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Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

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Eug

Eug

Lifer
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:

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M1 Ultra discussion here:

Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

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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:

Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

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M5 Family discussion here:

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johnsonwax said:
MacOS is very aggressive with swap. I've got 32GB on this machine, 8GB of swap, and 12 GB free.

Where I think MacOS is most aggressive is with holding inactive Safari tabs in swap. Cache doesn't really do the job for JS reliant pages, whereas swap can quickly reload in, and where going back to network for data would be really slow. So I think even when there's plenty of RAM, MacOS just dumps inactive tabs into swap. I don't think Safari is the only place where this happens either. I suspect it does the same with Mail and some other apps. These are carryovers from iOS.

I think this is both one reason why MacOS performs better than Windows on low RAM - because who doesn't have a browser open, and why Safari runs so much better than Chrome, because Apple can't do that with Chrome tabs.

So I wouldn't consider the presence of some swap to be indicative of memory pressure, I think it's just how MacOS sort of 'cheats' inactive processes, and frankly it's a pretty good cheat because all modern OSes have a lot of work put into blasting swap in quickly and resuming processes, so why not just leverage that instead of a whole separate caching scheme?
Click to expand...
Yeah. And, having faster SSD bandwidth makes this not the problem it used to be. I remember getting beach balls anytime swap was going on with a device with spinning rust.
 
MerryCherry said:
Will Ultrafusion stick around, now that they have moved to the new chiplet architecture?
Click to expand...

Ultrafusion is effectively a chiplet architecture. Going to "real" chiplets won't change the physical limitations to any great degree.

Without knowing exactly what the cause(s) of the GPU scaling issues were I don't think we can make any educated guesses about whether they can/will fix it. It would be interesting to compare different types of benchmarks to see what stuff is more/less affected by it. If it was old school bitmaps and textures you could split "ownership" of parts of the display between the chips, but with fancier techniques let alone raytracing such simple division of work is no longer feasible (or at least way way more difficult)

Based on what (little) I know of GPU design if I had to guess I'd say the problem is more likely to be driver related than the physical design of the GPU and its split across separate dies. Heck just look at how even Nvidia would sometimes get nice double digit performance increases from a simple driver update not long after a new generation was released, and they know way more about GPUs than Apple does.
 
name99 said:
My iMac Pro (32GB) has 12GB of swap right now. And I'm not doing anything especially aggressive.

But it may ALSO mean that, for example, you've left an app in the background for three weeks, and the OS has sensibly concluded that all relevant modified pages should be paged out, so that the DRAM can be used by a more active app.
One difference between Eug and me may be that I open many apps, and leave them running perpetually – because why not, the system handles this appropriately. But other people either like to close apps after they use them, or simply don't open many apps.
Each of these parties will see a very different swap file size – with zero implications for actual usability and performance/stuttering.
Click to expand...
Hmmm… I tend not to keep all my apps in swap forever, because I usually run a rather limited set of apps but continue to use them on a continual basis. I won’t load all my apps and keep them in memory because most of the time I don’t need those extra other apps. But what this also means is that I often actually use most of the apps I have in memory… and as mentioned, in this context I would sometimes notice pauses on my M1 machine when the swap started to accumulate. I’d imagine the experience would be very different if I had 32 GB of physical memory I could use for actual active applications, along with 8 GB of swap of applications I only use once in a blue moon, especially on a machine with decent SSD speeds.


digitaldreamer said:
Yeah. And, having faster SSD bandwidth makes this not the problem it used to be. I remember getting beach balls anytime swap was going on with a device with spinning rust.
Click to expand...
AFAIK, the Neo is about tied for the slowest SSD of any Apple Silicon Mac ever made. Both the 256 and 512 GB models max out around 1.4 GB/s. Also, the CPU speed throttles severely very quickly in tests, and in prolonged use, the A18 Pro single-core is actually slower than M1 single-core in the fanless MacBook Air. There was a test out there that showed decreased throttling in the Neo if you add thermal pads to better connect the SoC to the chassis.

I can only hope the next Neo (A19 Pro next year?) fixes three of these problems:

1. 8 GB RAM —> 12 GB RAM. A19 Pro comes with 12 GB RAM.
2. Faster SSD speed in the 512 GB Neo. Apparently iPhone 17 Pro 512 GB SSD is faster than 256.
3. Better cooling. iPhone 17 Pro got a vapour chamber.

As for beach balls, see below.


jdubs03 said:
Josh chimes in:
Pretty much made the same points I made when it was announced. Rev 2 will be so much more compelling.
Click to expand...
He noticed the same pauses that I noticed, but even worse, he got a spinning beach ball of death doing stuff that wouldn’t be all that taxing for other recent 16 GB Apple Silicon machines.
 
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Eug said:
AFAIK, the Neo is about tied for the slowest SSD of any Apple Silicon Mac ever made. Both the 256 and 512 GB models max out around 1.4 GB/s. Also, the CPU speed throttles severely very quickly in tests, and in prolonged use, the A18 Pro single-core is actually slower than M1 single-core in the fanless MacBook Air. There was a test out there that showed decreased throttling in the Neo if you add thermal pads to better connect the SoC to the chassis.

I can only hope the next Neo (A19 Pro next year?) fixes three of these problems:

1. 8 GB RAM —> 12 GB RAM. A19 Pro comes with 12 GB RAM.
2. Faster SSD speed in the 512 GB Neo. Apparently iPhone 17 Pro 512 GB SSD is faster than 256.
3. Better cooling. iPhone 17 Pro got a vapour chamber.
Click to expand...

You're overlooking that Apple may not see those performance gaps as something that needs fixing, but rather something that justifies the large gap between the Neo's price and the MBA's price. If they fix all the Neo's shortcomings to where it is a Macbook Air less a few cores and smaller RAM/NAND defaults they'll lose a lot of Air sales to the Neo.

It is also funny that people now talking about 1.4 GBps from their storage as "slow". It wasn't that long ago that we dealt with hard drives, that could barely exceed 100 MBps sequential but in the real world when any random access was involved would be down in the single digit MBps or worse. 1.4 GBps was something you could only get by striping dozens or hundreds of disks in an enterprise array.
 
Doug S said:
You're overlooking that Apple may not see those performance gaps as something that needs fixing, but rather something that justifies the large gap between the Neo's price and the MBA's price. If they fix all the Neo's shortcomings to where it is a Macbook Air less a few cores and smaller RAM/NAND defaults they'll lose a lot of Air sales to the Neo.
Click to expand...
“If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will.”
- Steve Jobs

All these fixes already exist with the A19 Pro, which is in the device I’m typing on right now, a friggin’ phone. One of the three fixes is not on this particular phone model, but would be if I paid extra for more storage. I would suggest the same for the next MacBook Neo: A19 Pro with 12 GB RAM and better cooling, plus better NAND speed for a higher priced 512 GB model. The main question is when it will come out, 2027 or 2028.


It is also funny that people now talking about 1.4 GBps from their storage as "slow". It wasn't that long ago that we dealt with hard drives, that could barely exceed 100 MBps sequential but in the real world when any random access was involved would be down in the single digit MBps or worse. 1.4 GBps was something you could only get by striping dozens or hundreds of disks in an enterprise array.
Click to expand...
People have been talking about that as slow for Macs since 2022. Technology progresses.
 
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