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

 

[Eug]

Apple's site doesn't allow us to compare the 17 Pro against the 16 Pro for performance.

iPhone 17 Pro still uses Qualcomm?

Yes because C1 and C1X do not support mmWave.

 

[johnsonwax]

"C1X is up to 2x faster than C1, and for the same cellular technologies, it is even faster than the modem in iPhone 16 Pro, while using 30 percent less energy overall. This makes C1X the most power-efficient modem in an iPhone."

I wonder if Apple is moving modems to more advanced nodes than we've seen in the past. That's an optimization that Apple can probably afford to make. Not sure how much of an iPhone power budget is in the radios, but my guess is on par with the CPU.

 

[mvprod123]

iPhone 17 Pro still uses Qualcomm?

yes

 

[adroc_thurston]

iPhone 17 Pro still uses Qualcomm?

yes because mmWave

 

[mvprod123]

Apple's site doesn't allow us to compare the 17 Pro against the 16 Pro for performance.

View attachment 129905

View attachment 129906

A18 Pro (+15% faster CPU and +20% faster GPU than A17 Pro). Only 5% better in CPU? Pretty meh. Probably most of the transistor budget was spent on the GPU. (+30% faster than A18 Pro)

 

[poke01]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1965482272829964395

EMTE Support on A19 Pro

 

[mvprod123]

A19 Pro:
Improved P-cores
50% more cache for E-cores
Massive GPU upgrade:
Next-gen dynamic caching
Doubled 16-bit floating point math rates
The new unified image compression
Neural core in each GPU core. (4x more compute than A18 Pro, MacBook Pro levels of compute)
View attachment 129900

M5 MacBooks will become full-fledged machines for LLM.

 

[mikegg]

A18 Pro (+15% faster CPU and +20% faster GPU than A17 Pro). Only 5% better in CPU? Pretty meh. Probably most of the transistor budget was spent on the GPU. (+30% faster than A18 Pro)

Looks like they upgraded the efficiency cores more in this generation with 50% more cache.

Personally, I don't really care for CPU speed that much anymore. It's all about GPU upgrades for running local LLMs for me. Having the "Neural Accelerators", aka tensor cores, is by far, the biggest Apple Silicon upgrade in a while.

 

[poke01]

“For the new A19 and A19 Pro chips to support Memory Integrity Enforcement, we dedicated an extraordinary amount of Apple silicon resources to security — more than ever before — including CPU area, CPU speed, and memory for tag storage. And to fully realize this hardware investment, we designed all of the new operating system elements of MIE jointly with our hardware work, including secure allocators, EMTE, and tag confidentiality protections.”


Interesting.

 

[mikegg]

“For the new A19 and A19 Pro chips to support Memory Integrity Enforcement, we dedicated an extraordinary amount of Apple silicon resources to security — more than ever before — including CPU area, CPU speed, and memory for tag storage. And to fully realize this hardware investment, we designed all of the new operating system elements of MIE jointly with our hardware work, including secure allocators, EMTE, and tag confidentiality protections.”


Interesting.

Does that mean they sacrificed CPU speed for more security? Seems like it.

 

[mvprod123]

“For the new A19 and A19 Pro chips to support Memory Integrity Enforcement, we dedicated an extraordinary amount of Apple silicon resources to security — more than ever before — including CPU area, CPU speed, and memory for tag storage. And to fully realize this hardware investment, we designed all of the new operating system elements of MIE jointly with our hardware work, including secure allocators, EMTE, and tag confidentiality protections.”


Interesting.

Still no SVE2?

 

[poke01]

Still no SVE2?

It’s still ARMv8.9

 

[mvprod123]

“For the new A19 and A19 Pro chips to support Memory Integrity Enforcement, we dedicated an extraordinary amount of Apple silicon resources to security — more than ever before — including CPU area, CPU speed, and memory for tag storage. And to fully realize this hardware investment, we designed all of the new operating system elements of MIE jointly with our hardware work, including secure allocators, EMTE, and tag confidentiality protections.”


Interesting.

"We conducted a deep evaluation and research process to determine whether MTE, as designed, would meet our goals for hardware-assisted memory safety. Our analysis found that, when employed as a real-time defensive measure, the original Arm MTE release exhibited weaknesses that were unacceptable to us, and we worked with Arm to address these shortcomings in the new Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE) specification, released in 2022. More importantly, our analysis showed that while EMTE had great potential as specified, a rigorous implementation with deep hardware and operating system support could be a breakthrough that produces an extraordinary new security mechanism."

Apple is once again making it clear to everyone that they are perhaps the biggest contributor to changes in ARM specifications.

 

[mvprod123]

It’s still ARMv8.9

9.2

 

[mvprod123]

"We conducted a deep evaluation and research process to determine whether MTE, as designed, would meet our goals for hardware-assisted memory safety. Our analysis found that, when employed as a real-time defensive measure, the original Arm MTE release exhibited weaknesses that were unacceptable to us, and we worked with Arm to address these shortcomings in the new Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE) specification, released in 2022. More importantly, our analysis showed that while EMTE had great potential as specified, a rigorous implementation with deep hardware and operating system support could be a breakthrough that produces an extraordinary new security mechanism."

