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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[mikegg]

I am really not sure why you think 2560x1600 has more PPI than 3840x2160.

It depends on the screen size. Pixels per inch.

You said you had one for a year, why not you speak about it? You should know better than marketing kool aid after all.

Sure. I played Starcraft 2, an older but surprisingly intensive game on my Macbok Air M1. It had same the performance plugged in or on battery life. When on battery, I could play the game for around 7 hours. I couldn't dream of doing this on a PC windows laptop. I never thought gaming on a laptop on battery life for more than 1-2 hours was possible.

That's my experience with the M1 Air. I don't own it anymore. I use a Macbook Pro 16" now.

And the 16gb ram model is actually faster at video editing and even photoshop. Hence why its such a shame to me Apple silicon gets choked with 8/256. That extra performance doesn't actually cost the amount they charge us for it.

Already explained elsewhere. Apple subsidizes base laptops by increasing margins on RAM/SSD upgrades. But even at 8/256, it's fine for 80% of users - which is what the Air targets anyways. Again, I used an 8/256 M1 Air for backend software engineering for one year. It was faster than my 16" Intel 2019 16/512 MBP.

RAM and SSD are cheap - especially the low quality DDR5 RAM that most Windows laptop makers use. What's not cheap is metal enclosure, high resolution and high quality display, good speakers, good touchpad, thin and light, etc.

 

[Doug S]

And the 16gb ram model is actually faster at video editing and even photoshop. Hence why its such a shame to me Apple silicon gets choked with 8/256. That extra performance doesn't actually cost the amount they charge us for it.

Why is it a shame? Not everyone does Photoshop, if 8/256 is adequate for someone's needs it provides a cheaper entry point for them.

I agree that Apple needs to step up the low end config and it sounds like they're going to 12 GB in the M3 generation due to the move from 16Gb to 24Gb DRAM chips. As I've said before the reason why they stuck with 8 GB may have been because they had the DRAM roadmap in hand and knew if they went 16 GB in the 16Gb chip generation their only choices with the 24Gb chips would be 12 GB (a step back) or 24 GB (which might force them to raise prices on the base config to keep their margins intact) unless an 18 GB configuration using 6 dies was possible - theoretically you could mix 16 and 32 bit width LPDDR to make 6 dies work but whether that is feasible in a single stack/module is another matter.

I imagine we will see 32 Gb DRAMs in a couple years, so 16 GB would become the base with M5.

 

[Glo.]

Why is it a shame? Not everyone does Photoshop, if 8/256 is adequate for someone's needs it provides a cheaper entry point for them.

I agree that Apple needs to step up the low end config and it sounds like they're going to 12 GB in the M3 generation due to the move from 16Gb to 24Gb DRAM chips. As I've said before the reason why they stuck with 8 GB may have been because they had the DRAM roadmap in hand and knew if they went 16 GB in the 16Gb chip generation their only choices with the 24Gb chips would be 12 GB (a step back) or 24 GB (which might force them to raise prices on the base config to keep their margins intact) unless an 18 GB configuration using 6 dies was possible - theoretically you could mix 16 and 32 bit width LPDDR to make 6 dies work but whether that is feasible in a single stack/module is another matter.

I imagine we will see 32 Gb DRAMs in a couple years, so 16 GB would become the base with M5.

Apple sticks with particular RAM capacity because, they buy them in bulk.

Apple simply orders ram that they can sign one simple volume contract with their suppliers. Which means that the RAM chips capacity has to scale from iPhone, AppleTV, Apple Watch, iPad, and then Macs.
Its the easiest and cheapest way to buy billions of memory chips each year.

 

[eek2121]

In my profession (software engineering), macOS trounces Windows. I'm a software engineer in Silicon Valley. I'm estimating that 80 - 90% of the tech workers here use macOS. Probably 5% are using Macs but with Linux. And the rest are Windows laptops but installed with Linux. Hardly anyone use Windows here.

Gaming isn't the only thing that matters in this world.

That has begun to change FWIW. Windows + WSL2 is bringing people back around and some of the tooling Microsoft has in the works will likely make most serious developers reconsider.

For me personally, I don’t view the Mac as superior. It just had better open source support thanks to it’s UNIX heritage. The hardware is great, but the software is meh.

