Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

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Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
1,396
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M1
5 nm
Unified memory architecture - LP-DDR4
16 billion transistors

8-core CPU

4 high-performance cores
192 KB instruction cache
128 KB data cache
Shared 12 MB L2 cache

4 high-efficiency cores
128 KB instruction cache
64 KB data cache
Shared 4 MB L2 cache
(Apple claims the 4 high-effiency cores alone perform like a dual-core Intel MacBook Air)

8-core iGPU (but there is a 7-core variant, likely with one inactive core)
128 execution units
Up to 24576 concurrent threads
2.6 Teraflops
82 Gigatexels/s
41 gigapixels/s

16-core neural engine
Secure Enclave
USB 4

Products:
$999 ($899 edu) 13" MacBook Air (fanless) - 18 hour video playback battery life
$699 Mac mini (with fan)
$1299 ($1199 edu) 13" MacBook Pro (with fan) - 20 hour video playback battery life

Memory options 8 GB and 16 GB. No 32 GB option (unless you go Intel).

It should be noted that the M1 chip in these three Macs is the same (aside from GPU core number). Basically, Apple is taking the same approach which these chips as they do the iPhones and iPads. Just one SKU (excluding the X variants), which is the same across all iDevices (aside from maybe slight clock speed differences occasionally).

EDIT:

Screen-Shot-2021-10-18-at-1.20.47-PM.jpg

M1 Pro 8-core CPU (6+2), 14-core GPU
M1 Pro 10-core CPU (8+2), 14-core GPU
M1 Pro 10-core CPU (8+2), 16-core GPU
M1 Max 10-core CPU (8+2), 24-core GPU
M1 Max 10-core CPU (8+2), 32-core GPU

M1 Pro and M1 Max discussion here:


M1 Ultra discussion here:


M2 discussion here:


Second Generation 5 nm
Unified memory architecture - LPDDR5, up to 24 GB and 100 GB/s
20 billion transistors

8-core CPU

4 high-performance cores
192 KB instruction cache
128 KB data cache
Shared 16 MB L2 cache

4 high-efficiency cores
128 KB instruction cache
64 KB data cache
Shared 4 MB L2 cache

10-core iGPU (but there is an 8-core variant)
3.6 Teraflops

16-core neural engine
Secure Enclave
USB 4

Hardware acceleration for 8K h.264, h.264, ProRes

M3 Family discussion here:


M4 Family discussion here:

 
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Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
1,396
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Some more benchmarks here: 14-inch MacBook Pro (M1 Pro) review: Life just keeps getting better for Mac users | Macworld

Seems the M1 Max's multicore prowess isn't particularly useful for the average user who should find the M1 Pro more than enough for their needs. Maybe data scientists may be better able to unlock the M1 Max's potential for their workloads.
Even the M1 Pro 8-core (6+2) with 14-core GPU would be fine for most of those users, but it's interesting to see how many won't even consider that for their light workloads, just because it's not a "real" M1 Pro.

M1 Pro 8-core is probably 1/3 faster than M1 for CPU, and much, much faster than M1 for GPU.

BTW, someone posed an interesting question. Since those cores are clustered, how does Apple allow binning in the 8-core model? Does Apple allow deactivation of only one core per cluster?
 
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Hitman928

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2012
6,187
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Even the M1 Pro 8-core (6+2) with 14-core GPU would be fine for most of those users, but it's interesting to see how many won't even consider that for their light workloads, just because it's not a "real" M1 Pro.

M1 Pro 8-core is probably 1/3 faster than M1 for CPU, and much, much faster than M1 for GPU.

BTW, someone posed an interesting question. Since those cores are clustered, how does Apple allow binning in the 8-core model? Does Apple only deactivation of only one core per cluster?

1 core per cluster would be my guess.
 

Roland00Address

Platinum Member
Dec 17, 2008
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Even the M1 Pro 8-core (6+2) with 14-core GPU would be fine for most of those users, but it's interesting to see how many won't even consider that for their light workloads, just because it's not a "real" M1 Pro.

M1 Pro 8-core is probably 1/3 faster than M1 for CPU, and much, much faster than M1 for GPU.

BTW, someone posed an interesting question. Since those cores are clustered, how does Apple allow binning in the 8-core model? Does Apple allow deactivation of only one core per cluster?
Does the M1 Pro 8 core have any other limitation such as number of displays or anything else?
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
1,396
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Does the M1 Pro 8 core have any other limitation such as number of displays or anything else?
Same number of displays for the M1 Pro 8-core and 10-core. The 8-core only has 14 GPU cores though, vs 16.

The 8-core comes with a lower wattage power brick.
You have to pay a bit extra to get the bigger power brick.
 

naukkis

Senior member
Jun 5, 2002
903
786
136
I don't think anyone was claiming the power efficiency wouldn't be really good, it's just that a particular poster was claiming 500% better than the most efficienct x86 competition which is bollocks and these new tests show as much. Also, everything looks super power efficient compared to Intel's chips :p.

