iPad Pro A12Z = M0?

[wetrollerskate]

Is the A12Z chip the equivalent to an M0 chip? Is it technically the predecessor to the M1 chip? With speed comparisons, from what I understand is as fast as the 2018 Intel Macbook Pros.

Is the M1 being considered a mindblowing speed upgrade compared to the A12Z or is this a more modest boost when comparing to Apple’s own chips vs Intel? I’m guessing iPad users got a taste of the ”X-variant“ Silicon chips early...

Hypothetically if iPadOS gets beefed up with more desktop capabilities, will the current iPad Pro be fast enough for it and not slow down with future OS updates in the next 3-4 years?

 

[The Game 161]

I imagine the next iPad Pro will be considered similar to M1 with A14X but then again apple will need to add areas wether in iOS 15 or new features to make use of that power.

 

[Falhófnir]

There will be small differences between the A14X and M1 to make them more suited to the needs of the iPad or Mac platform they serve, but in basic design they will (most likely) both have 4 firestorm and 4 ice storm cores and an 8 core GPU. So the raw power will be very similar, though in a MacBook Air it can run fanless at about 10W while it will be more like 7-8W in the iPad.

If they had made a Mac chip based on the A12, likely a similar story, the same numbers of Vortex and Tempest cores and a similar GPU to the A12X/Z but a differing TDP and probably a few other tweaks and differences to optimise it for the Mac.

 

[AutomaticApple]

Is the A12Z chip the equivalent to an M0 chip? Is it technically the predecessor to the M1 chip? With speed comparisons, from what I understand is as fast as the 2018 Intel Macbook Pros.

Is the M1 being considered a mindblowing speed upgrade compared to the A12Z or is this a more modest boost when comparing to Apple’s own chips vs Intel? I’m guessing iPad users got a taste of the ”X-variant“ Silicon chips early...

Hypothetically if iPadOS gets beefed up with more desktop capabilities, will the current iPad Pro be fast enough for it and not slow down with future OS updates in the next 3-4 years?

If the chips are too similar, then Apple would have to make some changes in order to differentiate them.

 

[ericwn]

Is the A12Z chip the equivalent to an M0 chip? Is it technically the predecessor to the M1 chip? With speed comparisons, from what I understand is as fast as the 2018 Intel Macbook Pros.

Is the M1 being considered a mindblowing speed upgrade compared to the A12Z or is this a more modest boost when comparing to Apple’s own chips vs Intel? I’m guessing iPad users got a taste of the ”X-variant“ Silicon chips early...

Hypothetically if iPadOS gets beefed up with more desktop capabilities, will the current iPad Pro be fast enough for it and not slow down with future OS updates in the next 3-4 years?

Nothing indicates the last paragraph will happen. But yes it will be plenty powerful for a tablet computer.

The M1 is not beyond our imagination spec wise or performance wise and those systems carry considerably more RAM too.

 

[rui no onna]

Is the A12Z chip the equivalent to an M0 chip? Is it technically the predecessor to the M1 chip? With speed comparisons, from what I understand is as fast as the 2018 Intel Macbook Pros.

Is the M1 being considered a mindblowing speed upgrade compared to the A12Z or is this a more modest boost when comparing to Apple’s own chips vs Intel? I’m guessing iPad users got a taste of the ”X-variant“ Silicon chips early...

Hypothetically if iPadOS gets beefed up with more desktop capabilities, will the current iPad Pro be fast enough for it and not slow down with future OS updates in the next 3-4 years?

Given Apple used the A12Z in the Mac Mini Developer Transition Kit, I do believe that qualifies it as M0.

In an interview shortly after the introduction of the DTK, Apple’s SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi praised the DTK's performance and contributed to expectations of superlative performance of forthcoming commercial products based upon Apple silicon custom-engineered for the Macintosh platform: “Even that DTK hardware, which is running on an existing iPad chip that we don’t intend to put in a Mac in the future – it’s just there for the transition – the Mac runs awfully nice on that system. It’s not a basis on which to judge future Macs ... but it gives you a sense of what our silicon team can do when they’re not even trying – and they’re going to be trying.”

Caveat, the DTK had 16GB RAM and 512GB storage.

 

[ejin222]

I mean, everything said and assumed here is just speculation. I love speculating, but we have no idea what Apple is planning.

My speculation is that Apple will make one general chipset and deactivate certain components whether that’s by design or manufacturing limitations, ie defects. The lesser chips will go to iOS/iPadOS devices while the better ones go to MacOS.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

No, that would be Apple Silicon M Series 0 Dev Max.

 

[rui no onna]

There will be small differences between the A14X and M1 to make them more suited to the needs of the iPad or Mac platform they serve, but in basic design they will (most likely) both have 4 firestorm and 4 ice storm cores and an 8 core GPU. So the raw power will be very similar, though in a MacBook Air it can run fanless at about 10W while it will be more like 7-8W in the iPad.

