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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M5 Family discussion here:

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[Eug]

It could be $700 if they make it a plastic shell and a less bright LCD display. I think it will still come with 16GB of ram though.

I've also heard it may only be available from the education store which would make 700 more believable.

Well, education pricing is not retail pricing, and if it were education only, that could make it largely irrelevant to the general population.

Cuz Apple’s education only SKUs have traditionally been available only for education institutional purchases, not for education individuals. For individuals, education offerings have been the same as retail, just with a discount.

 

[Doug S]

But don't discount the aggregate costs on the larger Mac. I'll note my story earlier from an engineer on the original Mac Mini who relayed that almost all of the cost benefits of the product came from the smaller volume/mass even considering the shift to a more expensive 2.5" drive from 3.5". Less aluminum, less time on the mill, cheaper to ship (remember Apple air freights everything), cheap to store/stock, less packaging, etc.

Well one of the things I suggested (haven't seen any rumors to that effect though, so unlikely given how close it appears to be to release) back when this was first rumored was they'd make the case out of plastic.

What's that you say, Apple isn't going to go back to the bad old days of plastic casing like all the bottom feeders in the low end PC laptop market! But if they did it as a transparent/translucent case like the old school iMac it might work. Apple has always prioritized aesthetics even internally where customers will never see it, this would give us a peek at the pretty guts.

It could also help appeal to the customers they'd be aiming at with this product - Gen Z and younger millennials. Those crazy kids are all in on "retro tech", to such an extent that production of vinyl music and film cameras had to be stepped up. If they see this low end Mac as a callback to turn of the century iMac they're too young to have ever seen in person but they've no doubt seen pictures or shots of it in contemporary media it could quickly become Tik Tok famous lol

 

[johnsonwax]

While I generally agree with what you said, it’s not true that Apple air freights everything. They air ship new high demand product releases but often make use of surface shipping for other products, as it’s cheaper and helps them meet their carbon targets.

I'm not aware of a single instance where an Apple product is going on a container ship to a customer or store. I'm sure there is some for components moving from say Taiwan to Vietnam or India for manufacturing, but I've never seen evidence that Apple even has a contract for containerized shipping of their end products.

 

[jpiniero]

I'm not aware of a single instance where an Apple product is going on a container ship to a customer or store. I'm sure there is some for components moving from say Taiwan to Vietnam or India for manufacturing, but I've never seen evidence that Apple even has a contract for containerized shipping of their end products.

I've always kind of assumed they might use air freight for some products at launch, they would use ships otherwise.

 

[johnsonwax]

Well, education pricing is not retail pricing, and if it were education only, that could make it largely irrelevant to the general population.

Cuz Apple’s education only SKUs have traditionally been available only for education institutional purchases, not for education individuals. For individuals, education offerings have been the same as retail, just with a discount.

You can get educational SKUs as an individual if you buy it through an educational reseller - basically a college bookstore with a contract with Apple. To the extent any of those still exist, you can in theory still buy them. Our got rolled up into Barnes and Noble back in 2018 and the Apple contract shifted to the University directly and then individuals couldn't access them because there was no point of sale. There's probably a school out there that still has that contract attached to an institutional bookstore. But then you'd need to be attached to the institution to buy it - student or faculty. So yeah, effectively not available.

 

[Eug]

I'm not aware of a single instance where an Apple product is going on a container ship to a customer or store. I'm sure there is some for components moving from say Taiwan to Vietnam or India for manufacturing, but I've never seen evidence that Apple even has a contract for containerized shipping of their end products.

Yes, for direct shipping to individuals, it's usually air freight (although I once got an accessory via ground shipping). However, for bulk shipments Apple does use surface shipping. They even said this right in one of their video events a couple of years ago.

https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Progress_Report_2024.pdf

We’re also finding new and better ways to get Apple products into
people’s hands. It’s not just trains, planes, and automobiles —
increasingly, we’re shipping Apple products on the open seas,
because ocean freight can reduce emissions by as much as
95 percent compared to air transport. And we continue to restore
our planet’s ecosystems — like the Atlantic Forest, which stretches
from Brazil to Paraguay — that play a key role in removing carbon
from the atmosphere.

Environment

Apple 2030 is our plan to bring our net emissions to zero through recycled materials, renewable electricity and lower-carbon transportation.

www.apple.com

50% of Mac mini by weight is shipped by non-air modes of transportation, like ocean freight, from our final assembly sites to their next destination over the lifetime of the product.

 

[johnsonwax]

I've always kind of assumed they might use air freight for some products at launch, they would use ships otherwise.

Maybe they are shifting due to emissions as Eug suggests but when I last got information from inside Apple on that, they weren't doing any sea freight at all. Worst case they'd air freight onto a continent and then do ground shipping, and of course that was all delegated to the shipper. Apple really didn't have any say in how it got from A to B except that it needed to arrive by a certain date, and their logistics at the time didn't even allow for that to take weeks over days. But Apple has escalated their emissions goals quite a bit since then and I can see them reconsidering sea freight in light of that. Even so, the original explanation regarding mass and volume came 20 years ago and Apple did add up those secondary costs quite early in the process - before any hardware was even designed. The original mini was an opportunity product in minimizing those costs to see what could be built out of the savings.