His point was spot on, it was opposing claim that Apple's lead is mostly from node advantage - like 20% when it actually is more like a half a order of magnitude more efficient. If that's a 3 or 5 weren't his point.

Apple's cores just are from totally different league than x86 rivals, and denial against it still lives strongly.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
22,065
11,693
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These "reviews" are terrible. Most of them are just running the same crap synthetic benchmarks we already had leaked to us. Is someone actually going to run those machines through their paces at some point? Anandtech is the only one that even made an effort and even that is somewhat lacking.

It may not be possible to get any better reviews. How much "real world" software is there in common between MacOS and Windows or Linux? It's almost not worth complaining about it anymore, though. Some people just want their SPEC scores.

Meanwhile:


(check the M1 Max score for CBR23)

vs:


(check the CBR23 MT score for the 5980HS)

But:

117495.png


So in 526.blender_r and 511.povray_r, the M1 Max massacres the 5980HS, but in Cinebench R23 it . . . doesn't? Wouldn't it be nice of AT to run a current build of Blender on their M1 Max review sample instead?
 

naukkis

Senior member
Jun 5, 2002
903
786
136
So in 526.blender_r and 511.povray_r, the M1 Max massacres the 5980HS, but in Cinebench R23 it . . . doesn't? Wouldn't it be nice of AT to run a current build of Blender on their M1 Max review sample instead?

R23 test runt once is so short that turbo-boosted chips can maintain it with high boost - that doesn't mean anything. Run that R23 test longer and it will gave similar results to Anand's spec tests.
 

TESKATLIPOKA

Platinum Member
May 1, 2020
2,523
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This is for everyone who is claiming M1 Max is leagues ahead of It's x86 competition in energy efficiency.

Techspot review of Ryzen 7 5800U

13.png

M1 Max(Package power: 34W) vs Ryzen 9 5980HS(Package power: 35W)
R23 MT: 12375 vs 11024
Difference in performance is only 12% in favour of Apple at similar power draw.

What would happen If I compared It against 15W Ryzen 7 5800U?
M1 Max(Package power: 34W) vs Ryzen 9 5800U(Package power: 15W)
R23 MT: 12375 vs 7394
Apple is 67% faster, but consumes 127% more power than AMD, which makes this AMD CPU 36% more power efficient. BTW It was a 10min long run, just to be clear.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
22,065
11,693
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R23 test runt once is so short that turbo-boosted chips can maintain it with high boost - that doesn't mean anything. Run that R23 test longer and it will gave similar results to Anand's spec tests.

R23 specifically loops for 10 minutes to avoid that effect.

This is for everyone who is claiming M1 Max is leagues ahead of It's x86 competition in energy efficiency.

I just want to point out, that I have found sources showing the 5980HS to perform much better than that in R23. The link I pasted above showed it scoring 12844.
 

naukkis

Senior member
Jun 5, 2002
903
786
136
Denial against Apple's cores seems to be strong - haven't you red Ian's review at all? Cinebench is absolutely low efficiency side of M1 as it is 10-thread 128 bit fpu against 16-thread 256 bit fpu cpus where SMT-scaling is great and increases efficiency a lot - and still M1 can be both better performing and more efficient than Zen3. That still is insane achievement - or putting it other way, x86 cpu manufacturers should be ashamed that they are beat so strongly by cpu from some lifestyle company which main target isn't selling cpus.....
 

Hitman928

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2012
6,187
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His point was spot on, it was opposing claim that Apple's lead is mostly from node advantage - like 20% when it actually is more like a half a order of magnitude more efficient. If that's a 3 or 5 weren't his point.

Apple's cores just are from totally different league than x86 rivals, and denial against it still lives strongly.

Those claiming the M1's lead was only due to the node advantage were a lot more accurate than him claiming M1 had a 500% advantage.
 

moinmoin

Diamond Member
Jun 1, 2017
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Regardless of what everybody states, hypes up or play down regarding the M1 family's performance, I think we can all agree that if Intel and AMD care about efficiency Apple clearly is the competition to beat right now.

As for reviews I'm still missing one that explains to me why according to Apple itself M1 Pro/Max Macbook Pro's efficiency while browsing is only half that of M1 Macbook Air. Has anybody seen one such yet?
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
22,065
11,693
136
Denial against Apple's cores seems to be strong - haven't you red Ian's review at all? Cinebench is absolutely low efficiency side of M1 as it is 10-thread 128 bit fpu against 16-thread 256 bit fpu cpus where SMT-scaling is great and increases efficiency a lot - and still M1 can be both better performing and more efficient than Zen3. That still is insane achievement - or putting it other way, x86 cpu manufacturers should be ashamed that they are beat so strongly by cpu from some lifestyle company which main target isn't selling cpus.....

Um.

Blender can absolutely use AVX, AVX2, and even AVX-512 (I think?) and M1 Max tears apart the competition in that sub-bench. See below, as well.

