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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[igor_kavinski]

Yes, yes but can it run x86 Crysis?

 

[Nothingness]

Yes, yes but can it run x86 Crysis?

Yes:

https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/1j6yqjb/crysis_3_remastered_m4_pro_16c_gpu_dxmt_60_fps_4k

 

[name99]

M3 Ultra Blender CPU
View attachment 119765

Is Blender CPU of any interest other than as a dick-measuring contest?
What I mean is: does anyone actually do real Blender work using the CPU (I don't know, maybe because they're using some weird material that can more easily be represented using CPU code, or they're testing new algorithms, for water or sub-surface scattering or whatever)?

Obviously for Team Apple it's nice to get a respectable showing, but does it actually MATTER? (As opposed to eg the GPU result.)

 

[Nothingness]

Is Blender CPU of any interest other than as a dick-measuring contest?
What I mean is: does anyone actually do real Blender work using the CPU (I don't know, maybe because they're using some weird material that can more easily be represented using CPU code, or they're testing new algorithms, for water or sub-surface scattering or whatever)?

Obviously for Team Apple it's nice to get a respectable showing, but does it actually MATTER? (As opposed to eg the GPU result.)

I wonder the same. The same remark applies to Cinebench.

 

[poke01]

Is Blender CPU of any interest other than as a dick-measuring contest?

Yes it’s actually part of SPEC CPU 2017 for a reason.

You can measure generational improvement for 3D applications

 

[The Hardcard]

Is Blender CPU of any interest other than as a dick-measuring contest?
What I mean is: does anyone actually do real Blender work using the CPU (I don't know, maybe because they're using some weird material that can more easily be represented using CPU code, or they're testing new algorithms, for water or sub-surface scattering or whatever)?

Obviously for Team Apple it's nice to get a respectable showing, but does it actually MATTER? (As opposed to eg the GPU result.)

I don’t know if current GPUs have changed the game, but for many years while GPUs were appreciated for time constraints, if you had the time top quality renders were done on CPU. For both video and 3D work. People wanted powerful GPUs for workstations for humans to design the scenes as smoothly as possible, but then the render farms would be a sea of CPUs grunting it out.

But that was many years ago. I haven’t been following recently.

 

[Nothingness]

I don’t know if current GPUs have changed the game, but for many years while GPUs were appreciated for time constraints, if you had the time top quality renders were done on CPU. For both video and 3D work. People wanted powerful GPUs for workstations for humans to design the scenes as smoothly as possible, but then the render farms would be a sea of CPUs grunting it out.

But that was many years ago. I haven’t been following recently.

It looks like Avatar 2 was rendered on CPUs only: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/...of-water-was-rendered-in-amazon-web-services/

But I'm not sure what's needed for film rendering is the same as what the typical end-user needs on his PC for making 3d stuff. I guess even early scene design for films are done with GPU acceleration before going to the render farms.

 

[Mopetar]

CPU render will still produce the absolute best quality, but unless it's the final render or close enough to it, using GPUs is going to be a lot faster, which is a lot better when you want a fast turn around to try different things out or test a proof of concept.

Maybe Cameron is the kind of perfectionist that would insist on only using CPU renders, but few can afford to be that picky. The Oscar winner for best animated film this year was made in Blender. I don't know what they used to work on or produce the final render, but they didn't have a large budget.