Heh the trash can design might now be viable now that they have silicon with lower heat.
Cannot wait to see what apple comes up with.
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Bloomberg: Apple Working on Next-Gen Apple Silicon Chips for MacBook Pro, iMacs, and Mac Pro Due to Launch Next Year
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Cannot wait to see what apple comes up with.
32 high performance cpu cores and 128 gpu cores?!
That sounds like a beast, awesome!
That sounds like a beast, awesome!
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I don’t know why people are saying this article is unnecessary or obvious. It talks about the chips next year being more powerful than Apple was planning for, and up to 32 performance cores for the processor and 128 cores for graphics for desktops.
I still wonder what they'll remove from the current Mac Pro to get it half-sized? I remember the uproar from the 2013 trashcan Mac Pro, and the lack of internal expansion. I'd like to have at least some internal expansion, including RAM, drives (either HDDs or SSDs), PCIe slots, maybe swappable CPU. Something that allows it to grow & upgrade as my needs change without either having a bunch of stuff all over my desk or having to buy a whole new computer.
Apple also seems to bee going to built-in/soldered components. While that helps with thinness, that really sucks for those who want internal upgrades, and those in IT trying to repair the computers. I'd much rather pay $100 for a new SSD than $2400 for a whole new computer.
"Those graphics chips would be several times faster than the current graphics modules Apple uses from Nvidia and AMD in its Intel-powered hardware."
That might not be that hard for Apple to do considering that they've always put lower-to-mid-end graphics in their Macs. I have to wonder how Apple's new graphics would compare to something like a GeForce 3090?
Apple will be doing this upgrade process on their schedule, not Intel's random and often non-existent schedule. Since the Windows world all get the latest Intel chip at the same time, it is hard for anyone builder to gain the latest CPU advantage. Apple sheds the Intel handcuffs and will release the "new and improved" models along with the operating system upgrades so the next generation would come out while intel is switching from scratching their head to scratching their backside.
There seems to be a lot of confusion around CPU vs SoC. The M1 is not a processor but an entire system on a chip and the performance improvements go far beyond just CPU cores and frequency. Worth reading this fantastic post on the issue https://debugger.medium.com/why-is-apples-m1-chip-so-fast-3262b158cba2
I think a part of it is that Macs have such a small percentage of the computer market, and gaming takes an even smaller percentage, what incentive is there to make AAA games? However, I think that if Apple makes good enough hardware, and either makes, or partners with someone who makes, a good game engine, more people will start gaming on Mac.
Considering the M1 has a basis on the A# chips that AppleTVs use, I'd be surprised if games couldn't be easily ported between them and Macs.
I would say you are both right. it is not so much about engineering and design capabilities. Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, et al all have that. No question.
However in business - the biggest barrier to changes like this is fixed capital investment and the time and money it takes to switch fixed capital investment into a new business line.
In this case - Intel and AMD have the bulk of their operations dedicated to the x86 market. They cannot just drop that business to go after ARM. It would take even more capital to develop an ARM offering that is competitive while maintaining their x86 business that keeps the lights on and the toilets flushing in the bathroom.
This transition gets complicated as the time frame is constrained. Now that Apple is in the market with a very compelling ARM offering - Intel/AMD will have to increase their investment in a compressed time schedule which increases risk. This is not easy to do. And they would have to do it in volume that exceeds what Apple needs to do to have an impact.
In contrast, Apple developed their chip design and engineering capabilities slowly over 10-12 years. They went to market when they had their investment laid in and producing. They most likely have their A and M chip roadmaps laid out for the next three years. Apple can go slow and steady now without much risk (not no risk just minimal).
This comes as a surprise to, who exactly?
Apple has just released their first Apple Silicone Macs, the lower end of the range. They have already announced the complete transition to their own in-house designed, Apple Silicon chips for the entire Mac line-up, with a two year timeframe.
And according to their ‘sources’, some secretive, industry insider no doubt. Apple are working on more of these chips?
Seriously? Sources? FFS, they could have asked me and I’d have been able to tell them that
Apple has just released their first Apple Silicone Macs, the lower end of the range. They have already announced the complete transition to their own in-house designed, Apple Silicon chips for the entire Mac line-up, with a two year timeframe.
And according to their ‘sources’, some secretive, industry insider no doubt. Apple are working on more of these chips?
Seriously? Sources? FFS, they could have asked me and I’d have been able to tell them that
I don't think all of us knew about the 32 core cpus and the 128 core GPUsThis comes as a surprise to, who exactly?
