Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

[Eug]

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:



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:

Page 78 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 78 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

M1 Ultra discussion here:

Page 109 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 109 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

M2 discussion here:

Page 127 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 127 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

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:

Page 215 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 215 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

M4 Family discussion here:

Page 263 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 263 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

 

[johnsonwax]

What the tariffs are about is ISOLATING CHINA. You can see multiple reasons for doing this, and again I'm not interested in making political arguments or justifications, simply in explaining the world. China is considered to be a US security threat AND to be a US economic threat.

They're not about that. Trump has a stick that he doesn't need Congress to approve, and he's going to hit everyone he can with it. In order for a doctrine to work, it needs to be clearly understood and consistently applied. The doctrine is designed to work by not needing to work, by signaling to everyone what the desired outcome is and to signal what everyone needs to do in order to avoid a given set of consequences. It's a stick that ideally never needs to be swung. Nobody here can figure out what the f is going on, therefore no doctrine can work. Apple isn't planning on moving manufacturing to the US because by the time they opened the factory, we'll either be in the next administration or we'll be in a fully fascist regime. It doesn't help that there is no predictable pathway to getting workers given how barren parts of the US manufacturing economy are. That's why trade policy needs to be a national doctrine that all politicians are invested in to some degree because in order for it to achieve it's aims of shaping the larger economy, it will need a decade to operate. Trumps policies aren't even shared by other Republicans let alone Democrats. They are strategically useless. I don't doubt Trump believes he will have this effect, but he will not.

I'm not sure how raising the price of selling goods to the US isolates China by making literally every other market cheaper to operate in. You understand the Plaza Accord was a complete failure, right? We had to sign a new accord 2 years later to stem the damage, and it achieved none of its goals relative to Japan. And I've personally known Peter Navarro for 30 years. I can assure you his racism toward the Chinese blinds him to reason, and his views on trade are not shared by anyone in the field for all of the aforementioned reasons.

You are projecting what is otherwise a reasonable economic/trade argument onto a bunch of nonsense actions. If the US wanted to isolate China, we'd be working to make China more expensive to work with, not less. Instead we made the US more expensive. It's also the opposite of a trade bloc - nobody wants to work with us. Even our defense exports are being dropped over this, which was one of our strongest export sectors and tied in tightly to our defense pacts. We also seem to be isolating every other country, especially Canada and Mexico and the EU by the same reasoning.

And the US still needs to contend with the problem that US manufacturing workers are so much more productive than those in countries like China that any shift of production to the US that doesn't come with an absurd degree of automation is going to either require immigration to staff or a reduction in GDP because we'll have to move workers from more productive jobs to less productive ones. Semiconductors is one of the few industries that makes sense to move to the US because those workers are so productive. But assembling iPhones? Who wants that job? Certainly nobody in the manufacturing sector. Maybe immigrants, but we've turned that pipe completely off.

 

[Kryohi]

Also its really funny people think Apple is expensive, the M4 Macbook airs are sold at $800. You cannot get a better laptop basic for tasks like like web and youtube at that price point.

They gourge on RAM and SSD pricing but NEVER buy from Apple directly if you want value. Buy Macs from third partys like Best Buy, JB hi-fi, currys whatever

Where I live spending 800€ for browsing, emails and YouTube is mostly considered stupid tbh, since you can get 350€ chinesium stuff with good battery life and 1080p ips screens for that (or an old Thinkpad).

And I never found good deals on high ram and high SSD capacity configs. If you want those, you have to spend double of what you would pay for a carefully chosen non-Apple laptop with an empty M2 slot and one (or two) SO-DIMM sockets. For me, a couple years ago, it was 1550€ total cost vs around 2900€ for the MacBook Pro with "equivalent specs" (but obviously better efficiency and slightly lower weight).

So even if I consider Apple Silicon stuff to be absolutely great, it's off-limits for me and a lot of other people, because in the end slightly better ST performance and much better efficiency are not worth the additional cost.

 

[poke01]

Where I live spending 800€ for browsing, emails and YouTube is mostly considered stupid tbh, since you can get 350€ chinesium stuff with good battery life and 1080p ips screens for that (or an old Thinkpad).

And I never found good deals on high ram and high SSD capacity configs. If you want those, you have to spend double of what you would pay for a carefully chosen non-Apple laptop with an empty M2 slot and one (or two) SO-DIMM sockets. For me, a couple years ago, it was 1550€ total cost vs around 2900€ for the MacBook Pro with "equivalent specs" (but obviously better efficiency and slightly lower weight).

