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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MadRat · Jul 23, 2022

Why so defensive of Apple when their product doesn't match consumer expectations? And how do you know the design decision was intentional? When lower end products that have a less aggressive clock and inferior process begin to compete with shiny new gadgets, its not a good look for anybody. They could have stayed within parameters so it would not throttle. Or they could have said their product isn't going to run the same when it gets to a certain thermal threshold. All I saw was marketing toting how fast and efficient it was because its better than previous products. That's not always true. They could have made it true.

repoman27 · Jul 23, 2022

MadRat said:
Why so defensive of Apple when their product doesn't match consumer expectations? And how do you know the design decision was intentional? When lower end products that have a less aggressive clock and inferior process begin to compete with shiny new gadgets, its not a good look for anybody. They could have stayed within parameters so it would not throttle. Or they could have said their product isn't going to run the same when it gets to a certain thermal threshold. All I saw was marketing toting how fast and efficient it was because its better than previous products. That's not always true. They could have made it true.

I prefer to base my opinions on empirical evidence and deductive reasoning rather than what some random person on YouTube said, especially when their entire monetization strategy hinges on driving engagement by making sensational claims that portray large companies or popular products in a negative fashion.

I have very little stake in Apple's welfare outside of my own personal involvement with their ecosystem. However, I find it upsetting that journalistic integrity, research, and fact checking have become entirely marginalized. There's practically nobody left in the industry still doing the hard work. AnandTech definitely took a hit when Anand and Brian left for Apple, and now with Ian going solo and Andrei joining Qualcomm's Nuvia team, it's on life support.

And Apple certainly did imply that the M2 MacBook Air would throttle under sustained loads by pointing out that the active cooling system in the 13-inch MacBook Pro would prevent that from happening. The M2 MacBook Air is also thinner, lighter, faster, and has a better screen than the M1 MacBook Air. However the regression in storage performance between the M1 and M2 generations is extremely unfortunate. If Apple wasn't forced into that decision by supply chain constraints or some other factor, it's something worth beating them up over.

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by, "When lower end products that have a less aggressive clock and inferior process begin to compete with shiny new gadgets..."

MadRat · Jul 25, 2022

You arguments are tough to pin down, repo. You acknowledge arguments about previous products then come back with...

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by, "When lower end products that have a less aggressive clock and inferior process begin to compete with shiny new gadgets..."

Surely you are also aware that current lower end products have very small differences in real world performance exactly due to throttling. Let's not pretend every new product is built on their leading edge processes. You kind of cherrypick what you argue with different people and sometimes contradicted yourself when arguiing with another person. After re-reading some of your arguments, I'm not sure what you are even getting on about any more. You have your opinion and everyone else is entitled to their own.

Apple could have done better than they did on the new products. Nowhere do I see people trying to say its garbage or anything. I suggest you let Apple defend Apple and not let your sentiments get too upset when Apple is criticized. This isn't the first time Apple didn't do a perfect product segmentation strategy. Probably won't be the last. Its okay, Apple will survive.

repoman27 · Jul 25, 2022

MadRat said:
You arguments are tough to pin down, repo. You acknowledge arguments about previous products then come back with...

Also, I'm not sure what you mean by, "When lower end products that have a less aggressive clock and inferior process begin to compete with shiny new gadgets..."

Surely you are also aware that current lower end products have very small differences in real world performance exactly due to throttling. Let's not pretend every new product is built on their leading edge processes. You kind of cherrypick what you argue with different people and sometimes contradicted yourself when arguiing with another person. After re-reading some of your arguments, I'm not sure what you are even getting on about any more. You have your opinion and everyone else is entitled to their own.

Apple could have done better than they did on the new products. Nowhere do I see people trying to say its garbage or anything. I suggest you let Apple defend Apple and not let your sentiments get too upset when Apple is criticized. This isn't the first time Apple didn't do a perfect product segmentation strategy. Probably won't be the last. Its okay, Apple will survive.

I acknowledged a previous argument (the storage performance regression) about Apple's most recent product (the M2 MacBook Air). And I only singled out that quote from your initial post because I honestly didn't understand your meaning. It's probably just a language issue, but even after your clarification, I still don't get it.

