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:

Page 78 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 78 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

M1 Ultra discussion here:

Page 109 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 109 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

M2 discussion here:

Page 127 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 127 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

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:

Page 215 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 215 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

M4 Family discussion here:

Page 263 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 263 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

 

[Doug S]

Apple's GPUs most likely have a lot of untapped potential, mostly because there aren't that many serious developers pushing them to eke the maximum performance out of them. Now if game developers took the Mac platform more seriously than Apple itself does, that COULD change...

Which just prompted a thought in my head:

Apple Management: Create the best, most powerful GPU architecture ever!
Apple engineers: DONE!
Apple Management: Now market it!
Apple Marketing: Uhhh Ummm well, we could certainly use them for better and faster and higher res video editing!
Apple Management: Any other ideas???

*crickets chirping*

A lot of developers create games for the iPhone first, because that's the biggest gaming market on the planet. Bigger than console, bigger than PC. So I wouldn't worry about them leaving a lot of untapped potential behind on iOS. But of course mobile gaming isn't "real gaming" according to the gaming police on this site.

As far as the Mac, Apple creates products tailored for what its customers use them for. Even if Apple had the fastest GPU around by far that wouldn't do much to bring game developers to the Mac, because the market size is pretty small versus Windows - and its even worse if you measure it in "how many people buy games" on each platform. There's also a pretty good sized segment of the "hardcore gamers" who like to fiddle with their hardware - overclocking their CPU, buying really expensive fast RAM and tweaking its settings to the ragged edge, that sort of thing that's not possible and never will be possible on the Mac (or consoles for that matter, which is probably a big reason why PC gaming has a dedicated audience even though its more of a pain dealing with the stupidity of Windows, GPU driver updates needed for some games and all that)

So even if Apple had the fastest GPU, and all the leading game developers also did top quality Mac exclusive games, that still probably wouldn't get many gamers to come to the Mac. Because they'd say "I don't just want to play these exclusives, I want to play my 10 year old game I still love" or "why can't I install a huge HSF and see how high I can clock this to crank out a few more frames" and so forth.

 

[Mopetar]

I don't hate Apple. They've done great. It's just their insistence on being the company for the rich rather than the common folk, that often causes me to lose it. That and the MacOS is crap. I don't know why they don't create a Mac version of Windows. Even just for pissing off Microsoft would be great.

What is Apple selling that's only for "rich" people? New iPads start at $350, new iPhones at $800 for the latest model, and much less for older models. Their desktop and laptops aren't terribly expensive either.

Considering that you can typically get more years out of an Apple product because it gets software updates for longer and the hardware holds up better, the cost per year isn't going to be any higher than alternatives with a lower sticker price.

If you think Apple is for rich people you've clearly never looked at actual luxury goods. Those companies sell products that can cost more than you or I will earn in a year. For example here is a brand name leather bag that costs $3,150. That's about the same price I paid for my M1 MBP.

I guarantee you that if I used that bag every day it would not last for two years before showing signs of serious wear or actually starting to fall apart. Contrast this with the actual leather bag that I use to carry around my MacBook, which I paid about $600 for when I bought it over close to 7 years ago. That bag is made of full grain leather and will probably last longer than I do. The MacBook will probably not last that long, but I don't see myself needing to replace it for many years still. By the time I replace it, the yearly cost will be below $400, which is probably what I'd end up spending if I bought cheap crap that I had to replace every other year.

My mother used to buy cheap laptops and they'd be shot within 3 years. They sucked to use before they died. Eventually I bought her a MacBook Air that she had for nearly ten years. The $1,000 up-front cost was more than the $500 she typically spent on a laptop but the total cost over time was lower and she had a laptop that was light and usable instead of a plastic craptop from Dell that was hot, noisy, and best left on a desk.

 

[poke01]

Apple marches to its own beat and will only become aggressive in pricing when it suits them. We see this the iPhone and iPad pricing. These are aligned with Android flagships.

As for the Mac they have revise some specs and I hope they that next month to make them even more competitive

 

[Doug S]

What is Apple selling that's only for "rich" people? New iPads start at $350, new iPhones at $800 for the latest model, and much less for older models. Their desktop and laptops aren't terribly expensive either.

While I agree with you that claiming they are only for "rich" people (unless you define "rich" when comparing with global incomes, rather than first world incomes) is silly, he's not wrong that Apple targets the premium sector. They've had that strategy since Jobs returned and it is hard to argue that it is a bad strategy given Apple's status as the world's most valuable company.

By global standards anyone capable of purchasing a new car is "rich", but I think most of us reading this wouldn't consider someone buying a Ford Focus "rich". Some might consider someone buying a $75K car rich, for others it might take moving into the $200K+ territory. In automotive terms Apple certainly isn't Ford Focus, but it is more like Audi or Mercedes than it is like Maserati or Rolls Royce.

