Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 108 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,583
996
126
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:

 
Last edited:

gdansk

Golden Member
Feb 8, 2011
1,973
2,353
136
What kind of workloads?
Exceedingly light after-work tasks. I think it's the default mail application. In total I had Chrome with maybe a dozen tabs, Mail, Preview and Finder open at the last time it forced me close applications. Confusingly, the Force Quit dialog didn't list any of the applications as using much memory. Just MacOS things™.

I actually never saw this dialog on my Intel MacBooks, even doing actual work. But hey this is really fast when it works.
 
Last edited:
Jul 27, 2020
15,738
9,807
106
Exceedingly light after-work tasks. I think it's the default mail application. In total I had Chrome with maybe a dozen tabs, Mail, Preview and Finder open at the last time it forced me close applications. Confusingly, the Force Quit dialog didn't list any of the applications as using much memory. Just MacOS things™.

I actually never saw this dialog on my Intel MacBooks, even doing actual work. But hey this is really fast when it works.
Maybe a memory leak in some app. I'm guessing Chrome. You could check Activity Monitor at regular intervals to see if any app is unusuaaly consuming a lot of memory.
 

The Hardcard

Member
Oct 19, 2021
46
38
51
It wasn't Chrome. Mail app.

Are you using the standard pointer or a custom one?

This article claims to identify the causes of the memory leaks:


I haven’t had any big enough to affect my QoS or otherwise draw my attention and I’ve been using the Mail app.
 
Last edited:

gdansk

Golden Member
Feb 8, 2011
1,973
2,353
136
I don't customize much. Standard cursor, of course. I do use finder search quite often. Kinda annoying trying to figure out which daily feature is causing an annoying bug. Like a game of land mines. Monterey definitely was not ready for release.
 
Jul 27, 2020
15,738
9,807
106
I don't customize much. Standard cursor, of course. I do use finder search quite often. Kinda annoying trying to figure out which daily feature is causing an annoying bug. Like a game of land mines. Monterey definitely was not ready for release.

Syrupy is a Python script that regularly takes snapshots of the memory and CPU load of one or more running processes, so as to dynamically build up a profile of their usage of system resources.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
7,797
5,899
136
I know this is anecdotal but my new M1 Pro MBP16 crashes due to out of memory more than my old 9750H MBP16. Both on Monterey, both 16GB. Maybe some memory leak in ARM versions?

But otherwise it seems generally faster and quieter. Work test suite completes a bit faster. And the battery life is much longer.
Exceedingly light after-work tasks. I think it's the default mail application. In total I had Chrome with maybe a dozen tabs, Mail, Preview and Finder open at the last time it forced me close applications. Confusingly, the Force Quit dialog didn't list any of the applications as using much memory. Just MacOS things™.

I actually never saw this dialog on my Intel MacBooks, even doing actual work. But hey this is really fast when it works.

I haven't had any issues like that, but maybe it's because I have more RAM. I also don't use the mail app either.

Maybe you could isolate it by just running that and nothing else to see if it happens. If it is a memory leak it should just be a matter of time.

Weird though since they've had their mail app native for a long time now and have been developing it for ARM for as long as they've had it on iOS. Maybe it's a bug in the latest version.
 

gdansk

Golden Member
Feb 8, 2011
1,973
2,353
136
It seems a lot of people on Reddit encounter it, seemingly regardless of application. Their advice is "restart more often" or watch Activity Monitor continually. Reminds me of the Windows 95 days again.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: lobz

Doug S

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2020
2,201
3,405
136
It seems a lot of people on Reddit encounter it, seemingly regardless of application. Their advice is "restart more often" or watch Activity Monitor continually. Reminds me of the Windows 95 days again.

New OS version has bugs. First time that's ever happened, bad Apple!

Oh wait, Windows 11 is pretty buggy too, for the same reason... Before long both will have patches to address the worst issues like this memory leak in macOS and the dog slow SSD in Windows 11.
 

gdansk

Golden Member
Feb 8, 2011
1,973
2,353
136
New OS version has bugs. First time that's ever happened, bad Apple!