What "current lower end products" are we talking about, and from whom? What "very small differences in real world performance" are you referring to, and who performed this testing? When you say "inferior process" or "their leading edge process", I assume you're talking about silicon manufacturing processes, but I have no idea what products you're implying were built using an inferior process or who "they" are in relation to the leading edge process. Whose lower end products are beginning to compete with what "shiny new gadgets"? Are you talking about Intel / AMD vs. Apple here, or Apple M1 vs. M2, or iPad vs. MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro?

MadRat said:
You have your opinion and everyone else is entitled to their own.

But what you're telling me is that you'd prefer it if I kept any pro-Apple opinions to myself in this forum, is that the deal? Tone down the pro-Apple rhetoric around here?

MadRat said:
You arguments are tough to pin down, repo."

I'm sorry if my posts don't consistently align with your stereotypes, maybe you should take a moment to reflect on whether those prejudices are well founded or not.

MadRat · Jul 25, 2022

You really have no middle ground, dude. You've once again went overboard. What you are trying to frame as anti-Apple is simple criticism in their design selections. And don't worry, your opinions are safe as long as you leave everyone else's alone. Honestly, I could care less. Your posts suggest you want to fight about minutae and win some kind of contest. Not cool in a general discussion. Maybe try to get out more?

There was a time not so long ago where we debated more about AT, Tom's, and HardOC reviews than about YouTube videos. Unfortunately we don't get those open, hard hitting reviews any more. Those reviews were risky because vendors could stop working with them. /Cough, nVidia... Vendors are incredibly thin skinned. Rare is the review where you can see exactly where a product is strong using real world comparisons. Now the debates here resort to synthetic benchmarks written by the vendor that literally owns the benchmark. Everybody is pro or against, because there is no room for feeling meh.

Well, this new round Apple left me feeling meh on the products I'm most likely to by for my teenage kid. And I certainly won't recommend some models for my adult children.

repoman27 · Jul 26, 2022

MadRat said:
You really have no middle ground, dude. You've once again went overboard. What you are trying to frame as anti-Apple is simple criticism in their design selections. And don't worry, your opinions are safe as long as you leave everyone else's alone. Honestly, I could care less. Your posts suggest you want to fight about minutae and win some kind of contest. Not cool in a general discussion. Maybe try to get out more?

There was a time not so long ago where we debated more about AT, Tom's, and HardOC reviews than about YouTube videos. Unfortunately we don't get those open, hard hitting reviews any more. Those reviews were risky because vendors could stop working with them. /Cough, nVidia... Vendors are incredibly thin skinned. Rare is the review where you can see exactly where a product is strong using real world comparisons. Now the debates here resort to synthetic benchmarks written by the vendor that literally owns the benchmark. Everybody is pro or against, because there is no room for feeling meh.

Well, this new round Apple left me feeling meh on the products I'm most likely to by for my teenage kid. And I certainly won't recommend some models for my adult children.

Point taken. I'm sorry I got my hackles up. Unfortunately, I got the impression that you might be arguing with me in bad faith and came back at you hard. I also apologize for snipping your post earlier in this thread and substituting "utter nonsense", that was uncalled for.

I guess a switch flips in my brain when I read posts that contain factual errors, false assertions, or deliberately misleading statements, and I have difficulty restraining myself from composing a response. Most people don't prefer being corrected. Understandably, people tend to feel like their opinions are being attacked when presented with data that undermines the beliefs forming the basis of those opinions. I get it.

MadRat · Jul 26, 2022

No worries. I come here to read about whats going on. I would have been upset to find out I should have paid extra for huge performance leaps for not much more in price, such as going to 512GB SSD over the 256. People in these forums catch things like that and I appreciate that. I tend to buy middle of road models rather than either end of extremes just because of past experiences.

poke01 · Jul 28, 2022

I still don't get the throttling issue. In a 10 minutes Cinebench run the M2 MBA is still faster than the M1 MBA. Both the Air's lose performance because of the lack of an active cooling solution. You want the full power of M2, Apple did say in their keynote the M2 13" Pro will do a better cause of the fan. The M1 13" Pro scores around 7700 in cinebench, so the M1 Air also slows down but I did not see this blown up in 2020.

I however agree that Apple have disclosed the SSD issue. That is inexcusable.

source:

Heartbreaker · Jul 28, 2022

poke01 said:
I still don't get the throttling issue.

Standard internet hysteria bandwagon. More hysteria equals more views.

But basically, nothing to see. Passively cooled device throttles just like previous generation.