 

[johnsonwax]

Yes, for direct shipping to individuals, it's usually air freight (although I once got an accessory via ground shipping). However, for bulk shipments Apple does use surface shipping. They even said this right in one of their video events a couple of years ago.

https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/Apple_Environmental_Progress_Report_2024.pdf

We’re also finding new and better ways to get Apple products into
people’s hands. It’s not just trains, planes, and automobiles —
increasingly, we’re shipping Apple products on the open seas,
because ocean freight can reduce emissions by as much as
95 percent compared to air transport. And we continue to restore
our planet’s ecosystems — like the Atlantic Forest, which stretches
from Brazil to Paraguay — that play a key role in removing carbon
from the atmosphere.

Environment

Apple 2030 is our plan to bring our net emissions to zero through recycled materials, renewable electricity and lower-carbon transportation.

www.apple.com

50% of Mac mini by weight is shipped by non-air modes of transportation, like ocean freight, from our final assembly sites to their next destination over the lifetime of the product.

Oh cool, I missed that statement. Thanks.

 

[Eug]

Apple doesn't have warehouses, cheap distribution facilities on the edge of town, they store everything in their high rent/high traffic retail locations. Individually those aren't large numbers but every one is 2x-6x higher for the Mac than the iPhone, and that adds up.

I forgot about this part. When I've ordered new launch products recently and it's come from a local site near Toronto, it hasn't been from a store. For example, it's been from places like Concord or Vaughan, which is essentially "on the edge of town". I don't know what's there, but I'm guessing it could be a UPS hub. It seems like Apple is using UPS' facility as a very short term storage facility. Mind you, that's not all that different from what they were doing before, except that previously you'd see the shipping information from the actual origin, whereas now the origin is listed as Concord/Vaughan.

 

[jdubs03]

Uhh. Does that last part say a billion pixels? (image in post)

https://twitter.com/x/status/1987797828052410475

 

[mvprod123]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1987864138132107533

 

[Doug S]

Uhh. Does that last part say a billion pixels? (image in post)

https://twitter.com/x/status/1987797828052410475

The cameras and the display are the remaining high cost non commodity parts after they've brought the SoC and radios in house. Looks like the camera is next on the list.

 

[johnsonwax]

The cameras and the display are the remaining high cost non commodity parts after they've brought the SoC and radios in house. Looks like the camera is next on the list.

Apple has plugged away at the screen for ages and not gotten anywhere. I think their microLED project may be totally dead now outside of AVP. They just can't crack the production cost problem. I suspect high density camera sensors is a very similar problem.

It's not for lack of trying that those are still on the list.

 

[johnsonwax]

Uhh. Does that last part say a billion pixels? (image in post)

https://twitter.com/x/status/1987797828052410475

Even if you take a billion pixels at face value, how do you move a 4GB sensor capture around a phone, store it, do compute on it, etc. If you look at the roadmap of improvements on the iPhone, a LOT of them are plumbing between camera sensor and the user rather than the sensor itself.

 

[Geddagod]

Is the A20 rumored to be on N2P or N2?
Anyone know if anyone reported the die size of the A19 yet either? Super unfortunate how so far we only have die shots... with no scale lol.

 

[Gene351]

Is the A20 rumored to be on N2P or N2?
Anyone know if anyone reported the die size of the A19 yet either? Super unfortunate how so far we only have die shots... with no scale lol.

Not the exact die size numbers, but apparently someone disassembled an iPhone Air and compared the A19 Pro area relative to previous generations (Source is in Japanese).



Source (EE Times)

 

[Geddagod]

Not the exact die size numbers, but apparently someone disassembled an iPhone Air and compared the A19 Pro area relative to previous generations (Source is in Japanese).

View attachment 133594

Source (EE Times)

Ah thank you. Funnily enough when I try to go to the website (not EE times but Techanalye) I get stopped by some security warning. No idea what that is about.
Luckily we also do have a A19 pro die shot, so it would be interesting to get a very rough P-core area estimation then for the M5. The M5 perf and IPC uplift seem decently strong, so I'm interested to see how area grew.

 

[Doug S]

Apple has plugged away at the screen for ages and not gotten anywhere. I think their microLED project may be totally dead now outside of AVP. They just can't crack the production cost problem. I suspect high density camera sensors is a very similar problem.

It's not for lack of trying that those are still on the list.

I think camera sensors are easier because displays are a system, and it is easier to contract out the manufacturing of the sensor chips than it is to contract out the manufacture of modern complex multilayer displays. Doubly so if they use some sort of new not ready for prime time tech like micro LED. If they invented some new display tech it would be almost impossible to avoid having it leaked/copied unless they built their own facility to manufacture it which is unlikely to be competitive economies of scale wise. They won't have that problem with a camera sensor though.

They can do their own sensors and still buy lenses and all the other optical components that are more akin to commodity level parts - at least to the extent they probably can't generate any value add or meaningful cost savings taking those in house.

 

[mvprod123]

 

[mvprod123]

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