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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[amosliu137]

part 2 (sorry for machine translation)

 

[amosliu137]

last part

 

[Nothingness]

I bet it's the pain of being clocked too high and near the limit

Yeah most of the speed up comes from the clock increase.

 

[Nothingness]

I built Libreoffice out of curiosity sometime back. Not sure about what it was doing exactly during the whole process but it used all eight threads and took 20 minutes to finish on i7-4770 on 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSD.

Future curiosity adventure is to do the same on my 128 thread AMD Zen 2 server on a RAM drive and see how fast it goes

By the way, may also do that on M1 Air if I can find its damn charger. Don't even remember what the damn thing looks like.

I don't know what build system Libreoffice uses, but most of the time it's the builder that invokes several compilation of source files in parallel.

The blocking point is the linker (the program that collects files that were generated by compilation to produce the executable); that's why multithreading efforts are done in the linker; that also explains why the speedup is not linear with the number of cores (and also because some files compile in no time, while others take a huge amount of time, in particular when a high level of optimization is enabled and non linear algorithms are being used).

 

[Glo.]

Not a bad deal. If you have the option and want to use it for development, you could do worse. Just don't do heavy writes to the SSD and try to do such workloads on external SSD or create a RAMdrive if that is a possibility.

Video editing and trading(multimonitor setup).

Thats my use case.

About my question. Best bit.

Its BRAND NEW, in unopened box. Leftovers.

 

[poke01]

Video editing and trading(multimonitor setup).

Thats my use case.

About my question. Best bit.

Its BRAND NEW, in unopened box. Leftovers.

Go for it

 

[FlameTail]

this is the screenshot for JamesAslan review

Very good sir, but why in this thread?

 

[Glo.]

Is that for a used or third party refurbished unit or something?

Brand new in completely unopened box. Leftovers. One of my country's retailers is selling them off.

The price is actually cheaper than M2 Pro Mac Mini.

 

[Eug]

Nice flexing of the world's fastest ST performance.

Haha.

BTW, I forgot to mention that my base iPad Pro has the binned 9-core M4 variant, so it's even more crazy to me that for CPU multi-core it's still a bit faster than M1 Max. Of course, the 10-core M4 is faster yet.

Mac Studio vs iPad16,4 - Geekbench

browser.geekbench.com

Again, old news, but at least now I can confirm just how fast this thing is. Too bad for most people using an iPad, that extra CPU speed will be wasted, but FWIW, it does feel snappier than my M1 Mac mini even just for surfing (which I guess is more a test of single-core). M1 is more than fine for this purpose of course, but side-by-side the speed difference is sometimes noticeable.

Video editing and trading(multimonitor setup).

Thats my use case.

Brand new in completely unopened box. Leftovers. One of my country's retailers is selling them off.

The price is actually cheaper than M2 Pro Mac Mini.

Holy sh!t! I'd buy a new one for that price even though I already have a 16 GB M1 Mac mini. I don't do video editing, but the M1 Mac mini is very limited in terms of ports. I'm using an external Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 hub and it does work fairly well, but it's just not the same as having built-in ports.

Considering there is no M3 Max or M4 Max Mac Studio, the M1 Max is only 1 generation behind the current Mac Studio, which is M2 Max. I'm guessing there will never be an M3 Max Mac Studio, and an M4 Max Mac Studio won't be out until 2025.

Memory and storage are the same. The M2 Max Mac Studio has more display support, but the M1 Max already supports up to 4 Pro Display XDRs, so that's irrelevant.

For video encoding, both M1 Max and M2 Max have dual hardware ProRes encoders. M2 Max does usually do faster video exports according to reviews, although M1 Max will still usually be significantly faster than M4 for video exports.

That's an amazing deal for a brand new unit.

 

[amosliu137]

Very good sir, but why in this thread?

Sorry I open two threads at same time ，and I put the wrong one.
However，Oryon is the spiritual successor to Firestorm, extensively reusing Firestorm's design.