So even if I consider Apple Silicon stuff to be absolutely great, it's off-limits for me and a lot of other people, because in the end slightly better ST performance and much better efficiency are not worth the additional cost.

Yeah in Europe I would stick with x86 and Windows. I never found a good deal for Apple stuff in Europe.

 

[johnsonwax]

TBF, a lot of the value of Apple hardware in the US comes from the relatively high resale value. You can flip your gear and get back ⅓-½ of what you paid. If there's no resale value of the Chinesium stuff, you're basically owning Apple gear for ½-⅔ of its list price for the cost of doing a local Craigslist transaction - you just need to tie up a bit of capital. But in the US Apple prices their products for a $1/day or a bit less ownership cost which for a durable good is extremely cheap. A car is $10-$20/hr of use but a MacBook Pro being used 8 hrs/day is like $0.10-$0.20/hr. It's wild the degree to which we pour money into cars and then 'oh no, Macs are so expensive'.

 

[Jan Olšan]

What the tariffs are about is ISOLATING CHINA. You can see multiple reasons for doing this, and again I'm not interested in making political arguments or justifications, simply in explaining the world. China is considered to be a US security threat AND to be a US economic threat.

So the apparent response is to create something like Napoleon's Continental System, a trade block that is US-aligned and gets the advantages of that, BUT has to substantially decouple itself from China. This is not as difficult an ask as some may think because plenty of other countries ALSO see China as probably a security and definitely an economic threat.

You believe that is the case (or that it is attainable, assuming it really is the goal), when the means towards that supposed end is hitting every last possible partner with punishment as bad as the enemy (China) and treating them like they are the enemy? And maintaining the overall idea that the master country is elligible to trade surpluss with everyone while all the slave countries in the "alliance" are supposed to be in deficits?
You really think countries would not try to trade outside of US "system" between themselves if going to the USA is a tariff/forced manufacturing relocation mess? And you don't even know that one day, the geniuses won't come with the idea to copy the chinese scheme with forced local joint ventures so that everyone can have their own "ARM China" situation in the USA...
And of course, that trading outside can mean with China actually. Ask yourself: How does USA making trading with them more shitty convince foreign countries to do more business with the country as opposed to less? If you look into european media and opinions an industry voices, you will find most of them mention ""finding alternative markets for goods" as one of the important takeaways from the US situation.

Though if you talk Napoleon's system, it was not an alliance of willing, but an empire of forced vassals created by aggression of a 19th century version of Hitler. I hope the USA's issues won't get that horrible.

In any case, tech giants won't get extempt as part of some grand plan, but merely because they have heaps of money and influence and heaps of people own their stock and so on. They have negotiation power and hitting them hard with tariffs or regulation is harder while small companies are more exposed. So the big guys are able to negotiate exceptions or loopholes, nothing new, nothing special. That's your "truth behind the low-IQ opinions of ordinary people." It's not exactly sublime, same as the policies.

Also its really funny people think Apple is expensive, the M4 Macbook airs are sold at $800. You cannot get a better laptop basic for tasks like like web and youtube at that price point.

They gourge on RAM and SSD pricing but NEVER buy from Apple directly if you want value. Buy Macs from third partys like Best Buy, JB hi-fi, currys whatever

B-but but but muh SHOPPING EXPERIENCE

 

[Doug S]

Apple is eating the tariffs. And the China ones are still sort of on pause, and the 50% India ones haven't yet impacted Apple. They'll likely continue to eat the tariffs until the model refresh so it doesn't look like Apple is raising prices. Like I said, Apple builds to price points. They're going to try and keep the price points and will compensate for the tariffs by cutting the value in the device. It's what they do.

They don't have any tariffs to eat, in either China or India. Did you miss the news about Cook visiting the White House last week to gift gold trinkets unto the king in exchange for a royal edict freeing Apple from tariffs?

 

[johnsonwax]

B-but but but muh SHOPPING EXPERIENCE

I always find this kind of condescension toward normal consumers to be very revealing regarding why tech enthusiasts find it so difficult to predict why their beloved technology fails in the market. Normal people don't spend 2 hours a day in tech forums in order to understand the dizzying array of specs, so when they try and buy something like a computer, having a person there who can engage with them and help them to contextualize their needs to the array of products around them is pretty helpful and worth paying for. Apple is not the most successful retailer in quite a few metrics for no reason. I'm not sure where things are today but there was a point where the half dozen or so flagship Apple stores in NYC and LA/SF were pulling in about the same revenue as all 15,000 Starbucks locations in the United States.