I still use a Mac for my day job, but all my consulting work is done on PC using WSL. Being able to use similar hardware and software (Zen 4 cores, Ubuntu LTS) makes bugs and performance regressions far less likely to happen vs Apple Cores/MacOS -> x86/ARM/Linux distro of choice.

 

[A///]

Linux, Windows and Mac making up the last 10ish pc for us. Although that may have changed. I've been on a year and some extra paid sabbatical from work. I go back in 2024. I could very well see more macs. the studios yes.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I've been on a year and some extra paid sabbatical from work. I go back in 2024. I could very well see more macs. the studios yes.

Imagine going back to work. They hand you a Macbook Pro 16. Then tell you to run Windows ARM on that via Parallels. Then tell you to use WSL on the Windows ARM inside Parallels. Then tell you to use BOCHS inside that WSL. At that point, how many bottles of wine will you have finished?

 

[A///]

Imagine going back to work. They hand you a Macbook Pro 16. Then tell you to run Windows ARM on that via Parallels. Then tell you to use WSL on the Windows ARM inside Parallels. Then tell you to use BOCHS inside that WSL. At that point, how many bottles of wine will you have finished?

Windows ARM doesn't run on MBPs at the mo because Microsoft refused to develop something apple needed to make it work. idk if it has to do with costs or the new qualcomm chips coming through through the nuvia acquisition. the tools we use at work are strictly linux or windows, they don't exist on macs afaik. macs make up a tiny portion of our company and no one beyond the front offices uses them.

 

[Mopetar]

That has begun to change FWIW. Windows + WSL2 is bringing people back around and some of the tooling Microsoft has in the works will likely make most serious developers reconsider.

For me personally, I don’t view the Mac as superior. It just had better open source support thanks to it’s UNIX heritage. The hardware is great, but the software is meh.

I just use a Mac laptop because of the hardware. It'll last 6+ years and still have good battery life. The software doesn't matter that much for most developers unless you're specifically targeting Windows and want a native machine for testing. Otherwise it doesn't matter what you write your code on and in a lot of cases you just end up making a commit that triggers a build on a different server that gets deployed to a test environment on another server.

My desktop at work runs Windows, but a lot of the time I'm remotely connecting to some Linux server to get work done. The desktop is just nice because it's easy to run a bunch of displays so I don't need to try to manage all of it on a single laptop display. I wonder if someday it will just be wall to wall displays. Why bother dealing with more browser tabs when you can just get another monitor?

 

[Doug S]

Apple sticks with particular RAM capacity because, they buy them in bulk.

Apple simply orders ram that they can sign one simple volume contract with their suppliers. Which means that the RAM chips capacity has to scale from iPhone, AppleTV, Apple Watch, iPad, and then Macs.
Its the easiest and cheapest way to buy billions of memory chips each year.

They use different RAM chips between iPhone models, they aren't choosing the DRAM for Macs based on purchase contracts for iPhone. The industry has transitioned from 16Gb to 24Gb DRAM chips, and that affects the capacities that everyone, including Apple, is able to buy. I'm sure you've noticed 24GB DIMMs on the market when there has previously never been any mass market DIMMs that weren't power of two.

 

[Glo.]

They use different RAM chips between iPhone models, they aren't choosing the DRAM for Macs based on purchase contracts for iPhone. The industry has transitioned from 16Gb to 24Gb DRAM chips, and that affects the capacities that everyone, including Apple, is able to buy. I'm sure you've noticed 24GB DIMMs on the market when there has previously never been any mass market DIMMs that weren't power of two.

Of course I have noticed.

Apple buys 4, 8, 12 GB chips for Macs and iPads, and 2 and 3 GB chips for iPhones, Apple Watches, etc.

And they will keep this configuration for M3 series chips, but with different memory bus widths.

 

[mikegg]

That has begun to change FWIW. Windows + WSL2 is bringing people back around and some of the tooling Microsoft has in the works will likely make most serious developers reconsider.

It hasn't. Macs are increasing in market share over Windows overall.

No one is switching from Macs to Windows for software engineering with or without WSL2. Meanwhile, more and more developers are switching to Macs instead.

There's a reason some people joke that the best Windows laptop is actually a Mac running Windows ARM via Parallels.

