[HN Gopher] Apple M1 Ultra Meanings and Consequences
___________________________________________________________________
Apple M1 Ultra Meanings and Consequences
Author : carlycue
Score : 180 points
Date : 2022-03-14 13:56 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mondaynote.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mondaynote.com)
| planb wrote:
| > Surprise, Apple announced not an M2 device but a new member of
| the M1 family, the M1 Ultra.
|
| Really this dod not come as a surprise to anyone interested in
| Apple's chips, it was rumored as "Jade-2C" for a long time. And
| they were not expected to release a "pro" version of M2 before
| the standard version for the new MacBook Air neither.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I'm not sure how Intel can ever compete in the consumer laptop
| market again. Apple could easily produce a knocked down M1
| Macbook base model for ~$599, at which point all but the low end
| Chromebook market goes to them.
| wmf wrote:
| Intel Arrow Lake may be competitive with M2 Pro, maybe M2 Max.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Alder Lake is no slouch and already out. M1, and really MacOS
| itself, need to both be substantially better than they are
| already to get people to move off of Windows or Linux & x86 in
| general
| klelatti wrote:
| 2021 Mac market share gains prove this to be incorrect.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Source & analysis needed.
|
| Poking around Apple's 2021 marketshare wasn't anything
| particularly special, and
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/576473/united-states-
| qua... isn't showing any sort of "M1 driven spike", either.
| Apple's y/y growth was larger than PC's y/y growth (Annual
| growth for Mac was 28.3%, against 14.6% for the global PC
| market), but note there both are still growing. Meaning M1
| didn't suddenly convert the industry.
|
| Regardless a one year data point certainly doesn't prove a
| trend, certainly not of the "Apple is going to destroy
| Intel/AMD/Nvidia" variety.
| klelatti wrote:
| So M1 and MacOS aren't good enough to get people to
| switch but we have Mac sales increasing at almost double
| the PC market. Hmmm.
|
| And fair enough to say many people won't switch because
| of inertia / software lock in which is true - but that's
| not because of the quality of M1 or MacOS.
| hajile wrote:
| With inflation and chip supply issues, Apple is much more
| likely to keep their prices and wait for everything else to
| catch up.
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| Well, with the pocket size of Intel, I would assume that some
| sort of serious research would be going on at the moment to
| maintain their dominance in that market.
|
| They would fight Apple in this. They also have AMD to fight for
| the non-M1 chip market... For a company used to enjoying
| dominance they have a lot of work to do to remain at the top.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Intel at this point is famous for blowing tons of R&D budget
| with little to show for it. I think the better question is if
| Intel can successfully eject its incompetent managers from
| the company.
| kayoone wrote:
| i don't think Apple is particularly interested in the low end
| Chromebook market. It has also been largely replaced by tablets
| and phablets and is pretty niche nowadays.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >i don't think Apple is particularly interested in the low
| end Chromebook market. It has also been largely replaced by
| tablets and phablets and is pretty niche nowadays.
|
| Kind of my point though; the low end isn't even worth it for
| PC manufacturers anymore. And by the time you get to a ~$600
| laptop, you can have a cheap M1 device with 10x the
| performance/watt. The new M1 iPad Air starts at $700, and
| absolutely blows any existing Intel laptop out of the water,
| short of a desktop replacement gaming rig with discrete GPU.
| simonh wrote:
| It'll never happen, far too many people that would otherwise
| buy a $1000 laptop would buy a $600 one instead. Why give up
| that $400?
| MichaelRazum wrote:
| Would love if you could run linux on it. That would be really
| amazing.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Progress on this front has been going pretty well.
|
| It's still not ready for everyday usage (though the people
| working on porting it might already be using it), but it's way
| moving a lot faster than one would guess. I'm considering a Mac
| Mini build machine sometime during 2022, it might be feasible
| for that.
|
| See https://asahilinux.org/2021/12/progress-report-oct-
| nov-2021/ or follow https://twitter.com/marcan42
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Crayne's Law: _All computers wait at the same speed_
| nickcw wrote:
| Amdahal's Law says hello.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law
|
| If we keep scaling up number of processors rather than clock
| speed, what is going to be the maximum number useful cores in a
| laptop or desktop? 20? 100? 1000? At some point adding more cores
| is going to make no difference to the user experience, but the
| way we are going we'll be at 1000 cores in about a decade so we
| better start thinking about it now.
|
| Or to put it another way, what normal workloads will load up all
| the cores in the new M1 chip?
|
| Being a software developer, compiling things is the obvious
| choice, except when you come to that rather serial linking phase
| at the end of the compile job. Already my incremental Go compiles
| are completely dominated by the linking phase.
|
| There are a few easy to parallelise tasks, mostly to do with
| media (as it says in the article). However a lot of stuff isn't
| like that. Will 20 cores speed up my web browser? How about
| Excel?
|
| Your average user is going to prefer double the clock rate of
| your processors to doubling the number of processors.
|
| Anyway, I don't want to rain on Apple's parade with these musings
| - the M1 Ultra is an amazing achievement and it certainly isn't
| for your average user. I wish I had one in a computer of my
| choice running Linux!
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Amdahals law is sometimes brought out as a whammy (not saying
| that is what you do), but economically we would expect that
| there will be a usage for this extra compute: we did it server
| side by hosting SAAS and thereby adding more users than anybody
| could think of.
|
| I suspect that rather than 1000 cores we might start to see
| more levels of cores, and hardware for more things. Already
| Apple has video encoding support. AI seems an obvious idea and
| it scales much better than most classical computing.
|
| If I may bring up something that may be more of a wish: I wish
| that we could give up the idea of shared memory and we could
| have many more cores that communicated by shared messaging. We
| are already seeing this spread with webworkers - if it became
| cheap to create a new thread and computers weren't bottlenecked
| then maybe more games would use it too.
| samwillis wrote:
| Message passing without shared memory is slow, having to copy
| data and maybe even serialise/deserialise it in the process.
| Message passing where you are just passing a pointer is fast.
|
| Web workers are basically the worst case, you have to
| serialise your data to and from JSON when passing it to and
| from a worker. It's not built for performance. There have
| been many cases where people have tried to improve
| performance of their apps by offloading work to a web worker
| but the added cost of serialisation ultimately made it slower
| than running on the main thread.
| minhazm wrote:
| I'm guessing you mean double the single core performance and
| not clock speed. Even Intel Pentium 4's from 2000 had higher
| clock speeds than Apple's M1 chips. The clock speed matters far
| less than what you can actually get done in a single clock
| cycle. Just looking at Apple's own products and their single
| core performance from Geekbench you can see they achieved
| around a 40% improvement in just single core performance [1].
| So it's not just adding more cores. Apple has usually been the
| one to hold out on cores and usually has resisted adding more
| cores to the iPhone / iPad chips in the past and focused on
| better single core performance.
|
| > Your average user is going to prefer double the clock rate of
| your processors to doubling the number of processors.
|
| I disagree. The reality is that these days people are running
| multi-threaded workloads even if they don't know it. Running a
| dozen chrome tabs, Slack, Teams, Zoom, some professional tools
| like IDE's, Adobe creative suite, etc. adds up very quickly to
| a lot of processes that can use a lot of cores.
|
| [1] https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks
| rayiner wrote:
| > Even Intel Pentium 4's from 2000 had higher clock speeds
| than Apple's M1 chips.
|
| It's wild to see that in print.
| ac29 wrote:
| Isnt true though - the Pentium 4 was released in 2000, but
| the fastest version available that year was only 1.5GHz. It
| wouldnt hit 3.2GHz (~M1) until 2003.
| pantulis wrote:
| Isn't running multiple single-threaded workloads at the same
| time also a case for better performance with more cores? So
| even for basic tasks having more cores is better (although
| maybe not that cost-efficient)
| katbyte wrote:
| only if those workloads are very CPU intensive, and the
| ones that are should probably be parallelized as much as
| possible anyway.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Sort of related: Adobe creative cloud is the most
| bloated, CPU-inefficient system I've ever had the
| displeasure of working with as a professional editor. I
| get FCPX is apple's NLE but the render times smoke
| premier in comparison and CC in general is just way too
| busy in the background.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| If I were to make a best case scenario on where multiprocessing
| , GPU acceleration and the neural engine I would say a iOS App
| development using a simulator , a container that contains your
| backend services and the iOS app using ML inference. Training
| on the M1 Ultra isn't really worth it.
| paulmd wrote:
| Apple's advantage is actually that it provides much higher
| single-thread (really, per-thread) performance than
| "comparable" x86 processors. A M1 Pro can match a 12900HK in
| perfectly-threaded high-code-density scenarios like Cinebench,
| with half the thread count. Real-world IPC is something like 3x
| (!) that of Intel right now - obviously it also clocks lower
| but Apple hits very hard in lower-thread-count scenarios.
