Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

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Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
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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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Doug S

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Feb 8, 2020
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When I saw the review up I knew the comments would be comedy gold, and I wasn't disappointed. Hard to believe there are morons on this site dumb enough to believe Apple is taking a loss on M1 Max. I guess some people will believe anything if it lets them ignore the results.

The one thing I don't get is all the people whining about the "lack of benchmarks", which as far as I can tell means "where are the game benchmarks". If Anandtech writes an article about IBM's new POWER10 CPU will they say the same thing? Sorry but getting the best gaming performance would require game developers 1) porting to ARM64, 2) porting to Metal, 3) porting to TBDR rendering pipeline. But hey, the poor quality of what ports do exist will allow the haters to claim the game benchmarks reflect Apple's "real" performance and all the other benchmarks have been rigged. Some people will believe some incredible bull**** to avoid upsetting their preconceived order of the world.

The only real hope IMHO for those who want to see Mac gaming become a thing is not that PC game developers jump through all those hoops to do a proper port, but that iPhone game developers decide to scale up one or two of their titles to test the water in the Mac game market. Then you'll have to buy them to demonstrate to them it was worth their trouble, or they won't bother with it again.
 

Doug S

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Feb 8, 2020
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CPUs cannot max out memory bandwidth on their own. CPU memory scaling maxes out at 243 GB/s on M1 Max. M1 Pro can max out the 204 GB/s though.

Andrei can get the GPU to use up to 90 GB/s.

This allows extra memory bandwidth overhead for the rest of the SoC.

That makes no sense. Why would they design the M1 Pro to allow the SoC to take all the memory bandwidth, then turn around and "assign" certain chunks of bandwidth to different units in the M1 Max?

The latter is obviously hitting some internal limits, and I'll bet with the right GPGPU load you could take a lot more than 90 GB/sec from the GPU. Having trouble finding a real world GPU load that uses more than 90 GB/sec doesn't mean it is limited to 90 GB/sec, it means you need to explore GPGPU loads if you want to see how much bandwidth the GPU is able to consume.
 

scannall

Golden Member
Jan 1, 2012
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When I saw the review up I knew the comments would be comedy gold, and I wasn't disappointed. Hard to believe there are morons on this site dumb enough to believe Apple is taking a loss on M1 Max. I guess some people will believe anything if it lets them ignore the results.

The one thing I don't get is all the people whining about the "lack of benchmarks", which as far as I can tell means "where are the game benchmarks". If Anandtech writes an article about IBM's new POWER10 CPU will they say the same thing? Sorry but getting the best gaming performance would require game developers 1) porting to ARM64, 2) porting to Metal, 3) porting to TBDR rendering pipeline. But hey, the poor quality of what ports do exist will allow the haters to claim the game benchmarks reflect Apple's "real" performance and all the other benchmarks have been rigged. Some people will believe some incredible bull**** to avoid upsetting their preconceived order of the world.

The only real hope IMHO for those who want to see Mac gaming become a thing is not that PC game developers jump through all those hoops to do a proper port, but that iPhone game developers decide to scale up one or two of their titles to test the water in the Mac game market. Then you'll have to buy them to demonstrate to them it was worth their trouble, or they won't bother with it again.
World of Warcraft runs natively on the M1. It might be a place to see a few results anyway.
 

Doug S

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Feb 8, 2020
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World of Warcraft runs natively on the M1. It might be a place to see a few results anyway.

It is still a port of unknown quality. How much time did they spend on making it perform well, versus "OK it runs without crashing, that's good enough for the Mac market - time to get the developers back to working on the PC platform where the real money is!"
 

moinmoin

Diamond Member
Jun 1, 2017
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Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,825
1,396
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That makes no sense. Why would they design the M1 Pro to allow the SoC to take all the memory bandwidth, then turn around and "assign" certain chunks of bandwidth to different units in the M1 Max?

The latter is obviously hitting some internal limits, and I'll bet with the right GPGPU load you could take a lot more than 90 GB/sec from the GPU. Having trouble finding a real world GPU load that uses more than 90 GB/sec doesn't mean it is limited to 90 GB/sec, it means you need to explore GPGPU loads if you want to see how much bandwidth the GPU is able to consume.
I never said that. I just meant that the CPU - in Andrei’s review - could not saturate that bandwidth.

