I think they should use a ‘G’ prefix for higher-end mobile chips... then in a few years they’ll finally ship a G5 laptop!
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Apple Silicon M1 Chip in MacBook Air Outperforms High-End 16-Inch MacBook Pro
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I agree the target market is general consumers, but the keynote was aimed heavily to the enthusiast community and this is why we are reacting. The general consumer that cares about social media, photos and facebook has no clue that there was a mac keynote, heck they probably don't know what a keynote is.
You have to understand that the tech sites, enthusiasts, tech youtubers, those are the primary target for the keynote, and those will be the messengers to the masses. You will soon see youtubers advertise why this new technology will suck or why it'll be great. Why you should buy it now, or why you should wait. The masses will watch the youtubers for advice. The general consumer will probably see youtube rather than the keynote.
To give you another example why the keynote is aimed at techies, everyone has a 'tech' person in their lives, this is the 'advisor' on whether something is good or bad and why. I'm sure if a friend of family member asks for advice on a purchase, they are likely going to refer to this person.
From personal experience, no general consumer that I have ever known cares about mac keynotes. They just don't care period. It's true what you say, they care about pricing, if and when they have to purchase a computer (every 5 to 10 years).
but you can always say "you is faster than most of you competitors", just for marking alone as well..
The true tests in in the real world where everyone is pounding in it.
the 4 "efficicienty cores" seems ok, as they would make sure they each run at full speed, but like everything there is some comprise, there has to be.
and that will come out only when people have run it though it's paces.
I think the exciting part of all this is having a powerful CPU while at the same time having low power efficiency. Up until now you had to give up one to get the other. Instead of just throwing in a bigger battery tackle the battery longevity through efficiency. Apple’s DNA has always been doing more with less. This is a new model for desktop CPU designs.
I don’t work in the industry anymore, but I did work at Exponential, Sun and AMD for a decade. And my Ph.D dissertation was on CPU memory hierarchies. So ...
Cost? Hard to say. Depends on how complicated the package is. But generally I would expect it to be cheaper, because connectors, boards, etc. cost money, soldering costs money, slots cost money, etc.
Repair? Harder. You have to replace the entire CPU package. Though apple likes to solder RAM in a lot of machines, anyway, so it’s not like it’s that easy to repair either way.
Physical limitations? Good question. Apple appears to be putting all the RAM on the same plane as the CPU. This means the more memory you have, the further it is from the CPU, which increases latency (And/or increases driver power). Of course, when it’s not in the socket, it may be stacked, but it’s even farther from the CPU. So overall, for now, it makes more sense to keep it in the CPU package (also reduces impedance, making it more efficient).
There are also ways to stack them - i have an example in my PhD dissertation using a well filled with thermally-conductive goop, with RAM chips on interposers separated by diamond sheets that transmit the heat into the goop. Apple isn’t doing that
Performance: this is a different issue than where you put the memory. You can share memory even if it’s external. Or you can have partitioned memory even if the memory is in the same package as the CPU.
As for the performance impact, apple says it is better. I can’t answer either way. You obviously have to worry about contention - it’s difficult for the CPU and GPU to write to the same memory area at the same times. But Apple knows a lot more about how it’s GPU and CPU work in concert than I do.
thank you, I always wished the second best model had more RAM (similar to storage option, 512Gb) instead of configure to order ... $1249 MBA and $1499 MBP and so on, even it means increasing the price in the second best model.
with appliance model and pricing, RAM also should be in the strategy not just the storage. That is where my cost of RAM question comes, integrated or soldered or not soldered RAM is still key to the overall performance of the system.
It’s a multi billion dollar industry - now’s the time to go after a slice of the pie. I won’t say bigger because right now it’s just crumbs.
They’re throwing tonnes of dollars at Apple TV+, they’d probably make their money back faster in gaming, if done properly.
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im really glad I decided not to Get a new MacBook Pro yet. I will gladly wait for apple to release the chip in the MacBook pro 16
Reminds me of this old article about the A6 development history.
I guess the spirit of Jobs lived through via Cook, so to speak. I don't think Cook gets enough credits for pouring in what must've been a crazy amount of money into the project. Business-wise it would've been so much easier to save the huge outlay of R&D by just going on semi-custom or even off-the-shelf chips. That's the type of long-term planning&execution not frequently seen.
I was thinking the same.
It would take an innovative approach for Apple to make waves in the gaming industry, as the big players have established themselves over many years and consoles.
I recall attempts to make other materials meeting or exceeding diamond's thermal conductivity, but I think diamond still holds the crown. Does anyone use industrial diamonds in CPU assemblies these days?There are also ways to stack them - i have an example in my PhD dissertation using a well filled with thermally-conductive goop, with RAM chips on interposers separated by diamond sheets that transmit the heat into the goop. Apple isn’t doing that
Also reminds me of reading about Akhan semiconductor's attempts to make an entire chip out of diamond (for both thermal conductivity and potential device size reasons). No idea how close they are to succeeding.
This is good for the entire tech industry, not just Apple. Calm down, fanboi.
-texted from my iPhone 12 Pro Max
Which reminds me - I wonder how many more posts I have to make on here before I earn the label “M1?”
It took Adobe years just to get a decent version of Photoshop to the A chip on ios and Autodesk software on macos is an awful buggy mess with 10 year old bugs still hanging around.
I understand your point but Adobe and Autodesk are two of the slowest moving corporations around.
They still sell many Intel Macs and maybe don't want to talk dirty about their supplier.
I think diamond still holds the crown, with silver #2 (at a fraction of the thermal conductivity). But I seem to recall some compound using boron and arsenic that was pretty close to diamond. Don’t know how far that’s gotten.
I don’t know of anyone actually using diamond, though.
What has changed? Macs have always been way down the list in gaming. Windows PC have always provided the best gaming experience, or Consoles, at second best, if you can't afford a decent gaming rig.
Now hopefully there are some dGPUs coming to the Pro line up (with possibly M1X, if that's how they want to define the first gen)
I am curious how you think the Unified Memory Architecture will affect GPU performance. It seems that not having to move data to and from the GPU should have a fairly positive impact on overall performance. Also, what do you expect the upper limit will be for SoC on chip RAM will be? I would love 32GB or 64GB for my next mini (not buying until it has 10Gb/s Ethernet again, but I can wait).
You can’t differentiate unless you own the whole stack. iPhone would be where mac is if they hadn’t put in all this hard work.
Well that was the right decision: wait till this event and then just decide what's best for you. But many instead chose to rushing into Intel Macs "before it's too late", out of fear and ignorance. I'd love to see their face when they see the ARM Air beating their new $3k machine.
Yes? That's why I said those numbers are insane for a fanless machine.