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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[Glo.]

A17 5+1
M3 10+2
M3 Pro 19+4
M3 Max 38+8
1,5~1,6 GHz

A17: 6 GPU cores.
M3: 12 GPU cores.
M3 Pro: 24 GPU cores.
M3 Max: 48 GPU cores.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I hope this year Apple finally understands that 16GB/512GB should be the base model.

 

[A///]

I'd prefer 32 gb to be the minimum from here on out.

 

[Glo.]

I hope this year Apple finally understands that 16GB/512GB should be the base model.

It should be 12/512 GB.

 

[A///]

It should be 12/512 GB.

you really must hate people.

 

[mikegg]

I hope this year Apple finally understands that 16GB/512GB should be the base model.

Why?

Currently, Bestbuy is selling the M2 Macbook Air 13" for $899.

It has:

* The best entry-level laptop SoC on the market
* Fanless
* Best entry-level laptop speakers
* Best touchpad
* All metal enclosure
* Retina display that others go up to 4k to match

Find me a Windows laptop that comes close for $899 and has 16/512. You can't.

The only laptop that comes close is the Dell XPS 13 Plus. Even then, it has worse SoC, not fanless, worse speakers, worse touchpad, no metal enclosure. As soon as you configure the Dell XPS with a 4k display to match the display of the Air, it costs $1700.

One 8GB RAM chip and one 256GB chip is far cheaper than the other components that Apple puts into he Air. That's why Windows laptop makers must use 16/512 to compete with the Macbook Air.

Apple subsidizes 8/256 base models by making the upgrade to 16/512 expensive. Anyone who has an ounce of business acumen knows this.

 

[dr1337]

Find me a Windows laptop that comes close for $899 and has 16/512. You can't.

For the given parameters of being a premium netbook, $899 is a sound price for apple to charge to retain brand image. But an 8/256 windows laptop can be found for well under $499 and some even have a metal case. Not exactly matching apple quality obviously but someone who doesn't need specs can be satisfied with a much cheaper device. However many people the only thing that matters in a personal computer is outright performance. $900 gets you a 15" 16/512 ASUS with 144hz screen and RTX 4060 GPU, which might be a lot louder and hotter and consumes more power, but also crushes the macbook air in any real workload. Even in AI doing stablediffusion the M2 only gets about 3it/s with its dedicated engine where as a 4060 mobile gets an easy 7it/s.

I really like macs, I like that apple as a company won't let up on quality being their main selling point. But for so many of us I would rather have actually good specs instead of a laptop that feels nice to hold. Apple corks up these amazing chips with lower specs just because it drives sales other SKUs. 8/256 macbook airs only exist to sell higher specc'd variants that have higher margins.

 

[mikegg]

For the given parameters of being a premium netbook, $899 is a sound price for apple to charge to retain brand image. But an 8/256 windows laptop can be found for well under $499 and some even have a metal case. Not exactly matching apple quality obviously but someone who doesn't need specs can be satisfied with a much cheaper device. However many people the only thing that matters in a personal computer is outright performance. $900 gets you a 15" 16/512 ASUS with 144hz screen and RTX 4060 GPU, which might be a lot louder and hotter and consumes more power, but also crushes the macbook air in any real workload. Even in AI doing stablediffusion the M2 only gets about 3it/s with its dedicated engine where as a 4060 mobile gets an easy 7it/s.

You mean this?



Compared to this?



I'm not sure why you're comparing these 2 laptops. They're completely in completely different classes.

If you want just want raw storage, RAM, and an Nvidia GPU, then of course a Macbook Air isn't for you.

Compare it with something that is meant to be compared with. The closest thing is Dell XPS 13 Plus.

I'm still waiting for someone to come up with a laptop that has the same build quality as a Macbook Air and costs around the same. I've been waiting for years. No one has ever come up with one. Anything that comes close costs significantly more than a Macbook Air and is somehow still worse. IE. Dell XPS 13 Plus.

