices to the 80% than they ship to the 20%. That's out of their control. That's just the basic nature of adoption curves - it takes time to ramp new tech.

And in what world does Apple OWE consumers the ability to buy their product? Does Hermes OWE my wife a Birkin bag? Does McLaren OWE you a cheap supercar? Does Ethiad OWE you a first class cabin? And you aren't even content to just demand Apple give you a cheap product, you also demand they put redacted Windows on it! Bitch, just buy a Windows PC. They're fucking cheap. You want a 4000 GB6 single core score to go with that? Take it up with AMD/Intel and tell them to get their redated together. And you know what they would tell you, if you could get the conversation to that level? They can't afford to match Apple's silicon development because you won't redacted pay enough for a PC to give them the margins they need to compete with Apple. That's what they'd tell you. So what, TSMC is supposed to develop 2nm out of the goodness of their heart and make it free to everyone, I guess.

I put a post above, my first or second here, which demonstrated that Apple hasn't changed the base price of the iMac in 26 years. It's gotten more than twice as affordable over time simply due to improved buying power from inflation. This is their system, and it's been their system for a quarter century. Their products generally speaking get cheaper over time. They are generally priced at about $1/day. That $1000 M4 iPad Pro should generally last you a solid 3 years. About $1/day - ⅓ of what you pay for Starbucks. Compute hardware is just about the best value for dollar of anything you can buy anywhere - including Apple hardware. My top of the line 16" MBP is right now around $2.50/day and given the choice between it and a Starbucks, I'd take it every day - especially when I spend 8+ hours a day with it.

You have the most deranged anti Apple takes I've ever seen - and I'm a LONG veteran of PC/Mac flame wars. You have a set of demands for Apple that don't apply to anyone else. Every fault of the market to not conform to your desires are Apple's fault alone. The whole thing comes off as wildly jealous. You so badly want to be an Apple user but have some ideological imperative that you can't give up on, and you don't have even a basic level of self-control to say 'I guess I just won't have that thing because of my ideological imperative', instead you constantly demand that the most valuable corporation on earth conform to your personal wants. As if Apple redacted cares about you. Apple doesn't redacted care about 80% of the market as it stands. Throwing you in that pile is nothing to them. Jesus, grow the redacted up.

 

[johnsonwax]

Samsung scores 2nm PFN orders, as TSMC preps GAA for iPhone 17 launch 2025

Samsung scores 2nm PFN orders, as TSMC preps GAA for iPhone 17 launch 2025

Samsung's recent announcement of securing a 2nm chip order from Japan's AI accelerator developer Preferred Networks (PFN) has sparked discussions about the actual production progress of rival TSMC's 2nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) process. This development highlights the intensifying competition in...

www.digitimes.com

Apple M5/A19 will be on TSMC N2?

I would assume so. That's why Apple is cutting TSMC the big prepayment check - to get that redacted built so they can launch on it.

 

[igor_kavinski]

But you don’t have to deal with Apple. So why be mad?

I'm a tinkerer. I want to tinker with something Apple that has 32GB RAM, user upgradable SSD, enough GPU cores to match a 4060 Ti. Then I wanna run benchmarks on it and see how much I can get out of it. And I have $1500. Does Apple want my money (and that of a lot of other geeks), yes or no? Make up your frickin' mind, Apple. Don't hide behind your brand. If you think your hardware is up to it, let REAL hardcore users use it, instead of daddy's little girl trying to design her fashion dresses on it or daddy's little boy running his DJ software on it.

 

[johnsonwax]

I'm a tinkerer. I want to tinker with something Apple that has 32GB RAM, user upgradable SSD, enough GPU cores to match a 4060 Ti. Then I wanna run benchmarks on it and see how much I can get out of it. And I have $1500. Does Apple want my money (and that of a lot of other geeks), yes or no? Make up your frickin' mind, Apple. Don't hide behind your brand. If you think your hardware is up to it, let REAL hardcore users use it, instead of daddy's little girl trying to design her fashion dresses on it or daddy's little boy running his DJ software on it.

Their answer is 'no'. It's always been 'no'. Why do you think they are undecided about this? Here are the things they sell. If you want it, buy it. If you don't see what you want, then they obviously don't want your money. This has always been the deal.

And what's with the toxic masculinity deleted? What makes you a REAL user? My god, you just whine and act entitled.

