Just reading through this A14 deep dive and seeing what that mobile SoC is capable of limited to 5 Watt really says a lot. Apple M1 is quite the beast.
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AnandTech: What to expect, based on A14.
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While the A14 is limited, the M1 might be unleashed to up to 15W (or perhaps 18W). Remember that phones tend to have smaller batteries and less thermal dissipation vs a laptop.
Also, we need to see if the M1 is based on the A14 design; which in theory it should.
Also, we need to see if the M1 is based on the A14 design; which in theory it should.
All evidence points to M1 being essentially the same as expected A14X/Z, with added USB 4 controllers and other stuff.
Some evidence of that is found here: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/10859 Apple talks about M1, but shows A14. Posted a few hours ago
Apple said for the MacBook Air it is 10W. The previous base MacBook Pro was stated to be 15W TDP, but in reality would Turbo Boost to 25W.
Finding all of this hard to believe. I mean that ARM CPU is an 800 dollar, 16-core chip.
Super exciting to see actual benchmarks when these puppies ship
Super exciting to see actual benchmarks when these puppies ship
I don't mean to get too off topic, but the number of people disappointed in 16GB for this chip is surprising to me. It's their low end machine. The target consumers at this price point don't need more than 16GB. For most of them, 8 is plenty. Since RAM is now unified into the SoC, I don't doubt that volume above 16GB would be so small as to make it not worth the manufacturing effort.
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It's really only Mac mini people that could be disappointed really, as they can't get more than 16GB RAM/2TB SSD/Gigabit ethernet unless they wait (and that's assuming all that arrives next year in a higher end chip).
Exactly. The max RAM for previous Air was 16gb.
Its more an issue perhaps with the mini and MBP where users could load up on RAM..
People are complaining about being limited to 16GB or RAM and still haven't used an M1 Mac. We have no idea how well the new macOS will handle under M1. Hence, we have no idea how to gauge how much RAM is needed.
In comparison, iPhones have 4GB or 3GB of RAM and handle all A14/A13 without hiccups. Now imagine those chips at 8GB limits. Goes to show 16GB might be overkill.
My advice to all complaining about the 16GB limit is wait and see how the new architecture and new OS handles RAM and multitasking before complaining. I personally think 16GB will be more than enough given how well Apple tailors its software to the hardware.
Granted these are laptops with more demands, but iPads can be considered a form of laptop (they go vs Surface) and they don't have 8GB or 16GB. More to that, iPads already handle various multitasking abilities on par with laptops.
We don't actually know whether M1 uses the A14 core designs. We do know it is a 4x4 setup with an 8 core GPU and that it has more cache than the A14 SOCs also. Also I don't think the 16GB RAM current limit is a big deal - the vast majority of software doesn't even hit that number and also this SOC has very fast memory tied to a VERY fast memory architecture.
Only with the mac mini, because the base 13" Mbp 2 ports also was maxed at 16 gb Ram
That's fair, I guess I was expecting some more full-featured(dunno how to word it) parts. Like how the Intel variants were able to drive two external displays instead of just one, or the apparent maximum of two Thunderbolt ports. It seems to share some of the limitations of the A-Series chips, which caught me from left field.
I expect this to be rectified by the next round of M-Series processors, but this also begs the question of how Apple's going to deal with the absurd amount of memory that the Mac Pro (or even iMac) can address. I don't think there's DDR chips with enough density to fit 32 or 64gb on a single module, let alone the 1.5 TB the Mac Pro can address.
I'm willing to say that I should've kept my expectations in check better, and I'm excited as a whole.