M1 is the A14X but rebranded

[senttoschool]

• Apple would have made the M1 (A14X) even if they didn't transition away from Intel
• M1 was made to run fanless and has 4/4 cores which is basically what the A14X would have been
• If Apple didn't ship any Macs using the A14X, they wouldn't have shipped any Apple Silicon Macs until the new MBPs later this year which would have been over a year from the ARM transition announcement to a single shipped product. Too long.
• People are shocked that Apple put the M1 into the iPad Pro. Well... what else could they have put in there?
• Explains the limited IO of M1

So why does it matter?

• By now, it should be obvious that the new MBPs will be based on A15 cores. No announcement at WWDC should make this even more likely because new MBPs will launch close to or after the iPhone 13.
• This means the low end Macs will not receive latest core designs first each year. It never made much sense for low end Macs to destroy MBPs in single core performance for 9+ months every year.
• We should expect a large jump in performance from the M1 to new MBP SoCs because those SoCs were truly designed for Macs from the ground up and has A15 cores.
• It's possible that Apple will never make another "A#X" SoC again. Instead, they might simply bin lower quality and defective SoCs from the J-Die Chop (sounds silly, I know). For example, instead of 8/2 CPU cores, they will disable 2 high-performance cores for the Macbook Air and iPad Pro. Doing this will save Apple designing resources and make use of defective SoCs.
• Alternatively, Apple may continue to design and produce "A#X" SoCs for iPads/low-end Macs because each of the J-Die Chop takes up too much space on a 300mm TSMC wafer. However, Apple will call this "M" SoCs from now on.
• I don't believe Apple will use "M2X" name because M is associated with low-end devices. I believe Apple will call MBP SoCs something like "P2" meaning Pro. Then they could market them as "P2 10-Core Processor. 32-Core GPU". Maybe someday we'll get something like "P4 64-Core Processor. 128-Core GPU" for the Mac Pro.

 

[chabig]

Names are arbitrary. You could say the M1 is the A13XX or A12XXX and it wouldn't matter. Also, M1 has 8/8 cores.

 

[Significant1]

• We should expect a large jump in performance from the M1 to "M2X" because "M2X" was truly designed for Macs from the ground up and has A15 cores.

Don't get your hopes up. I think it is obvious that Apple was already working on using its own designed processor in everything, since they pushed introduced 64bit in iPhone way before it was needed. Therefore is has been a long continious incremental process, that I don't see will change. Yes, there will be new socs with even more cores, but still same type of cores used in iPhone and up.

It has also proved to be a winning formula, so I don't see they need to change.

 

[Banquo321]

Excellent analysis by OP.

 

[Falhófnir]

Wasn't this obvious from it's configuration from the outset... or at the very least as soon as it went into the iPP, dispelling any remaining doubt about mac-specific logic for IO etc?

Judging by how Apple have so far marketed the M1 macs (core counts) and how they marketed Intel chips in Macs, (specifying GHz and core count) I wouldn't be surprised if the chip that goes into the 16" is simply called 'M1(2?) with 8 performance cores' and the M1/M2 are retconned as 'M1/M2 with 4 performance cores'* or something. That's unless they want to charge more for higher binned chips (i.e. 'i3/5/7' in Intel language) which adds more complexity via additional core counts (6 out of 8 cores active) and different sustainable clock speeds.

*if the number of efficiency cores differs as rumoured total core count is probably a bit misleading.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Names are arbitrary. You could say the M1 is the A13XX or A12XXX and it wouldn't matter. Also, M1 has 8/8 cores.

I would have preferred they revived the G numbers, and called it the G6.

 

[opeter]

About the name... the could simply call it M Pro or whatever for the more powerfull chips/SOCs. I think, in the longer run they are trying making a "brandish" thing of these Ms.

 

[xraydoc]

Names are arbitrary. You could say the M1 is the A13XX or A12XXX and it wouldn't matter. Also, M1 has 8/8 cores.

The M1 has 4 efficiency cores and 4 performance cores, not 8 and 8.

 

[TopherMan12]

The M1 has 4 efficiency cores and 4 performance cores, not 8 and 8.

Believe @chabig is referring to the 8 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores.

 

[leman]

I would have preferred they revived the G numbers, and called it the G6.

They use G for for the GPU, albeit internally. The A14/M1 GPU is G13 for example.

 

[leman]

Believe @chabig is referring to the 8 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores.

