Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

Eug · Nov 10, 2020

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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Tuna-Fish · Nov 10, 2020

gdansk said:
Did they say 128KiB+192KiB L1 cache?
That's huge, Zen and Skylake are 32KiB+32KiB L1.

Implies low clock speed. Fetch from L1 is one of the major timing-critical circuits in modern CPUs. High clocked CPUs have small L1:s, backed by medium-sized fast L2:s, because otherwise the delay (in cycles) of fetching from L1 would get too high to reasonably hide. If you reduce clocks, you can push up L1 sizes and not have an intermediate level between L1 and the LLC. To keep performance up, this of course also implies that their design is very wide.

Regarding the non-upgradeable RAM: This has been a long time coming. In reasonably specced laptops, the energy needed to signaling to DRAM is a significant proportion of total energy budget. Going with soldered LPDDR cuts that in half. Everyone knows it would help, but so far no-one has been willing to take the leap. I suspect that now that Apple gets to be the one who sells this concept to people and makes it palatable, ultraportables will mostly switch over in just a few hardware cycles. Other laptops will follow suit later.

Going with just 8GB on the weak models and at most 16GB is a ballsy move. I think it's just too low.

name99 · Nov 10, 2020

Doug S said:
The RAM isn't integrated into the SoC, it would be integrated into the package via stacking. Just like it is in the iPhone/iPad SoCs. Or so he's assuming.

The DRAM packaging is interesting, it's not just "copy a phone"!
Like I said, A12X is described here, and the Apple picture suggests M1 is similar:

The Packaging of Apple’s A12X is… Weird | Siliconica

sst.semiconductor-digest.com

name99 · Nov 10, 2020

Entropyq3 said:
I can’t find that anywhere. Where’s this info from?
Likewise for the cache-size data.

Cache size info is here:
2020-11-10 19_10_00_575px.jpg

Gideon · Nov 10, 2020

Tuna-Fish said:
Implies low clock speed.

Would really like to see how far they can clock it. The phone SoC goes to 3GHz in a 5W TDP for everything, they will probably squeeze at least a little more out of it.

Tuna-Fish said:
Going with just 8GB on the weak models and at most 16GB is a ballsy move. I think it's just too low.

Totally agree with that

name99 · Nov 10, 2020

Tuna-Fish said:
Implies low clock speed. Fetch from L1 is one of the major timing-critical circuits in modern CPUs. High clocked CPUs have small L1:s, backed by medium-sized fast L2:s, because otherwise the delay (in cycles) of fetching from L1 would get too high to reasonably hide. If you reduce clocks, you can push up L1 sizes and not have an intermediate level between L1 and the LLC. To keep performance up, this of course also implies that their design is very wide.

Regarding the non-upgradeable RAM: This has been a long time coming. In reasonably specced laptops, the energy needed to signaling to DRAM is a significant proportion of total energy budget. Going with soldered LPDDR cuts that in half. Everyone knows it would help, but so far no-one has been willing to take the leap. I suspect that now that Apple gets to be the one who sells this concept to people and makes it palatable, ultraportables will mostly switch over in just a few hardware cycles. Other laptops will follow suit later.

Going with just 8GB on the weak models and at most 16GB is a ballsy move. I think it's just too low.

Too low based on what?
Plenty of macbooks are sold to people (like half my family) who only use them for email, browsing, and various forms of chat.
Remember macOS uses RAM compression (which has had many years to be perfected) and will have even faster swapping than the current machines.

Honestly, this carping about RAM feels like people desperate to find SOMETHING to complain about. It does not match the reality of most user experience.

zacharychieply · Nov 10, 2020

Tuna-Fish said:
Going with just 8GB on the weak models and at most 16GB is a ballsy move. I think it's just too low.

apple is still using lpddr4 instead of lpddr5, 16GBs of ram will not become bassline until they hopefully transition to lpddr5.

