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:

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M1 Ultra discussion here:

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M2 discussion here:

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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:

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M4 Family discussion here:

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[The Hardcard]

no real use cases other than ultra-niche, such as:

…- lidar, LLM, data science etc are also niche easily <1% user market share

What does it matter if real use cases are ultra-niche or not? First, 1% market share is still millions of people. Second, I’m not convinced that is only 1%. I think it is probably closer to 10% since there are thousands of niches and certain ones are above 1 million people each. There are, for instance, 3 million commercial truck drivers in the United States.

sounds like software issue 10000%

It is a software issue, however, not just in the way you are implying. While there are no doubt a lot of poor decisions, bugs, and lack of optimization, fixing all of that would not eliminate the issue.

The issue is that the software has to be complex, has to be extremely branchy, and on one thread. It is software that enforces real-time compliance with hundreds of government regulations and dozens of individual company rules that hit differently, depending on the time of day, the location, the type of work being done in relation to the types of work done and other conditions going back 8 days at any given moment.

It is simply more work than even current processors can do on a thread and still smoothly keep up with the user. This is not an uncommon scenario and why advances in CPU, GPU, and NPU cores will continue to provide real world benefits to users for years to come. Double the performance of the A19 Pro P core will still leave millions of “ultra niche”users looking for more.

- ios/android AAA games are very few
- they all run near smooth 60fps on iphone 12

I don’t know where you’re coming from here. There are numerous videos on YouTube of even the iPad M4 not getting 30 frames per second on certain current games. Plus, games are one of many moving compute targets. The demand for gaming resources continues to increase.

finally: need real AAA games or professional highend computing?

just get a Halo handheld

Phones are the only devices with this type of computing power that does not entail compromises. Halo handhelds are still too bulky to be seamlessly carried around and used at will.

 

[Eug]

^^^ I just saw a review of the 17 Pro Max vs the 16 Pro Max and even Minecraft was noticeably smoother on the 17 Pro Max. The GPU is an enormous upgrade even just over this one generation.

 

[smalM]

recently I read the average age of an iPhone in use was 5.7 years IIRC.

Average life span.
As an iPhone.
My oldest iPhone is a 7 Plus used as an iPod in my car.

 

[johnsonwax]

So back in early 2021 Tim Cook reported Apple had an installed base of 1.65 billion active Apple products, including "over 1 billion" iPhones. The most recent number for their installed base was 2.35 billion earlier this year, but the number of iPhones was not broken out. But if the overall installed base grew by 40% surely iPhones have grown a lot. Maybe not by the whole 40%, I'm not sure what else is included in that aside from iPhone, Mac, iPad and Watch. Do Airpods count?

Apple's yearly iPhone sales fluctuate, but have averaged around 225 million a year for the past decade. So given that Apple sold their billionth iPhone in 2015 that's well over 3 billion sold in total. Most of the ones older than a decade have likely been broken or retired by now, but everything sold in the past decade is still getting security updates (the 6S released in 2015 received its most recent security update a few weeks ago) so aside from breakage those are still gonna be in use somewhere.

So it is easy to believe the installed base has an average age of 5.7 years. The "upgrade cycle" of 3.7 years is talking about first owner. Obviously the people able to spend $500 to $1000 or more on a new smartphone aren't going to hold onto it until it is ready for retirement ~10+ years on.

There was a similar statistic I saw a few years ago that the average car in the US was 12.5 years old. The people are buying brand new cars aren't holding on them for 20+ years account for that 12.5 year average. They sell or trade them after 3-5 years and buy another brand new one, and it goes through multiple owners until it finally ends up in the crusher when it is ~25-30 years old (or is retired sooner if its in an accident or has a mechanical issue serious enough it isn't worth repairing)

A lot of this disconnect comes from the fact that the iPhone resale market is relatively strong and the Android one mostly nonexistent outside the small share of flagship phones. The 2nd hand iPhone market is around $65B/yr. That's about 40% the size of the global PC market - and that's just iPhones.