 

[mikegg]

I'm still waiting for someone to come up with a laptop that has the same build quality as a Macbook Air and costs around the same. I've been waiting for years. No one has ever come up with one. Anything that comes close costs significantly more than a Macbook Air and is somehow still worse. IE. Dell XPS 13 Plus.

Let's make it easier.

The Macbook Air M1 is on sale for $750 on Amazon and Costco right now.

Find me a Windows laptop that has greater than 200 pixels per inch that costs $750 or lower.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The Macbook Air M1 is on sale for $750 on Amazon and Costco right now.

Three year old laptop on sale coz people were not buying it.

 

[mikegg]

Three year old laptop on sale coz people were not buying it.

You bought one.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Let's make it easier.

The Macbook Air M1 is on sale for $750 on Amazon and Costco right now.

Find me a Windows laptop that has greater than 200 pixels per inch that costs $750 or lower.

Here's a couple:

HP Pavilion Plus Laptop: 14" 2.8K OLED, i5-13500H, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD $680 & More + Free S/H

HP has HP Pavilion Plus Laptop (14t-eh100) on sale for $679.99 when you follow the deal instructions below. Shipping is free. Thanks to Community Member Dr.Wajahat for finding this deal. Dea ...

slickdeals.net

ASUS ZenBook 14X: 14.5" 2.8K OLED 120Hz Touch, i7-13700H, 16GB LPDDR5, 512GB SSD $649.99

New available for $649.99 $999.99 Open-Box Excellent also available for $563.99 in 'Buying Options'. SPECS: 14.5" 2.8K (2880x1800) 16:10, 120Hz 0.2ms, 400-nits, 550-nits Peak, 100% DCI-P ...

slickdeals.net

Now, find me any Macbook with OLED display.

 

[MadRat]

Best Buy? After the training leak last week I'd be looking elsewhere if not for their already stupid product choices. They literally were an Apple, Lenovo, and HP shop with not much else. They haven't showcased much else for the past two years. I can buy direct from Dell or shop aggregate sites like Newegg for 100x more options.

 

[igor_kavinski]

You bought one.

I had no intention of buying it. Wanted to get rid of brand new 3060 Ti Fe and PNY 3080 10GB (stupidly bought them without thinking it through). The local market was offering crap prices so this one shop offered me the M1 Macbook plus about $82 cash. Now the M1 is just lying unused collecting dust. Maybe it will come in handy in future? Might try stable diffusion on it for fun.

 

[Eug]

A17: 6 GPU cores.
M3: 12 GPU cores.
M3 Pro: 24 GPU cores.
M3 Max: 48 GPU cores.

Mark Gurman is claiming:

M3 - CPU 4+4 cores, GPU 10 cores (not 12)
M3 Pro - CPU 6+6 or 8+6 cores, GPU 18 or 20 cores (not 24)
M3 Max - CPU 12+4 cores, GPU 32 or 40 cores (not 48)
M3 Ultra - CPU 24+8 cores, GPU 64 or 80 cores

It should be 12/512 GB.

I think a minimum of 8 GB / 256 does make sense (as my kids and my wife are totally fine with that for their entry level type usage on their three Macs), although my preference would be 12 GB / 256 GB.

 

[mikegg]

Here's a couple:

HP Pavilion Plus Laptop: 14" 2.8K OLED, i5-13500H, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD $680 & More + Free S/H

HP has HP Pavilion Plus Laptop (14t-eh100) on sale for $679.99 when you follow the deal instructions below. Shipping is free. Thanks to Community Member Dr.Wajahat for finding this deal. Dea ...

slickdeals.net

ASUS ZenBook 14X: 14.5" 2.8K OLED 120Hz Touch, i7-13700H, 16GB LPDDR5, 512GB SSD $649.99

New available for $649.99 $999.99 Open-Box Excellent also available for $563.99 in 'Buying Options'. SPECS: 14.5" 2.8K (2880x1800) 16:10, 120Hz 0.2ms, 400-nits, 550-nits Peak, 100% DCI-P ...

slickdeals.net

Now, find me any Macbook with OLED display.