Lots of x86 laptops throttle even with a fan, and that apparently doesn't matter.

ZGR · Jul 28, 2022

I would argue it would be a big deal if Apple did not provide the ability to throttle the CPU in settings. But they do.

Low power mode did not exist back when I bought my Intel mac. I had to use 3rd party software to keep force clocks down in MacOS.

Doug S · Jul 28, 2022

poke01 said:
I however agree that Apple have disclosed the SSD issue. That is inexcusable.

If it wasn't for benchmarks few if any would have noticed. People are getting pretty spoiled considering it was not too many years ago when laptops had hard drives with performance a tiny fraction of what we complain about today.

Anandtech posts reviews for SSDs all the time that get better performance for larger drives for exactly the same reason. Why do I not see comments on those reviews complaining about that the way Apple has been criticized over this issue? It is only bad when Apple does it in the Macbook Air's SSD, but no problem when SK Hynix or Samsung does it in their SSDs?

kschendel · Jul 28, 2022

poke01 said:
I however agree that Apple have disclosed the SSD issue. That is inexcusable.

It was foolish from a marketing standpoint. From a real user standpoint, it's a non-issue for just about all Air users. Yes, I hear people argue "but if I copy 50 gigabytes back and forth it's slower." And you're doing that with a 256GB SSD? I don't think so. The paper numbers look bad, but they are largely irrelevant. My main work computer has a 10x disparity between slowest (SATA) and fastest (PCIe 4) SSD, looking at sequential I/O, and you simply can't tell the difference interactively.

smalM · Jul 29, 2022

The problem is not that the new generation 256GB SSD is slower than the last generation 256GB SSD. The problem is that there still is a 256GB SSD.

Eug · Jul 29, 2022

smalM said:
The problem is not that the new generation 256GB SSD is slower than the last generation 256GB SSD. The problem is that there still is a 256GB SSD.

This is my wife's 2017 MacBook Air with 128 GB SSD, running macOS 12.5 Monterey.

jeanlain · Jul 29, 2022

256 GB is fine for a base model. Not everyone stores videos.

Heartbreaker · Jul 30, 2022

jeanlain said:
256 GB is fine for a base model. Not everyone stores videos.

Agreed. My ancient Windows PC with 128GB boot SSD with all applications and their data still has plenty of space.

It's pretty much Media and Games that take up storage (I have a game SSD and Media HDD as well). Media collections can by many TBs and that really will usually be on external storage (Network, USB etc...) for a laptop, and games aren't going to be that prevalent either, so ultimately this will be enough for most people on the base model Mac Laptop.

I have been thinking about a Mac Mini and keeping cost down. I'm considering the 256GB/16GB model, since there won't be many Mac Games, and Media Storage would be external, even 256GB for OS/Applicaitons/data will be plenty.

Eug · Jul 30, 2022

jeanlain said:
256 GB is fine for a base model. Not everyone stores videos.

Yup, different needs for different people. Or even different needs for different machines for the same person.

Here are my Mac mini (<0.1 TB used) vs my iMac (~1.8 TB used, although 1 TB is on an external drive). (I'm not counting Time Machine usage.)

guidryp said:
I have been thinking about a Mac Mini and keeping cost down. I'm considering the 256GB/16GB model, since there won't be many Mac Games, and Media Storage would be external, even 256GB for OS/Applicaitons/data will be plenty.

I've been debating what storage to get for my new M2 / M2 Pro Mac mini, too, because it may end up eventually replacing my iMac (see above). I'm thinking perhaps 512 GB with external 2 to 4 GB SSD. I already bought a T7 Shield external SSD which is DRAM-less but which maintains transfer speeds over time well. Perhaps my 2 TB Samsung T7 SSD for the Photos drive and my 2 TB Samsung T7 Shield SSD for my other stuff.

The Samsung T7 Shield is my holy grail for a non-Thunderbolt USB-C DRAM-less SSD.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-t7-shield-portable-ssd-review/2

P.S. These transfer speed are significantly slower than the "slow" 256 GB SSD on the new M2 MacBook Air and M2 MacBook Pro, but they are sufficient for my needs. If in the future I truly need a super fast drive, maybe I'll invest in a Thunderbolt drive.

smalM · Jul 30, 2022

Eug said:
This is my wife's 2017 MacBook Air with 128 GB SSD, running macOS 12.5 Monterey.