 

[eek2121]

It hasn't. Macs are increasing in market share over Windows overall.

No one is switching from Macs to Windows for software engineering with or without WSL2. Meanwhile, more and more developers are switching to Macs instead.

There's a reason some people joke that the best Windows laptop is actually a Mac running Windows ARM via Parallels.

“no-one”

Not true. At least 5 folks on my team did exactly that and 2 managers switched to chromebooks. We repurposed the macs as in-house build servers. A stack of macbooks takes no space.

 

[igor_kavinski]

2 managers switched to chromebooks.

I wish we could issue these to our useless managers.

 

[Edrick]

It hasn't. Macs are increasing in market share over Windows overall.

No one is switching from Macs to Windows for software engineering with or without WSL2. Meanwhile, more and more developers are switching to Macs instead.

There's a reason some people joke that the best Windows laptop is actually a Mac running Windows ARM via Parallels.

There are lots of companies switching to Windows from Macs. Mine included. There are a lot of areas where Windows still has a large advantage.

 

[Doug S]

There will always be companies switching from Windows to Mac, Mac to Windows, or switching servers from Windows to Linux or Linux to Windows people can point to as anecdotal evidence. The only metrics that matter are market share figures, and installed base figures (which account for longevity of use)

Sometimes there are good technical reasons for these migrations from one to another, but sometimes it is because there's a new decision maker in the mix who has a bias/preference and wants things their way.

 

[A///]

I doubt we will in the future, even if I plan on retiring in a few years.

 

[repoman27]

Windows ARM doesn't run on MBPs at the mo because Microsoft refused to develop something apple needed to make it work. idk if it has to do with costs or the new qualcomm chips coming through through the nuvia acquisition. the tools we use at work are strictly linux or windows, they don't exist on macs afaik. macs make up a tiny portion of our company and no one beyond the front offices uses them.

You can't run ARM versions of Windows natively on Apple Silicon Macs because Apple has not provided platform support / drivers (a.k.a. Boot Camp). However, running ARM versions of Windows 11 in Parallels Desktop VMs on Apple Silicon Macs is now officially supported by Microsoft and Parallels: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...m2-chips-cd15fd62-9b34-4b78-b0bc-121baa3c568c

You could run Windows Insider preview images of Windows 10/11 for ARM in VMs on Apple Silicon Macs for quite some time, but it wasn't officially supported due to an exclusivity agreement between Microsoft and Qualcomm: https://www.xda-developers.com/windows-10-arm-apple-silicon-macs/

edit: I should also add that you can run pretty much any AArch64 Linux distro in a VM and Asahi Linux natively (with Fedora Asahi Remix coming soon).

 

[A///]

You can't run ARM versions of Windows natively on Apple Silicon Macs because Apple has not provided platform support / drivers (a.k.a. Boot Camp). However, running ARM versions of Windows 11 in Parallels Desktop VMs on Apple Silicon Macs is now officially supported by Microsoft and Parallels: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...m2-chips-cd15fd62-9b34-4b78-b0bc-121baa3c568c

You could run Windows Insider preview images of Windows 10/11 for ARM in VMs on Apple Silicon Macs for quite some time, but it wasn't officially supported due to an exclusivity agreement between Microsoft and Qualcomm: https://www.xda-developers.com/windows-10-arm-apple-silicon-macs/

interesting. I read a long time ago ms was being the ahole here and not letting apple implement it. thanks for the info.

 

[Doug S]

You can't run ARM versions of Windows natively on Apple Silicon Macs because Apple has not provided platform support / drivers (a.k.a. Boot Camp). However, running ARM versions of Windows 11 in Parallels Desktop VMs on Apple Silicon Macs is now officially supported by Microsoft and Parallels: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...m2-chips-cd15fd62-9b34-4b78-b0bc-121baa3c568c

You could run Windows Insider preview images of Windows 10/11 for ARM in VMs on Apple Silicon Macs for quite some time, but it wasn't officially supported due to an exclusivity agreement between Microsoft and Qualcomm: https://www.xda-developers.com/windows-10-arm-apple-silicon-macs/

edit: I should also add that you can run pretty much any AArch64 Linux distro in a VM and Asahi Linux natively (with Fedora Asahi Remix coming soon).