OLED laptop displays are quite a bit inferior to mini LED used by Macbook Pros. The brightness difference is staggering. I doubt Apple would want OLED until the tech gets much better.

In addition, I haven't seen any OLED laptop screens that are above 4k resolution and has 120hz. Those are minimum requirements for a MBP 16".

Oh wow, you did manage to find some on sale. Good job! I admit defeat on that one.

I will now go back to my old challenge:

* The best entry-level laptop SoC on the market
* Fanless
* Best entry-level laptop speakers
* Best touchpad
* All metal enclosure
* Retina display that others go up to 4k to match
* Same performance plugged in and unplugged
* 18 hours of battery life
* Uses more expensive LPDDR RAM

Find me a Windows laptop that comes close for $899 and has 16/512. You can't.

 

[Doug S]

I really like macs, I like that apple as a company won't let up on quality being their main selling point. But for so many of us I would rather have actually good specs instead of a laptop that feels nice to hold. Apple corks up these amazing chips with lower specs just because it drives sales other SKUs. 8/256 macbook airs only exist to sell higher specc'd variants that have higher margins.

I agree. For a company that goes all-in on quality to the point that they exactly specify particularly high grades of metal for stuff like the bands in iPhone or the case in a Macbook selling a fairly measly configuration in 2023 doesn't quite fit the rest of the quality picture. I mean they sell iPhones with 6 GB of RAM and those are single user devices that run only one foreground application at a time, giving you only 2 GB more for a laptop isn't all that generous.

The only reason I can see why they stuck with 8 GB is because they will now apparently go to 12 GB base config due to larger DRAM dies being used. So it sort of makes sense not going to 16 GB because if they had they couldn't very well go backwards to 12 GB so they'd have had to jump to 24 GB for their new base with M3. At least that's how I'm guessing it goes, based on reported configurations of 36 GB and 48 GB M3 Macs being tested everything seems to be in 12 GB chunks this time around.

They don't seem to want to manage more than two SKUs for the LPDDR stacks, though if they were willing to tolerate one more perhaps (I'm not really sure) 18 GB would have been an option. If they did 18/512 I don't think anyone would have much ground to complain about that as the entry level config on lower end offerings like the Air and the Mini.

 

[dr1337]

* The best entry-level laptop SoC on the market

Arguably its not because the m1/m2 being so powerful they are held back by low system specs.

Fanless

So a laptop that gets physically hotter and is prone to heatsoak?

* Best entry-level laptop speakers

My dude doesn't have a sound bar, or a bluetooth speaker, or headphones? You want laptop speakers?

* All metal enclosure

This is reasonable.

* Retina display that others go up to 4k to match

Its barely a hair above 1440p in resolution, putting it on the level of 4k is about a 60% stretch.

* Same performance plugged in and unplugged

The only way that's possible is by power limiting your chip, AKA reducing potential performance. That's just physics.

* 18 hours of battery life

I'd be interested if this one were actually true but I'm sure its not. Maybe if you only use the device for safari.

* Uses more expensive LPDDR RAM

haha!

I will now go back to my old challenge:

I concede that you have a specific list of requirements that only the product you like can fulfill. For me I don't know why someone would want to buy a premium SOC like an m1 to only have it used for chromebook duties.

If Apple wants to take more than 20% of the marketshare then they're gonna have to do something other than sell laptops that are only 80% perfect. Upgradability would make me seriously consider/recommend a mac for a new laptop.

Heck I had a few ipods back in the day, used to rip many CDs, and so my entire music collection barely fits under 100gb. Using a brand new base model macbook air as a media player, something I regularly do on a old windows laptop, seems rough and not fun without paying a lot for slightly more storage. A 256gb laptop with unupgradable storage just seems like a sad device to me

Defending apple saving $20 on a couple of chips so that they can upsell higher end models is absurd. As your challenge clearly shows, the other specs of the laptop are great, so they should stop pointlessly choking them for the sake of money.

