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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[johnsonwax]

Figure 1 shows the Mac mini, which was launched on November 8, 2024. Compared to its predecessor, the device's maximum volume has been reduced from 1389mm³ to 807mm³, and its weight has decreased from 1.28kg to 0.73kg—a reduction of approximately 40%. The device is now compact enough to fit in the palm of a hand.

So, this is something I know from 'people'.

In the era of the original Mini, which coincided with Apple pushing for an end to physical media and a push away from desktops to laptops like the Air, a lot of Apples focus was on gaining supply chain advantages. This was roughly the period when the iPhone launched.

One advantage Apple thought they could get, and it was something they knew they would need if the iPhone took off, was a shift from container shipping and having 30-60 days of inventory (even if that inventory was locked up in a container ship and not held as inventory) to air freight and having 3-6 days of inventory. This affected a wide range of operations, including the ability to use Apple retail stores as warehouses. Consider that many of Apple's flagship stores do 1-3M in sales per day, sometimes in a 10,000sq ft store and consider the warehousing and logistics challenges in that.

One of their approaches to this was to aggressively shrink the physical size of the product, including packaging. Cutting the product in half volume wise means twice as many units in a ULD, half as many trucks, and twice as much inventory in a storeroom, and potentially passing the crossover point from containerized sea freight to air freight costs. Remove physical media and Apple can remove that whole section from their physical stores, as well as the volume in the product taken up by a DVD drive. When the original Mini came out, people thought the 3.5" hard drive was a bad decision because they were so much more expensive than the 5.25" drives at the time, but when you factored in packaging costs, shipping costs, warehousing costs, and the greater ability to turn over inventory which meant they were less likely to wind up with millions of units that customers don't want because they don't hold the product - it goes straight to customers in days not weeks, it wound up being cheaper for Apple to use the 3.5" drives than the retail cheaper 5.25" ones if it enabled those kinds of changes - which it did. Removing accessories like chargers from iPhone packaging has this additional benefit. And at volumes of hundreds of millions of units, it's not just a profitability thing, it's a 'can we reduce the delivery load enough that launch weekend doesn't overwhelm the global shipping industry'. That wasn't a problem back when they started this effort, but by 2012 it was.

Apple's continued aggressive reduction in component count is part of this overall strategy. Half as many parts is a supply chain which is half as complex and likely can move twice as fast. They have a particularly holistic strategy toward this stuff. How much of a simplification of supply chain and reduction of warranty repairs (put aside the cost and just consider the volume of people trying to access warranty service in their retail stores) was just eliminating the headphone jack?

 

[repoman27]

My understanding is that the chips in the NAND package are PCIe/flash bridges. They'd need a lot of wires for the full NAND interface that's typically required for a controller to talk to flash chips, so they are essentially tunneling that interface via PCIe.

I expect these guys are just confused by the custom Apple chip they see and for whatever reason are assuming it does more than it actually does.

The extra die in the NAND packages is Apple's custom Memory Signal Processing (MSP) chip:

Apple SSDs utilize multi-chip packages, each of which contain a single MSP (Memory Signal Processing) die along with 2 to 16 NAND flash memory dies. So far I’ve seen packages with 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, and 16 NAND dies. Some SSDs incorporate a single package with an extra NAND die resulting in the non-power-of-2 quantities of 5 and 9. This additional overprovisioning allows for larger pseudo-SLC (Single Level Cell) caches which improve performance and extend the useful life of the drive. While the NAND dies Apple uses are bog standard, the MSP is proprietary special sauce.

Like other memory types, NAND dies are connected via a highly multiplexed parallel interface. Apple uses the Toggle DDR (Double Data Rate) interface, a standardized bus that is 8 bits wide and transfers data on both the rising and falling edges of the signal waveform. Just as with DRAM, the key to achieving the highest capacities is connecting as many dies as possible to each bus. However, as you increase the number of dies per bus, the capacitive loading decreases signal integrity and makes achieving the maximum clock speeds impossible. Much like DRAM does with RDIMMs (Registered Dual In-line Memory Modules) and LRDIMMs (Load Reduced Dual In-line Memory Modules), the solution is to use buffer chips to mask the effect of loading. Samsung’s “F-chips” are one example of this type of frequency boosting interface chip.

Apple, however, developed their proprietary MSP in-house using IP and engineering talent gained through the acquisition of Anobit in 2011. Each of Apple’s MSPs supports two independent 8-bit Toggle DDR interfaces to which as many as 8 NAND dies can be attached. They utilize a PCIe Gen4 x1 link as transport between the NAND package and SSD controller, unlike simple buffer chips from other vendors which use ONFI or Toggle interfaces. To my knowledge this is completely unique, and it greatly simplifies routing, allows the NAND to be located much further from the controller, and reduces power usage. Were it not for this, the removable NAND modules in M-series Macs would look more like SO-DIMMs, with hundreds of pins rather than 72 to 76, and up to four modules would be needed to accommodate the 16-channel controllers in the Max and Ultra SoCs. The other party piece that Apple’s MSP technology delivers is what Anobit claimed prior to the acquisition as a 20x increase in NAND endurance. Not surprisingly, Apple must develop a new MSP to support each new type of NAND flash that they use. The MSP also underwent a minor revision between the original M1 models introduced in 2020 and subsequent M1 generation Macs released in 2021 and 2022.

The EE Times Japan article was written by Hiroharu Shimizu of TechanaLye Shimizu (@techanalye1 on X / Twitter). I'm pretty sure he knows what he's talking about, although some degree of nuance is likely lost by the machine translation from Japanese to English.