Apple laid out this plan back in 2017 when they said they were going for more durable phones with longer replacement cycles, longer software support cycles, a greater investment in the resale market, and a shift toward services - because while Apple doesn't take a lot of the direct revenue off of the 2nd hand sales, those 2nd hand customers are equally valid for services, and in some cases more valid service customers when it comes to repairs. Services scale not off of annual sales, but off of installed base. That's a big part of why their service revenue exploded so much.

But you don't see that in the Android market. Android is competing much more for first party sales. The OEMs don't make meaningful money off of services - not even Samsung so that secondhand market isn't really worth nurturing. ApplePay has almost 800 million users and processed about $6T in transactions last year. Apple gets as much as 15 basis points from those transactions. Those secondary iPhone sales are as good as the primary in that regard.

 

[DZero]

no real use cases other than ultra-niche, such as:


sounds like software issue 10000%



- ios/android AAA games are very few
- they all run near smooth 60fps on iphone 12

- lidar, LLM, data science etc are also niche easily <1% user market share


finally: need real AAA games or professional highend computing?

just get a Halo handheld

Tell me that you are not a tech savy, not even an enthusiast, without telling it directly.

 

[name99]

5.7 years is longer than for the average upgrade cycle. I remember about 5-6 years ago, there was a stat that the average length of ownership was in the midst of a transition from 3+ years to around 4 years or so. However, that would not factor in used phones, and it seems that 5.7 years likely includes all those used phones. BTW, the stat for the upgrade cycle seems to have levelled off in 2022 according to this table, and was projected in 2023 to maybe even decrease in subsequent years.

Different things are being compared.
There is one population which is something like "the primary phone of a person who buys iPhones".
THAT is the population for whom "upgrade cycle" is a meaningful term.

But what happens to that previously primary iPhone when you buy a new phone? One way or another it frequently gets a new life. You may sell it on eBay. You may give it to a kid or your housekeeper. You may keep it as a secondary device, used more like an iPod than a phone.
THAT is the population for whom "average age" is relevant.

iPhones do die - eventually the cracked screen has one fall too often, or the battery swells. But most last (and are capable of lasting) a long time.
I'm doing my part -- I have an iPhone XR with a cracked screen sitting on the wall in my bathroom acting as a control center for audio I listen while shaving and showering...
This already has a dead battery (lasts about 10 min when unplugged) but it hasn't yet swollen enough to destroy functionality. So I keep using it for this job -- why not?

 

[fastandfurious6]

What does it matter if real use cases are ultra-niche or not? (Large essay)

95% of iphone17 promax buyers wouldn't understand any difference if they were given iphone 12 in the shell of 17

The number is so glaringly huge that it deserves mention and even headlines: nearly nobody needs an iphone 17promax. It's only 1% who have compute intensive usecases and another 10% casual-pro who will use telescope camera more frequently

large essays cannot water down these facts

 

[Eug]

I've decided to return the iPhone 17 Pro Max. I'm keeping the smaller iPhone 17 Pro instead, even though the 17 Pro Max has better speakers and longer battery life. The 17 Pro just feels more comfortable in my hands and in my pocket.

95% of iphone17 promax buyers wouldn't understand any difference if they were given iphone 12 in the shell of 17

The number is so glaringly huge that it deserves mention and even headlines: nearly nobody needs an iphone 17promax. It's only 1% who have compute intensive usecases and another 10% casual-pro who will use telescope camera more frequently

large essays cannot water down these facts

As you've admitted yourself, the camera on the 17 Pro Max is better than the 12 Pro Max. However, it's not just better. It's way, way better, like totally different league. And it's easy to tell the difference even with birthday shots. It's not just the telephoto. The other cameras are noticeably improved too. It may not matter to you, but for a large chunk of the mainstream iPhone buying population, camera upgrades are a very big driver.

Fortunately, this generation has the cameras identical on the 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max, so I can go with the smaller device. In some of the older generation iPhones, the Pro Max would get camera upgrades that the Pro didn't.

 

[fastandfurious6]

yes we agree!

iphone upgrade since 2020 = just better cameras every 3-4 gens

 

[Eug]

yes we agree!

iphone upgrade since 2020 = just better cameras every 3-4 gens

The thing is though, you can’t truly get the better cameras without some of the SoC upgrades. The photo engine is vastly improved.