 

[GC2:CS]

Sorry I open two threads at same time ，and I put the wrong one.
However，Oryon is the spiritual successor to Firestorm, extensively reusing Firestorm's design.

I also lean on the side that Oryon should be in its own thread. However there was “slightly worse than Firestorm” mentioned in there a few times in the article… I wounder if this is due to some Apple IP being excluded from the design.

 

[smalM]

Display engine should be 2x display engine.

Like this?

 

[FlameTail]

Something unusual about the M4 is that it seemingly has four Thunderbolt controller

Every previous base M chip (M1-M3) has had only two Thunderbolt controllers.

 

[Eug]

Something unusual about the M4 is that it seemingly has four Thunderbolt controller
View attachment 101755
Every previous base M chip (M1-M3) has had only two Thunderbolt controllers.

Hmmm... If that is accurate, that gives me a bit of hope for the M4 Mac mini. However, I'm afraid that if Apple does adopt 4 Thunderbolt ports on the M4 Mac mini, they'll just eliminate the 2 USB-A ports.

Currently, the M2 Mac mini has 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports and 2 USB-A ports.
The M2 Pro Mac mini has 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports and keeps the 2 USB-A ports.

 

[Doug S]

Hmmm... If that is accurate, that gives me a bit of hope for the M4 Mac mini. However, I'm afraid that if Apple does adopt 4 Thunderbolt ports on the M4 Mac mini, they'll just eliminate the 2 USB-A ports.

Currently, the M2 Mac mini has 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports and 2 USB-A ports.
The M2 Pro Mac mini has 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports and keeps the 2 USB-A ports.

Maybe Apple has eliminated separate USB controllers and is using TB controllers for maximum flexibility? A TB port can be presented as a TB port, a USB-C port (or more than one if they aren't offering the fastest speeds) one or more USB-A ports, a DP port, or even an HDMI port (if they add a tiny extra chip to convert from DP to HDMI)

I do find it interesting to compare the size of those TB controllers with other stuff on the chip. The area required for two TB controllers is roughly equivalent to the area devoted to the NPU, four E cores, or roughly one P core if you include its share of the cache and AMX unit. They wouldn't have devoted that much real estate without some solid reasons and I have to think they saved some space elsewhere for that to make sense in the entry level M4.

 

[Eug]

Maybe Apple has eliminated separate USB controllers and is using TB controllers for maximum flexibility? A TB port can be presented as a TB port, a USB-C port (or more than one if they aren't offering the fastest speeds) one or more USB-A ports, a DP port, or even an HDMI port (if they add a tiny extra chip to convert from DP to HDMI)

I do find it interesting to compare the size of those TB controllers with other stuff on the chip. The area required for two TB controllers is roughly equivalent to the area devoted to the NPU, four E cores, or roughly one P core if you include its share of the cache and AMX unit. They wouldn't have devoted that much real estate without some solid reasons and I have to think they saved some space elsewhere for that to make sense in the entry level M4.

Well, elimination of USB-A may be a marketing decision, which I've been expecting sooner rather than later, regardless of how many TB controllers there are. Currently, the M2 iMac has two TB4 ports along with two (non-TB) USB-C ports, and no USB-A ports. The timing would make sense too, since Apple's iPhones are now USB-C, as are their iPads.

Actually, IMO having four TB4 ports even without USB-A would represent an improvement to the port situation for the base Mac mini. However, I'm not convinced they'd do that either. Could there be such a thing as binning by TB controllers? Anyhow, I don't expect to see four USB-C ports on the MacBook Air, and they won't necessarily need four TB controllers for the base Mac mini either, but fingers crossed they'd use them all. TB4 x 3 plus USB-C x 2 might be even better than TB4 x 4 for mainstream users.

 

[Doug S]

Well, elimination of USB-A may be a marketing decision, which I've been expecting sooner rather than later, regardless of how many TB controllers there are. Currently, the M2 iMac has two TB4 ports along with two (non-TB) USB-C ports, and no USB-A ports. The timing would make sense too, since Apple's iPhones are now USB-C, as are their iPads.