 

[FlameTail]

Apple M5 in 2025H2

AI spatial computing to be the main selling point for new M5-powered Vision Pro; new Appleâ¦

The new M5-powered Vision Pro is expected to enter mass production in 2H25. The main selling point will be the integration of Appleâ¦

medium.com

The new M5-powered Vision Pro is expected to enter mass production in 2H25

 

[poke01]

Apple M5 in 2025H2

AI spatial computing to be the main selling point for new M5-powered Vision Pro; new Appleâ¦

The new M5-powered Vision Pro is expected to enter mass production in 2H25. The main selling point will be the integration of Appleâ¦

medium.com

Yearly refreshes of M-series ships is good. M5 identifiers also showed up in iPad Pro and Macs this year too.

 

[fastandfurious6]

M5 in 2025 that's so fast wow

 

[fastandfurious6]

Yearly refreshes of M-series ships is good

is it? too much waste..... economical, ecological, all of it

just for small incremental updates

the only winner is TSMC which gets 💰💰💰💰💰💰 apple moneybags for the cutting edge node each time

 

[The Hardcard]

is it? too much waste..... economical, ecological, all of it

just for small incremental updates

the only winner is TSMC which gets 💰💰💰💰💰💰 apple moneybags for the cutting edge node each time

What is being wasted? The die size is nearly the same each year, the design and development of IP blocks is continuous whether you scoop up the results yearly or wait longer. You wouldn’t save on validation since you pay those people continuously whether or not they have a chip to work on.

Then there are the resulting products. A major part of Apple’s incremental updates is increased efficiency per workload. A tiny amount per chip, but the savings for a userbase of 150 million A chips and 50 million M chips can probably be measured in some number of houses yearly energy needs.

 

[name99]

What is Apple selling that's only for "rich" people? New iPads start at $350, new iPhones at $800 for the latest model, and much less for older models. Their desktop and laptops aren't terribly expensive either.

Considering that you can typically get more years out of an Apple product because it gets software updates for longer and the hardware holds up better, the cost per year isn't going to be any higher than alternatives with a lower sticker price.

If you think Apple is for rich people you've clearly never looked at actual luxury goods. Those companies sell products that can cost more than you or I will earn in a year. For example here is a brand name leather bag that costs $3,150. That's about the same price I paid for my M1 MBP.

I guarantee you that if I used that bag every day it would not last for two years before showing signs of serious wear or actually starting to fall apart. Contrast this with the actual leather bag that I use to carry around my MacBook, which I paid about $600 for when I bought it over close to 7 years ago. That bag is made of full grain leather and will probably last longer than I do. The MacBook will probably not last that long, but I don't see myself needing to replace it for many years still. By the time I replace it, the yearly cost will be below $400, which is probably what I'd end up spending if I bought cheap crap that I had to replace every other year.

My mother used to buy cheap laptops and they'd be shot within 3 years. They sucked to use before they died. Eventually I bought her a MacBook Air that she had for nearly ten years. The $1,000 up-front cost was more than the $500 she typically spent on a laptop but the total cost over time was lower and she had a laptop that was light and usable instead of a plastic craptop from Dell that was hot, noisy, and best left on a desk.

I've no special interest in this subject, and I have no knowledge of Louis Vuitton specifically (whose popularity is a mystery to me).

But I will say that "mid-luxury" brands, like say Coach for handbags, or St John Knits for garments, are actually very nice and very well made. A Coach bag is (usually..., there's always the stuff that. to my eyes looks awful) very attractive and will last you for decades; and if you buy it at an outlet mall will cost you maybe $250 or so. A St John suit will cost you maybe $500 (if you buy it on sale at the outlet mall) but is quite gorgeous, not just the many different colors going into pattern, but more subtle issues like the way the thing is one knit from top to bottom, no panels sewn together, just varying the number of stitches in each row.

Next time you're at your local mall, go look at Coach bags and St John's suits (of course at the non-outlet mall they will cost 3x the price...) and just see what they are like in person - photos do not really do them justice, and of course you cannot feel the textures or see the various details.

Now not all luxury is like this (expensive watches make zero sense to me) but that's kinda the point – everyone has different, often very different, opinions about
- what's even nice. Much of Louis Vuitton or expensive watches I wouldn't want even if you gave them to me.
- what's nice enough to be worth the cost. A Coach handbag or St John suit (on sale!)? Probably. An Hermes scarf? They are beautiful, and you have to see them in person, the photographed silk is not as impressive. But at that cost? Not for me. And an Hermes Apple watch band? God no, that goes into the "will not wear even if given for free" category.