|
| If your code is bottlenecked on a single thread, or if it
| doesn't scale well to higher thread counts, Apple is actually
| great right now. The downside is that _you can 't get higher
| core counts_, but that's where the Pro and Ultra SKUs come in.
|
| (The real, real downside is that right now you can't get higher
| core counts on M1 without being tied to a giant GPU you may not
| even use. What would be really nice is an M1 Ultra-sized chip
| with 20C or 30C and the same iGPU size as A14 or M1, or a
| server chip full of e-cores like Denverton or Sierra Forest,
| but that's very much not Apple's wheelhouse in terms of
| products unfortunately.)
| __init wrote:
| > Real-world IPC is something like 3x (!) that of Intel right
| now - obviously it also clocks lower
|
| That's the problem, though -- if you clock yourself much
| lower, of course you can get higher IPC; you can pack more
| into your critical paths.
|
| Now, certainly Apple has some interesting and significant
| innovations over Intel here, but quoting IPC figures like
| that is highly misleading.
| paulmd wrote:
| Of course IPC needs to be contextualized, but it's still a
| very important metric. And Intel's processors aren't
| clocked 3x higher than Apple either - that would be 9 GHz,
| and you can't even sustain 5 GHz all-core at 35W let alone
| 9 GHz which just isn't physically possible even on LN2.
|
| https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph17024/117496.png
|
| That's an absolutely damning chart for x86, at iso-power
| the M1 Max scores 2.5x as high as a 5980HS in FP and 1.43x
| as high in integer workloads, despite having just over half
| the cores and ~0.8x the transistor budget per core. So it's
| a lot closer to the ~2.5-3x IPC scores than you'd think
| just from "but x86 clocks higher!". And these results do
| hold up across the broad spectrum of workloads:
|
| https://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph17024/117494.png
|
| Yes, Alder Lake does better (although people always insist
| to me that Alder still somehow "scales worse at lower power
| levels than AMD"? That's not what the chart shows...) but
| even in the best-case scenario, you have Intel basically
| matching (slightly underperforming) AMD while using twice
| the thread count. And that's a single, cherrypicked
| benchmark that is known for favoring raw computation and
| disregarding performance of the front-end, if you are
| concerned about the x86 front-end, this is basically a
| best-case scenario for it... high code compactness and
| extremely high threadability. And it still needs twice the
| threads to do it.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/vaYTmDF.png
|
| Like your "but x86 uses higher clock rates", you can also
| say "but x86 uses SMT", so maybe "performance per thread"
| is an unfair metric in some sense, but there is practical
| merit to it. If you _have_ to use twice the threads to
| achieve equal performance on x86 then that 's a downside,
| where Apple gives you high performance on tasks that don't
| scale to higher thread counts. And if Apple put out a
| processor with high P-core count and without the giant GPU,
| it would easily be the best hardware on the market.
|
| I just strongly doubt that "it's all node" like everyone
| insists. Apple is running fewer transistors per core
| already, and AMD/Intel are not going to double or triple
| their performance-per-thread within the next generation
| regardless of how many transistors they might use to do it
| (AMD will be on N5P this year, which will be node parity
| with Apple A15). x86 vendors can put out a product that
| will be competitive in one of several areas, but they can't
| win all of them at once like Apple can.
|
| And going forward - it's hard to see how x86 fixes that IPC
| gap. You can't scale the decoder as wide, Golden Cove
| already has a pretty big decoder in fact. A lot of the
| "tricks" have already been used. How do you triple IPC in
| that scenario, without blowing up transistor budgets
| hugely? Even if you get rid of SMT, you're not going to
| triple IPC. Or, how do you triple clockrate in an era when
| things are actually winding backwards?
|
| Others are very, very confident this lead will disappear
| when AMD moves to N5P. I just don't see it imo. The gap is
| too big.
| kayoone wrote:
| Well, chrome could certainly use more threads for all your tabs
| which might make it even more of a resource hog but probably
| also run faster. Software Engineering will evolve too, like we
| have seen in game development over the last decade. While 10
| years ago most game engines were hardly using let alone
| optimized for multicore systems, nowadays the modern engines
| very much benefit from more cores and I guess the modern OSes
| also benefit from having more threads to put processes on.
| simonh wrote:
| These pro machines are squarely aimed at creative professionals
| doing video work and image processing. Of course there are used
| for a lot of other stuff too, but that's the biggest single use
| case by long way. The studio name for the new systems was well
| advised.
| xmodem wrote:
| Derbauer pointed out that, for Intel's 12 series, that the
| e-cores dominate the p-cores not just in performance per watt,
| but also performance-per-die-area. I haven't run the numbers
| for the M1, but I'd be shocked if it wasn't similar.
|
| It seems unavoidable that you can get more total performance
| with larger numbers of slower cores than smaller numbers of
| faster cores. The silicon industry has spent the entire multi-
| core era - the last 15 years - fighting this reality, but it
| finally seems to have caught up with us, so hopefully in the
| next few years we will start to see software actually start to
| adapt.
| hajile wrote:
| It's pretty well established that M1 E-cores are something
| like 50% the performance, but 1/10 the power consumption.
|
| A55 is probably 1/8 the performance, but something like 1/100
| of the power consumption and a miniscule die area. I wouldn't
| want to have all A55 cores on my phone though.
|
| Performance per die area is also relative. For example, Apple
| clocks their chips around 3GHz. If they redesigned them so
| they could ramped them up to 5GHz like Intel or AMD, they
| would stomp those companies, but they would also use several
| times more power.
|
| What is really relevant is something like the ratio of a
| given core's performance per area per watt to the same value
| for the fastest known core.
|
| The only interesting area for ultimate low-power in general
| purpose computing is some kind of A55 with a massive SIMD
| unit going with a larabee-style approach for a system that
| can both do massive compute AND not have performance plummet
| if you need branchy code too.
| paulmd wrote:
| Apple's e-cores are actually (relatively speaking) much
| better than Intel's. From memory, Apple gets about the same
| performance (actually higher in single-threaded, but same
| MT performance) out of about 2/3rds the transistor count as
| Intel. Note that this is invariant of node - obviously
| Blizzard cores are physically much smaller than Gracemont,
| but they are _more_ smaller than you get out of a node
| shrink alone, apple is doing more with _actually less
| transistors_ than Intel.
|
| Since the Intel e-cores still have a relatively wide
| decoder, e-core designs may be the part where the bill
| comes due for x86 in terms of decoder complexity. Sure it's
| only 3% of a performance core, but if you cut the
| performance core in half then now they're 6%. And the
| decoder doesn't shrink _that_ much, Gracemont has a 3-wide
| decoder vs 4-wide on Golden Cove, and you still have to
| have the same amount of instruction cache (instruction
| cache hit rate depends on the amount of "hot code", and
| programs don't get smaller just because you run them on
| e-cores). A lot of the x86 "tricks" to keep the cores fed
| don't scale down much/any.
|
| edit:
|
| Intel Golden Cove: 7.04mm^2 with L2, 5.55mm^2 w/o L2
|
| Intel Gracemont: 2.2mm^2 with L2, 1.7 mm^2 w/o L2
|
| Apple Avalanche: 2.55mm^2. (I believe these are both w/o
| cache)
|
| Apple Blizzard: 0.69mm^2 (nice)
|
| Note that N7 to N5 has roughly 1.6x logic density scaling -
| so a Blizzard core would be 1.24mm^2 or roughly 73% of the
| transistor count of Gracemont for equivalent performance!
| For the p-cores the number is 82%.
|
| This is one of the reasons I feel Apple is so far ahead.
| It's not about raw performance, or even efficiency, it's
| the fact that Apple is winning on _both those metrics_
| while using 2 /3rds the transistors. It's not just "apple
| throwing transistors at the problem", which of course they
| are, but just they're starting from a much better baseline
| such that they can afford to throw those transistors
| around. The higher transistor count in total is coming from
| the GPU, the cores themselves Apple is actually much more
| efficient (perf-per-transistor) than x86 competitors.
| hajile wrote:
| Golden Cove has 6-wide decoders (that should be using
| massive amounts of resources).
|
| Of course, it doesn't help that Intel lists laptop chip
| turbo frequencies to use either 95w or 115w and
| Anandtech's laptop review of one had the 12900H hitting
| those numbers with sustained power draw at an eye-raising
| 85w. That's 2-3x the power of M1 Pro and only 20-30% more
| performance.
|
| That laptop also showed that cutting power from 85w to
| 30w roughly halved the performance. On the plus side,
| this means their power scaling is doing pretty well. On
| the negative side of things, it means their system gets
| worse multithreaded performance at 30w despite having 40%
| more cores.
| BackBlast wrote:
| That's not the only factor at play. Many to most applications
| are dominated by single thread performance. JavaScript's
| interpreters are single threaded, for example.