Actually, IMO having four TB4 ports even without USB-A would represent an improvement to the port situation for the base Mac mini. However, I'm not convinced they'd do that either. Could there be such a thing as binning by TB controllers? Anyhow, I don't expect to see four USB-C ports on the MacBook Air, and they won't necessarily need four TB controllers for the base Mac mini either, but fingers crossed they'd use them all. TB4 x 3 plus USB-C x 2 might be even better than TB4 x 4 for mainstream users.

Well four TB ports would pretty much be the same as today's Mini except you'd need an adapter or hub to use one or two for USB-A. I can't see the point in providing that many TB ports on an entry level device.

If the four TB controllers on the M4 were providing all the I/O (i.e. whatever direct on-chip support there is for HDMI, DP, USB, and ethernet is removed) then you wouldn't get four TB ports. Maybe you get two TB, the third TB becomes your HDMI port, and the fourth TB is split between one USB-C, one USB-A and one gigabit/10Gb ethernet.

Or maybe you get two USB-C and zero USB-A, if Apple is ready to wave goodbye to USB-A entirely. Which I imagine would frustrate people who would whine about dongles, but someone needs to push the industry to finally move away from USB-A for accessories like thumb drives and wired mice.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Or maybe you get two USB-C and zero USB-A, if Apple is ready to wave goodbye to USB-A entirely.

Or put USB-A on the left or right of the keyboard so people can plug them in vertically. Do they have the "courage" to do that?

 

[Thibsie]

Well four TB ports would pretty much be the same as today's Mini except you'd need an adapter or hub to use one or two for USB-A. I can't see the point in providing that many TB ports on an entry level device.

If the four TB controllers on the M4 were providing all the I/O (i.e. whatever direct on-chip support there is for HDMI, DP, USB, and ethernet is removed) then you wouldn't get four TB ports. Maybe you get two TB, the third TB becomes your HDMI port, and the fourth TB is split between one USB-C, one USB-A and one gigabit/10Gb ethernet.

Or maybe you get two USB-C and zero USB-A, if Apple is ready to wave goodbye to USB-A entirely. Which I imagine would frustrate people who would whine about dongles, but someone needs to push the industry to finally move away from USB-A for accessories like thumb drives and wired mice.

Whining about dongles seems pretty much in line with Apple usual behaviour IMO.

 

[poke01]

Whining about dongles seems pretty much in line with Apple usual behaviour IMO.

If you see the 24” iMac in Apple offices/Stores they have USB-A dongles attached. Pure idiocy, getting rid of USB-A on desktops.

The Intel iMacs were much better.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Pure idiocy, getting rid of USB-A on desktops.

They don't even have audio in/out ports. Had to use a USB adapter to connect my headphones when I used (more like struggled coz of the weird UI) an iMac in a lab.

Even some students with Linux experience were pissed. They demanded to have Linux boxes but were ignored and told that Apple is "superior".

 

[poke01]

They don't even have audio in/out ports. Had to use a USB adapter to connect my headphones when I used (more like struggled coz of the weird UI) an iMac in a lab.

Even some students with Linux experience were pissed. They demanded to have Linux boxes but were ignored and told that Apple is "superior".

It’s really sad Mac’s used to have gold standard I/O in Jobs days on iMacs and MacBooks Pro.

They know IO is important but they gate keep to higher end models like the Studio.

 

[repoman27]

They don't even have audio in/out ports. Had to use a USB adapter to connect my headphones when I used (more like struggled coz of the weird UI) an iMac in a lab.

Even some students with Linux experience were pissed. They demanded to have Linux boxes but were ignored and told that Apple is "superior".

