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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[richardskrad]

How does the M2 Ultra stack up against the PC world? Apple Silicon is a SoC so it’s hard to quantity the difference between it and the individual parts in a PC.

You can get individual parts that are performing better in a PC but the SoC design, I’m sure, must bring something to the table right? Performance per watt is not important on desktop and that’s Apple’s biggest advantage. If we take that way, what does the M2 Ultra Mac Studio give people who spend so much money? Is it for video and photo editors who want a lot of performance in a quiet and small package?

 

[Qwertilot]

How does the M2 Ultra stack up against the PC world? Apple Silicon is a SoC so it’s hard to quantity the difference between it and the individual parts in a PC.

You can get individual parts that are performing better in a PC but the SoC design, I’m sure, must bring something to the table right? Performance per watt is not important on desktop and that’s Apple’s biggest advantage. If we take that way, what does the M2 Ultra Mac Studio give people who spend so much money? Is it for video and photo editors who want a lot of performance in a quiet and small package?

Can probably base things off this, not much will have changed except for mild increases from all sides:

Apple's M1 Pro, M1 Max SoCs Investigated: New Performance and Efficiency Heights

www.anandtech.com

(Then all scaled up for the ultra of course.).

There do seem to be some workloads where it really is simply sarcastically fast. Otherwise its just Apple's fastest chip overall, and very fast with it. A fairly massive GPU attached of course.

 

[Eug]

MBKHD review of 15" MBA:

Bottom line. Exactly the same aside from the bigger screen, louder speakers, bigger trackpad, and less CPU throttling. (Both the 13.6" and 15.3" MBAs are fanless.)



---

John Gruber interviewed a bunch of Apple execs. I'm not a big fan of his interviewing style in this interview, but he is at least fairly knowledgeable. Anyhow, he asked about the design choices and limitations of the new Apple Silicon Mac Pro:

Questions and responses

Re: RAM being only 192 GB - Unified RAM is a big deal. Yes RAM for CPU is now more limited at the high end, but for RAM for GPU is way more than for previous GPUs.

Re: PCIe slots but no third party GPUs - PCIe can be used for high speed storage, like for audio production. PCIe can also be used for high speed network cards, for high end colour grading workflows. Apple's design is based around a unified memory architecture, so third party GPUs don't make sense in this context.

Re: The necessity for GPUs for AI - Apple's design has its own strengths and others have theirs.

 

[richardskrad]

delete

 

[Eug]

M2 Ultra Mac Studio reviews are hitting the net.

M2 Ultra Mac Studio review: Top of the line

The M1 Mac Studio arrived last year with a shock, an entirely new class of Mac that debuted as the fastest Mac around. But with the Mac Pro presumably coming down the road, what role (if any) would…

sixcolors.com

Geekbench 5 (not 6) comparisons:

M2 Ultra Mac Studio review: Who needs a Mac Pro, anyway?

The realities of Apple Silicon make the Studio the best bet for most pros.

arstechnica.com

Ars says it's still silent.

Geebench 6.1 comparison, for @Doug S:





Ars also pointed out Hector Martin's post about the Mac Pro's PCIe, saying it's a cheat.

Hector Martin (@marcan@treehouse.systems)

Yeah okay so they are totally cheating. They have two big PCIe switches and are hanging everything off of them. From the device tree: # 8x Gen4 lanes on die 0, switched: - x1 to USB internal - x2 to SATA internal - x4 to I/O card (USB, probably single lane connected) - x8 to slot6 - x1 to...

social.treehouse.systems

Yeah okay so they are totally cheating.

They have two big PCIe switches and are hanging everything off of them.

 

[Markfw]

Those numbers don't compare it to anything else. What good is that ?

 

[Ajay]

Those numbers don't compare it to anything else. What good is that ?

For people considering Mac upgrades. Or, since this is a CPU subforum, just for an estimate of the improvements in the SOC.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Those numbers don't compare it to anything else. What good is that ?

M2 Ultra GB5 ST score is less than a Ryzen 7700X.

M2 Ultra GB5 MT score is slightly less than 13900K but more than 7950X.

Source: https://www.thefpsreview.com/2022/12/02/amd-ryzen-7-7700x-cpu-review/3/

What makes the M2 Ultra a juicy proposition is the power consumption. Under 62 watts, nothing comes close.

 

[Markfw]

M2 Ultra GB5 ST score is less than a Ryzen 7700X.

M2 Ultra GB5 MT score is slightly less than 13900K but more than 7950X.