If they had made a Mac chip based on the A12, likely a similar story, the same numbers of Vortex and Tempest cores and a similar GPU to the A12X/Z but a differing TDP and probably a few other tweaks and differences to optimise it for the Mac.

Mind, I was looking at the new MacBook Airs and I just noticed the $999 8GB/256GB had 7-core GPU (ala-A12X) while the $1249 8GB/512GB had 8-core GPU (ala-A12Z). Looks like it's possible to upgrade the "M1X" MBA and it's $50 cheaper than a similarly configured "M1Z" MBA.

I wonder if Apple gimped the entry level MBA in some other way (e.g. peak performance) and how that's gonna affect TDP/heat and battery life.

 

[Tsepz]

Given Apple used the A12Z in the Mac Mini Developer Transition Kit, I do believe that qualifies it as M0.



Caveat, the DTK had 16GB RAM and 512GB storage.

I was thinking exactly this. Indeed.

 

[ejin222]

Mind, I was looking at the new MacBook Airs and I just noticed the $999 8GB/256GB had 7-core GPU (ala-A12X) while the $1249 8GB/512GB had 8-core GPU (ala-A12Z). Looks like it's possible to upgrade the "M1X" MBA and it's $50 cheaper than a similarly configured "M1Z" MBA.

I wonder if Apple gimped the entry level MBA in some other way (e.g. peak performance) and how that's gonna affect TDP/heat and battery life.

One thing we have to remember is that the M1 chip is on a 5nm process while the A12Z is on a 7nm process. So, though the # of cores are the same on both, the chip is actually different.

 

[rui no onna]

One thing we have to remember is that the M1 chip is on a 5nm process while the A12Z is on a 7nm process. So, though the # of cores are the same on both, the chip is actually different.

Yeah, I know the M1 is more likely the Mac version of A14X/A14Z.

I was just surprised they had two different M1 chips for the MacBook Air considering cooling likely wasn't an issue. Of course, it could be down to yield and they're dumping all the chips that didn't pass binning to the lower priced items.

 

[blurryvision]

Given Apple used the A12Z in the Mac Mini Developer Transition Kit, I do believe that qualifies it as M0.



Caveat, the DTK had 16GB RAM and 512GB storage.

Would we ever see a future iPad with 16GB RAM? haha

 

[muzzy996]

Would we ever see a future iPad with 16GB RAM? haha

Doesn’t make sense to me given the fact that the iPad is intended for mass market and the majority of users would’t need that kind of specs. At least not near term.

 

[yurc]

Based on Anandtech analysis, M1 is literally A14z/x, so calling M0 on A12z seems appropriate.

 

[ElBerserko]

The recent Ars Technica has some interesting details in it: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...ewing-apple-about-its-mac-silicon-revolution/

Craig Federighi addresses this topic a bit:

The M1 is essentially a superset, if you want to think of it relative to A14. Because as we set out to build a Mac chip, there were many differences from what we otherwise would have had in a corresponding, say, A14X or something.

We had done lots of analysis of Mac application workloads, the kinds of graphic/GPU capabilities that were required to run a typical Mac workload, the kinds of texture formats that were required, support for different kinds of GPU compute and things that were available on the Mac… just even the number of cores, the ability to drive Mac-sized displays, support for virtualization and Thunderbolt.

There are many, many capabilities we engineered into M1 that were requirements for the Mac, but those are all superset capabilities relative to what an app that was compiled for the iPhone would expect.

Jonny Srouji also stated:

It's not like some iPhone chip that is on steroids. It's a whole different custom chip, but we do use the foundation of many of these great IPs.

However, that's not to say they didn't test some of these capabilities in the A12Z and just left them disabled. What Craig says does make it seem like the A14X will be different than the M1 in more ways than just Watts and clock speed.

 

[ericwn]

Would we ever see a future iPad with 16GB RAM? haha

One can dream.

 

[ericwn]

Doesn’t make sense to me given the fact that the iPad is intended for mass market and the majority of users would’t need that kind of specs. At least not near term.

Certainly true but Pro models would probably get the spec first and more demanding workflows can probably use more RAM easily.

 

[muzzy996]

Certainly true but Pro models would probably get the spec first and more demanding workflows can probably use more RAM easily.

Perhaps but there would either need to be a balance struck between how much additional memory was given to higher spec’d models (much like has been done up until this point), a fundamental shift in memory management for iPadOS or a forking of the pro line of iPads. I can’t see having iPadOS remaining unchanged in memory management but allowing Pro models have so much more memory than base ipads that software begins to bloat up becoming more challenging to run on some models in the ecosystem. As it stands today the cost to jump from 8gb to 16gb on an M1 rig is nearly the cost of a 32gb base iPad wifi at $200 so its hard to imagine expecting the entire iPad market to bear the cost of more RAM in order to support such a large jump in capacity near term.


Not against the change though. I would love to see more performance differentiation with the pro models to better justify their costs.