 

[Eug]

Now what would be interesting to see is the profit share Apple has in laptops.

In smartphones, iPhones make up only about 20% of shipments, but Apple takes home >50% of the profit in the industry.

I haven't seen any recent stats that spell that out for the individual product lines, but most pundits state that the Mac profit share is, like iPhones, much, much higher than would be expected from market share. However, it's likely not as dramatic as with the iPhones.

FWIW, gross margin on Apple products is in the 40-45% range average, but it skews higher on the iPhone, with some estimating it to be near 50% on the iPhones but <40% on the Macs.

I'm a tinkerer. I want to tinker with something Apple that has 32GB RAM, user upgradable SSD, enough GPU cores to match a 4060 Ti. Then I wanna run benchmarks on it and see how much I can get out of it. And I have $1500. Does Apple want my money (and that of a lot of other geeks), yes or no? Make up your frickin' mind, Apple. Don't hide behind your brand. If you think your hardware is up to it, let REAL hardcore users use it, instead of daddy's little girl trying to design her fashion dresses on it or daddy's little boy running his DJ software on it.

No, Apple does not really want your money. It's not worth it for them to cater to your niche group.

BTW, I'm sure you guys are aware I'm an Apple fan. However, after the Apple ][ era, I went PC only, eventually building my own PCs and overclocking them. Then I went pre-built Windows, and then went Mac. Despite my history, I no longer use any Windows products at home. Although sometimes I still tinker with old machines, I find it's less aggravating on the Mac side than it is Windows side. I have tried a few Linux setups as well, but gave up on that pretty quickly. It's even more aggravating on Linux, at least for someone like me who isn't an engineer or developer or whatever. Ironically though back in university I actually took a couple of intro software programming classes including in assembly, but they were truly intro and that knowledge is completely useless today, being in intro Pascal and base-10 assembly, ie. on a simulated computer in base 10 because they assumed we'd be too stupid to think in hex. I'm curious, do they still teach base-10 assembly in university these days?

 

[igor_kavinski]

What makes you a REAL user?

Because I push hardware to the limit.

 

[igor_kavinski]

No, Apple does not really want your money. It's not worth it for them to cater to your niche group.

Fine, I'll just put a thought in Elon's head that Apple silicon is the only thing that will work on Mars and then it's him and his merry band of billionaires plotting a hostile takeover of Apple.

 

[igor_kavinski]

that knowledge is completely useless today, being in intro Pascal

Check out Delphi. Or https://www.freepascal.org/

Have fun remembering and challenging yourself..

 

[name99]

So yeah, Apple does make money on cloud compute - they have for a long time - that's the App Store. That's AppleTV+. That's iCloud. And they've always run on Azure and AWS because even Apple, using their own silicon, can't turn a greater profit by doing so.

While I strongly agree with your overall point, do you know for a fact this particular detail ("they've always run on Azure and AWS") and how it has evolved?
Certainly there have been times in the past when Apple has used each of the big three cloud services, we've seen fragmentary info about that.
On the other hand, even five years ago we know that Apple had large data centers, and all the major known ones from them are still around and appear to still be used by Apple.

It seems to me (purely as an outsider with very little knowledge of this space) that the trajectory has probably been somewhat different from what you describe. More like initial versions of Mobile Me and then iCloud launched on AWS/Google/Azure because why not, how else do you get started?
And then slowly one step at a time (maybe Maps this year, maybe Siri cloud compute next year) elements moved from a commercial provider to Apple internal. Along with various parallel migrations inside those data centers – this year we try to run this functionality on OSX instead of Linux? Next year we try to run it on Apple Silicon?

On the one hand, we have all those data centers which, presumably, do *something*.
On the other hand, having this stuff in-house maybe makes it easier to tweak things to Apple's requirements (eg security issues)? Or whatever they are boasting about this year in terms of zero carbon and suchlike.
On the third hand maybe it's even operationally cheaper once you get to a certain scale? Especially so (unclear, but seems possible) if you're running on repurposed Apple silicon (ie Apple chips, but fitted into fairly bare-bones boxes)?

I could also believe a somewhat split model where all interesting "compute" now happens in Apple data centers, but bulk storage of photos and backups (something to which Apple can probably add little value) happens on the commercial cloud?