Eug · Nov 10, 2020

Tuna-Fish said:
Regarding the non-upgradeable RAM: This has been a long time coming. In reasonably specced laptops, the energy needed to signaling to DRAM is a significant proportion of total energy budget. Going with soldered LPDDR cuts that in half. Everyone knows it would help, but so far no-one has been willing to take the leap. I suspect that now that Apple gets to be the one who sells this concept to people and makes it palatable, ultraportables will mostly switch over in just a few hardware cycles. Other laptops will follow suit later.

Going with just 8GB on the weak models and at most 16GB is a ballsy move. I think it's just too low.

This is just M1. These replace the low end models of those lines. I can't remember all the specs for all the models, but I do know that at least some of them were limited to 16 GB anyway. For example, the entry level 2020 Intel 13" MacBook Pro could not be spec'd with more than 16 GB RAM. However, that model has now been deleted from their lineup, leaving only the higher end 13" model that can have 32 GB.

M1X or whatever it's called is probably going to support up to 64 GB RAM.

Eug · Nov 10, 2020

Tuna-Fish said:
Regarding the non-upgradeable RAM: This has been a long time coming. In reasonably specced laptops, the energy needed to signaling to DRAM is a significant proportion of total energy budget. Going with soldered LPDDR cuts that in half. Everyone knows it would help, but so far no-one has been willing to take the leap. I suspect that now that Apple gets to be the one who sells this concept to people and makes it palatable, ultraportables will mostly switch over in just a few hardware cycles. Other laptops will follow suit later.

Did I misunderstand this part of your post? Cuz Apple has been using soldered RAM for just about forever. However, it used to be on the mainboard, not inside the SoC package.

Gideon · Nov 10, 2020

name99 said:
Honestly, this carping about RAM feels like people desperate to find SOMETHING to complain about. It does not match the reality of most user experience.

I agree that 3 GHz is plenty for macbook Air type machine. I also agree thet 16GB is plenty for Air, but for Macbook? not as clearly.

As a full stack web-develper in a company where a lot of people (me included) use macs I do really see it as being a major limitation. We consult a number of companies whose projects usually don't run that well at all on a 16GB machines (we usually manage to set up a bit leaner stacks). That's despite memory compression (which btw is not some fairy-dust super tech but is also used in Windows and Linux) and swapping. Once you start running decently complex micro-service projects in docker along with multiple IDE windows and browsers along with all kinds of required electron based chats (slack, teams, skype), terminals spotify and other helper tools, 16 GB of ram runs out really quickly.

I do agree that 32GB is mostly overkill for the usual web-dev, but 16GB can often be limiting, hence my complaint. While I have a 15" 2018 model, quite a few devs (especially female ones) do prefer the 13" models and 16GB would be a dealbreaker for them.

And it is a legitimate conern for me. I was thinking about buying a few during the screencast (and possibly some minis for the office, since they are so cheap) but I'll probably wait for the later versions as it stands. (I certainly wouldn't buy a new laptop in 2021, meant to last for years, with just 16GB)

I also wish you were a bit less agressively-defensive about your favorite company (everyone who complains must exclusevily do it because they are dumb and have biases), especially as it's the one you worked for (if I remember correctly).

Eug · Nov 10, 2020

Gideon said:
I agree that 3 GHz is plenty for macbook Air type machine. I also agree thet 16GB is plenty for Air, but for Macbook? not as clearly.

As a full stack web-develper in a company where a lot of people (me included) use macs I do really think this is a major limitatino. We consult a number of companies whose projects usually don't run that well at all on a16GB machine, despite memory compression (which btw is not some fairy-dust super tech but is also used in Windows and Linux) and swapping. Once you start running decently complex micro-service projects in docker along with multiple IDE windows and browsers along with all kinds of electron based chat (slack, teams, skype) and spotify 16 GB of ram runs out really quickly.

I do agree that 32GB is mostly overkill for the usual web-dev, but 16GB can often be limiting, hence my complaint. While I have a 15" 2018 model, quite a few devs actually run 13" models and 16GB would be a dealbreaker for them. I was thinking about buying a few during the screencast (and possibly some minis for the office, since they are so cheap) but I'll probably wait for the later versions as it stands.

I also wish you were a bit less agressively-defensive about your favorite company (everyone who complains must exclusevily do it because of their biases), especially as it's the one you worked for (if I remember correctly).