Source: https://www.thefpsreview.com/2022/12/02/amd-ryzen-7-7700x-cpu-review/3/

What makes the M2 Ultra a juicy proposition is the power consumption. Under 62 watts, nothing comes close.

Well, I have not tried that low, but at 65 watt, the 7950x is supposed to be killer.

 

[Tarkin77]

at 65W, 7950X is faster in Cinebench R23

(Ryzen 9 7945HX is even faster with 33-34k in CB R23)

 

[Doug S]

Yeah okay so they are totally cheating.

They have two big PCIe switches and are hanging everything off of them.

That's pretty much irrelevant for their market. Apple doesn't support third party GPUs so the stuff people will be connecting will be PCIe cards for a storage array or 100GbE class networking, or specialty cards for video production like Blackmagic. Very few of those are PCIe 4.0, so the 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes are equivalent to 32 PCIe 3.0 lanes - and even then sharing via switch is only a problem if you are using a bunch of cards operating at/near max PCIe bandwidth.

Anyway as I've said before I think this Mac Pro is a placeholder, and the real one will arrive next year based on two or four M3 Max dies (i.e. M3 "Extreme" or whatever they end up calling it the true high end) This form factor with 6 PCIe slots may have been designed with that "Extreme" future in mind, since the additional two Max dies will provide another 32 PCIe 4.0 lanes (or possibly PCIe 5.0 with M3 Max?) so oversubscription on the 6 PCIe slots will be pretty much eliminated.

Apple is going to want to use the same form factor for the low end (Ultra) and high end (Extreme) versions of the Mac Pro, so rather than cutting it down to 3 PCIe slots in the lower end one it'll still have 6 slots they'll just be oversubscribed.

 

[eek2121]

That's pretty much irrelevant for their market. Apple doesn't support third party GPUs so the stuff people will be connecting will be PCIe cards for a storage array or 100GbE class networking, or specialty cards for video production like Blackmagic. Very few of those are PCIe 4.0, so the 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes are equivalent to 32 PCIe 3.0 lanes - and even then sharing via switch is only a problem if you are using a bunch of cards operating at/near max PCIe bandwidth.

Anyway as I've said before I think this Mac Pro is a placeholder, and the real one will arrive next year based on two or four M3 Max dies (i.e. M3 "Extreme" or whatever they end up calling it the true high end) This form factor with 6 PCIe slots may have been designed with that "Extreme" future in mind, since the additional two Max dies will provide another 32 PCIe 4.0 lanes (or possibly PCIe 5.0 with M3 Max?) so oversubscription on the 6 PCIe slots will be pretty much eliminated.

Apple is going to want to use the same form factor for the low end (Ultra) and high end (Extreme) versions of the Mac Pro, so rather than cutting it down to 3 PCIe slots in the lower end one it'll still have 6 slots they'll just be oversubscribed.

GPUs may or may not be supported. This was not confirmed. The M2 Ultra apparently has a different PCIE controller.

Even if not, ML accelerators are still supported. Th e integrated GPU is also nothing to sneeze at. It apparently is between the 4070 and 4070ti in terms of performance. It also has access to up to 192gb of RAM.

I wish Intel and AMD would release a chip like this.

 

[StinkyPinky]

M2 Ultra GB5 ST score is less than a Ryzen 7700X.

M2 Ultra GB5 MT score is slightly less than 13900K but more than 7950X.

Source: https://www.thefpsreview.com/2022/12/02/amd-ryzen-7-7700x-cpu-review/3/

What makes the M2 Ultra a juicy proposition is the power consumption. Under 62 watts, nothing comes close.

Which is great for laptops, but you really have to question the value of the Mac Pro desktop. You can get a 13900K with a 4090 GPU and 128GB ram for half the price and miles more GPU performance.

 

[igor_kavinski]

You can get a 13900K with a 4090 GPU and 128GB ram for half the price and miles more GPU performance.

That's fine if you are fine with paying the power bill. Not everyone is OK with that much heat emission and power usage. For those who want the coolest, quietest yet powerful system, Apple is happy to oblige, with a price that unfortunately reflects how neglected this space is by the other ARM licensees.

 

[Mopetar]

Pretty good results from Apple. Just being able to compete with the best from Intel and AMD is amazing.

I'm really interested to see some GPU tests to see where the stack up against AMD/Nvidia in that regard. Now that they've got some software to support DX12 emulation we can start to get more comparisons by seeing how they stack up against WINE/Proton performance on Linux. It's not perfect, but there are so few titles with good native support that it's difficult to judge how they actually stack up.