SPEC usually does custom compilations of each software it benchmarks and tends to compile more for the least common denominators. For instance, in the x264/x265 tests they compile without AVX or SSE flags on x86 which is not at all how the software is actually used. This could paint a very different picture of video encoding performance as x86 kind of relies on those more modern instructions.

Just another reason to be skeptical of SPEC results.
 

StinkyPinky

Diamond Member
Jul 6, 2002
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It may not be possible to get any better reviews. How much "real world" software is there in common between MacOS and Windows or Linux? It's almost not worth complaining about it anymore, though. Some people just want their SPEC scores.

Perhaps but there are games with native M1 support for example, rather than relying on rosetta. Would just be interesting to see the CPU/GPU unleashed without being hindered by overhead.
 
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Hitman928

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Denial against Apple's cores seems to be strong - haven't you red Ian's review at all? Cinebench is absolutely low efficiency side of M1 as it is 10-thread 128 bit fpu against 16-thread 256 bit fpu cpus where SMT-scaling is great and increases efficiency a lot - and still M1 can be both better performing and more efficient than Zen3. That still is insane achievement - or putting it other way, x86 cpu manufacturers should be ashamed that they are beat so strongly by cpu from some lifestyle company which main target isn't selling cpus.....

M1 is extremely impressive, no doubt. Clear efficiency leaders and absolute performance (outside of memory bound stuff) isn't even far off core for core with x86's best. Apple does have some advantages though with being a vertically integrated company that AMD and Intel just don't have. If Apple had to rely on actually selling these chips to others to make their money, these chips would be very expensive and would be a hard sell for the vast majority of laptops actually sold in the marketplace. They'd also not have the software support they can provide to actually enable much of the functionality used by the chips. They'd be left with a niche product with limited support on the software side. Usually these types of products don't last long. Apple can do it because they control the design from top to bottom now but even if AMD made the same thing tomorrow, it would have a hard time finding a market to sell in any kind of real volume.

AMD's most similar products are their console APUs where they can do things they can't in their general market products as they are designed in cooperation with the console maker who will request certain features/specs and can make sure the console design from top to bottom works. The difference is game consoles are very low margin products that make up for it in software sales. Apple products are seen as premium products and they can charge accordingly. Apple also has the money to hire the best engineers in the world, which they have done to a large degree, so it shouldn't be a surprise that on top of all of their other advantages, they also just have very good engineers to make it all come together in an optimum design.
 

Hitman928

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Apr 15, 2012
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Perhaps but there are games with native M1 support for example, rather than relying on rosetta. Would just be interesting to see the CPU/GPU unleashed without being hindered by overhead.

I'd like to see more Rosetta benchmarks come out with the reviews. It seems like we saw a lot more of this with the M1. Obviously this wouldn't be ideal performance wise for the M1max, but at the same time it would actually tell us what kind of performance can be expected in those scenarios where native isn't supported and everyone should understand that it's not representative of architecture performance in those scenarios without accounting for the Rosetta penalty. It was actually pretty surprising with M1 how well it performed in most cases even with only a Rosetta path available.
 

BorisTheBlade82

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May 1, 2020
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Ok, then show me where M1max or pro has a anywhere near a 500% advantage over Zen 3 in Cinebench. That was his claim. Or really any compute bottlenecked application that isn't using the custom accelerators.

(Edited)
Do I really have to quote from the AT article for you?

In other ST workloads, the M1 Max is more ahead in performance, or at least in a similar range. The performance/W difference here is around 2.5x to 3x in favour of Apple’s silicon.

In multi-threaded tests, the 11980HK is clearly allowed to go to much higher power levels than the M1 Max, reaching package power levels of 80W, for 105-110W active wall power, significantly more than what the MacBook Pro here is drawing. The performance levels of the M1 Max are significantly higher than the Intel chip here, due to the much better scalability of the cores. The perf/W differences here are 4-6x in favour of the M1 Max, all whilst posting significantly better performance, meaning the perf/W at ISO-perf would be even higher than thi s.
That you do not even realize that when it is plainly written down in front of you by Andrei is very much telling.
I have to admit that it is quite satisfying that basically everything I got burnt for here right after presentation has been confirmed by AT.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
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Regardless of what everybody states, hypes up or play down regarding the M1 family's performance, I think we can all agree that if Intel and AMD care about efficiency Apple clearly is the competition to beat right now.

As for reviews I'm still missing one that explains to me why according to Apple itself M1 Pro/Max Macbook Pro's efficiency while browsing is only half that of M1 Macbook Air. Has anybody seen one such yet?
Are you saying that M1 Pro/Max is less efficient than M1? If so, that would make sense since they only have half the efficiency cores of M1.
 

Hail The Brain Slug

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2005
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Do I really have to quote from the AT article for you?


That you do not even realize that when it is plainly written down in front of you by Andrei is very much telling.
I have to admit that it is quite satisfying that basically everything I got burnt for here right after presentation has been confirmed by AT.

Advantage over Intel's chips isn't advantage over Zen 3.