I'm 99% sure Apple will introduce a 14" Pro and 16" Pro next year, both with mini-LED, and with support for at least 32 GB RAM max and possibly up to 64 GB RAM max. And they will be LPDDR5.

Will the RAM be on the mainboard again though?

amrnuke · Nov 10, 2020

I for one think this is going to be a watershed moment and will surely be one of the biggest highlights for Tim Cook's reign, no matter what comes. This will formally erase that blurry line between phones and computers.

As for the performance, using just SPEC and GB5 it would be easy to get excited. This will be a stellar laptop and entry level desktop Mac for most users. Undoubtedly, it'll handle word processing, light to medium spreadsheet work, presentations, browsing, and so on with ease.

The big question will be whether this thing can scale up, and what the power/speed ramp looks like on a real chip. Do we compare this 4 big/4 little chip to a 4/8 Renoir/ICL/TGL chip or to an 8/16 chip? What did Apple use in their comparison? And in what applications? Lots of questions. Hopefully we get some good benchmarks next week.

name99 · Nov 10, 2020

Gideon said:
I agree that 3 GHz is plenty for macbook Air type machine. I also agree thet 16GB is plenty for Air, but for Macbook? not as clearly.

As a full stack web-develper in a company where a lot of people (me included) use macs I do really see it as being a major limitation. We consult a number of companies whose projects usually don't run that well at all on a 16GB machines (we usually manage to set up a bit leaner stacks). That's despite memory compression (which btw is not some fairy-dust super tech but is also used in Windows and Linux) and swapping. Once you start running decently complex micro-service projects in docker along with multiple IDE windows and browsers along with all kinds of required electron based chats (slack, teams, skype), terminals spotify and other helper tools, 16 GB of ram runs out really quickly.

I do agree that 32GB is mostly overkill for the usual web-dev, but 16GB can often be limiting, hence my complaint. While I have a 15" 2018 model, quite a few devs (especially female ones) do prefer the 13" models and 16GB would be a dealbreaker for them.

And it is a legitimate conern for me. I was thinking about buying a few during the screencast (and possibly some minis for the office, since they are so cheap) but I'll probably wait for the later versions as it stands. (I certainly wouldn't buy a new laptop in 2021, meant to last for years, with just 16GB)

I also wish you were a bit less agressively-defensive about your favorite company (everyone who complains must exclusevily do it because they are dumb and have biases), especially as it's the one you worked for (if I remember correctly).

Two points.
(a) Mocking a technology as "fairy-dust super tech" is not a way to endear yourself to others. I made no claims as to Apple's exclusive use of this tech.

(b) The 13" MBP is the low-end model. Which part of "low end is low end" did you not understand. Only idiots (of which, OMG, there are so many. Reading Twitter right now makes you weep for humanity) assume that these specs are the end point for the MBP range as a whole.

If these specs don't meet your needs, then wait. The claim is not "no-one needs more than 16GB", it is "plenty of people will find these machines meet their needs". If you're not one, you're not one.

(c) I am not "agressively-defensive about [my] favorite company"; I am happy to (and frequently do) criticize Apple. I am aggressively against stupidity and dishonesty.

Roland00Address · Nov 10, 2020

Doug S said:
I suspect the rumored 8+4 core chip will slide in those (and maybe be offered as an optional upgrade for the 13" MBP) and it will also have more GPU cores.

I would also not be surprised if that 8+4 chip was able to operate as a chiplet so 2 or 4 of them could be used to create a 16 or 32 core MCM for the high end stuff. But they said the transition would take two years (like I had previously guessed) so they have plenty of time to do a monolithic design for those should they choose to do so.

I wonder how a Mac Pro with 32 cores taken from a 3nm A16 would do against contemporary Intel and AMD based workstations?

Serious question

A) could we do M1s in chiplets of 2 and 4?
B) or would it make more sense to make a larger chip as a separate die?
C) or is Apple just going to wait 6 months or a year and do the successor of the firestorm (big) and icestorm (little) before doing 8 or more big cores?