|
| Something I don't often see, but it does come up here and
| there. One nice thing about the M1 is the performance is
| consistent as it doesn't have a massive auto-scaling boost
| involved. An Intel or AMD chip might start off at top speed
| single thread, but then something else spins up on another
| core, and you take a MHz hit on your primary thread to keep
| your TDP in spec. The background task goes away, and the MHz
| goes back up. Lots of performance jitter in practical use.
|
| Interconnects and IO also consume power. You can't just scale
| small e-core counts without also hitting power walls there
| too.
|
| All that said, I'd love to see some E-core only chips come
| out of intel targeted at thin clients and long battery life
| notebooks.
| paulmd wrote:
| > All that said, I'd love to see some E-core only chips
| come out of intel targeted at thin clients and long battery
| life notebooks.
|
| they exist, that's called Atom. "e-core" is just a
| rebranding of Atom because the Atom brand is toxic with a
| huge segment of the tech public at this point, but
| Gracemont is an Atom core.
|
| There's no Gracemont-based SKUs yet, but Tremont-based
| Atoms exist (they're in one of the models of NUC iirc),
| which is the generation before. Also, the generation before
| that is Goldmont/Goldmont Plus which are in numerous
| devices - laptops, thin clients, and NUCs.
|
| Keep an eye on the Dell Wyse thin-client series, there are
| a lot of Goldmont-based units available if you can settle
| for a (low-priced surplus) predecessor.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. In general, devs don't
| target machines that don't exist.
|
| But from some quick searching, excel will split out independent
| calculations into their own threads. So for that, the answer
| seems to be: it depends. If you're using 20 cores to calculate
| a single thing, it seems like the answer is "no". But if you're
| using 20 cores to calculate 20 different things, it seems like
| the answer is "yes".
| gameswithgo wrote:
| It can accelerate compilation times quite a bit at times, which
| could allow us to use more compile time safety checks and more
| compile time optimizations, indirectly making the lower core
| count computers faster.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| The most interesting new thing going on in the M1 Ultra:
|
| >combining multiple GPUs in a transparent fashion [is] something
| of a holy grail of multi-GPU design. It's a problem that multiple
| companies have been working on for over a decade, and it would
| seem that Apple is charting new ground by being the first company
| to pull it off.
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/17306/apple-announces-m1-ultr...
| jayd16 wrote:
| Not that it isn't good for the M1 but is such a setup really
| something other companies are attempting to pull off? It seems
| like GPU makers just put more cores on a single die.
|
| Does this tech apply to discrete graphics? You can't really
| connect separate cards with this, right?
|
| Are you saying this is a blow to Intel's graphics? Or maybe
| you're implying it's a way for integrated graphics to become
| dominant?
| sanguy wrote:
| They have an 8 tile version in internal testing for the next
| generation Mac Pro workstations.
|
| It won't launch until 3nm is ramped up.
|
| But that is when it is completely over with Intel, AMD, Nvidia
| completely.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > But that is when it is completely over with Intel, AMD,
| Nvidia completely.
|
| AMD is already shipping on 9 tile SoCs, and Intel is doing tile
| stuff, too.
|
| Unless Apple gets back into the server game, and gets a lot
| more serious about MacOS, pretty much nothing Apple does makes
| it "game over" for Intel, AMD, or Nvidia. Especially not Nvidia
| who is still walking all over every GPU coming out of Apple so
| far, and is so _ridiculously_ far ahead in the HPC & AI
| compute games it's not even funny.
| CamelRocketFish wrote:
| Source?
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Having impressive or even superior hardware does not mean that
| the ecosystems built up around Intel/AMD/Nvidia disappear over
| night. Wake me up when Metal has the same libraries that Cuda
| does, etc. etc.
| neogodless wrote:
| When you say 8 tile, you mean 8 M1 Max CPUs glued together?
|
| So presumably $16,000 (or greater) systems?
|
| In what way does this eliminate competitors from the market?
| Also is Apple doing something that is literally impossible for
| anyone else to do?
|
| And will the use cases that Apple currently does not cover
| cease to exist?
| pcurve wrote:
| The author Jean-Louis Gassee was the head of BeOS, a modern multi
| threaded OS that Apple almost chose over Nextstep
| jeffbee wrote:
| Pardon me but even as a person who developed a few toy
| applications for BeOS back in the 90s, what about it could have
| been described as "modern", then or now? Certainly today, 25
| years after the fact, it doesn't feel like an OS written
| partially in C++, that had a few SMP tricks but barely any
| working networking, is modern. Even at the time, its modernity
| was in question compared to even Windows NT.
| rayiner wrote:
| It still holds up pretty well. I'll take a multi-threaded C++
| GUI toolkit over Electron any day.
| [deleted]
| Guillaume86 wrote:
| Electron has become the Godwin point of software
| performance discussions.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Considering how everyone called everyone a Nazi over past
| 5 years, I think it's to safe to say that the Godwin's
| Law belongs to an era of internet that has expired.
| ianai wrote:
| I liked the GUI. It also booted incredibly fast compared to
| windows at the time.
|
| I remember the GUI being responsive and laid out in a way I
| wished Windows was at the time. I remember reading about the
| prospects for BeOS 5 menus later. They were going to have a
| ribbon of color follow your menu selections through drop
| downs. I forget the look since it's been so long, but it was
| a cool idea. Would have made drill downs easier to follow.
| Notably, modern OSes can be pretty finicky about menu drill
| downs and outright user hostile. It's pretty easy to lose an
| entire drill down by moving the mouse a couple pixels one or
| another way too far, for instance.
|
| Mobile UI of course is amongst the most limited interfaces.
| We've gone backwards a lot in ways on mobile. It also seems
| mobile may be steering people away from certain careers by
| simply being good enough to ignore learning things like touch
| typing, Linux/foss, or hobbies that lead to tech careers.
| (Not sure how much sense this last point makes-just spreading
| to general trends I've heard or seen.)
|
| Edit-maybe I'd say BeOS had a certain polish that seems
| lacking even in todays FOSS GUIs/OSes but especially back
| then.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| > Notably, modern OSes can be pretty finicky about menu
| drill downs and outright user hostile. It's pretty easy to
| lose an entire drill down by moving the mouse a couple
| pixels one or another way too far, for instance.
|
| The Mac basically solved this problem in 1986 when Apple
| first introduced hierarchical menus. To make it work, the
| UI layer has to be able to avoid strict hit testing of the
| mouse cursor during menu tracking, which I would conjecture
| is probably difficult in some environments.
| User23 wrote:
| Being able to play 8 quicktime movies smoothly at once on a
| PPC 603 while the UI remained responsive was pretty
| impressive back in 1997.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| The indexed and searchable file system was pretty cool
| wmf wrote:
| At the time there was an idea that normal PCs could never
| afford to run "professional" OSes like NT, Unix, or NeXTSTEP
| and thus BeOS was only competing with "PC" OSes like classic
| MacOS, Windows 95, or OS/2. In retrospect this was wrong,
| although it did take until 2001-2003 for real OSes to make
| their way to the mainstream.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Exactly, around 98 I ran Windows NT 4.0 at work, in a very
| expensive Pentium II with plenty of memory (I guess 64MB at
| the time). At home in my personal machine with an older AMD
| K-5 and only 16MB (another guess) Windows NT was not very
| usable, although it was way more stable than windows 95.
| And nevermind the price difference.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| You've got to be kidding. The state of the art for the vast
| majority of desktop computer users was classic Mac OS and
| Windows 9x. Did you never see the BeOS demos where they
| yanked the plug out of the wall while doing heavy filesystem
| operations and booted straight back up without significant
| data loss? I don't remember if NTFS existed back then, but
| most people wouldn't use NT and successors until the turn of
| the century.
|
| There were gaping holes in functionality, but BeOS was a
| revelation at the time.
| jeffbee wrote:
| NTFS came out years before BeFS and had journaling from day
| 1. At the time that people were experimenting with BeOS
| there were already millions of users of Windows NT. Even
| Windows NT 3.1 for workstations sold hundreds of thousands
| of copies.
|
| Be's _all time_ cumulative net revenues were less than $5
| million.
| Kyro38 wrote:
| He also was the head of Apple France.
| Hayvok wrote:
| JLG also worked at Apple through the 80s. Ran the Mac team and
| a few other groups.
