melgross
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Apple unveils 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, M1 Max starting at $2499
These are by no means cheap chips. As Anandtech just said about these new chips;”Apple invested in silicon.” Meaning that these are large, and expensive. There is no other way to do what these do on chip.Mondain said:I thought that creating their own silicon would improve product performance AND drive prices down. At least, the M1 was touted as costing much less than the intel chips previously powering macs. I had expected cheaper prices.
frankly, it surprised me. I was thinking they would put a large GPU array on the substrate as they did with RAM so that they wouldn’t have to make such gigantic chips.
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Apple unveils 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Pro, M1 Max starting at $2499
I might have gotten an earlier date, because I started to order through the store in Apple’s site, but the bar didn’t move at some point, so I switched to the store App, where I had bought the phones and my watch through, so the process started again. The dates are actually between Nov 3rd and the 5th, not the 6th. That was a typo.docno42 said:
So you are the one I was competing withmelgross said:Ok, so. I ordered as soon as the store went live.
16” M1 Max, 64GB RAM, 2TB drive. Arrives between Nov 3rd (day after my birthday), and Nov 6th. Pretty good!
If I could have been a bit quicker the original date was October 26th. D'oh! -
Apple Silicon MacBook Pro and AirPods event is on October 18
I imagine e they could just extend the fabric they’re using now. I believe the RAM is on that fabric now. If so, then there shouldn’t be a problem for a CPU either.tht said:
For chip-to-chip comm, they'll be alright if they use an interposer or a silicon bridge between chips. However, Apple is famous or infamous for trying to make due with the minimum possible at a package level. If they can get away with using a 256 bus in the substrate PCB between a dGPU and the SoC, they will use it. Who knows.melgross said:
I’ve also been thinking that the graphics cores could be off chip but on the substrate. I think I mentioned that once. Latency might suffer a small amount, but not much. If they offload the GPU, then two benefits. One is that they have far more room on the substrate, which can be any size. Two is that there is now a lot more room on the chip for everything else, such as more, and bigger performance cores, or a 5G modem. Thought the modem would t be this year, of course.tht said:Big questions on my mind:
1. Will they offer 64 GB RAM, and if so, how? LPDDR5? In-package? 4 memory chips, or 8 in 4 pads stacked 2 high.
2. What's the deal with the GPU? Will they offer 32 cores? If so, 16 cores in the SoC, 16 cores off-chip but in package? If so, makes for an MCM with 5 to 9 chips.
3. If this M1X chip is used for the large iMac, how do they get to 128 GB RAM and 64 GPU cores?
This is the first true blue, designed for a Mac SoC. Will be interesting to see what design paths they chose.
There's a lot of implied constraints. If there is a 16c GPU in the SoC, and a 16c dGPU in-package, I would think this would mean the OS would see it as 2 GPUs. I can't see how this would work well from either a marketing or user standpoint. I'd think Apple would want these 2 GPUs to act as one, with the same latencies and bandwidth to SLC and main memory, and doubles GPU power with developers changing code. The easiest way out of this mess is to just fab a SoC with a 32 core GPU and fuse off cores, but fusing off half the GPUs is a gigantic waste of silicon.
Apple has to scale CPU cores and GPU cores way up for the large iMac and Mac Pro. And possibly mix and match the number of CPU vs GPU cores for different customers. It's quite the vexing problem. I think they can get out of the multi-chip integration mess if they used a silicon bridge between a dGPU and a the SoC chip switched fabric bus, and if the SLC latencies and bandwidth are the same, they can increase GPU power by just adding more in-package dGPUs. If this direct connection to the SoC fabric works. Big if.
It's quite the problem. Or, they just won't offer much option in CPU and GPU cores. Just 1 or 2 options and call it good enough. Which means, a customer who needs a of CPU cores will get a big GPU along for the ride, and vice versa.
Apple has to do something. There is simply no way that they can get 16, 32, 64 or the 128 cores on that chip. No way to get more than 6 performance core on the chip either if the GPU is still there. So eventually, I think they have to move the GPU off. They can’t just make the chip arbitrarily large, and shrinking node sizes are becoming less efficient and less able to fit more transistors in the same space according to the node, which has been a compromise since 22nm.
possibly they,l even take the ever increasing in size neural engine out. Something has to give in the highest end models. It can’t be all done on chip at those complexity levels. I can’t imagine that Apple isn’t working on that.
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Apple Silicon MacBook Pro and AirPods event is on October 18
The black screen bezels wasn’t always a thing. Monitors used to have a beige bezel, or a grey bezel, usually. When black bezels came out, people complained. Now people are so used to it that anything else seems wrong. You’ll get used to this too.patchythepirate said:
I just want an M1 iMac without a white border on the screen, don't care what size it is. Maybe I'm just too particular, but I'm surprised the white border didn't bother more people. It's jarring when the computer is off, or when watching a show (what TVs have white borders?), or when in dark mode, and even when the screen is on you still have that thin black border. Maybe this is just a preference thing, or maybe my feelings actually reflect objective aesthetic truths, and people just don't notice these irregularities enough for it to matter, just like they don't notice the drops of morning dew on a dandelion, or the hue of the sunset, or that the gd light turned green one minute ago.Eric_in_CT said:Desperate for a larger iMac refresh.
What does the Armchair-Predictor reveal?
in general, black bezels are thought to be better for still and video editing. I tend to agree. But white, or light grey (which these are closer to) are thought to be better for graphics publishing and general writing. Many flat screen TVs today, such as the Phillips, use colored lighting around the screen so it won’t be black, which gives the appearance of a larger screen.
with bezels becoming smaller, the colot becomes less important.
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Apple's iPhone unaffected by chip shortage hitting rivals
While true, it doesn’t have to be an Apple custom chip. It could be any chip. If just one chip is experiencing shortages, then that’s the weakest link, and is enough to stop everything dead in its tracks. It doesn’t even have to be a chip, it can be anything. It can be a chemical use to clean boards, or insulators for wiring. Or connectors. Or glue.mike1 said:Most of Apple's chips are custom to Apple. They can't be used elsewhere. It's not like there's a warehouse somewhere with chips that could be used in anything else. Stockpiling is what you do with with crude oil or corn. It's more a matter of securing manufacturing time and raw materials with foundries and using it to make what they need.