A, B, or C? I have had time to see if it is technically impossible / not feasible to see if the M1 could be done as chiplets today with the info Apple dropped.

Eug · Nov 10, 2020

amrnuke said:
I for one think this is going to be a watershed moment and will surely be one of the biggest highlights for Tim Cook's reign, no matter what comes. This will formally erase that blurry line between phones and computers.

As for the performance, using just SPEC and GB5 it would be easy to get excited. This will be a stellar laptop and entry level desktop Mac for most users. Undoubtedly, it'll handle word processing, light to medium spreadsheet work, presentations, browsing, and so on with ease.

The big question will be whether this thing can scale up, and what the power/speed ramp looks like on a real chip. Do we compare this 4 big/4 little chip to a 4/8 Renoir/ICL/TGL chip or to an 8/16 chip? What did Apple use in their comparison? And in what applications? Lots of questions. Hopefully we get some good benchmarks next week.

A lot of the traditional benchmarking methods may actually fall down here. For example, in many optimized multi-media applications, A12X iPad Pros from 2018 actually do much better than current Intel MacBook Pros.

The problem with the iPad Pros though is they do not (yet) have the depth of software support so a lot of the big legacy apps are missing. However, for the mid-tier mainstream power users, the Apple designed SoCs shine, if the software can leverage it.

What will be interesting for example is the comparison of Final Cut on Apple's chips vs Intel. There will be no truly native Adobe Premiere on Apple's chips any time soon, but Apple said they have now built Final Cut to be native on M1, etc.

Gideon · Nov 10, 2020

name99 said:
(b) The 13" MBP is the low-end model. Which part of "low end is low end" did you not understand. Only idiots (of which, OMG, there are so many. Reading Twitter right now makes you weep for humanity) assume that these specs are the end point for the MBP range as a whole.

If these specs don't meet your needs, then wait. The claim is not "no-one needs more than 16GB", it is "plenty of people will find these machines meet their needs". If you're not one, you're not one.

I did get it's the low-end model and I agree it works for a large majority of the current buyer base, I was just saying that my actual requirements are not some desperate attempt to "just complain about something" (I still wish they made macbook models geared towards developers).

name99 said:
(c) I am not "agressively-defensive about [my] favorite company"; I am happy to (and frequently do) criticize Apple. I am aggressively against stupidity and dishonesty.

Yeah ok, I can relate. Ignorance and stupidity are awfully widespread in the tech-enthusiast crowd. People buy a product, immediately become emotionally attached to it and suddenly just like everything praising the company and dislike anything even slightly pointing towards negative (no matter te fact).

And sorry for the unneeded agressiveness. It probably stemmed from the fact that I've not stumbled upon any of your criticism, yet every post I have cmoe accross has been highly supportive of pretty much every aspect of how apple operates (with the exception of perhaps yearly cadence being set to stone) and all of their prodcut decisions under active debate (not saying it's a valid impression by any means, it's just the one that stuck).

name99 · Nov 10, 2020

Gideon said:
I did get it's the low-end model and I agree it works for a large majority of the current buyer base, I was just saying that my actual requirements are not some desperate attempt to "just complain about something" (I still wish they made macbook models geared towards developers).

Yeah ok, I can relate. Ignorance and stupidity are awfully widespread in the tech-enthusiast crowd. People buy a product, immediately become emotionally attached to it and suddenly just like everything praising the company and dislike anything even slightly pointing towards negative (no matter te fact).

And sorry for the unneeded agressiveness. It probably stemmed from the fact that I've not stumbled upon any of your criticism, yet every post I have cmoe accross has been highly supportive of pretty much every aspect of how apple operates (with the exception of perhaps yearly cadence being set to stone) and all of their prodcut decisions under active debate (not saying it's a valid impression by any means, it's just the one that stuck).

Got to respect you for that reply!
I get irritated (by many things!) but especially by people who can't tell the difference between "product designed for the bulk of humanity" and "what I want designed for me, personally, in a perfect world". Hell, I usually don't get what I want -- but I understand the wya the world works in this regard.

As for Apple criticism, mainly what's discussed in this forum is the SoCs, and with those there's little to criticize! You can wish that they had sometimes made different choices, but their choices are justified.