 

[Ajay]

If Apple wants to take more than 20% of the marketshare then they're gonna have to do something other than sell laptops that are only 80% perfect. Upgradability would make me seriously consider/recommend a mac for a new laptop.

They don't. They just want high profits with a large enough market share to keep developers interested. That is all working fine for Apple. These large companies aren't interested in d*ck measuring contests. Just revenues and, especially, profits.

 

[trivik12]

You mean this?

View attachment 84394

Compared to this?

View attachment 84395

I'm not sure why you're comparing these 2 laptops. They're completely in completely different classes.

If you want just want raw storage, RAM, and an Nvidia GPU, then of course a Macbook Air isn't for you.

Compare it with something that is meant to be compared with. The closest thing is Dell XPS 13 Plus.

I'm still waiting for someone to come up with a laptop that has the same build quality as a Macbook Air and costs around the same. I've been waiting for years. No one has ever come up with one. Anything that comes close costs significantly more than a Macbook Air and is somehow still worse. IE. Dell XPS 13 Plus.

Nah. you are comparing gaming vs thin and light laptop.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/uploads/tx_nbc2/AcerSwift3SF313-53__1_.JPG

Acer Swift 3 tends to be constantly on sale. I have bought 12th gen for $350 with 8/512. Its great for my daughter for sure.

 

[Doug S]

If Apple wants to take more than 20% of the marketshare then they're gonna have to do something other than sell laptops that are only 80% perfect. Upgradability would make me seriously consider/recommend a mac for a new laptop.

Given that Apple doesn't have even 10% of the PC market, they probably aren't too worried about what they need to do to go over 20%. They have plenty of room to grow with their current strategy, and anyway their biggest roadblock isn't the lack of upgradability (well under 10% of PCs are EVER upgraded during their lifecycle) or the price, but the dominance and ubiquity of Windows.

 

[A///]

Given that Apple doesn't have even 10% of the PC market, they probably aren't too worried about what they need to do to go over 20%. They have plenty of room to grow with their current strategy, and anyway their biggest roadblock isn't the lack of upgradability (well under 10% of PCs are EVER upgraded during their lifecycle) or the price, but the dominance and ubiquity of Windows.

adding to this it's disingenuous to state upgradeability is a pathway to consideration for an apple based laptop when many windows based laptops have also undertaken the soldered components approach. apple's products service a specific subset of consumers outside general users who prefer the platform and harmonious syncing of all apple devices together. these are a limited subset. I would venture to say that if apple's order books were public record the amount of customized laptops and other computers which veer off at a higher pricing scale are liminted n number compared to their base or close to base models.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I would venture to say that if apple's order books were public record the amount of customized laptops and other computers which veer off at a higher pricing scale are liminted n number compared to their base or close to base models.

That almost sounds like they are lazy and prefer to extract the most profits at the low end with base models rather than expecting people to get the customized higher end models because they KNOW the upgrades are priced unfairly so fewer people will bite the bullet hence lesser work for them to do.

 

[Glo.]

Mark Gurman is claiming:

M3 - CPU 4+4 cores, GPU 10 cores (not 12)
M3 Pro - CPU 6+6 or 8+6 cores, GPU 18 or 20 cores (not 24)
M3 Max - CPU 12+4 cores, GPU 32 or 40 cores (not 48)
M3 Ultra - CPU 24+8 cores, GPU 64 or 80 cores


I think a minimum of 8 GB / 256 does make sense (as my kids and my wife are totally fine with that for their entry level type usage on their three Macs), although my preference would be 12 GB / 256 GB.

I believe Gurman found base SKUs, only.

And there will be more surprises especially for M3 Max chip.

 

[A///]

That almost sounds like they are lazy and prefer to extract the most profits at the low end with base models rather than expecting people to get the customized higher end models because they KNOW the upgrades are priced unfairly so fewer people will bite the bullet hence lesser work for them to do.

It's because few normal people want or need the processing power memory and disk space we here use or need.