 

[fastandfurious6]

of course, bc there's not much else use of computing power for android/iOS haha

 

[mvprod123]

The 14-inch base M5 MacBook Pro is expected to launch in October, and the M5 Pro/Max versions are delayed into January 2026 due to new So_IC packaging.

M5 MacBook Pro Could Launch in October as M4 Model Faces Supply Constraints

Supplies of the 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro model appear to be constrained amid rumors that an upgraded M5 model could launch as soon as this year. As...

www.macrumors.com

 

[The Hardcard]

The number is so glaringly huge that it deserves mention and even headlines: nearly nobody needs an iphone 17promax.

Thank you for this sentence. I mistook your argument as a legitimate technical position. Now it is clear that it is just the coping mechanism of an irrational Apple hater who is butthurt about Apple Silicon’s continued leading performance.

But your fantasy percentages are wildly off and in fact there are millions of users who benefit from increased performance in phones. Phones are the fundamental computing device of society and single-threaded Javascript performance is central to so many.

Critically, the computational complexity demanded from phone SOCs is acccelerating and broadening. Those are the facts. The SOCs of 2030, will need to be significantly more performant. Phones are likely to still be main driver of increased compute and yes far more likely than not Apple compute units will remain the performance leader.

 

[Doug S]

The 14-inch base M5 MacBook Pro is expected to launch in October, and the M5 Pro/Max versions are delayed into January 2026 due to new So_IC packaging.

M5 MacBook Pro Could Launch in October as M4 Model Faces Supply Constraints

Supplies of the 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro model appear to be constrained amid rumors that an upgraded M5 model could launch as soon as this year. As...

www.macrumors.com

This guy says it is because Apple is going to a chiplet based solution for M5 Pro & Max with separate CPU and GPU dies. He's clearly being overly optimistic with his claim it'll "allow customers to mix and match core counts" since it is still fixed at packaging time and Apple prefers a limited number of SKUs.

https://xcancel.com/VadimYuryev/status/1975354667396964766

 

[Eug]

This guy says it is because Apple is going to a chiplet based solution for M5 Pro & Max with separate CPU and GPU dies. He's clearly being overly optimistic with his claim it'll "allow customers to mix and match core counts" since it is still fixed at packaging time and Apple prefers a limited number of SKUs.

https://xcancel.com/VadimYuryev/status/1975354667396964766

Like me and unlike some of you guys in this forum, Vadim Yuryev has zero chip design knowledge.

He often repeats rumours that he's found elsewhere, but not infrequently draws the wrong conclusion. If you want to compare Davinci Resolve performance on Macs for editing 4K YouTube content though, he's your guy.

 

[mvprod123]

This guy says it is because Apple is going to a chiplet based solution for M5 Pro & Max with separate CPU and GPU dies. He's clearly being overly optimistic with his claim it'll "allow customers to mix and match core counts" since it is still fixed at packaging time and Apple prefers a limited number of SKUs.

https://xcancel.com/VadimYuryev/status/1975354667396964766

This was stated by Ming-Chi Kuo almost a year ago.

BE Semiconductor Poised to Benefit from iPhone 18 Pro Variable Aperture, Apple PCC/High-End M5â¦

Conclusion: The plummet in BE Semiconductorâs (BESI) stock price in 3Q24 has already priced in the 2H24 shipment delays. Looking ahead toâ¦

medium.com

https://twitter.com/x/status/1871185666362745227

 

[jdubs03]

It would make most sense to release all M5 SKUs soon. As it would be strange to have a vanilla M5 out there which will be more performant potentially even close to an M4 Pro.

 

[johnsonwax]

It would make most sense to release all M5 SKUs soon. As it would be strange to have a vanilla M5 out there which will be more performant potentially even close to an M4 Pro.

M4 iPad Pro came out in May, the first M4 Mac in October. They're just running that back for M5. No big deal.