Where I am a lot less happy is
- general software quality. Far too many bugs, far too many obviously dumb/short-sighted design decisions.
- far too limited (ie unambitious) thinking around HomeKit and Apple TV, both of which are being run by pathetically timid management.
- they still haven't internalized that what they are selling is the Apple Compute Ecosystem, not individual products, so, while there is adequate (far better than any other company) linkage between devices, it's not nearly good enough. I should be able to set preferences for my entire compute ecosystem in one place, update software in one place, view state in one place. Think of how large clusters (things like Beowulf, let alone a data warehouse) are managed; I should have that sort of total view and total control of my personal Apple ecosystem, not fifteen devices that all have to be manually curated, updated, migrated.

Doug S · Nov 10, 2020

Roland00Address said:
Serious question

A) could we do M1s in chiplets of 2 and 4?
B) or would it make more sense to make a larger chip as a separate die?
C) or is Apple just going to wait 6 months or a year and do the successor of the firestorm (big) and icestorm (little) before doing 8 or more big cores?

A, B, or C? I have had time to see if it is technically impossible / not feasible to see if the M1 could be done as chiplets today with the info Apple dropped.

A couple years ago when we were speculating about Apple going ARM on the Mac over on RWT I postulated they would use an A14X for the low end Macs that could also operate as a chiplet, and go two chiplet on the higher end MBP models and iMac, four chiplet on the iMac Pro / low end Mac Pro and eight chiplet on a top end 32 core Mac Pro. I think I even suggested the first three models would be the Air, Mini and low end MBP, but I'd have to see if I can find that thread before I could be sure (too bad the search function on that site is so crappy)

So sure, I could believe this (and claim to be prescient if it comes to pass) but the Twitter rumors about Apple doing an "8+4" design, if true, mean there's a bigger chip out there beyond the A14X/M1. So if they go the chiplet route they'd use that 8+4 design as the base unit not the M1.

I wouldn't be shocked if some of the first A15 based wafers TSMC fabs for Apple are 8+4 chips. The volume they need for those are tiny compared to iPhone volumes, so they could get the higher end MBP and the iMac out the door in time for back to school. It would also give them plenty of lead time for testing chiplet based designs (though I think the iMac Pro and Mac Pro will be A16 based, these A15 based "chiplets" would just be for internal testing to work out some of the issues in a more complex design than Apple has previously attempted)

Doug S · Nov 10, 2020

name99 said:
Too low based on what?
Plenty of macbooks are sold to people (like half my family) who only use them for email, browsing, and various forms of chat.
Remember macOS uses RAM compression (which has had many years to be perfected) and will have even faster swapping than the current machines.

Honestly, this carping about RAM feels like people desperate to find SOMETHING to complain about. It does not match the reality of most user experience.

I don't think there's anything wrong with 8GB as the entry level, it is 16GB being the high end that's the problem. Now maybe this is just a product segmentation thing, and when the A15 based Air, Mini and 13" MBP come out next July or so the current models will sell for $100 off as "last year's model" similar to what they do with the iPhone - and then only offering lower end memory configs will make sense.

Eug · Nov 10, 2020

Confirmed. M1 Macs do NOT support existing eGPUS.

Macs with the M1 chip do not support eGPUs | TechCrunch

Apple today announced its first self-developed processor for Mac hardware. Called the M1, the system on a chip (SoC) is based on an Arm architecture

techcrunch.com

Doug S said:
I don't think there's anything wrong with 8GB as the entry level, it is 16GB being the high end that's the problem. Now maybe this is just a product segmentation thing, and when the A15 based Air, Mini and 13" MBP come out next July or so the current models will sell for $100 off as "last year's model" similar to what they do with the iPhone - and then only offering lower end memory configs will make sense.

I mentioned this before, but it appears that these new Macs replace older Intel models that were also limited to 16 GB. The Intel models that support 32 GB are higher end models, and they are still being sold on the Apple website, because they haven’t been replaced yet.

The 32 GB replacements will likely come in the form of new machines with a different chip next year, along with a new form factor and mini-LED.

