It would be a great move for Apple! Even if they could only get Nintendo agree to let them make/sell the hardware at a profit, put their non-Arcade services on it, use the eshop instead of the App Store, and let users play eshop games they've purchased on the Switch 2 on their Mac (for a fee...
Eh, for a Macbook 16 at least - with presumably 32 GPU cores - I think 4x LPDDR5-6400 is enough. 200GB/s bandwidth, and you are scaling the bandwidth almost linearly with the number of additional GPU cores relative to the M1. Performance will still be well above the 5600M.
No idea what...
I think you misread - I said "clocked at iPhone speeds." To be more specific, 16 Firestorm cores clocked around 2.89GHz would use around 40W. You could get to 3GHz on 5NP, though.
The only reason I was thinking about thermals is because this is a pretty ambitious proposition for the MBP16...
Wow. This is written by Gurman, but it reads like a Macrumors thread. The claim that Apple is making a 16x firestorm core part for laptops is kind of hard to believe on its face.
It does survive a baseline viability test. Clocked at iPhone speeds, 16 perf cores would use about 40W. Clocked...
Yeah, I feel like big.LITTLE already accomplishes SMT's goal of more threads in an elegant way. The Icestorm cores do take up a little die space, but it's not much. The upside is appreciable: the thermal impact of the Icestorm cores is low, while SMT necessarily piles more work onto the hottest...
I may staring a little too hard into the void. But we're so used to seeing x86 parts just go off as their thermal headroom increases, and the conventional wisdom that while laptops are good enough for most tasks there's no replacement for being able to crank desktop power consumption through...
The flood of benchmarks for the M1 have been pretty much all positive. But one small sour note seems to have gone underdiscussed.
The Mac Mini hits the same single-core performance targets as the Macbook Air in benchmarks. Of course, the Mini can doubtless sustain this performance for much...
That skepticism is understandable. The reality is that the M1 will outperform Tiger Lake by a lot on native apps, which will be few and far between at launch.
I have no reservations about the M1's performance in theory, though.
Quick note, just for people wondering. Andrei did confirm the M1 uses 2x LPDDR4X modules. The Finnish site is wrong.
But please do not despair. If we are good consumers, and we buy Apple One Pro Max subscriptions as Tim Apple asks us to do, I am sure he will someday deliver us an SoC with...
@Eug I guess we finally have our answer - Apple didn't go with the A14 in the Air but gave it a best-in-class part instead. I have no doubt the MBA will be the best fanless notebook ever made and by a large margin.
On the other hand, I can feel the aura of disappointment from MBP13 fans. Even...
Sure, I'll... conject. The A14X is probably a lot like the A12X. Four high perf cores, 7 or 8 GPU cores, and will work in fanless designs. I think pretty much everyone would guess this part exists and is as described.
The A14T is probably the Bloomberg APU. I'll guess 10 GPU cores. It...
Yeah, I don't want to extrapolate too much about GPU performance on compute scores. Apple has been keen on GPGPU for awhile now and I don't doubt that they excel in that area.
...But I can't help but mull over this 34.5% difference a little. The memory configurations appear to be the same...
Did a very lazy random sample of compute (ie gpu) scores for the "iPhone13" models on Geekbench vs the iPhone 11 Pro. 9173 > 7510.4; 22% performance increase. I didn't stratify the "iPhone13" entries with more or less RAM, but looking at the results I didn't see any evidence that there was a...
I wonder if anyone here took an interest in this article from the other day? Based on what we know about the performance of Apple's GPU cores, it seems like not much has changed with them - it looks like they just split the difference on power/performance benefits from N5 and made few (if any)...
I don't think there's any doubt that the A14X will be larger and devote more die area to the GPU. We've already seen Apple double GPU cores with the A12X.
What I'm wondering about is more to do with whether or not the cores themselves will see changes. As you say, the phone is already...
Fair! More worried about the 8% GPU increase, which sounds like "we put the A13 GPU on N5." But I'm getting talked into the idea that they moved graphics engineers onto another pipeline, and we'll see a new GPU core debut with a Mac or iPad Pro.
Maybe? That is odd. I don't think there's been any direct comparison between the A10 and A12 before. Here's what Apple says about the A10 vs the A11:
A11 Bionic, the most powerful and smartest chip ever in a smartphone, features a six-core CPU design with two performance cores that are 25...
Yeah, I looked at it again and they definitely said "compared to the previous iPad Air." They also say "40% more transistors than our seven nanometer chip" which, well, the A12 is 7nm.
Great catch. Well, that settles it.
The performance of the CPU is in line with expectations. Though I...
This is also what I'm trying to figure out. Are they comparing it to the A12? Or the A13?
Because if they're comparing it to the A12, those graphics improvements are pretty modest. Which is not a great place to be when you are about to launch an SoC lineup based on this design that is...