Same thing with GPU.
 

moinmoin

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Jun 1, 2017
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However, as you know, that was not a benchmark. That was just based on Apple’s specs.
I said as much, that it's according to Apple itself. And I am wondering why I'm not seeing any review trying to prove or disprove it, and in the former case, get down to what exactly causes that rather big difference. We already guessed before, that's not what I'm interested in now that reviewers and others have the actual hardware (AT apparently doesn't have the M1 hardware they tested before anymore so their review was useless in that regard).
 
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scannall

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It is still a port of unknown quality. How much time did they spend on making it perform well, versus "OK it runs without crashing, that's good enough for the Mac market - time to get the developers back to working on the PC platform where the real money is!"
Blizzard has been making games for the Mac since they started ages ago. Including World of Warcraft. So it should be a solid build.
 

Hitman928

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2012
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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.

A 5800u at 15W limited TDP scores ~7500 points in MT for a perf/w score of 500. An M1max scores ~12400 at 34 watts for a perf/w score of 365. Clearly Zen 3 is more efficient than M1max. Additionally, for ST, an M1 chip uses just 3.8W to get the same score as M1max which uses 11W. That gives M1 a 2.9x performance efficiency advantage over M1max. They must have really screwed up the M1max design to do so bad in perf/w compared to M1. (/s)

It's easy to cherry pick data points with zero nuance/context and make whatever point you want to make.
 

Roland00Address

Platinum Member
Dec 17, 2008
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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.
I do not get it then. Unless it is just complaining paying more and you do not want too, and thus you create false complaints why there should not be an 8 core model in existence.

The 8-Core is fast enough, and it has the additional features over the 4+4 core M1. For example a better screen, more ports, 12 additional watt hour battery*, etc. Let apple salvage some dies and offer a lower price sku.

*Apple is quoting less battery life though. Maybe this is due to less efficiency cores, the screen, or something else that means it may get 3 hours less max battery.
 

Gideon

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Nov 27, 2007
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Many people on twitter (and I think some even here) are missing a very crucial part about the power efficiency of these laptops.

People seem to focus on M1 Pro losing some benches by 5% to a 11th gen Tige Lake H (pulling 100W from the wall for that btw) without having seen an M1 mac, let alone actually run any real world workloads themselves on it vs such a H series beast.

One thing that is as certain as taxes to all premium x86 laptops with decent performance, is that if there is MT load, the fans will kick in. It doesn't matter if it's a Mac or PC, AMD, Intel , 45W or 15W series, when you start a heavier multi-threaded workload (say like Cinebench) on an x86 laptop, the fans will kick on in a matter of seconds. It might take 20 seconds on some and 5 on others but they will kick in aggressively far before the bench is finished.

This has always been a thing but from recent times I vividly remember this happening to all Intel MacBooks at work, my mother's R7 Lenovo Yoga (4800U) wife's x360 Spectre (1065G7), and any gaming laptops I've tried to run it on elsewhere.

The thing is that for both the M1 and the M1 Pro/Max (as confirmed by this guy and another YT review I forgot), the fan doesn't even turn on for that Cinebench MT score you see. Yeah, I mean it eventually does, if you run the bench in loops for 5+ minutes straight. But even then it's nothing like 99% of other laptops. It's almost inaudible (at sub 30db and ~30°C skin-temperatures), while most similar-sized laptops by that point are loud or uncomfortably warm . This power-efficency in extension also means that you get the exact same performance on battery that you do while plugged in.

That is the real gamechanger about these laptops for me.

I do software work, that isn't all that taxing overall, but just enough is going on constantly (unit/integration tests running IDEs indexing, app docker containers running in the background) that no matter what x86 laptop I use , in about half an hour the fans are roaring and my palms sweaty ( I like to call it Eminem programming for that).

The only laptop that offered about the same performance as best x86 machines and had no issues staying cold and quiet was the M1 Macbook I tried. If it weren't for it's 16GB memory and 1-external monitor limit it would already fit my needs (but that's why I limp by on the temporary M1 mini until I get the 14" with M1 Pro)

The difference really is that huge and the benchmark numbers alone absolutely fail to tell the story.