So while I agree that the 24-inch iMac design is stupid in so many ways and represents a major regression from the Intel based iMacs, Apple has never made a Mac without a headphone jack:

I also think a lot of people use dongles because they don't realize that Type-C ports are still USB ports, and Type-C to whatever cables are available. Devices with integrated Type-A cables / connectors like thumb drives, mice, and keyboards are obviously an issue, but you can also use an inexpensive USB Type-A hub instead of one or more dongles. I bought a USB3 Type-C to Type-B cable to connect the 7-port USB3 hub that I already had sitting on my desk to my MacBook Pro. Problem solved, no dongles required.

As for students demanding Linux desktops, I mean, they have to realize that they're in the minority, and very few students would prefer the desktop Linux experience as deployed by a typical university staff. They also may not realize that Macs are certified UNIX products.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Apple has never made a Mac without a headphone jack

They also may not realize that Macs are certified UNIX products.

Don't know. I just followed the lab staff's directions and only plugged in the headphones in the USB to audio adapter. Maybe the built-in sound was disabled by the staff for some reason?

The students could compile/make their projects just fine in the Mac console (zsh?) but I think they were annoyed by the MacOS UI, like me. I certainly don't want to use MacOS for anything serious ever again.

 

[Eug]

Well four TB ports would pretty much be the same as today's Mini except you'd need an adapter or hub to use one or two for USB-A. I can't see the point in providing that many TB ports on an entry level device.

USB4 is Thunderbolt. However, USB4 doesn't have dual monitor support, and has less stringent speed requirements. Also, it has a lower minimum power delivery spec. Thunderbolt 4 is basically a higher tier of USB4, which requires dual monitor support, 40 Gbps speed, and minimum 15 W power, and needs to be certified.

I'm assuming that M4 does not support Thunderbolt 5. (The iPad Pro does not support Thunderbolt 5.) The M4 iPad Pro specs state it supports USB4 and Thunderbolt 3 (not 4). I suspect this is because although it is Thunderbolt, it only supports one external monitor.

BTW, side note: Here's my M4 iPad Pro connected to my old 27" iMac in Target Display Mode.



On the iPad Pro itself are Pages and Numbers, and on the iMac are Safari x 2 and Netflix overlaid on top in the bottom left corner, with the audio playing from the iMac.

Even though the M4 chip allegedly has 4 USB4 / Thunderbolt controllers, it only has one USB4 / Thunderbolt port, and Apple limits the number of external displays to one on an iPad Pro.

If the four TB controllers on the M4 were providing all the I/O (i.e. whatever direct on-chip support there is for HDMI, DP, USB, and ethernet is removed) then you wouldn't get four TB ports. Maybe you get two TB, the third TB becomes your HDMI port, and the fourth TB is split between one USB-C, one USB-A and one gigabit/10Gb ethernet.

Or maybe you get two USB-C and zero USB-A, if Apple is ready to wave goodbye to USB-A entirely. Which I imagine would frustrate people who would whine about dongles, but someone needs to push the industry to finally move away from USB-A for accessories like thumb drives and wired mice.

After @FlameTail's post and thinking about it some more, I am now pretty sure the new Mac mini will have four USB-C ports of some sort, and no USB-A ports. As mentioned, I've been expecting this for some time, and the fact that M4 likely has four USB4/Thunderbolt controllers reaffirms that belief. We shall see how they are configured, but assuming they don't bin M4 chips by USB4/Thunderbolt controller functionality, I think (hope?) all four USB-C ports on an entry-level Mac mini would be USB4/Thunderbolt. They could still limit the number of external monitors supported though. ie. All four USB-C ports could support an external display, but Apple could limit it to a max of two external displays per base Mac mini.

BTW, off topic, but we recently renovated our kitchen, and we installed a bunch of electrical receptacles with USB. They are USB-C only, with no USB-A. I did that because although USB-C can be described as a mess, USB-A is even worse of a mess when it comes to device charging. This is also true with combination USB-C / USB-A chargers and electrical receptacles. It's more consistent if you stick with dual USB-C on those electrical receptacles. I figured now was a good time to forego USB-A, since everything is going toward USB-C, but I do have some USB-C to USB-A adapters as a backup.