 

[johnsonwax]

They don't have any tariffs to eat, in either China or India. Did you miss the news about Cook visiting the White House last week to gift gold trinkets unto the king in exchange for a royal edict freeing Apple from tariffs?

Again, Apple just reported that they ate about $1B in tariffs last quarter and forecasted $1.1B this quarter (which was made before the tariff hike that caused Apple to go to the WH). There they got a full exemption for the proposed but not implemented additional 100% semiconductor tariff, and an exemption for iPhones for half of the 50% India tariffs (the additional 25% due to India buying oil from Russia is exempt, they still pay the original 25%).

I don't know where you got the 'Apple pays no tariffs' news from, but they're still paying all tariffs on all other products, all tariffs on iPhones from China, half the tariff on iPhones from India, and won't have to pay the 100% additional tariff on semiconductors (which is on top of the national tariffs, which Apple still pays) and that's only going to be helpful for the Mac Pro which is the only thing being made in the US.

 

[Jan Olšan]

I always find this kind of condescension toward normal consumers to be very revealing regarding why tech enthusiasts find it so difficult to predict why their beloved technology fails in the market. Normal people don't spend 2 hours a day in tech forums in order to understand the dizzying array of specs, so when they try and buy something like a computer, having a person there who can engage with them and help them to contextualize their needs to the array of products around them is pretty helpful and worth paying for. Apple is not the most successful retailer in quite a few metrics for no reason. I'm not sure where things are today but there was a point where the half dozen or so flagship Apple stores in NYC and LA/SF were pulling in about the same revenue as all 15,000 Starbucks locations in the United States.

That's not what I was condescending (but mostly joking, really) about: Silly harping about how special you feel when you visit the store and how that's an extra feature of the product and so on. Sometimes one sees really dumb things on the internet.

Though you should also remember the attention you get in retail store like that is not merely helpfulness, it's also trying to get you to spend more, so it's not such a clear-cut advantage. In quarterly earning, yes. For the customer, not necessarily.

Again, Apple just reported that they ate about $1B in tariffs last quarter and forecasted $1.1B this quarter (which was made before the tariff hike that caused Apple to go to the WH). There they got a full exemption for the proposed but not implemented additional 100% semiconductor tariff, and an exemption for iPhones for half of the 50% India tariffs (the additional 25% due to India buying oil from Russia is exempt, they still pay the original 25%).

Maybe they do it like Nvidia and AMD, where they wrote off inventory in massive way when the sales of GPus to China got banned, to lower their taxes. (Just before it got reverted - maybe the accounting will be adjusted, dunno, but so far it looks like pure profit). Deduct the rumor, sell the news?

 

[poke01]

B-but but but muh SHOPPING EXPERIENCE

I find Apple stores to be overrated. Just go to your local Microcentre equivalent in your country for tech while offering deeper discounts. Much more knowledgeable staff etc and they don’t lock you into Apple only stuff.

 

[johnsonwax]

I find Apple stores to be overrated. Just go to your local Microcentre equivalent in your country for tech while offering deeper discounts. Much more knowledgeable staff etc and they don’t lock you into Apple only stuff.

There's almost 10x as many Apple Stores in the US than Microcenters. Fry's went out of business. I live in SoCal and there's 1 Microcenter and 4 Apple Stores near me. You have Best Buy's which are pretty terrible and Costco which is unhelpful and I can't think of a single other place to get a sales person to help buy a PC - it's almost all online. And a lot of these places have cheap PCs mainly because they have stripped back warranties. The US doesn't have minimum warranty requirements like Europe does, etc.

I spearheaded the laptop requirement program for my university and warranty was a big problem. The discount PCs often had no warranty past 90 days, no on-site service options. You could maybe mail it away and get a replacement/repair in a few weeks, but usually students were having to buy a whole new PC which was a real problem for a school where most students were low income. 30% of our students didn't have access to a credit card. I worked with our campus bookstore to offer no-interest PCs that were designed to be repaid through the financial aid system that had reasonable warranty options and/or reasonable repair options and that usually added several hundred dollars to the cost of the machine - bringing them awfully close to the price of a Mac, and local authorized repair was pretty much nonexistent except for Apple. Apple would give university bookstores either 1 or 2 points of margin on devices (can't remember exactly) if they participated in the authorized repair program so students could get things fixed on campus.

These aren't factors for tech enthusiasts but they are very much factors for normal consumers. The stores have classes for how to back up your computer, and so on and you can get one on one sessions to learn how to do specific things. I know Microcenter used to do some of that years ago.