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| >A slightly orthogonal thought: because every word, every image
| of Apple Events is carefully vetted, one had to notice all six
| developers brought up to discuss the Mac Studio and Mac Ultra
| benefits inter work were women.
|
| Well yes, the event was on March 8, International Women's Day.
| [deleted]
| jws wrote:
| Also, the style of that segment was a continuous monologue but
| changing speakers on each sentence. The speakers all had very
| similar voices, so it sounded very much like a single speaker.
| It was an interesting effect, though we lost the message
| because we started discussing whether they were processing the
| voices to be more similar or if Apple is just big enough to say
| to their customers "We need a female developer, camera ready,
| and her voice needs to sound like this." and get 6 hits.
| throwaway284534 wrote:
| schleck8 wrote:
| What a weird comment, you are talking about there being women
| at all but the observation is that there were exclusively
| women
| throwaway284534 wrote:
| I don't believe the author would've put the same emphasis
| on the gender ratio if it was all male speakers.
|
| That they consider an all female group a noteworthy
| observation is exactly what's antiquated about this kind of
| thinking. All male group? Business as usual. But fill the
| stage with women and suddenly it's "saying something." --
| The implication that Apple is putting them on stage to
| virtue signaling they're a female lead company.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| Where did the author say women are needed to take care of the
| housework? Even with the sarcasm this is a pretty thoughtless
| and offensive post.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| That was a truly bizarre segue. I wonder what emotions or
| thoughts he was hoping to inspire with that sentence.
| katbyte wrote:
| nanoservices wrote:
| Claiming misogyny at every turn shuts down discourse and
| actually hurts progress as people will just avoid all
| discussion even when it is legitimately misogyny.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Avoiding discussion just because misogyny is mentioned
| when misogyny is, in fact, at every turn is what actually
| hurts progress, as is avoiding mentioning misogyny
| because of people doing that. (But, of course, that's the
| motivation for the avoidance in the first place.)
| nanoservices wrote:
| > Avoiding discussion just because misogyny is mentioned
|
| Its human nature, people will avoid it by not engaging if
| it just gets thrown around and used to berate without
| cause.
|
| > when misogyny is, in fact, at every turn
|
| Yes, it pervasive but not at every turn. Case in point,
| this thread.
|
| > as is avoiding mentioning misogyny because of people
| doing that.
|
| No one is saying to avoid it. Just saying that it is not
| helping when you indiscriminately label everything as
| misogyny.
| avazhi wrote:
| This sort of comment isn't helpful, and you should stick to
| Reddit.
|
| On a more personal level, you should query why your
| response to a question about why every single presenter was
| a woman (in the computer industry it's statistically
| impossible that it was a random assortment) is to accuse
| the questioner of being a misogynist. You're probably the
| same kind of person who would label a person who asks why
| blacks make up 14% of the population but commit 52% of the
| crime in the United States a racist. In neither case have
| you contributed anything, nor have you done anything to
| further the enquiries that are clearly being hinted at: Why
| did Apple think it was appropriate to have nothing but
| women presenting a keynote? Corporate virtue signalling? If
| blacks commit so much crime, why, and if they don't, why
| are the numbers inaccurate?
|
| But of course, labelling somebody as a misogynist or a
| racist takes 2 brain cells and 5 seconds.
|
| Do better.
| katbyte wrote:
| It was on international women's day, so there is no
| surprise why every dev was a women. What was strange is
| having a a weird out of place callout about it in a
| blogpost/article that was entirely dedicated to the
| tech/cpu.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| > If blacks commit so much crime, why, and if they don't,
| why are the numbers inaccurate?
|
| We don't know this because the figures cited are biased
| towards successful convictions. If white folks are able
| to afford better, more competent lawyers, you can expect
| them to mount successful defenses. I've never, ever, seen
| anyone post the 13/50 stat without acknowledging this
| fact in their comments or replies. And I've seen it a
| lot.
| avazhi wrote:
| Obviously my use of this stat was to make a point apropos
| of the commenter I was replying to - but your response is
| exactly what I meant in the sense that, assuming we are
| both interested in talking/learning about the subject,
| there's a dialogue to be had. Calling me a racist would
| obviously do nothing except convince me that I must be
| right because namecalling in isolation is the ultimate
| white flag in internet discourse (well, so I say).
|
| At any rate - my response is that not only are blacks
| exponentially more likely to be convicted, but they are
| exponentially more likely to be arrested in the first
| place (talking about per capita population here). This
| obviously has nothing to do with lawyers, because it's
| data from the stage preceding the lawyers showing up.
| You'll probably respond by saying that in fact the system
| is rigged against blacks (cops are racists, you'll say),
| and maybe you'll point out how NYC's stop and frisk
| policy disproportionately targeted young black males (the
| same ones who are exponentially more likely to be both
| arrested and convicted in the first place). You'll point
| out correctly that my reasoning on this point is
| circular, and then I might bring up the stats from both
| before stop and frisk, during it, and then after it was
| no longer city policy, to suggest some causality. I might
| also draw the link between IQs and crime rates (the
| causality of which has been demonstrated across racial
| groups), and I'd point out how black adults are basically
| a full standard deviation below the average white or
| Asian American. I'd also probably point out that IQ isn't
| something that can be changed very quickly, whether by
| lawyers, or nutritionists, or water filters, and that
| there's nothing to suggest that the IQ gap is likely to
| improve very quickly (and that's assuming that it's the
| result of environmental and not genetic factors in the
| first place, which isn't clear). On that note I'd also
| probably bring up how intelligence and personality seem
| to be 70-90% genetic, and the problems that fact alone
| ostensibly presents. You might, again (and not
| incorrectly), point out how 'the system' has basically
| been fucking blacks for the past 200 years, and that it's
| therefore impossible to say with certainty what they
| would look like in an environment without such horrendous
| baggage, and I'd respond that notwithstanding it being
| true that they've been mistreated, enslaved, and in some
| US states subjected to what we'd today call genocide, it
| doesn't change the fact that they are (apparently) both
| dumber than non-blacks (on average) and, as the plausible
| result of being significantly less intelligent, much more
| likely to commit violent crimes. Where would we go from
| there?
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Varying from the corporate norm of ensuring every single
| bit of promotional material you have correlates with a
| representative sample of the population sticks out like a
| sore thumb. I don't know why people are feigning shock that
| people found it remarkable.
| katbyte wrote:
| the presentation was on international women's day.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Yup, that does seem to be the most likely reason they
| cast women for the presentation instead of men.
| throw-8462682 wrote:
| > Misogyny?
|
| What an extremely unkind thing to say. There was nothing in
| the GP to suggest this. In fact it's entirely plausible
| that Apple decided to honor women's day this way.
|
| You must have known that accusing people of misogyny can
| have a impact on their livelihood in today's hyper PC
| world. That makes your comment even more unkind. I think
| you should apologize.
| katbyte wrote:
| I was agreeing with the comment I replied to? that it was
| strange and out of place for a blog post that was
| entirely dedicated the tech/CPU to call out something
| that had nothing to do with it? (and it was a pretty
| obvious nod to international women's day)
| flumpcakes wrote:
| That's an extremely unfriendly thing to jump to. There was
| nothing in the text to suggest that.
|
| I also noticed that every developer was from one gender and
| even commented to my partner at the time, at which point I
| remembered it was international women's day and perhaps
| this was Apple showing their support in an unvoiced/non-
| bombastic way.
|
| Does this make me a misogynist? For noticing something?
| katbyte wrote:
| there is quite a difference between noticing something
| (and then correctly noting it is international women's
| day) and making a strange note of it in an article that
| is entirely about the CPU. It really doesn't have a place
| there.
| dymk wrote:
| At minimum, it gives you a taste of what it feels like to
| be a woman in tech, and everybody around you is male.
| csunbird wrote:
| I haven't watched the event, although, I would notice the
| all female cast just like I would notice the all male
| cast. It is a simple anomaly to have every caster to be
| male or female.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| I don't need a "taste". I have basic empathy for other
| human beings, regardless of gender.
| User23 wrote:
| I'm sure you're writing in good faith, but you may be
| interested to know that in internet slang "noticing" is a
| racist and possibly sexist dog-whistle[1].
|
| [1]
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Noticing
| tomca32 wrote:
| Interesting. Could you suggest how to rewrite that
| comment and express that a person noticed something (in
| the literal sense of the word) without using a dog
| whistle?
| dylan604 wrote:
| It occurred to me that...
|
| I realized that...
|
| I became aware...
|
| That's without even looking for a thesaurus. Not that I'm
| supporting this alt-definition of noticing, but your
| question seemed pretty trivial to answer.
| hajile wrote:
| Then it's 5 seconds before all those are "bad words" too.
|
| Maybe it's better to assume that most people in the world
| aren't evil degenerates unless there's hard evidence to
| the contrary.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Welcome to the "woke" world. You'll be learning a lot
| about what people totally unfamiliar to you do that
| you've also done at some point without knowing it. We're
| all sinners in a woke world
| tomca32 wrote:
| Thanks, that does answer the question I wrote, however my
| point was that I'm very uncomfortable with this
| environment where any innocent word could be interpreted
| as a dog-whistle, and was curious if any "notice"
| synonyms are also considered dog-whistles.
| nanoservices wrote:
| Interested to know this as well. I am not sure if
| pointing to a definition on Urban Dictionary with ~100
| thumbs is enough to redefine a word let alone assume that
| the average person is using it as a dog whistle.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| Are you implying I'm racist or sexist for using a normal
| word in it's usual context?
|
| I don't particularly care if a normal word, which is in
| plenty of dictionaries, is co-opted by a small group of
| people. My friends won't know this secret meaning, my
| family won't know that, whatever is on the TV, Radio, or
| Cinema won't know that.