Apple is once again making it clear to everyone that they are perhaps the biggest contributor to changes in ARM specifications.

"Google took a great first step last year when they offered MTE to those who opt in to their program for at-risk users. But even for users who turn it on, the effectiveness of MTE on Android is limited by the lack of deep integration with the operating system that distinguishes Memory Integrity Enforcement and its use of EMTE on Apple silicon."
😁

 

[poke01]

The N1 chip is really good IP for first gen. BT6 and wifi 7

 

[johnsonwax]

The N1 chip is really good IP for first gen. BT6 and wifi 7

It's a little out of character for Apple to do this unless they want to do more in the radio space. They've sort of had that ambition with U1, but it's not like Broadcom isn't perfectly competent to provide these kinds of chips. Why make effectively a commodity component unless you intend to push it out of the commodity space? Cellular was a little different as they were trying to escape a monopoly situation and there was similar opportunity for power savings as they found with AS. I can't imagine N1 power draw is high enough to justify it.

 

[poke01]

It's a little out of character for Apple to do this unless they want to do more in the radio space. They've sort of had that ambition with U1, but it's not like Broadcom isn't perfectly competent to provide these kinds of chips. Why make effectively a commodity component unless you intend to push it out of the commodity space? Cellular was a little different as they were trying to escape a monopoly situation and there was similar opportunity for power savings as they found with AS. I can't imagine N1 power draw is high enough to justify it.

They got radio engineers now, better make use of them

 

[Mopetar]

Making their own wireless chip is exactly in character for Apple. Much of their history has been trying to vertically integrate their entire product. Eventually they'll be designing all of the software and hardware in them and will move to only produce their devices in their own special Apple factories. After that those factories will only accept Apple mined aluminum. Many years later and it will truly be an Apple World. Think Borg Cube, but a much nicer, more modern design.

 

[DavidC1]

Looks like they upgraded the efficiency cores more in this generation with 50% more cache.

Highlighting specific changes rather than saying how much general increase there is on the CPU means there's nothing much to talk about. 50% more cache sounds good than 10% CPU gains.

Making their own wireless chip is exactly in character for Apple. Much of their history has been trying to vertically integrate their entire product. Eventually they'll be designing all of the software and hardware in them and will move to only produce their devices in their own special Apple factories. After that those factories will only accept Apple mined aluminum. Many years later and it will truly be an Apple World. Think Borg Cube, but a much nicer, more modern design.

Wall-E and Idiocracy's massive Costco, but with Apple design.

 

[Eug]

iPhone Air uses binned A19 Pro SoC. iPhone 17 uses A19 non-Pro.

View attachment 129899

This could explain some of the competing rumours for iPhone Air. Some claimed it would use A19, and some claimed it would use A19 Pro. Well, like iPhone 17, the Air has an SoC with 6 CPU cores and 5 GPU cores, but the Air's SoC is a binned Pro whereas the 17's SoC is a separate SoC specifically designed that way.

17 has 8 GB RAM
Air and 17 Pro have 12 GB RAM

It seems spec-wise the A19 Pro (binned or not) is paired with 12 GB RAM, whereas the A19 is paired with 8 GB RAM. So, if Apple does release an A19 Pro Mac, I wonder if it will also be paired with 12 GB RAM (with no other option).

And this year I finally lose my iPhone nano-SIM slot here in Canada.

 

[MS_AT]

Sounds interesting https://security.apple.com/blog/memory-integrity-enforcement/

 

[Doug S]

I wonder if Apple is moving modems to more advanced nodes than we've seen in the past. That's an optimization that Apple can probably afford to make. Not sure how much of an iPhone power budget is in the radios, but my guess is on par with the CPU.

C1 is N4 for the baseband and N6 for the radio.

It isn't clear if the C1X is on a different process, or they just enabled wider MIMO. Maybe they binned C1 modems and saved the "good" ones to be designated C1X? Its possible they moved to the baseband to N3 or radio to N4 (if TSMC has N4PRF ready, anyone know?) if it is a distinct die.

I would assume C2 will be on N3P and N4PRF for next year's iPhone.

 

[Doug S]

The N1 chip is really good IP for first gen. BT6 and wifi 7

I bet it doesn't last long as a distinct chip. They'll merge the baseband with the cellular baseband (and that may eventually become part of the SoC) and they'll merge the wifi/BT radio chip with the cellular radio.

 

[adroc_thurston]

I bet it doesn't last long as a distinct chip. They'll merge the baseband with the cellular baseband (and that may eventually become part of the SoC) and they'll merge the wifi/BT radio chip with the cellular radio.

Yep.
Though modem/BT combos will be discrete for a while.
SoC area is getting kinda pricey these days.