 

[johnsonwax]

This guy says it is because Apple is going to a chiplet based solution for M5 Pro & Max with separate CPU and GPU dies. He's clearly being overly optimistic with his claim it'll "allow customers to mix and match core counts" since it is still fixed at packaging time and Apple prefers a limited number of SKUs.

https://xcancel.com/VadimYuryev/status/1975354667396964766

I think the claim is silly, but that is a problem that Apple needs to work on. I don't expect you'd have a huge expansion of SKUs, but I suspect there is a sizable market for a M5/Pro with a Max GPU on it and possibly a Max with a Pro GPU. The Max has a base cost of $3200 now and that limits its reach quite a bit.

 

[jdubs03]

M4 iPad Pro came out in May, the first M4 Mac in October. They're just running that back for M5. No big deal.

Let me be more specific. All M5 MacBook SKUs should come out at the same time. Like what they did last year with the M4 series. Or reverse it and put the iPad Pro out after the new MacBooks out.

 

[johnsonwax]

Let me be more specific. All M5 MacBook SKUs should come out at the same time. Like what they did last year with the M4 series. Or reverse it and put the iPad Pro out after the new MacBooks out.

Oh, I see - you mean MBP SKUs. Yeah, the Pro/Max are really the important part of the MBP lineup and it's odd to wait on those and just run the M5 out.

 

[Eug]

These Chinese YouTubers are killing it with their review video production values.

This last pic seems to confirm my subjective observation that my iPhone 17 Pro gets a bit warmer than my 17 Pro Max, but that both stay noticeably cooler than my 12 Pro Max does under similar conditions.

BTW, the 17 Pro Max is on the way back to Apple. I'm sticking with the 17 Pro.

 

[Doug S]

I think the claim is silly, but that is a problem that Apple needs to work on. I don't expect you'd have a huge expansion of SKUs, but I suspect there is a sizable market for a M5/Pro with a Max GPU on it and possibly a Max with a Pro GPU. The Max has a base cost of $3200 now and that limits its reach quite a bit.

If this is true it was done for Apple's servers. They beefed up the A19/M5 generation GPU core to be much better at AI. So put as many of those GPU chiplets as can fit on a board with a minimal number of CPU chiplets, cover the backside of the board with DRAM and a few NAND stacks, then replicate as many are needed to fill a datacenter or two.

Any additional options for their consumer product offerings is a side effect.

 

[fastandfurious6]

there are millions of users who benefit from increased performance in phones

There is a ceiling, it doesn't continue forever. Double performance could mean from 0.02s to 0.01s, marginal

Other real examples and quantify the percentage of users? Until now we have:

- horribly written ultra niche app for Truckers
- lidar
- "data science"

at best that's 4% of total users

 

[DZero]

These Chinese YouTubers are killing it with their review video production values.

View attachment 131582

View attachment 131583

View attachment 131584

This last pic seems to confirm my subjective observation that my iPhone 17 Pro gets a bit warmer than my 17 Pro Max, but that both stay noticeably cooler than my 12 Pro Max does under similar conditions.

BTW, the 17 Pro Max is on the way back to Apple. I'm sticking with the 17 Pro.

What I can see...
- 17 is doing great, so the life of this device is secured.
- 17 Air is an interesting surprise but is being niche
- 17 Pro is nice, still, seems that the existance of this one is less justified if we consider a new model coming next year.
- 17 Pro Max is by far the most sold and by far the best of the bunch.

Don't misunderstand me, but despite I like the Pro series, I feel that Apple will pull the plug of the vanilla pro and put the Pro Max as the new Pro or just calling Max as the flagship of Apple.
Why?
- 17 is the new base iPhone and the improvements were so massive that people like it.
- 17 Air is a debut and expecting to be 2 years at least.
- 17 Pro Max is the flagship, so no.
- And there is the rumor of the iPhone Fold / Flip on the works.

And seeing that Apple maintain the 4 iPhones lineup, the vanilla Pro might be sacrified to put the new foldable phone.
Also, this implies that each model will be different each other and not be a clone. Even the e series has a reason to be:
- e series to be the low cost phone
- Vanilla to be the base one
- Air is the lightweight one
- Pro Max is the flagship
- Foldable to be the luxury one.

Let's see how this ends, because the vanilla Pro is selling really well, but has some issues like overheat despite the chamber, which the Pro Max is not noticeable due sizes. And again.. Apple might want a 4 phone lineup for next year, not counting the "e" tier