|
| And now this conversation is completely off topic.
|
| The internet is so hyper partisan that even normal,
| boring usage of the English language is now weaponised as
| shibboleths.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I find the concept of calling people out for using terms
| that are dog whistles quite problematic. By their very
| nature, dog whistles are terms in widespread innocent
| use, and as such the majority of the people using the
| term will using it in its ordinary usage in good faith.
| We shouldn't assume people are using these terms as dog
| whistles unless we have some other evidence to suggest
| that.
| karaterobot wrote:
| What a strange culture we've trapped ourselves in.
| fleddr wrote:
| No, not at all. Clearly, in recent years Apple's keynotes
| and adverts have been making a clear diversity statement,
| in particular an optical one, that is pretty much
| opposite to reality.
|
| They've taken it so far that in a way, they've swung to
| the other end of the extreme. Less diversity by
| emphasizing diversity too much, if that makes sense.
|
| Since discussing gender and skin color always gets people
| worked up, let me pick a less controversial one: wealth.
|
| When you check Apple's adverts and see the actors using
| their products, they're clearly living the Valley
| lifestyle. They're all young, fit, filthy rich, have
| fantastic work spaces and living rooms, carefully
| designed by fashionable architects, lead an inner city
| lifestyle where they hop on Ubers to go to Starbucks, you
| get the idea.
|
| ...none of which represents even a fraction of the actual
| customer base. The working class is not featured, rural
| people are not featured, other countries are not
| featured, which leads me to conclude that Apple's
| signaling is not diverse. It's fashion for the elite,
| with a vast distance to their actual users.
|
| Apple's products are desirable enough for it to not
| matter, but it's fine to spot it. It's hard to miss.
|
| Just don't misread it as anything but optics. Have a look
| at leaked tech memos to understand how Apple really
| thinks. They're predatory towards competitors. They'll do
| anything to dodge taxes and bypass consumer protection
| laws. They sabotage open standards. They rely on
| exploitation for their manufacturing. They make secret
| deals so that employees can't switch. They treat their
| store staff as garbage.
|
| Apple is a deeply unethical, predatory, neoconservative
| company. Yet if you feature lots of black women in your
| ads, you optically look progressive and good.
|
| Woke capitalism from the world center of hypocrisy:
| California.
| flumpcakes wrote:
| > fashion for the elite
|
| I agree completely. I also believe that hackernews is the
| exact target audience for Apple products. People who can
| argue that $250,000 for a non-manual, 9-5 job is somehow
| not a good salary.
|
| Apple like to show people (all people from all
| backgrounds) as if they are normal or average rather than
| the hyper-elite that they are. If Apple had an advert
| with the average family in an average home it would
| probably be distressing to most people.
|
| I'm lucky enough to be in the top 20% of earners in my
| country and I am in my 30s, but I still would never be
| able to afford a house as depicted in Apple's
| advertising. Or have the budget to spend $5,000 on a
| computer for my work.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'll give Gassee the benefit of the doubt. If you were
| ignorant of the fact that it was Women's Day (guilty here!)
| he might have thought it disingenuous to _not_ mention it? At
| least in passing as he did.
|
| I'm glad Apple are showcasing the diversity of their
| workforce (I raised three daughters of my own, wish they
| would have shown an interest in programming, not really) but
| I worry that there is a danger of backlash for going too far.
| redox99 wrote:
| The author detected an "anomaly" (see proof below) and
| pointed it out. I think it's pretty hostile to call such
| comments as bizarre, or question the author's intentions.
|
| It seems that around 90% of developers are men[1]. Therefore,
| using a binomial distribution, if 6 developers were picked at
| random, the chance that all of them would be women (or other
| non men gender) is 0.0001%. (Interestingly, there is a 53%
| chance that all 6 of would be men).
|
| The reason for such unlikely occurrence is that most likely,
| as the parent mentioned, Apple wanted to feature women
| developers for International Women's Day.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126823/worldwide-
| develo...
| 323 wrote:
| starwind wrote:
| Am I the only one bothered that the M1 "Max" was apparently not
| the best Apple could do? In what would is the "Ultra" version of
| something better than the "Max" version? MAXIMUM MEANS AS GREAT
| AS POSSIBLE!!!
|
| Anyone? Just me? ...ok
| jmull wrote:
| You're never going to make it in marketing, my friend.
| r00fus wrote:
| I take it you never played Steet Fighter in the 90s.
| jayd16 wrote:
| fine print was local* maximum, I guess.
| layer8 wrote:
| > MAXIMUM MEANS AS GREAT AS POSSIBLE!!!
|
| And "ultra" means "beyond" [great]. It enters the next realm.
| :)
| wmf wrote:
| Then you won't want to know that USB "full speed" is slower
| than "superspeed".
| layer8 wrote:
| Also, Full HD is lesser than Ultra HD. They should have
| called it Overflowing HD.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I think Full HD was really just to separate from 720p. So
| if you consider "HD" to mean 1080p and UltraHD to mean 4k,
| its like saying a "Full v6" and a "v8" or something. For
| whatever reason it made just enough sense to never bothered
| me too much.
| shantara wrote:
| >Here 5 nm and 3 nm refer to the size in nanometers, billionths
| of meter, of circuit elements used to build chips
|
| Not this again. They don't mean anything except for being purely
| marketing designations
| monocasa wrote:
| Sort of. Foundaries can normally point to some real world
| metric for their Nnm node name. But because they pick different
| metrics it's not useful for comparing between nodes/foundaries
| hence why people say it doesn't mean anything practical.
| zamalek wrote:
| Within the same foundry, they are comparable. It's just a
| decrementing version number, though.
| [deleted]
| bklyn11201 wrote:
| > "which points to the problem I'd have if I wanted to update my
| own five-year old iMac, I'd need to jettison a perfectly good
| display in order to move to an Apple Silicon CPU."
|
| Is it impossible to use the 27" iMac as a display monitor for the
| new Mac Studio?
| jmull wrote:
| There are workarounds, like "Luna Display" (I haven't tried it
| and I'm not affiliated).
|
| I also wonder how well running something like a VNC client
| fullscreen on the old iMac with universal control might work.
| (I've also used Jump Desktop's "Fluid" protocol which is the
| same general idea as VNC, though provided a higher-quality
| lower lag connection in my case.)
|
| I think there are some decent solutions for a secondary
| display, but I kind of doubt any of these would be good enough
| for a primary display for most use cases.
|
| I would guess all of these have tradeoffs in terms of lag,
| frame rate, quality, reliability, etc. though I'd love to hear
| different.
| auggierose wrote:
| It's impossible to use it as a display for anything than
| itself.
| newsclues wrote:
| Target display mode exists but it's compatibility support could
| be improved.
| tl wrote:
| Target Display Mode which turns iMacs into monitors is not
| supported on newer iMacs (anything post 2015):
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| "You can use more than one iMac as a display, if each iMac is
| using a Thunderbolt cable to connect directly to a
| Thunderbolt port on the other Mac (not the other iMac)."
|
| Do Mac's not have USB ports? It's truly bizarre that you need
| 1 thunderbolt port per monitor. That's an incredible amount
| of wasted bandwidth.
| stephenr wrote:
| How is a USB port from pre-2015 going to help you transmit
| a DisplayPort signal?
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Good point.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| This sounds terrible for the consumers and for the
| environment as once the computer inside dies or is obsolete,
| you have to throw away a perfectly good display that could
| have a second life as an external monitor plugged into a more
| modern system since display technology doesn't go outdated as
| fast as computing.
| jkestner wrote:
| It's terrible. The original reason Apple dropped this
| feature was because there wasn't an external bus that could
| push that many pixels. But Thunderbolt can do it now. This
| reuse would be more meaningful than preconsumer recycling
| of aluminum.
|
| I use https://astropad.com/product/lunadisplay/ to use my
| iPad or an old Mac's screen as a secondary screen and it's
| good.
| jibbers wrote:
| Wouldn't an obsolete computer still be perfectly fine for
| less demanding users? Average Joes, poor people, a kid's
| first PC, etc. -- give it away, I say.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| As someone who finally bit the bullet and scrapped/curbed 2
| old iMacs, yeah. It hurt a lot. Perfectly good, well-
| calibrated 21.5" and 27" monitors just reduced to paper
| weights. Plucked the ram/HDD's and sent them on their way.
| I looked into _every_ possible option for them. Such a
| waste.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Especially a waste since it's even the same panel as the
| one you're throwing away. Apple hasn't upgraded the 27"
| 5k for 8 years now, this new one included (lots of non-
| display upgrades like the camera and audio, sure, but the
| display itself hasn't changed)
| sylens wrote:
| I believe they got rid of target display mode support a number
| of years ago, in terms of both a hardware and software (High
| Sierra or earlier only)
| jeffbee wrote:
| Target display mode has been dead and gone since 2015.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| This used to be possible on older iMacs and was called Target
| Display Mode. I believe a five year old iMac is too recent to
| be able to do it.