I've kind of had the iPad Magic Keyboard design on my mind too. Is something like this possible on notebooks?
The iPad also has this "canvas mode"
But I think something similar to the Surface Studio's "drafting mode" might also be achievable for notebooks:
I'm sure artists and designers...
You pressed a good argument earlier in this thread that the MB Air would be fine with a dual (perf) core A14. There have also been rumors since then that an A14X is coming in an iPad Pro in 1H 2021. All things considered, if both of these SoCs are ready - why not use both?
You can sell two...
Thanks for sharing this. I don't take all of JEDEC's info about their own memory at face value, but understand that lower speeds could be used for less power. Still, I recommend you take a look at this study, especially Section 5.3. In broad strokes, you'll see HBM2 using much more power...
All correct. But efficiency doesn't mean less power used, it means more bang for your buck. But the bandwidth is a lot higher than LPDDR, so power is higher too.
And it's dense. And it's near the APU cores. It's a heat/area problem in the MBP16 which can't cool it's internals at the rate of...
I'm just going off memory here, but I think the CPU either treated the HBM as cache or didn't use it at all.
As for your question, it's a great one. I'm not sure. I don't presume HBM3 exists. Nor do I presume the theoretical 24GB stacks of HBM2E exist. Either one would make using HBM alone...
For clarification, are you suggesting that there would be HBM (of some variety) on package and DDR (of some variety) off package that would be treated, from the developer's perspective, as a single resource? I would not assert this is not doable, but I would presume it is very difficult. I'd...
I mean, how much confidence do we have in Samsung's 5nm node and Gate-All-Around 3nm node? What kind of volume can they realistically handle?
Because I am not sure TSMC would have capacity to supply Intel on N5P even after Apple has completely moved off of it. AMD already has their orders in...
I'd be willing to bet Apple keeps 3nm tied up though. They will have their entire product line on TSMC and they have a lot more money than AMD. And they are in the exact same position as AMD in regards to marketshare. I know the conventional wisdom is that Apple never goes for marketshare...
I think only the Mac Pro has a shot at upgradable RAM. I mean, none of those other models currently allow that except I think the Mac Pro and the iMac 27.
Though that doesn't mean the system memory for the Macbook Pro has to be on the APU package either; it could be soldered down somewhere...
Memory is one of the biggest questions for Apple Silicon IMO. One optimistic case I read recently was Apple really pumping up the CPU L cache and then going all in on on-package HBM for shared system memory. Absurd cache sizes allow the CPU cores to have very low latency while the GPU gets...
I've heard a few people whispering about HBM3. Are there any firm manufacturing commitments? As well as I'm aware HBM3 is borderline vaporware right now.
It is theoretically a game-changer. You could theoretically fit a 32GB stack of HBM3 in the same physical/thermal/cost space as a 16GB...
Oh, whoops. I guess the 27" does go to 8 cores.
I don't think it changes my message much though. The design challenges for AS on iMac in the near-term aren't insurmountable and it's reasonable to assume Apple might prefer to jump the low bar they've set for themselves now rather than clear a...
I think it's safe to assume anyone talking about HBM is talking about HBM2E. But I believe HBM2E actually uses more power than HBM and is even less appropriate for an Air.
I agree that iMac is likely to be soon and that it probably won't be AS. Though, I was surprised to find the entry level...
As well as I'm aware no one is manufacturing the 12-Hi stacks, so I'm ignoring them until that changes. One stack would be ideal, but 16GB is not enough for all-system memory from the MBP16 on up (the only devices I can really see them springing for HBM with) so you are stuck with two stacks no...
This thread has diverged wildly into apple-hate territory. We should get back on track discussing ideas for Apple's new silicon - and ignore the people who are just on here to start fights about whether Apple's products are a good value.
Someone shared an interesting idea on macrumors that I...
I'm not sure what you mean - in that context I'm describing a scenario where the Air has an SoC with 4 perf cores and 8 GPU cores. I don't think either Intel or AMD has a part that could provide better performance at any price.
Looking at your price breakdown I think we could make the case either way for whether or not the Air is "worth" an A14X. It may come down to timing; if Apple wanted to get the Air out this year the A14 is readily available and the specter of Cezanne U is probably half a year out. I'm less...
Oh man, an A12Z!! Gracious. I'm hoping you wind up pleasantly surprised by what Apple rolls out instead of me being cripplingly disappointed.
IMO, Apple will want to update the iPad Pro 1H 2022 with a new 4+4-and-8 SoC anyway. So why not use one they develop for the Air in 2021? Hell, I...
I appreciate tempered expectations but isn't this a little too conservative? The iPad has four performance cores... why would the Air only use 2? Not to mention the current Air is available in a four-core configuration...? No one is going to accept Icestorm cores as a substitute for Sunny...
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