Personally, I think it's a bit misleading to refer to the m1 as having 8 CPU cores, since only four of those are the fast cores. Most people out there assume that CPU cores are symmetric, so counting the efficiency cores might facilitate false expectations. For intuitive understanding, we might as well refer to M1 as a 5-core CPU, since the four Icestorm cores are roughly equivalent to a single Firestorm one

 

[TopherMan12]

Personally, I think it's a bit misleading to refer to the m1 as having 8 CPU cores, since only four of those are the fast cores. Most people out there assume that CPU cores are symmetric, so counting the efficiency cores might facilitate false expectations. For intuitive understanding, we might as well refer to M1 as a 5-core CPU, since the four Icestorm cores are roughly equivalent to a single Firestorm one

uh.....yeah

 

[sirHydra]

• Apple would have made the M1 (A14X) even if they didn't transition away from Intel
• M1 was made to run fanless and has 4/4 cores which is basically what the A14X would have been
• If Apple didn't ship any Macs using the A14X, they wouldn't have shipped any Apple Silicon Macs until the new MBPs later this year which would have been over a year from the ARM transition announcement to a single shipped product. Too long.
• People are shocked that Apple put the M1 into the iPad Pro. Well... what else could they have put in there?
• Explains the limited IO of M1

So why does it matter?

• By now, it should be obvious that the new MBPs will be based on A15 cores. No announcement at WWDC should make this even more likely because new MBPs will launch close to or after the iPhone 13.
• This means the low end Macs will not receive latest core designs first each year. It never made much sense for low end Macs to destroy MBPs in single core performance for 9+ months every year.
• We should expect a large jump in performance from the M1 to new MBP SoCs because those SoCs were truly designed for Macs from the ground up and has A15 cores.
• It's possible that Apple will never make another "A#X" SoC again. Instead, they might simply bin lower quality and defective SoCs from the J-Die Chop (sounds silly, I know). For example, instead of 8/2 CPU cores, they will disable 2 high-performance cores for the Macbook Air and iPad Pro. Doing this will save Apple designing resources and make use of defective SoCs.
• Alternatively, Apple may continue to design and produce "A#X" SoCs for iPads/low-end Macs because each of the J-Die Chop takes up too much space on a 300mm TSMC wafer.
• I don't believe Apple will use "M2X" name because M is associated with low-end devices. I believe Apple will call MBP SoCs something like "P2" meaning Pro. Then they could market them as "P2 10-Core Processor. 32-Core GPU". Maybe someday we'll get something like "P4 64-Core Processor. 128-Core GPU" for the Mac Pro.

Well, the M1 is an entry-level chip, but today we are at the point where an entry-level chip performance is more than enough for 90% of people.

We all buy overpowered PCs for our needs.
I have a 10-year-old PC with a glorious Intel 3570K and a GTX 770 just because I don't want to pay Adobe a rent every year. It still runs CS6 like the first day. Rock-solid machine.

The M1 is an incredible entry-level chip.

 

[leman]

uh.....yeah

Sorry if that’s too complicated and confusing for you. That’s exactly why I’m against referring to M1 as an eight-core CPU

 

[Colstan]

I think that it's been fairly obvious that the M1 is just the A14X wearing a mustache.

What I would point out is that Apple did tweak it to include things like virtualization support and optimizations for Rosetta. Those particular capabilities wouldn't have been useful in an iPad Pro, at least in its current incarnation.

 

[xraydoc]

Believe @chabig is referring to the 8 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores.

Ah, perhaps.

 

[Abazigal]

Personally, I think it's a bit misleading to refer to the m1 as having 8 CPU cores, since only four of those are the fast cores. Most people out there assume that CPU cores are symmetric, so counting the efficiency cores might facilitate false expectations. For intuitive understanding, we might as well refer to M1 as a 5-core CPU, since the four Icestorm cores are roughly equivalent to a single Firestorm one

Apple’s M1 is a fast CPU—but M1 Macs feel even faster due to QoS

Howard Oakley did an excellent deep dive on M1 scheduling and performance.

arstechnica.com

8 cores is 8 cores.

Apple's QoS strategy for the M1 Mac is an excellent example of engineering for the actual pain point in a workload rather than chasing arbitrary metrics. Leaving the high-performance Firestorm cores idle when executing background tasks means that they can devote their full performance to the userInitiated and userInteractive tasks as they come in, avoiding the perception that the system is unresponsive or even "ignoring" the user.

For me at least, I never automatically equate more cores with better performance, but then again, I am primarily an iOS user who is accustomed to my devices having fewer, faster cores.

If anything, android phone processors have kinda poisoned the well by showing how more cores can actually lead to slower performance (due to excessive heat generated, higher power usage and slower single-core performance). That and many apps and processes just aren’t optimised to actually take advantage of that many cores.

So I am actually glad that “despite” having more cores, the M1 chip is able to retain the speed, fluidity and battery efficiency we have come to expect of iOS devices.