I'd say Apple is like Coach or St John in two ways.
- You pay more, but you get value (in niceness and in durability) for the cost.
- Like Coach or St John, the headline prices are not the relevant prices for most people. You can buy Coach at the mall, or you can drive 50 miles to the outlet mall and get it for a third the price. Likewise you can buy a fully loaded iPad Pro for $4500 (or whatever it is) but the price that's actually relevant to most people is, like you said, the cost of an iPad, or last year's iPhone, or an Apple Watch SE.

 

[Eug]

I've no special interest in this subject, and I have no knowledge of Louis Vuitton specifically (whose popularity is a mystery to me).

But I will say that "mid-luxury" brands, like say Coach for handbags, or St John Knits for garments, are actually very nice and very well made. A Coach bag is (usually..., there's always the stuff that. to my eyes looks awful) very attractive and will last you for decades; and if you buy it at an outlet mall will cost you maybe $250 or so. A St John suit will cost you maybe $500 (if you buy it on sale at the outlet mall) but is quite gorgeous, not just the many different colors going into pattern, but more subtle issues like the way the thing is one knit from top to bottom, no panels sewn together, just varying the number of stitches in each row.

Next time you're at your local mall, go look at Coach bags and St John's suits (of course at the non-outlet mall they will cost 3x the price...) and just see what they are like in person - photos do not really do them justice, and of course you cannot feel the textures or see the various details.

Now not all luxury is like this (expensive watches make zero sense to me) but that's kinda the point – everyone has different, often very different, opinions about
- what's even nice. Much of Louis Vuitton or expensive watches I wouldn't want even if you gave them to me.
- what's nice enough to be worth the cost. A Coach handbag or St John suit (on sale!)? Probably. An Hermes scarf? They are beautiful, and you have to see them in person, the photographed silk is not as impressive. But at that cost? Not for me. And an Hermes Apple watch band? God no, that goes into the "will not wear even if given for free" category.

I'd say Apple is like Coach or St John in two ways.
- You pay more, but you get value (in niceness and in durability) for the cost.
- Like Coach or St John, the headline prices are not the relevant prices for most people. You can buy Coach at the mall, or you can drive 50 miles to the outlet mall and get it for a third the price. Likewise you can buy a fully loaded iPad Pro for $4500 (or whatever it is) but the price that's actually relevant to most people is, like you said, the cost of an iPad, or last year's iPhone, or an Apple Watch SE.

This is not correct. Most top end Coach products cannot be purchased at the Coach outlet mall stores. Similarly, outlet mall Coach products are often not sold in the flagship Coach stores. They are actually separate product lines, and the materials and the manufacturing quality reflect the price differences. This is true for most other competing brands too at those price points.

An analogy would be as if Apple sold the iPhone Pro Max only at the flagship Apple Stores and the iPhone SE at a hypothetical outlet mall Apple Store, but as we know, Apple doesn’t work that way.

 

[Mopetar]

While I agree with you that claiming they are only for "rich" people (unless you define "rich" when comparing with global incomes, rather than first world incomes) is silly, he's not wrong that Apple targets the premium sector.

I think the whole argument is off base from nearly the very beginning and splitting hairs over downstream details isn't worthwhile.

If a person would consider it reasonable to believe that Apple should sell their high-quality products at the prices charged by purveyors of cheap crud products, why do they never demand that the companies making the inexpensive crap products raise their level of quality to what Apple has on offer?

I think that exposes the underlying dishonesty in the argument. Everyone realizes on some level that if you're only willing to spend $$ that you can expect a performance in line with what was paid. But somehow the existing high quality product ought to be sold for far less than its value, usually because "reasons" that aren't all that reasonable or that no person would consider valid were they to be applied to them.

I'm sure many of the posters here are older and have been working for decades in their career field. Imagine if your current employer came to you and asked you to take a pay cut. Although you're an experienced and skilled employee why shouldn't you lower your pay to be similar to that of an entry-level worker who charges much less for their labor even though they're of lower quality? Who here wouldn't be insulated at the mere suggestion?

As a long time Apple user I don't want them to change to cater to the demands of unreasonable people. I want to buy a premium product and when I buy them from other PC makers, the cost isn't so different from what Apple charges. It's not hard to spec out a $3,000 laptop from Dell or HP if you want something of a similar high quality to what you can get from a high-end MacBook Pro.

 

[name99]

This is not correct. Most top end Coach products cannot be purchased at the Coach outlet mall stores. Similarly, outlet mall Coach products are often not sold in the flagship Coach stores. They are actually separate product lines, and the materials and the manufacturing quality reflect the price differences. This is true for most other competing brands too at those price points.

An analogy would be as if Apple sold the iPhone Pro Max only at the flagship Apple Stores and the iPhone SE at a hypothetical outlet mall Apple Store, but as we know, Apple doesn’t work that way.

Are you sure about that? Does it vary by state?