|
| DIY display from the hardware should be possible with a display
| driver from Aliedpress, though.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I looked around for something like this but finding something
| that can drive the panel is tricky. In my case it was an old
| surface studio with a 3000x2000 resolution. I think it's
| actually two panels fused together and calibrated at the
| factory and it's all custom. Finding a board seemed nigh
| impossible
| pdpi wrote:
| They've never supported target display mode for any of the 5k
| iMacs. 5k displays, in general, seem to be few and far between,
| and poorly supported (haven't seen a single one for PC, only
| Apple's offerings), so I imagine trying to support target
| display mode wouldn't be great.
| simonh wrote:
| I remember reading at the time that they couldn't reasonably
| get the connector throughput working. The original 5K iMacs
| used custom high bandwidth internal interconnects because
| there weren't any standard spec interconnects that could do
| the job, therefore no commercial external cables or
| connectors up to it either.
|
| It might be possible in theory now, but I suppose that ship
| has sailed.
| soci wrote:
| My late 2009 27" iMac can be used as a monitor by connecting a
| laptop to the minidp port. I doubt this is still possible in
| newer Macs after 2015.
| toqy wrote:
| yeah i was very disappointed to find out i couldn't use my
| wife's imac as a display for my mpb
| chrisoverzero wrote:
| >In passing, we'll note there is Mac Studio version sporting a
| single M1 Max chip that happens to weigh 2 pounds less, most
| likely the result of a smaller power supply.
|
| This article was published on 13 March. It's been known for 5
| days (as of the time of this comment) that the difference in
| weight is due to the Ultra variant's using a copper heat sink, as
| opposed to an aluminum one. The whole article has this kind of
| feeling of off-the-cuff, underinformed pontification, and I don't
| think it's a very good one.
| [deleted]
| yborg wrote:
| I kind of had a similar impression, but Jean-Louis is kind of
| an elder statesman in the industry from his time at Apple. I
| actually find it heartening that a guy in his mid-70s and long
| out of the industry still follows it from a technical
| standpoint even at this level.
| wmf wrote:
| I love JLG but it doesn't excuse putting out wrong
| information. He should fully retire if he's not going to do
| the work properly.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Geez man! I think you forgot the /s
| datavirtue wrote:
| Typical apple blog.
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? We ban
| accounts that do that repeatedly. You've unfortunately been
| doing it repeatedly, and I don't want to ban you again.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| rwmj wrote:
| How do you connect 10,000 signals between two microscopically
| tiny dies reliably?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Assuming they're on different dies, it would be the same way
| they connect the thousand or so pins (of an FPGA or CPU) from
| the die to the BGA/PGA/LGA package: interposers with wires
| whose widths are in the nanometer range
| hajile wrote:
| Same way AMD did it with their HBM GPUs. There's was 4K wires,
| but once you've moved to etching the wires with lithography,
| even millions of wires wouldn't be impossible.
| cjensen wrote:
| The two dies and interconnect are all part of the same silicon.
| In the chiplets used by AMD and many others, they use separate
| CPU dies with literal wires between them. This replaced the
| wires with hard silicon.
|
| Disadvantage of this technique is yields will be worse because
| the individual component is bigger, and this is limited to
| combining exactly two chips because it's not a ring-bus design.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This is false. Apple's M1 Ultra uses an interposer to connect
| two chips.
| u320 wrote:
| No, this is a multichip design, Apple was clear about that.
| And you don't make wires out of silicon.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| With a custom chip interconnect which has its wires made with
| lithography
| ossusermivami wrote:
| > A slightly orthogonal thought: because every word, every image
| of Apple Events is carefully vetted, one had to notice all six
| developers brought up to discuss the Mac Studio and Mac Ultra
| benefits inter work were women.
|
| it was international women day on that day, i think it was a nice
| touch from apple
| Maursault wrote:
| So, surprise, the M1 Ultra is 2x M1 Max chips. They've been
| secretly planning since inception to attach 2 chips together. Why
| am I so unimpressed? Because connecting 2 chips together is so
| dang obvious. Because I would have expected Apple to connect 10
| of them together in a semi-circle and not only own the desktop
| and mobile market, but in a truly shocking surprise, release a
| new Apple server that has 10x the processing power of the next
| most powerful server running at 1/10th the Wattage, and a new
| macOS server version with a footprint smaller than iOS that is
| binary compatible with the whole of linux development.
| Melatonic wrote:
| ARM is already being heavily looked at for datacenters
| regardless of Apple - I do not see them entering the server
| market anytime soon. Their bread and butter has always been to
| market "Pro" devices but more at the consumer level.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > release a new Apple server that has 10x the processing power
| of the next most powerful server running at 1/10th the Wattage
|
| The power efficiency of M1 is _vastly_ overstated. Reminder
| here that the M1 Ultra is almost certainly a 200W TDP SoC
| (since the M1 Max was ~100W, and this is 2x of those...)
|
| So 10x M1 Max's would be ~1000W. That's possibly to put in a
| server chassis, but it's of course also not remotely 1/10th the
| wattage of existing server CPUs, either, which tend to be in
| the 250-350w range.
|
| And interconnects aren't free, either (or necessarily even
| cheap). The infinity fabric connecting the dies together on
| Epyc is like 70w by itself, give or take.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The M1 Pro is slightly faster than other CPUs at that ~35W
| design point, but it doesn't scale up beyond that, or Apple
| just doesn't care if users can experience its latent scaling
| abilities, if they exist. I like this chart from "Hardware
| Unboxed" that puts current Apple, AMD, and Intel CPUs in
| context: https://imgur.com/PKHelVY
| wtallis wrote:
| It's suspicious how the bottom point on each of those
| curves is exactly 35W. Real-world power measurements don't
| line up that cleanly, so I wouldn't be surprised if what
| they're graphing on that axis (for the x86 processors) is
| merely the power limit they set the systems to throttle to,
| rather than a real measurement. That or they interpolated
| to produce those points.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| >The power efficiency of M1 is vastly overstated. Reminder
| here that the M1 Ultra is almost certainly a 200W TDP SoC
|
| 114 Billion transistors are going to draw some power.
|
| An RTX 3090 is 28.3 Billion transistors drawing 350W or so
| for just the GPU portion of the system.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Sounds like you're looking more for the upcoming M2 refresh of
| the Mac Pro.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > Second, the recourse to two M1 Max chips fused into a M1 Ultra
| means TSMC's 5 nm process has reached its upper limit.
|
| M1 Max is ~20x22 mm (~430 mm2), double this, even without some of
| the interconnect die space, doesn't fit into the reticle anyway.
| MikusR wrote:
| Cerebras is 46225 mm2
| _ph_ wrote:
| That is made in a multi-step process, as far as I understand
| its design, they made the point of designing it from a
| completely repetitive structure which is the size of one
| step.
| jecel wrote:
| Among the issues that Cerebras had to overcome was how to
| connect tiles on a wafer where each tile has to be smaller
| than a reticle. In normal chips you have a gap on all sides
| where the diamond saw will cut the wafer into individual
| dies. Having wires cross that gap requires non standard
| processing. And the tiles themselves would still be limited
| to a single reticle (under 35mm on a side), so a multi-
| reticle M1 would not be easy to design.
| allie1 wrote:
| Means MacabookPro m1max orders will get even more delayed
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| The delays are bad enough at the moment, it should not get
| worse pls.
|
| Some are yet to receive orders placed since January for the
| 2021 MBP. Especially for anything beyond the base model. I
| wonder if they have the capacity to serve the current one going
| on Sales this week.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Or replaced with orders for Studios. I'm not in the market for
| a laptop, but if I were getting a computer before last week, I
| probably would've gotten an m1max MBP because I always want
| more memory. Now, I've got a desktop option.
| sharikous wrote:
| > the M1 Ultra isn't faster than an entry-level M1 chip [...] the
| clock speed associated with the 5nm process common to all M1 chip
| hasn't changed for the M1 Ultra
|
| It's telling that almost the only "bad" thing that you can say
| about the M1 Ultra is that its single threaded performance is on
| par with the M1, whose performance is great anyway. Apple pumped
| up the integration, cache size, pipeline length, branch
| prediction, power efficiency and what not.
|
| I think that in terms of clock frequency increase that road is
| closed, and has been for 15 years already.
|
| Realistically the only disadvantage I heard about Apple Silicon
| is that the GPU performance is not quite as earth-shattering as
| they claim.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > I think that in terms of clock frequency increase that road
| is closed, and has been for 15 years already.