You are talking about space, I'm talking about speed.

Heartbreaker · Jul 30, 2022

smalM said:
You are talking about space, I'm talking about speed.

I don't think you read your own post that he quoted. It literally says the problems is not speed, but size.

DrMrLordX · Jul 30, 2022

guidryp said:
I don't think you read your own post that he quoted. It literally says the problems is not speed, but size.

Nah, if you understand anything about the history of SSDs and how they perform, you'll understand he was saying the same thing the entire time. Most commercial-grade SSDs suffer performance degradation in smaller configurations. You get a big boost in performance moving from 65GB->256GB->512GB, and sometimes you get another boost moving to 1TB. 256GB drives are almost always hampered on maximum write performance based on their size/number of channels.

Doug S · Jul 30, 2022

DrMrLordX said:
Nah, if you understand anything about the history of SSDs and how they perform, you'll understand he was saying the same thing the entire time. Most commercial-grade SSDs suffer performance degradation in smaller configurations. You get a big boost in performance moving from 65GB->256GB->512GB, and sometimes you get another boost moving to 1TB. 256GB drives are almost always hampered on maximum write performance based on their size/number of channels.

Micron just announced 1 Tb chips, when we see 2 Tb chips in a few years then a 256 GB SSD could contain a single NAND chip! They are making changes in them to increase on chip parallelism but there's only so much they can do, so smaller configs will always be slower.

Smartphones have to keep upping their minimum storage, even as everyone is pushing "cloud" and don't really need more. It would be difficult to make a 16 GB phone today, because AFAIK no one is making 128 Gb TLC NANDs anymore. You'd have to use MLC or SLC, but that costs more so it wouldn't be worth it.

DrMrLordX · Jul 31, 2022

Doug S said:
Micron just announced 1 Tb chips, when we see 2 Tb chips in a few years then a 256 GB SSD could contain a single NAND chip! They are making changes in them to increase on chip parallelism but there's only so much they can do, so smaller configs will always be slower.

Thanks. You really drove the point home. It really is time to sunset 256GB SSDs for anything but the lowest-end products.

richardskrad · Aug 5, 2022

M2 Mac speeds for web browsing are the fastest ever seen

We’ve seen the results of a whole bunch of benchmarks measuring M2 Mac speeds in the latest MacBook Air and...

9to5mac.com

The M2 chip is now the fastest chip in the world for browsing the web. It scores 339 when running Speedometer 2.0 on Chrome.

For comparison, the Intel i9-12900KS scores 310.

newschool · Aug 5, 2022

richardskrad said:
M2 Mac speeds for web browsing are the fastest ever seen

We’ve seen the results of a whole bunch of benchmarks measuring M2 Mac speeds in the latest MacBook Air and...

9to5mac.com

The M2 chip is now the fastest chip in the world for browsing the web. It scores 339 when running Speedometer 2.0 on Chrome.

For comparison, the Intel i9-12900KS scores 310.

Both of my two friends who are using M1 have different experience.

One with with a MBA and one with a MBP. Both of them have scrolling lag while browsing.

And if you google it, its a common issue.

It seems the activation of performance cores is not optimized and that the ultra efficient cores are not enough

Heartbreaker · Aug 5, 2022

Eug said:
I've been debating what storage to get for my new M2 / M2 Pro Mac mini, too, because it may end up eventually replacing my iMac (see above). I'm thinking perhaps 512 GB with external 2 to 4 GB SSD. I already bought a T7 Shield external SSD which is DRAM-less but which maintains transfer speeds over time well. Perhaps my 2 TB Samsung T7 SSD for the Photos drive and my 2 TB Samsung T7 Shield SSD for my other stuff.

The Samsung T7 Shield is my holy grail for a non-Thunderbolt USB-C DRAM-less SSD.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-t7-shield-portable-ssd-review/2

View attachment 65168

P.S. These transfer speed are significantly slower than the "slow" 256 GB SSD on the new M2 MacBook Air and M2 MacBook Pro, but they are sufficient for my needs. If in the future I truly need a super fast drive, maybe I'll invest in a Thunderbolt drive.

Does the regular T7 have the same electronics as T7 shield, just a less rugged case. I don't care about physical durability, and water/dust proof, so don't want to pay extra for that.

An issue I see mentioned with all these small external high speeds USB drives is heat generation. Often even when barely doing anything.

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