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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[name99]

Isn't the bulk of Apple's data center activity centered around content distribution or cloud storage? Most of what they're doing doesn't seem like it needs a significant number of servers or computational power since it's mostly storage. It seems like they're trying to do most of their AI stuff on device.

For NOW. The whole point is that's going to change...
XCode in the Cloud is the small case right now. Some Siri.
Private Cloud Compute will be larger.

And things like Maps are a hybrid that require both sides to be useful.

 

[oak8292]

Is Apple doing its own iCloud data storage or is that still be outsourced to other cloud providers? iCloud may be big but it is a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of Amazon or Microsoft's cloud data storage. I'm not sure they DIY it less expensively than they could negotiate it with third parties.

As more countries are likely to have requirements that data has to be stored in their borders, Apple datacenters acting as a front end to talk to end user devices in "iCloud protocol" and passing the data off to third parties to store makes more sense than building infrastructure every time a country passes a law requiring local data storage.

Apple has a combination of solutions. They have eight dedicated data centers. Six in the U.S., one in China and one in Europe. They rent space in 29 third party data center locations. They still use third party cloud service providers like AWS and Akamai.

Apple has over a billion users and their services business is $100 billion per year. AWS revenue last year was $107 billion.

 

[Doug S]

Apple has a combination of solutions. They have eight dedicated data centers. Six in the U.S., one in China and one in Europe. They rent space in 29 third party data center locations. They still use third party cloud service providers like AWS and Akamai.

Apple has over a billion users and their services business is $100 billion per year. AWS revenue last year was $107 billion.

Knowing how many datacenters and how many they rent space us doesn't tell us anything about what percentage of iCloud data lives on Apple owned storage vs third party cloud storage.

The makeup of Apple's vs AWS's services businesses is quite different. ~$20 billion of Apple's "services" is Google paying them to make Google Search the default on Safari. A bunch of the rest is the 30% fee on App Store payments. Both are under threat - the DOJ may force Google to quit making deals like the one with Apple, and may force Apple to let third parties make it easy for iPhone owners to bypass Apple and pay with them.

Since almost every app these days is "free", with all the revenue coming in the form subscriptions and other in-app payments, Apple might be in a position where they have to maintain a huge App Store infrastructure to handle all the downloads but not derive any revenue from it (OK in reality some people would continue to pay through Apple because it is easier, but the government's position would force them into a situation where theoretically they could have to operate it for free) So Apple Services revenue might go from AWS scale to a quarter of the size in a few years, unless they can find new sources of services revenue. And Services may go from their highest margin to their lowest margin business if that happens.