|
| Possibly, except M1 runs at relatively low clock speeds of
| around 3.2ghz. This is in no small part how it achieves good
| power efficiency. It's a bit surprising that a wall powered
| unit is still capped at this clock speed, although whether
| that's intentional or just something Apple hasn't gotten around
| to fixing is TBD. That is, the M1 largely lacks the load-based
| turbo'ing that modern Intel & AMD CPUs have. So it's "stuck" at
| whatever it can do on all-cores & max load. This could be
| intentional, that is Apple may just not ever want to venture
| into the significantly reduced perf/watt territory of higher
| clock speeds & turbo complications. Or it could just be an
| artifact of the mobile heritage, and might be something Apple
| addresses with the M2, M3, etc...
| r00fus wrote:
| > It's a bit surprising that a wall powered unit is still
| capped at this clock speed
|
| The Intel/x86 mantra that desktops should be allowed to be
| massively inefficient just to pump up the clock speed
| fractionally is what's changing.
|
| I for one, agree with Apple - 450W beasts aren't really
| needed. Most workflows can be (or already are) parallelized
| so multiple cores can demolish what a fast single-thread can
| tackle.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > The Intel/x86 mantra that desktops should be allowed to
| be massively inefficient just to pump up the clock speed
| fractionally is what's changing.
|
| Nonsense. Nobody is going to just give up "free"
| performance.
|
| > I for one, agree with Apple - 450W beasts aren't really
| needed.
|
| Nobody makes a 450W consumer CPU, so this is a strawman.
| The M1 Ultra's 200W already puts it quite far beyond the
| typical consumer setup of 65-125W anyway.
|
| Regardless if 450W lets your work finish faster than 200W,
| that's a tradeoff ~everyone makes. Nothing about that is
| changing.
|
| > Most workflows can be (or already are) parallelized so
| multiple cores can demolish what a fast single-thread can
| tackle
|
| If this is truly the case for you then you'd already be on
| the Threadripper/Epyc train and the M1 Ultra would be kinda
| boring.
| wtallis wrote:
| Please try to be consistent or at least explicit about
| whether you're including a GPU in the power numbers you
| are referencing; changing that context mid-sentence makes
| it quite hard to tell whether you really have a solid
| position.
| r00fus wrote:
| > Nonsense. Nobody is going to just give up "free"
| performance.
|
| No, they're done with "free" waste. Apple chips idle at
| far lower and due to efficiency cores, handle moderate
| workloads with low TDP.
|
| > Nobody makes a 450W consumer CPU
|
| CPU, yes. But the M1 (along with all Apple chips) is a
| SoC so if you include graphics, storage, memory and
| motherboard - you can easily eclipse 450W for many
| enthusiast consumer (gaming) builds. Most gaming builds
| are 300-500W.
| ls612 wrote:
| But for a desktop chip like the M1 Ultra which will always be
| on wall power I don't see why Apple would be uncomfortable
| pushing the thermal envelope of the M1 architecture.
| zamalek wrote:
| > It's telling that almost the only "bad" thing that you can
| say about the M1 Ultra
|
| The M1 is truly a great thing. It beats the pants off the Intel
| 2019 MBP that work gave me while I fixed some M1 problems.
|
| That is, however, comparing Apple Intel to Apple Silicon. The
| 2019 Intel MBP is, on an absolute scale (vs. my own AMD laptop
| of the same year), completely and utterly incompetent.
|
| Comparing Apple Silicon to Intel and AMD isn't as
| straightforward, and there's a lot of good and bad for all
| three. Apple is now merely competitive.
| protomyth wrote:
| I never understand that criticism from the user point of view.
| A modern OS runs a lot of threads and the M1 isn't exactly a
| slow poke, and the M1 Ultra has a lot more cores to run all
| those threads.
| genmon wrote:
| I don't get this:
|
| > Second, the recourse to two M1 Max chips fused into a M1 Ultra
| means TSMC's 5 nm process has reached its upper limit. It also
| means TSMC's 3 nm process isn't ready, probably not shipping
| until late 2022. Apple, by virtue of their tight partnership with
| TSMC has known about and taken precautions against the 3 nm
| schedule, hence the initially undisclosed M1 Max UltraFusion
| design wrinkle, likely an early 2021 decision.
|
| "recourse"... "design wrinkle"... wouldn't something like
| UltraFusion be an architectural goal at the outset, rather than
| something grafted on later? Feels pretty fundamental.
|
| I have a vague memory that AMD has/had something similar -- the
| idea what their entire range would be the same basic core, fused
| together into larger and larger configurations. Seems like a
| smart move to concentrate engineering effort. But chip design not
| even slightly my area.
| infinityio wrote:
| > I have a vague memory that AMD has/had something similar
|
| You are correct - AMD CPUs from 2016 onwards make use of a
| collection of up-to-8-core chiplets linked by what they call
| "Infinity Fabric"
| rayiner wrote:
| Depends on what the UltraFusion interconnect is. Ganging up
| chips as am unplanned stop-gap isn't unheard of (e.g. the ATI
| Rage Fury Max). But it's much harder to do when you're talking
| about grafting on a cache coherent interconnect. If they're
| using something off the shelf like CXL maybe it wasn't planned
| from the outset.
| monocasa wrote:
| It wasn't unplanned. The work by marcan on asahi Linux
| revealed support for multi die configurations baked into the
| M1 Max.
|
| > While working on AIC2 we discovered an interesting
| feature... while macOS only uses one set of IRQ control
| registers, there was indeed a full second set, unused and
| apparently unconnected to any hardware. Poking around, we
| found that it was indeed a fully working second half of the
| interrupt controller, and that interrupts delivered from it
| popped up with a magic "1" in a field of the event number,
| which had always been "0" previously. Yes, this is the much-
| rumored multi-die support. The M1 Max SoC has, by all
| appearances, been designed to support products with two of
| them in a multi-die module. While no such products exist yet,
| we're introducing multi-die support to our AIC2 driver ahead
| of time. If we get lucky and there are no critical bugs, that
| should mean that Linux just works on those new 2-die
| machines, once they are released!
|
| https://asahilinux.org/2021/12/progress-report-oct-nov-2021/
| nicoburns wrote:
| > It also means TSMC's 3 nm process isn't ready, probably not
| shipping until late 2022. Apple, by virtue of their tight
| partnership with TSMC has known about and taken precautions
| against the 3 nm schedule, hence the initially undisclosed M1 Max
| UltraFusion design wrinkle, likely an early 2021 decision.
|
| I find it hard to believe that this was a last-minute decision.
| Rather, I think this pattern of a new core design (using a new
| process if there is one) releases first for the smallest devices
| (iPhones), and the gradually moves its way up the lineup all the
| way up the Ultra before the cycle repeats with a new generation
| is likely Apple's new strategy going forwards.
|
| My understanding is that this is pretty much what Intel and AMD
| do too (releasing their smaller dies on new processes first) and
| that this is a general strategy for dealing with poorer yield
| number on new process nodes. The idea that Apple would ever have
| considered releasing their biggest chip as the first chip on a
| new node seems far-fetched to me.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Oddly for GPUs its the other way around and has been for a
| while. Nvidia and AMD seem to start with the mid and big dies
| first before filling out the small ones later. Intel seems to
| be coming from small to big however so they may reverse the
| trend at least for themselves. But it could still be driven by
| yield issues where the margins are less good for smaller dies
| and they sell in much larger volume so things need to be
| working well to hit the volume of the market and still be
| highly profitable.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Nvidia and AMD seem to start with the mid and big dies
| first before filling out the small ones later.
|
| For GPUs, yield is less of an issue... the chips are
| manufactured with the expectation of a number of cores of the
| many thousand small (in terms of silicon area) ones being
| defective - overprovisioning, basically. That allows them to
| simply bin the sliced chips according to how many functional
| core units the individual chip has.
|
| In contrast, even the Threadripper AMD CPUs have only 64
| large cores which means the impact of defects is vastly
| bigger, and overprovisioning is not feasible.
| chickenimprint wrote:
| Current AMD chiplets come with a maximum of 8 cores.
| Macha wrote:
| Right, that's a different strategy again. If you're
| making a monolithic 64 core die and one of the cores is
| defective, and the next one down in your product lineup
| is the 48 core, that's going to make the 64 core model
| harder to stock (and maybe not worth aiming for at all,
| if your yields are bad enough that this happens often).
|
| Meanwhile if you're making 6 x 8 core chiplets and one of
| those cores is defective, well that chiplet can go into a
| 48 core or be a midrange consumer cpu or something, and
| you'll just pick one of your many many other 8 core
| chiplets to go with the rest for the 64 core.
| agloeregrets wrote:
| Ala: The 14/16 inch MacBook Pro making all full-die
| function models built to order. I do find it interesting
| that they did a 7 core GPU version of the M1 much like
| the A12X/A12Z binning. I wonder if getting full function
| M1 was ever the intent.
| snek_case wrote:
| Probably because the beefier GPUs for the server or compute
| market are way more profitable for Nvidia than high-end
| gaming GPUS, which are also way more profitable than chips
| Nvidia might make for laptops or low end gaming.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Incidentally, there's a rumor that the iPhone 14 is going to
| use a new A16 processor in the iPhone Pro, but stick to last
| year's A15 for the non-pro version.