The last time I remember being as impressed with a laptop was when I benchmarked my father's brand new Pentium M in 2003 vs my higher end Athlon XP desktop
 
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Hitman928

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2012
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Many people on twitter (and I think some even here) are missing a very crucial part about the power efficiency of these laptops.

People seem to focus on M1 Pro losing some benches by 5% to a 11th gen Tige Lake H (pulling 100W from the wall for that btw) without having seen an M1 mac, let alone actually run any real world workloads themselves on it vs such a H series beast.

One thing that is as certain as taxes to all premium x86 laptops with decent performance, is that if there is MT load, the fans will kick in. It doesn't matter if it's a Mac or PC, AMD, Intel , 45W or 15W series, when you start a heavier multi-threaded workload (say like Cinebench) on an x86 laptop, the fans will kick on in a matter of seconds. It might take 20 seconds on some and 5 on others but they will kick in aggressively far before the bench is finished.

This has always been a thing but from recent times I vividly remember this happening to all Intel MacBooks at work, my mother's R7 Lenovo Yoga (4800U) wife's x360 Spectre (1065G7), and any gaming laptops I've tried to run it on elsewhere.

The thing is that for both the M1 and the M1 Pro/Max (as confirmed by this guy and another YT review I forgot), the fan doesn't even turn on for that Cinebench MT score you see. Yeah, I mean it eventually does, if you run the bench in loops for 5+ minutes straight. But even then it's nothing like 99% of other laptops. It's almost inaudible (at sub 30db and ~30°C skin-temperatures), while most similar-sized laptops by that point are loud or uncomfortably warm . This power-efficency in extension also means that you get the exact same performance on battery that you do while plugged in.

That is the real gamechanger about these laptops for me.

I do software work, that isn't all that taxing overall, but just enough is going on constantly (unit/integration tests running IDEs indexing, app docker containers running in the background) that no matter what x86 laptop I use , in about half an hour the fans are roaring and my palms sweaty ( I like to call it Eminem programming for that).

The only laptop that offered about the same performance as best x86 machines and had no issues staying cold and quiet was the M1 Macbook I tried. If it weren't for it's 16GB memory and 1-external monitor limit it would already fit my needs (but that's why I limp by on the temporary M1 mini until I get the 14" with M1 Pro)

The difference really is that huge and the benchmark numbers alone absolutely fail to tell the story.

The last time I remember being as impressed with a laptop was when I benchmarked my father's brand new Pentium M in 2003 vs my higher end Athlon XP desktop

I don't know if it was having kids or just getting older in general, but my appreciation of a quiet running machine has greatly increased over the years. Having the fans not kick in would be a big selling point for me. With that said, isn't the trade off Apple is making increased weight for the cooling system or is the laptop a similar weight as other machines in its class?
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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I do not get it then. Unless it is just complaining paying more and you do not want too, and thus you create false complaints why there should not be an 8 core model in existence.

The 8-Core is fast enough, and it has the additional features over the 4+4 core M1. For example a better screen, more ports, 12 additional watt hour battery*, etc. Let apple salvage some dies and offer a lower price sku.

*Apple is quoting less battery life though. Maybe this is due to less efficiency cores, the screen, or something else that means it may get 3 hours less max battery.
Battery life for 8-core and 10-core is listed as being the same. The difference here though is you can only get the 8-core in the 14" model. There is no 8-core available for the 16" model. The 16" model has more battery life, but that increased battery life is true compared to both of the 14" models.

I think it's because people saw the benchmarks which showed GB5 at 12500 for the 10-core, and then saw the benchmark of 9950 for the 8-core and then concluded it's foolish to go with the 8-core since the 10-core is only US$200 more, regardless of what their workload and needs are.

Perhaps the way some should be looking at it IMO is that the 8-core M1 Pro gets 30% higher CPU benchmark scores than M1, massively improved memory bandwidth over M1, a hugely improved GPU, and additional hardware encode/decode support absent on the M1.
 

insertcarehere

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Jan 17, 2013
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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.

And here I thought people frequenting this website would know better than to equate package power with TDP. Unless the reviewer explicitly monitored package power consumption, it is not possible to compare the two given how different laptop OEMs will calibrate profiles for the same chip.