Apple has just released their first Apple Silicone Macs, the lower end of the range. They have already announced the complete transition to their own in-house designed, Apple Silicon chips for the entire Mac line-up, with a two year timeframe.
And according to their ‘sources’, some secretive, industry insider no doubt. Apple are working on more of these chips?
Seriously? Sources? FFS, they could have asked me and I’d have been able to tell them that
would like to see integrated gpu performance equivalant to nvidia rtx 2060 using aapl silicon
with power efficiency. early bencmarks mac m1 gpu performs below surface book's gtx 1660 equivalent
with power efficiency. early bencmarks mac m1 gpu performs below surface book's gtx 1660 equivalent
It will be relentless Apple Silicon assault on computer industry and no turning back. New performance bar will be set by Apple and Apple will break it. That story will continue in future. Once the strong foothold in Laptop and Desktop is achieved, at some point, Apple silicon will be in Data center.
AMD had K12 for 3-4 years but given state of windows on arm (still 💩) and low market share of Linux there wasn't any point.
Yeah, what a time to be alive! (Despite pandemic and such). I’m enthusiastic about the future of the Mac!Isn't it refreshing to see so much enthusiasm about the future of Mac , back to where we were pre-intel transition when many PowerPC Mac's easily outperformed their Intel counterparts, but Apple had no choice but to switch at the time as PowerPC was simply not capable to scale down to mobile computing as quick as they needed it... Now, the future is entirely in Apple's hands, and while they will face some stiff competition in the future, at the moment, Mac's are completely relevant, no scrap that, Macs are completetly industry leading again. What a time! I'm saving my pennies and get myself an Apple Silicon based iMac next year, I might even get a paperround (not had one since I was 16
This M1 MacBook Air is my first RISC based computer on my life, I didn’t live the PowerPC era, I was just a child. My first mac was a Core2Duo machine, great machine, but I always felt it was just like a premium PC laptop running Mac OS X. I always thought the Power PC macs had something special (despite their high temperatures). Now I’m really thrilled with this MacBook Air with a Risk computer SoC. Completely silent, completely fast, specially multitasking. You can be running a Cinebench CPU benchmark, and moving Safari or watching a YouTube video at the same time. Impressive.
Can't say I know too many individuals who game and plan on investing in a Mac for their next gaming rig.
No rumours of an M1 based AppleTV yet, but more than likely they are working on something to boost the power of the next generation of the AppleTV.
As for a dedicated Games console from Apple I wouldn't hold your breath. Very few developers consider releasing games for the Mac these days and the M1 chip may have done more bad than good in that situation. Even long time developers in the last few years released less content for macOS. Blizzard were well known to Mac users for releasing their titles alongside their Windows counterpart, but that ended with Overwatch. I also doubt we will see Overwatch 2 with a Mac release, same thing for Diablo 4.
If Apple want to get into having a games console, they need to bring in some heavy hitting developers to make some solid titles for their platform. Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have their own studios that produce for them first party titles that make you WANT to buy that system over the competition. Unless Apple has that, and has it in place for a consoles launched, it will be doomed.
I find it hard to believe Apple may possibly release more powerful chips for their more powerful computers. But thankful for Mac Rumors sharing this insightful gem of information as I'm sure are the advertisers on this page.
Any more questions from the "why didn't they just switch to AMD crowd"?
I don't think it's practical. It would likely be a separate die. Sort of like how the RAM is part of the M1 package, but the RAM is not on die.
Apple have years of experience at designing GPUs that cram unprecedented power into the space, heat and power consumption constraints of phones, tablets and, now, 10W laptops. NVIDIA/AMD make cards with 2-3 times the performance that consume 10-20 times the power. I'm not going to try and call which one of those is "smartest".
Apple also have the advantage that their designers can concentrate on building the best possible GPU for MacOS and Metal, a GPU that only needs to work in a handful of computer models designed alongside the chips, that will come with an OS release adding dedicated support for those chips, whereas AMD and NVIDIA have to worry about OpenGL, OpenCL, CUDA, DirectX past and future, legacy support going all the way back to VGA, supporting someone else's OSs (Windows and Linux at least) and hardware compatibility with every generic PC clone on the market.
...and even then, if AMD and NVIDIA still have the best engineers, Apple can dip into their Scrooge McDuck gold-filled swimming pool and make those engineers a better offer. We're not living in the good old days of Jobs and Woz kludging together stuff in their garage...