Remember - it’s the Macs that are getting an ipad chip. Not the ipad getting a Mac processor.

 

[Abazigal]

• I don't believe Apple will use "M2X" name because M is associated with low-end devices. I believe Apple will call MBP SoCs something like "P2" meaning Pro. Then they could market them as "P2 10-Core Processor. 32-Core GPU". Maybe someday we'll get something like "P4 64-Core Processor. 128-Core GPU" for the Mac Pro.

The Mac Pro is an extremely low volume product. I am not convinced Apple will go to all the trouble of creating a custom processor just for it.

My guess is that Apple will just find a way to stitch together multiple M1 chips together to form your M1x for whatever chip that will be used in the MBPs and Mac Pro.

 

[TopherMan12]

Sorry if that’s too complicated and confusing for you. That’s exactly why I’m against referring to M1 as an eight-core CPU

Fair enough. I'm just not well read on CPU intricacies. Most I'm pay attention to are benchmark scores.

 

[leman]

8 cores is 8 cores.

Is it though? How many cores does an i7-1165G7 have? Four or eight?

It all depends on what you count and how. And don’t get me started on the GPU cores… Apple says that M1 has 8 GPU cores. If it were an Nvidia product it would be marketed as a 1024-core GPU instead.

 

[bobcomer]

Is it though? How many cores does an i7-1165G7 have? Four or eight?

It all depends on what you count and how. And don’t get me started on the GPU cores… Apple says that M1 has 8 GPU cores. If it were an Nvidia product it would be marketed as a 1024-core GPU instead.

4 with HT in Intel logic.

I agree with you, an M1 is basically a 4 core chip with 4 specialty low power cores that low priority tasks can be offloaded to for efficiency. (except I thought all 4 low power cores was equal to about half a high power core)

 

[frostbit3]

Is it though? How many cores does an i7-1165G7 have? Four or eight?

It all depends on what you count and how. And don’t get me started on the GPU cores… Apple says that M1 has 8 GPU cores. If it were an Nvidia product it would be marketed as a 1024-core GPU instead.

8 cores is 8 cores. It has 8 cores that can do processing. The i7-1165G7 only has 4 cores. It cannot process things on 8 cores simultaneously as the M1 can.

The other thing to remember though is the M1 is much different than the A14X because Apple had to put a lot more on the SoC like PCIe amongst other things. The M1 is a natural progression of their ARM design, but it isn't simply "the same chip rebranded"

 

[dmccloud]

Personally, I think it's a bit misleading to refer to the m1 as having 8 CPU cores, since only four of those are the fast cores. Most people out there assume that CPU cores are symmetric, so counting the efficiency cores might facilitate false expectations. For intuitive understanding, we might as well refer to M1 as a 5-core CPU, since the four Icestorm cores are roughly equivalent to a single Firestorm one

Given that even Intel is moving to a BIG.little model in upcoming CPUs, I don't think it's misleading at all. There's still 8 cores total on the M1. To be honest, I think it's actually in some ways more accurate marketing than Intel, where the max speeds of a given processor are often limited to single-core performance, and the CPU as a whole has to throttle down under multi-core load to maintain operating temperatures. Of course the issue there is that there is a subset of people who still think that clock speeds tell the entire story (just as there are people who think core counts tell the whole story), even though there's a myriad of factors that go into calculating the overall performance any processor, regardless of the underlying ISA or architecture...

 

[leman]

8 cores is 8 cores. It has 8 cores that can do processing. The i7-1165G7 only has 4 cores. It cannot process things on 8 cores simultaneously as the M1 can.

Of course it can. The i7-1165G7 appears to the OS as a 8-core CPU, capable of running 8 threads simultaneously. As far as the software is concerned, there are 8 CPU cores. That’s what SMT is all about.

 

[frostbit3]

Of course it can. The i7-1165G7 appears to the OS as a 8-core CPU, capable of running 8 threads simultaneously. As far as the software is concerned, there are 8 CPU cores. That’s what SMT is all about.

"A single physical CPU core with hyper-threading appears as two logical CPUs to an operating system. The CPU is still a single CPU, so it’s a little bit of a cheat. While the operating system sees two CPUs for each core, the actual CPU hardware only has a single set of execution resources for each core. The CPU pretends it has more cores than it does, and it uses its own logic to speed up program execution. In other words, the operating system is tricked into seeing two CPUs for each actual CPU core."

CPU Basics: What Are Cores, Hyper-Threading, and Multiple CPUs?

Much Ado About Threads.

www.howtogeek.com

It's not truly 8 cores. It cannot truly process 8 things simultaneously, it can only do 4 hence the 4 cores. 8 cores != 4c/8t