Oh wait, Windows 11 is pretty buggy too, for the same reason... Before long both will have patches to address the worst issues like this memory leak in macOS and the dog slow SSD in Windows 11.
Well it shipped with this operating system. It's totally a dog crap out-of-the-box experience compared to any past Mac I've had. Even running the same nominal operating system (Monterey) my old MBP16 had never encountered these problems.

Not sure what Windows 11 has to do with it
 
Jul 27, 2020
15,738
9,807
106
Progress Report: October-November 2021 - Asahi Linux

While working on AIC2 we discovered an interesting feature… while macOS only uses one set of IRQ control registers, there was indeed a full second set, unused and apparently unconnected to any hardware. Poking around, we found that it was indeed a fully working second half of the interrupt controller, and that interrupts delivered from it popped up with a magic “1” in a field of the event number, which had always been “0” previously. Yes, this is the much-rumored multi-die support. The M1 Max SoC has, by all appearances, been designed to support products with two of them in a multi-die module. While no such products exist yet, we’re introducing multi-die support to our AIC2 driver ahead of time. If we get lucky and there are no critical bugs, that should mean that Linux just works on those new 2-die machines, once they are released!

The physical address space size of the CPU cores increased from 36 bits (64 GiB) to 42 bits (4 TiB). The RAM region moved from the top 32 GiB of address space to the top 3 TiB. This means that while the old M1 chips were architecturally limited to a maximum of 32 GiB of RAM, the M1 Pro/Max revision can support up to at least 1 TiB or 3 TiB (depending on whether they want to keep it power-of-two aligned or not). Note that this is not how much memory the chips support in actuality, just how high the underlying architecture can scale without incompatible changes.

Apple engineers are likely thinking ahead to dominate the server world.
 
  • Like
Reactions: repoman27

StinkyPinky

Diamond Member
Jul 6, 2002
6,761
777
126
Yeah 165W is somewhat pushing it. Kinda stops being mobile at that point surely.

Technically gluing two EGPU's together with epoxy and sticking them in thunderbolt ports is also mobile.
 

Doug S

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2020
2,201
3,405
136
Progress Report: October-November 2021 - Asahi Linux

Apple engineers are likely thinking ahead to dominate the server world.


They need it for the Mac Pro. With LPDDR5X using 16Gb DRAMs allowing up to 64 GB per package, they could theoretically support 8 TB of LPDDR5X in a four SoC Mac Pro. I doubt they will offer anything that ridiculous, but I would expect they will offer at least 512 GB in the "smaller" two SoC Mac Pro due next year, and at least 2 TB if not more in the four SoC model in 2023.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
7,797
5,899
136
The 16" MBP with the M1 Max is pretty heavy. 4.8 pounds. The gamer laptops on NBC with the 3080 are mostly 5 or 6 pounds. Seems the battery might be the cause of it being so heavy.

The previous 16" MBP was 4.3 pounds so it's not that much more. I moved from an older 15" so the weigh difference is noticeable, but it's not noticeably worse to carry around.
 

gdansk

Golden Member
Feb 8, 2011
1,973
2,353
136
even ram seem to be integrated into SOC !!! Also its LPDDR4x and not LPDDR5. But yearly updates like iphone. I guess we will see new macs every year like iphone.
I suspect a slower cadence for Macs. Yearly upgrade cycle isn't nearly as common as it is for phones. The M1 is already over a year old. When the M2 debuts it should be an indicator of what cadence Apple is planning for Macs.
 

scannall

Golden Member
Jan 1, 2012
1,944
1,638
136
I suspect a slower cadence for Macs. Yearly upgrade cycle isn't nearly as common as it is for phones. The M1 is already over a year old. When the M2 debuts it should be an indicator of what cadence Apple is planning for Macs.
Apple has already said the M series is on an 18 month cadence.