 

[poke01]

There's almost 10x as many Apple Stores in the US than Microcenters. Fry's went out of business. I live in SoCal and there's 1 Microcenter and 4 Apple Stores near me. You have Best Buy's which are pretty terrible and Costco which is unhelpful and I can't think of a single other place to get a sales person to help buy a PC - it's almost all online. And a lot of these places have cheap PCs mainly because they have stripped back warranties. The US doesn't have minimum warranty requirements like Europe does, etc.

I spearheaded the laptop requirement program for my university and warranty was a big problem. The discount PCs often had no warranty past 90 days, no on-site service options. You could maybe mail it away and get a replacement/repair in a few weeks, but usually students were having to buy a whole new PC which was a real problem for a school where most students were low income. 30% of our students didn't have access to a credit card. I worked with our campus bookstore to offer no-interest PCs that were designed to be repaid through the financial aid system that had reasonable warranty options and/or reasonable repair options and that usually added several hundred dollars to the cost of the machine - bringing them awfully close to the price of a Mac, and local authorized repair was pretty much nonexistent except for Apple. Apple would give university bookstores either 1 or 2 points of margin on devices (can't remember exactly) if they participated in the authorized repair program so students could get things fixed on campus.

These aren't factors for tech enthusiasts but they are very much factors for normal consumers. The stores have classes for how to back up your computer, and so on and you can get one on one sessions to learn how to do specific things. I know Microcenter used to do some of that years ago.

It’s sucks cause Microcentre is really good.

But my point stand stands for countries other the US, for example in Australia Apple stores don’t price match beyond 10% while resellers do. They do crazy discounts and the best thing is service is on par with Apple.

 

[oak8292]

It’s sucks cause Microcentre is really good.

But my point stand stands for countries other the US, for example in Australia Apple stores don’t price match beyond 10% while resellers do. They do crazy discounts and the best thing is service is on par with Apple.

Prior to Apple starting into retail it was Micro Center that had Apple store within a store and dedicated Apple reps paid by Apple in store. Apple had the problem that most computer store employees were gamers and fans of PCs. If you wanted to buy an Apple product you had to convince the ‘geek’ that you knew what you wanted and it was a Mac. If you were not dead set on buying Apple they would direct you to a PC as a ‘better’ choice.

Having an Apple store near by meant you could get support for a Mac even if you did not have a Apple ‘sheeple’ in your friend group. It was a massive success.

As a Mac user since the 128K Mac for personal computing and a PC user for work I got to do a lot of ‘technical’ support when people bought Macs. With certain individuals I would also recommend PCs. I really had no desire to be technical support for everybody or feel the need to defend Apple against any shortcoming they perceived.

 

[igor_kavinski]

It's wild the degree to which we pour money into cars and then 'oh no, Macs are so expensive'.

People score chicks with their cars. Do Macs help do that too?

 

[johnsonwax]

People score chicks with their cars. Do Macs help do that too?

In my case, yes, sorta. I bought a Laserwriter from my wife, carried it out of the store, and I asked her out soon after and she decided after me carrying the printer out without asking for help that she'd date me.

Don't know anyone who scored a date with a car. Know a lot of women who rule guys out based on what they drive - usually the kind of car that the guy thinks will get them a date is often the red flag.

 

[dr1337]

Having an Apple store near by meant you could get support for a Mac even if you did not have a Apple ‘sheeple’ in your friend group. It was a massive success.

thank god with apple silicon their products are so much more reliable now that everyone isn't hinging on in person support

 

[igor_kavinski]

In my case, yes, sorta. I bought a Laserwriter from my wife, carried it out of the store, and I asked her out soon after and she decided after me carrying the printer out without asking for help that she'd date me.

Nah. Women just like big, strong guys. Being able to carry the Laserwriter simply proved your strength to her.

Having a car gives you a very good excuse to ask "Where you going? Maybe I can drop you off?". Drop her off a few times, ask for a date and there you go.

 

[Eug]

Don't know anyone who scored a date with a car. Know a lot of women who rule guys out based on what they drive - usually the kind of car that the guy thinks will get them a date is often the red flag.

Ironically, two things I had that were popular with the ladies were:

- 2001 iBook G3 (a slow entry level Mac)
- 2001 Prius (one of the ugliest cars ever made)

However, the iBook was a very unique laptop at the time, being white and very compact. And it didn’t look like the prior toilet seat Mac. Random women would approach me in coffee shops etc. to ask about it. The much more costly 2002 PowerBook G4 Titanium I subsequently bought generated no such interest unfortunately.

As for the Prius, along with the Honda Insight, it was one of the two first mass production hybrids in North America. Several different women asked if they could check out the car. However, many men did the same.