In a way, these new M1 machines are effectively almost mass market dev kits.

HurleyBird · Nov 10, 2020

I think Apple marketing screwed this one up if M1 is as fast as most of us think it is. The performance claims look like the typical BS and by now a lot of people know the pattern and have it set to ignore. To the extent M1 is impressive, they should have actually shown it to be so.

ultimatebob · Nov 10, 2020

Doug S said:
I don't think there's anything wrong with 8GB as the entry level, it is 16GB being the high end that's the problem. Now maybe this is just a product segmentation thing, and when the A15 based Air, Mini and 13" MBP come out next July or so the current models will sell for $100 off as "last year's model" similar to what they do with the iPhone - and then only offering lower end memory configs will make sense.

Honestly, that seems like a typical Apple marketing strategy. They always launch their first generation product with an obvious design limitation, and then "fix" it in the second generation to get people to upgrade faster.

Take the first gen iPhone for example. It only had 2G Edge networking when most high-end phones were already coming with 3G. The following year, when they (finally) released a 3G phone, everyone felt compelled to upgrade. The first gen iPad was also slow as molasses, so when the "much faster" iPad 2 came out a year later, a lot of those early adopters upgraded.

I think that the lesson is obvious... avoid the first generation of any new Apple product or total redesign of an existing product.

Eug · Nov 10, 2020

ultimatebob said:
Honestly, that seems like a typical Apple marketing strategy. They always launch their first generation product with an obvious design limitation, and then "fix" it in the second generation to get people to upgrade faster.

Take the first gen iPhone for example. It only had 2G Edge networking when most high-end phones were already coming with 3G. The following year, when they (finally) released a 3G phone, everyone felt compelled to upgrade. The first gen iPad was also slow as molasses, so when the "much faster" iPad 2 came out a year later, a lot of those early adopters upgraded.

I think that the lesson is obvious... avoid the first generation of any new Apple product or total redesign of an existing product.

In general I agree with you, and as mentioned above, I think of the M1 Macs as being almost a set of mainstream mass market dev kits that you can buy and keep. However, it should be noted that the 3G chipsets at the time of the original iPhone were quite power hungry. The lower power model 3G chipset is what Apple put in the iPhone 3G.

BTW, our carriers in Canada didn't even bother to carry the original iPhone. They only started with the 3G. Part of the reason was because Apple did its negotiations first with the American carriers, but I suspect that many carriers around the world were less interested in a 2G handset anyway. Of course, that didn't stop my buddies driving down to Buffalo to pick up US models that they subsequently jailbroke and ran in Canada.

I agree about the iPad though. I absolute refused to buy the original iPad, mainly because it only had 256 MB RAM. I waited for the iPad 2 with twice the RAM. Same with the original iPad Air. I refused to buy that one, and waited for the iPad Air 2 with twice the RAM. We are still using the iPad Air 2 now 6 years later. The kids are using it, with no need to upgrade for the next couple of years.

name99 · Nov 10, 2020

HurleyBird said:
I think Apple marketing screwed this one up if M1 is as fast as most of us think it is. The performance claims look like the typical BS and by now a lot of people know the pattern and have it set to ignore. To the extent M1 is impressive, they should have actually shown it to be so.

Really? And what would you have them do differently?

Because you can go read the comments on Andrei's article and see the insanity in full force. The people who do not want to believe this will not believe it; and more benchmarks won't convince them.

I fully expect the same is just as true of you. You will read Andrei's arrticle and come up with a dozen dumb reasons why his numbers are "dishonest" -- the compiler lost many of the Intel votes, the test harness is biased to report that Apple is ahead, equipment from big energy is deliberately manipulating how much power is reported used by each device.
The full range of lunacy from last week is being redeployed as we speak.

Eug · Nov 10, 2020

OK, I went through all the marketing blurbs and matched the claims with the machines compared:

Up to 3.9X faster video processing
Up to 3.5X faster CPU performance
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with prerelease Final Cut Pro 10.5 using a 55-second clip with 4K Apple ProRes RAW media, at 4096x2160 resolution and 59.94 frames per second, transcoded to Apple ProRes 422. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air.