Case in point, the 5900HS has a 35w TDP, which Asus (the only OEM w/ a 5980HS laptop) happily ignored in the implementation with power profiles that draw 65w & 45w from the CPU, respectively. https://www.ultrabookreview.com/46631-asus-zephyrus-g14-2021-review/
 
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Roland00Address

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@Eug I was comparing 13 inch M1 4+4 core vs the 14 inch M1Pro 6+2 battery life. But yeah we see eye to eye where there is a place for the 6+2 Pro and it should be seen as a step up from the 13 inch M1.

1699, for a 13” M1 4+4 with 16gb ram and 512 storage.
1999, for a 14” M1 6+2 Pro with same ram and storage.
2199, for a 14” M1 8+2 Pro with same ram and storage.

Likewise for gpu there is a 1400 delta from 1699 to 3099 depending on if you want an 08, 14, 16, 24, or 32 core GPU. Lots of step up opportunities, I can make the case one should stop at 2k plus taxes, or spend 2.2k.
 
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Hitman928

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And here I thought people frequenting this website would know better than to equate package power with TDP. Unless the reviewer explicitly monitored package power consumption, it is not possible to compare the two given the laptop OEMs calibration.

Case in point, the 5900HS has a 35w TDP, which Asus (the only OEM w/ a 5980HS laptop) happily ignored in the implementation with power profiles that draw 65w & 45w from the CPU, respectively. https://www.ultrabookreview.com/46631-asus-zephyrus-g14-2021-review/

Your point is valid, but from what I've seen, the 35W number in the Techspot review is with the CPU really drawing 35W. At 65W, Cezanne should score pretty close to 13,000 points in Cinebench r23 as shown in your link.
 

Leeea

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quoting your own post, 408gb/s
That is just the memory bandwidth.

What we really want to see is the MH/s for Eth mining.

I have a feeling it is going to be 1/2 the MH/s of a 3080, but at 1/4 watts. Which would be exceptional.


-Leeea tries to catch the attention of the wolves: "hey, look over there, fresh meat!"-
 

Hitman928

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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. Unless Anandtech is custom compiling the sub tests and turning these flags back on? Either way, some of the tests make it hard to really compare performance for real world apps when they're not testing the apps in the way they are actually compiled/run in the real world.

Going back and reviewing, I believe I mis-remembered the SPEC setup. I believe it is Anandtech that compiles with flags that turn off SSE for x264/x265. The actual flag is to disable ASM which makes sense as it is highly optimized for x86, but then the fallback is to not have any SSE/AVX. You'd have to check each tests compiler flags to see what is being used.
 
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insertcarehere

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Your point is valid, but from what I've seen, the 35W number in the Techspot review is with the CPU really drawing 35W. At 65W, Cezanne should score pretty close to 13,000 points in Cinebench r23 as shown in your link.

Not to belabor the point any further, but unless power was explicitly monitored (and it wasn't in the techspot review), then we have no idea what profile was actually used and therefore an accurate idea of actual power draw.

Computerbase found three power profiles for the ROG Flow X13 (AFAIK the only laptop with 5980HS), each of which exhibit clearly different behaviors, only one of which would likely really meet the criteria for 35w power draw.
https://www.computerbase.de/2021-02...chmarks_und_huerden_mit_35_42_und_80_watt_tdp
 

simas

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Oct 16, 2005
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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.


I am with you- ideal/not ideal is irrelevant, real world is. Is this of any value to me who wants to play non-console AAA PC games? Does GamePass works on it (for game subscriptions and access to day one releases from anything Microsoft owned or contracted with)? How does it perform in say Cyberpunk which I still think has the best writing I have seen in last few years?


otherwise , it is just another Apple thingy - a real (and likely good) tool for very few people and use cases , an overpriced status symbols for vastly more wannabees and *yawn* for the rest of the PC enthusiast crowd. irrelevant, overpriced, overhyped, overmarketed and oversold gizmo.

As Apple stock owner (indirectly, through index funds), I strongly approve of anyone who wants to spend their money on it to go ahead and do it :) . Pay sales tax while at that , support your local government, even better.

as person spending my own money, this is irrelevant.