Windows on ARM is already a very niche product, and with virtualization handling the needs of 99% of use cases for M1/M2 Mac users who want to run Windows software, the tiny number of people interested in booting Windows natively on Apple Silicon doesn't justify the investment on either side that would be required for commercial support.

 

[poke01]

Less than 3 weeks for A17 reveal. The foundation for the M3 series of chips.

 

[mikegg]

“no-one”

Not true. At least 5 folks on my team did exactly that and 2 managers switched to chromebooks. We repurposed the macs as in-house build servers. A stack of macbooks takes no space.

For software engineering, Windows is getting less and less relevant with or without WSL2. While WSL2 makes Windows a *viable* software engineering platform, it's still not completely native. There are plenty of issues when it comes to running WSL2: https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues

In addition, Macbooks are just nicer to use than Windows laptops. Low heat, low noise, long battery life, fast, native *nix command line, and a more polished UI.

Again, where I work, in Silicon Valley, which produces the best software, everyone uses a Mac. It's hard to find someone using Windows here. And now that Macs are significantly better with Apple Silicon, its market share is increasing over Windows overall.

Despite this, there are a lot more Windows developers because most developers in poorer countries use cheap Windows machines. And students usually start out with cheap Windows machines as well. Usually, you'll find a lot more Macs than Windows in $100k+ tech jobs.

So while some are switching to Windows, and some are switching to Macs, the overall trend is that Macs are increasing in market share.

 

[soresu]

the overall trend is that Macs are increasing in market share

More likely just that Macs are regaining marketshare lost when Apple stopped caring for much of the last decade while they were concentrating on iPhone and iPad sales.

I remember when Macs were everywhere 15-20 years ago too when every year or 2 had a new version of Mac OSX getting all of this big fanfare, and then they weren't because iFad gobbled up all the attention.

 

[ikjadoon]

More likely just that Macs are regaining marketshare lost when Apple stopped caring for much of the last decade while they were concentrating on iPhone and iPad sales.

I remember when Macs were everywhere 15-20 years ago too when every year or 2 had a new version of Mac OSX getting all of this big fanfare, and then they weren't because iFad gobbled up all the attention.

That's not accurate. Data shows macOS growth, too, in the past 10 years. Apple has doubled their macOS market share in a decade and the growth began before M1. So M1 as the catalyst is also not accurate.

Jan 2013
Windows: 90.90%
Mac: 7.95%
Linux: 0.88%
Unknown: 0.19%
Chrome: 0.01%

Jan 2023
Windows: 74.14% (down 18%, relative)
Mac: 15.33% (up 93%, relative)
Linux: 2.91%
Unknown: 5.28%
Chrome: 2.35%

How does that figure when Apple only ships ~8% of all PCs? Many possible factors: shipments vs usage (shipped it, but never sold to an end-user), sale vs usage (bought it, but not using it), different calculation methods (Apple's shipments are all estimates, not an official #), PCs used for 'hidden' workloads (gov't, bots), etc.

Traditionally, market share has meant sales per quarter, but Statista seems to imply usage. On a more strictly usage at Stat Counter who uses web trackers, macOS now accounts for ~20% of global PCs. Same situation: growth has been steady since 2009. In fact, in 2020+, macOS seems to have grown slower than usual, but that could also mean there were far more Windows PCs than usual. Maybe that's pandemic sales, where I can imagine PCs grew faster (relatively) than macOS, but need data to confirm that first.

 

[richardskrad]

To me it feels like both Apple and Microsoft have found much better revenue streams and restructured their orgs. Microsoft is no longer prioritising Windows and Apple is an iPhone company now. Laptops are mainly bought in bulk by corporations for employees. Consumers Use Chromebooks, tablets and phones for their computing needs.

 

[soresu]

To me it feels like both Apple and Microsoft have found much better revenue streams and restructured their orgs. Microsoft is no longer prioritising Windows and Apple is an iPhone company now. Laptops are mainly bought in bulk by corporations for employees. Consumers Use Chromebooks, tablets and phones for their computing needs.

This soooo much.

It feels like a non zero chance that MS might even abandon Windows at some point in the future beyond basic maintenance and optimisation.