Up to 7.1X faster image processing
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction Mac mini systems with Apple M1 chip, and production 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i3-based Mac mini systems, all configured with 16GB of RAM and 2TB SSD. Prerelease Adobe Lightroom 4.1 tested using a 28MB image. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Mac mini.

Our high‑performance core is the world’s fastest CPU core when it comes to low‑power silicon.
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13‑inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM measuring peak single-thread performance of workloads taken from select industry-standard benchmarks, commercial applications, and open source applications. Comparison made against the highest-performing CPUs for notebooks commercially available at the time of testing. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.

Up to 2X faster CPU performance
Matches peak PC performance using 25% of the power
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13‑inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM. Multithreaded performance measured using select industry‑standard benchmarks. Comparison made against latest‑generation high‑performance notebooks commercially available at the time of testing. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.

3X CPU performance per watt
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13‑inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM, as well as previous‑generation Mac notebooks. Performance measured using select industry‑standard benchmarks. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.

From teraflops to texture bandwidth to fill rate to power efficiency, this GPU is in a class of its own — and brings the world’s fastest integrated graphics in a personal computer.
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13‑inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM using select industry-standard benchmarks. Comparison made against the highest-performing integrated GPUs for notebooks and desktops commercially available at the time of testing. Integrated GPU is defined as a GPU located on a monolithic silicon die along with a CPU and memory controller, behind a unified memory subsystem. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.

Up to 2X faster GPU performance
Matches peak PC performance using 33% of the power
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13‑inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM. Performance measured using select industry‑standard benchmarks. Comparison made against latest‑generation high‑performance notebooks commercially available at the time of testing. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.

Up to 15X faster machine learning performance
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction Mac mini systems with Apple M1 chip, and production 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i3-based Mac mini systems, all configured with 16GB of RAM and 2TB SSD. Prerelease Pixelmator Pro 2.0 Lynx tested using a 216KB image. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Mac mini.

Up to 17 hrs of wireless web browsing
Up to 20 hrs of movie playback
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13‑inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See apple.com/batteries for more information.

Up to 15 hrs of wireless web browsing
Up to 18 hrs of movie playback
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, configured with 8GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. The wireless web test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. The Apple TV app movie playback test measures battery life by playing back HD 1080p content with display brightness set to 8 clicks from bottom. Battery life varies by use and configuration. See apple.com/batteries for more information.

Run up to 3x more instrument and effect plug‑ins with Logic Pro.
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction Mac mini systems with Apple M1 chip, and production 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i3-based Mac mini systems, all configured with 16GB of RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with prerelease Logic Pro 10.6.0 with project consisting of multiple tracks, each with an Amp Designer plug-in instance applied. Individual tracks were added during playback until CPU became overloaded. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Mac mini.

Fly through tasks with Final Cut Pro, like rendering a complex timeline up to 6x faster.
Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction Mac mini systems with Apple M1 chip, and production 3.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i3-based Mac mini systems with Intel Iris UHD Graphics 630, all configured with 16GB of RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with prerelease Final Cut Pro 10.5 using a complex 2-minute project with a variety of media up to 4K resolution. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of Mac mini.

HurleyBird · Nov 10, 2020

name99 said:
I fully expect the same is just as true of you. You will read Andrei's arrticle and come up with a dozen dumb reasons why his numbers are "dishonest" -- the compiler lost many of the Intel votes, the test harness is biased to report that Apple is ahead, equipment from big energy is deliberately manipulating how much power is reported used by each device.
The full range of lunacy from last week is being redeployed as we speak.

I think you misunderstand me. I think that M1 is likely very strong. It might not beat Renoir at everything MT or Tiger Lake at everything ST, but as an entire package my intuition says that this should be the best laptop chip out there by a good margin. Cezanne might upset that a bit, but will be disadvantaged by 7nm vs 5nm.

I'm not saying that Apple resorted to marketing BS because their product is weak. I'm saying I think the product is strong, but present the product in a way that reeks of snake oil makes it look weaker than it likely is since many people are primed to automatically discount this kind of marketing.

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