 

[trivik12]

That's fine if you are fine with paying the power bill. Not everyone is OK with that much heat emission and power usage. For those who want the coolest, quietest yet powerful system, Apple is happy to oblige, with a price that unfortunately reflects how neglected this space is by the other ARM licensees.

These benchmarks are extreme use cases. Average power consumption is not about when CPU/GPU is pushed to max. So its exaggeration that its ok to pay several 1000$ upfront for greater efficiency for a workstation !!! I can understand for laptops for sure.

 

[Eug]

Pretty good results from Apple. Just being able to compete with the best from Intel and AMD is amazing.

I'm really interested to see some GPU tests to see where the stack up against AMD/Nvidia in that regard. Now that they've got some software to support DX12 emulation we can start to get more comparisons by seeing how they stack up against WINE/Proton performance on Linux. It's not perfect, but there are so few titles with good native support that it's difficult to judge how they actually stack up.

LTT tested a few games with the new game porting toolkit on M1 Ultra:

I won't draw any conclusions since I'm not a gamer anymore (since the original Unreal Tournament on Windows), so I don't know enough about gaming through WINE or Proton or gaming overall.

What I can say though is that this was essentially just a demo to see if it works (it does, sometimes) and to see if games that do work are playable in terms of frame rates (some are, some aren't).

Anyway as I've said before I think this Mac Pro is a placeholder, and the real one will arrive next year based on two or four M3 Max dies (i.e. M3 "Extreme" or whatever they end up calling it the true high end) This form factor with 6 PCIe slots may have been designed with that "Extreme" future in mind, since the additional two Max dies will provide another 32 PCIe 4.0 lanes (or possibly PCIe 5.0 with M3 Max?) so oversubscription on the 6 PCIe slots will be pretty much eliminated.

Apple is going to want to use the same form factor for the low end (Ultra) and high end (Extreme) versions of the Mac Pro, so rather than cutting it down to 3 PCIe slots in the lower end one it'll still have 6 slots they'll just be oversubscribed.

I appreciate your optimism for M3 series. I hope you're right, but I can't say I'm as confident as you are.

Anyhow, I was totally wrong with my own prediction. Back in 2021 (without any design knowledge) I predicted a "P" series architecture or something that would allow for additional non-unified memory. But for about the last year or so I've known that prediction would be wrong, given all the leaks about the Mac Pro that have come out over that time.

P.S. Maybe I'll sell my 2017 m3 MacBook when M3 comes out in 2024.

 

[moinmoin]

Now that they've got some software to support DX12 emulation we can start to get more comparisons by seeing how they stack up against WINE/Proton performance on Linux.

In case people missed it, Apple is using Wine as well for this Game Porting Toolkit. The graphics translation layer seems to be its own thing, though there not everything is GPL so Apple isn't obligated to contribute back if they took something from e.g.(zlib/MIT licensed) DXVK.

 

[Eug]

In case people missed it, Apple is using Wine as well for this Game Porting Toolkit. The graphics translation layer seems to be its own thing, though there not everything is GPL so Apple isn't obligated to contribute back if they took something from e.g.(zlib/MIT licensed) DXVK.

Yes, good you pointed that out. Linus describes it in the video I linked above.

 

[StinkyPinky]

That's fine if you are fine with paying the power bill. Not everyone is OK with that much heat emission and power usage. For those who want the coolest, quietest yet powerful system, Apple is happy to oblige, with a price that unfortunately reflects how neglected this space is by the other ARM licensees.

Perhaps if you're in Europe where power costs are higher, but surely the few grand you save isn't going to be even close to being chewed up by power in its lifetime. You can literally buy a 13900K/4090 GPU/128 GB RAM system AND TWO 5K Apple/LG monitors and still have a couple of grand left over.

That's a hard sell for me as someone who is platform agnostic and doesn't care which OS I use.

 

[Ajay]

That's a hard sell for me as someone who is platform agnostic and doesn't care which OS I use.

I don't think you are the target consumer for the Mac Pro. Apple is likely targeting specific professionals who's workflow is tied in to Mac applications and hardware in the Mac ecosystem.

 

[Eug]

Some GPU and media accelerator benches.

 

[Glo.]

I mean, Apple on the same node provided 30% performance uplift, and for what they are, M2 series chips are EXTREMELY impressive. There is nothing that comes close to performance per watt on the market.

Imagine what they can do with a full node shrink, tho...

 

[moinmoin]

There is nothing that comes close to performance per watt on the market.

Isn't the original M1 still the most efficient of them all?

 

[Glo.]

Isn't the original M1 still the most efficient of them all?

They are roughly equal in terms of per/watt.