The MacRumors Show: New iPad Pro With the M4 Chip for AI?

[barabba9174-bis]

They do battery replacements. At a good price too.

Yes, obviously, but it's stronger than me, I always have to find an excuse to change something that I already have and it works.

 

[sos47]

i hope they get 2 USB C ports.
when the cams move to landscape it makes no sense to keep one port on the right side. it should be on both sides symmetrical.

 

[Squirrrrel]

Lots of petulant "If Apple does <X> I'm moving to Canada" type comments...

Amazing how we get these threats three times a year, and yet the SAME PEOPLE still keep showing up in the forums...

Apple still sells their products in Canada.

 

[name99]

The article made it sound like the major selling point of an M4 chip would be its advanced AI capabilities. Similar things were said about the upcoming A18 chips for iPhones. If so, where would it leave people with their existing pre-M4 and pre-A18 devices?

Probably in exactly the way you would expect.
SOME advanced AI features only work on A17 or A18 or M4. Just like Raytracing.
MOST AI feature work on the older chips, but slower, or drawing more power, or having to use the network as opposed to operating on-device.

I mean, isn't this just common sense?
EVERY new chip has great new features, that are relevant to developers – and much less to users, especially non-tech users.
AND
Every new FEATURE will, as much as possible, operate on older hardware as well as newer hardware, just not as well.

 

[Velli]

I’m in the “M3x, not M4” camp.

 

[killhippie]

You do know that this "major security flaw" is
- not nearly the big deal you seem think it is. It doesn't affect anything happening at supervisor or hypervisor level, and if an app is rolling their own crypto at user level, well, they deserve whatever they get

- easily fixed (IF Apple thinks its worth doing, which I doubt) by flipping a particular bit in a control register

But sure, feel free to run around spreading hysteria.

The M3 can be partially fixed as you can turn off DMP on the M3 not the M1 or M2 and doing that seriously degrades the performance of the processor, M1 and M2 are cannot be patched at all. I'm not up for buying a chip that has two security flaws, the M1 and M2 had another flaw already that could not be patched. Intel chips have that vulnerability too but like the M3 can be patched.

Apple's M-series have two types of cores: big Firestorm cores and little Icestorm cores. The DMP-based GoFetch exploit only works on Firestorm cores it appears, including M1 and M2 CPUs. The GoFetch paper suggests all cryptographic work should solely be run on the Icestorm cores for the time being. Running anything on the efficiency-focused Icestorm cores is bound to be slower, but it should hopefully be be secure.

I have no idea if Apple will implement this with the next update but I will move away from the from the M2 Pro when the M4 lands with a pro variant probably on the Mac mini. My worry is Apple want people to update computers like iPhones and that really should not be happening. Also this push for AI concerns me because macOS will loose some new functionality unless you have a M4 depending what Apple have up thier sleeve, and for people that have just got a M3 thats a low punch.

 

[I WAS the one]

Can I enable iPadOS and macOS switch in the Settings menu with this new announcement? 🤣

 

[name99]

The M3 can be partially fixed as you can turn off DMP on the M3 not the M1 or M2 and doing that seriously degrades the performance of the processor, M1 and M2 are cannot be patched at all. I'm not up for buying a chip that has two security flaws, the M1 and M2 had another flaw already that could not be patched. Intel chips have that vulnerability too but like the M3 can be patched.

Apple's M-series have two types of cores: big Firestorm cores and little Icestorm cores. The DMP-based GoFetch exploit only works on Firestorm cores it appears, including M1 and M2 CPUs. The GoFetch paper suggests all cryptographic work should solely be run on the Icestorm cores for the time being. Running anything on the efficiency-focused Icestorm cores is bound to be slower, but it should hopefully be be secure.

I have no idea if Apple will implement this with the next update but I will move away from the from the M2 Pro when the M4 lands with a pro variant probably on the Mac mini. My worry is Apple want people to update computers like iPhones and that really should not be happening. Also this push for AI concerns me because macOS will loose some new functionality unless you have a M4 depending what Apple have up thier sleeve, and for people that have just got a M3 thats a low punch.

Seriously, dude, if you're going to try to school me, at least start by understanding the points to which I am referring...
Which is not hard, just go to the relevant page and see the April update:

GoFetch: Breaking Constant-Time Cryptographic Implementations Using Data Memory-Dependent Prefetchers

A new microarchitectural side-channel attack exploiting data memory-dependent prefetchers in Apple silicons.

gofetch.fail

Not mentioned on that page (but relevant, and mentioned in my comment) is the issue that this particular prefetcher is not active for anything other than user level.

 

[Zacharybinx34]

Perfect, now I can CRUSH Angry Birds even harder! ...

Give Ipad's Mac OS or bust!