My GF buys a fair amount of Coach and hangs out at both stores, and has never mentioned this to me. Likewise my limited browsing of both stores.

 

[Eug]

Are you sure about that? Does it vary by state?

My GF buys a fair amount of Coach and hangs out at both stores, and has never mentioned this to me. Likewise my limited browsing of both stores.

Yes I’m positive.

Differences Between Coach vs. Coach Outlet

Everyone's talking about Coach and Coach Outlet, what's the difference? Both come from the same brand, but they serve up something different for shoppers.

retailboss.co

While occasionally Coach Outlet stores will have true Coach products on sale, generally this is not true, and even when it is true, it’s limited to a few items that nobody wants. And even then it will still usually be considerably more expensive than the regular Coach Outlet products.

The Coach Outlet products are less well made and less durable, but a lot of people don’t care because they cost 1/3rd the price, look good, and may get used only occasionally.

 

[mvprod123]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1839388547587215819

 

[mvprod123]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1838304273974857740

 

[mvprod123]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1840300722958807270

 

[name99]

Yes I’m positive.

Differences Between Coach vs. Coach Outlet

Everyone's talking about Coach and Coach Outlet, what's the difference? Both come from the same brand, but they serve up something different for shoppers.

retailboss.co

While occasionally Coach Outlet stores will have true Coach products on sale, generally this is not true, and even when it is true, it’s limited to a few items that nobody wants. And even then it will still usually be considerably more expensive than the regular Coach Outlet products.

The Coach Outlet products are less well made and less durable, but a lot of people don’t care because they cost 1/3rd the price, look good, and may get used only occasionally.

That's interesting in that it seems like a pretty extreme play on market segmentation by social anxiety! Most of what was said boils down to "Coach Outlet can be detected as such by someone obsessed with doing so".
Which is probably true, and maybe important for a certain type of person, but is mostly, I think, orthogonal to the point I was making.

I guess the Apple analogy would be something like an obsessive person who looked at the serial number of your iPhone 14 and sneered that "oh, you bought it January 2024, when it was already the last year's model!" Presumably there are people who are socially insecure enough that this is some sort of issue for them, but for the average person, I suspect matters of build quality, appearance, and general niceness are what matter, not whether or not the package has the right serial number or the right price tag.

I guess how one thinks about this depends on the crowd one hangs with. If that crowd are teenage girls obsessed with tearing each other down by any means possible, you'll view these differences as incredibly important; if that crowd is 50+ adults who couldn't give a fsck what anyone else thinks, they're buying for themselves based on their determination of niceness vs cost, you'll view these differences as somewhat pathetic and bizarre.


But thanks for that article. I'm now curious! I'm fairly close to both an expensive mall and an outlet mall, so maybe some time over the next month I'll visit both in the same day and see if I can spot differences now that I've been told what to look for

 

[mvprod123]

Finally, Apple R1 die shot!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1840505063011492325

 

[mvprod123]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1840495865372545079

 

[mvprod123]

A18/A18 Pro die shots

https://twitter.com/x/status/1840813636220305447

 

[Doug S]

So it is two different dies.

Did any of these people doing die photos list the sizes in mm^2?

 

[Gene351]

So it is two different dies.

Did any of these people doing die photos list the sizes in mm^2?

Did some pixel-peeping and basic maths (so there'll be some margin of error).

Assuming the die sizes of Pcore and GPU core are the same between A18s and M4 (Pcore = 3.0 mm^2, GPU core = 2.69 mm^2) [Source],

A18 Die Size
Measured with Pcore as reference: 90.23 mm^2
Measured with GPU core as reference: 89.74 mm^2


A18 Pro Die Size
Measured with Pcore as reference: 107.09 mm^2
Measured with GPU core as reference: 105.56 mm^2


[Image Source]

Edit: No wonder Apple didn't mention any transistor counts during the event. A18 Pro's die size stayed about the same compared to A17 Pro on a lesser dense node (N3E vs N3B), so the transistor count might actually be less.

 

[FlameTail]

So it is two different dies.

Yes, Tupai and Tahiti.

Edit: No wonder Apple didn't mention any transistor counts during the event. A18 Pro's die size stayed about the same compared to A17 Pro on a lesser dense node (N3E vs N3B), so the transistor count might actually be less.

That doesn't sound right.

 

[Gene351]

Yes, Tupai and Tahiti.
View attachment 108489

That doesn't sound right.

The total CPU area in the A18 Pro looks to be bigger than in the A17 Pro, so maybe they managed to cut down area in other places?

And although I said possibly less, it might just be within the margin of error. Could be more, could be less.

Besides, a good chunk of M4's increase in transistors (from M3) is probably from having two additional Thunderbolt controllers, larger display engine, and 2 more E cores (which the A18 Pro updates sort of lack). I could be wrong though.