|
| That's a big change from Apple where they've historically put
| their newest processor in every single phone they launch (even
| the $430 iPhone SE announced last week has the A15 now).
|
| I wonder if it's purely a cost cutting measure, or if they're
| not expecting good enough yields to supply them for every
| iPhone, or if they're holding some fab capacity back to have
| room for the higher end chips alongside the A16.
| josh2600 wrote:
| Honestly, my guess is that the fab production issues impact
| everyone. I wonder if they get the same number of runs per $
| as they used to pre-covid, my guess would be no. If that's
| the case, that drives BoM up and Apple is hyper margin
| conscious.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I'd imagine if anything it's a capacity issue now that
| they're producing mac chips in addition to iPhone chips. I
| suspect the fact the current chip is already so fast may also
| be a factor. Pretty much nobody using an iPhone is clamouring
| for a faster CPU. I have an iPhone 6s, and even the A9 in
| that is fast enough that my phone never feels slow.
| gumby wrote:
| > I have an iPhone 6s, and even the A9 in that is fast
| enough that my phone never feels slow.
|
| Last year I upgraded from a 6s+ to a 12 and I can confirm
| this the other way around: my old phone _did_ feel slow for
| a couple of key apps; turns out they are still slow on the
| new phone. They are just poorly written, and one is
| basically just a CRUD app with no excuse.
|
| So my lesson is to likely keep this phone for a decade.
| It's not like I couldn't afford to upgrade but why bother?
| nonamenoslogan wrote:
| I will echo this, I was on a 7 and it broke, so I got a
| regular model 12. The phone itself feels much faster, it
| loads quicker, the batteries last longer and the screen
| is much nicer to look at--but some of the apps I use are
| about the same for opening/loading time. I blame the apps
| not the phone; some are much better--Pokemon Go for
| example loads in just a second or two on the 12 but takes
| 30 or so on the 7.
| lolive wrote:
| Isn't the camera better? And also the battery life?
|
| [happy owner of a 6s here]
| lynguist wrote:
| I found the biggest difference to be the display. I
| changed from iPhone 7 Plus to iPhone 13 mini. From 7 on
| the display is wide color and the newer phones are all
| OLED with true blacks. They're impressive.
|
| Another big difference is 5G. I can easily get 500+
| MBit/s downstream while outside.
| tblt wrote:
| How did you find the change in display size?
| gumby wrote:
| The camera is better at low light photos but I don't
| really care about that. Camera plays no role in my
| selection of phone and I wish the lenses didn't protrude
| (which they could address by putting more battery in!).
|
| Yes, the battery was kinda shot but I could have replaced
| it.
| hajile wrote:
| I'd guess that they are having product differentiation issues
| between the iphone and the iphone Pro. Most people just don't
| see the value in faster screen, stainless band, and a not-so-
| great telephoto camera (I own a pro, but I'm hardly their
| primary market). An entire processor generation difference
| would give a big selling point to average consumers for
| paying the extra few hundred dollars.
|
| There's been rumors that they'll be skipping A15 cores for
| the upcoming M2 processors.
|
| If they skipped over the best-selling iphone, that would give
| them a TON of extra space for M2 chips. This would allow them
| to put a little more ground between the new Air with the M1
| and the pro iPads. It would also allow them to drop a new
| version of the macbook air and drive a lot of sales there. I
| know I'd gladly upgrade to a M2 model -- especially with a
| decent CPU bump and a 24/32GB RAM option.
|
| Then again, they could just stick with what people expect. I
| wouldn't be surprised either way.
| dangus wrote:
| I feel like I can see increased efforts at differentiation
| on the 13 Pro compared to the 12 Pro.
|
| The iPhone 12 Pro was perhaps the least differentiated
| high-end model Apple has ever put out.
|
| I think the 13 Pro has a few features that make it a bit
| more of a compelling buy:
|
| - The new telephoto lens is a massive improvement (I wonder
| if your last experience was with the 12 or older? The new
| camera is actually worth something while the old one had
| mediocre quality compared to the main lens).
|
| - ProMotion has no tangible benefit, but it makes every
| interaction with the screen look smoother. When you go back
| to old phones that don't have it, it's jarring. I can see
| why some of the Android-using tech enthusiasts have
| criticized Apple for not delivering high refresh rate for
| so long.
|
| - The previous iPhone 12 had identical main/wide cameras
| with the Pro model unless you got the Max variant, which is
| no longer the case. The iPhone 13 Pro has different/better
| cameras all around over the 13.
|
| - The GPU of the 13 Pro has an extra core over the 13,
| which was not the case for the iPhone 12 lineup. Anyone who
| does mobile gaming on graphically intense games should
| probably choose the Pro model over the regular one.
|
| - Significantly better battery life over the non-Pro
| version, which was not the case for the 12 models, which
| had identical ratings.
| hajile wrote:
| For an average consumer, are those things worth hundreds
| of dollars?
|
| I know the value, but I work in tech and spend tons of
| time digging into hardware as a hobby. Camera matters to
| some, but most of the rest are pretty bare features
| compared to the $200 (20%) increase in price.
|
| When I list all the things I can buy with $200, where do
| these features rank in comparison to those other things?
| I'm blessed with a good job, so I can afford the luxury.
| I was poor when I was younger and I definitely wouldn't
| be spending that for those features. $220 out the door
| would be almost 20 hours of work at $15/hr (after taxes).
| dangus wrote:
| I think that's a valid question. Objectively, no, those
| features are not necessarily worth the literal dollar
| value the price segmentation is commanding.
|
| But, there are some other points to consider:
|
| - It seems like most people in the USA who buy mid to
| high-end phones finance their phones from carriers, and
| pay 0% interest for it. So, what the consumer is really
| considering is "is the Pro model worth $5-8/month more to
| me?" or "Would I pay $200 extra over 2-3 years?" and I
| think that's an easier justification for many people.
|
| - Carriers offer a number of financial incentives and
| discounts in exchange for loyalty (there aren't any
| contracts anymore, but there are "bill credits" that
| function the same way).
|
| - You did use $15/hour as an example, which around the
| median US salary, but Pro models are not intended to be
| the top selling model for the median earner in the US.
| They're marketed at, I would guess, the top 20% of
| earners, which lines up with the Pro/Pro Max models only
| making up 20% of iPhone sales in 2020 [1]. That would
| mean that Apple would expect individuals buying the
| iPhone Pro models to make about $75,000/year or greater.
| About 10% of the population makes a 6-figure salary. [2]
|
| - Smartphones are the primary communication and computing
| device for many if not most people. I think that there
| are many people who see the smartphone as the most
| valuable possession they own.
|
| [1] https://www.knowyourmobile.com/phones/most-popular-
| iphone-mo...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_
| United_...
| nicoburns wrote:
| > So, what the consumer is really considering is "is the
| Pro model worth $5-8/month more to me?" or "Would I pay
| $200 extra over 2-3 years?" and I think that's an easier
| justification for many people.
|
| I find this attitude bizarre. It's not any cheaper! I
| guess it can make a difference if you have cash flow
| issues. But an iPhone Pro is decidedly a luxury, so if
| you have cash flow issues then you probably just
| shouldn't buy one?
| [deleted]
| paulmd wrote:
| It absolutely was not. The A15/"M2" architecture isn't even
| going to be on 3nm, it will be N5P, so only a "plus" of the
| current node. There was absolutely no scenario where Apple was
| on 3nm this year.
|
| Incidentally this means that Apple will no longer have a node
| advantage once Zen4 launches - both Zen4 and A15 will be on the
| same node, so we can make direct comparisons without people
| insisting that Apple's performance is solely due to node
| advantage/etc.
|
| But yeah, that does go to show that 3nm is slow to launch in
| general - Apple would not willingly give up their node lead
| like this if there were anything ready for an upgrade. I don't
| think it's actually _falling behind_ in the sense that it was
| delayed, but it seems even TSMC is feeling the heat and slowing
| down their node cadence a bit.
|
| Also, as far as this:
|
| > Second, the recourse to two M1 Max chips fused into a M1
| Ultra means TSMC's 5 nm process has reached its upper limit.
|
| There is still Mac Pro to come, and presumably Apple would want
| an actual Pro product to offer something over the Studio
| besides expansion.
|
| marcan42 thinks it's not likely that quad-die Mac Pros are
| coming based on the internal architecture (there's only IRQ
| facilities for connecting 2 dies) but that still doesn't rule
| out the possibility of a larger die that is then connected in
| pairs.
|
| Also bigger/better 5nm stuff will almost certainly be coming
| with A15 on N5P later this year, so this isn't even "the best
| TSMC 5nm has to offer" in that light either.
| caycep wrote:
| What would be interesting in the far future is if, say, Zen 4
| (or 5+) and M2(+) claims some of Intel's new foundry
| capacity...the comparisons would be very interesting...
| marcan_42 wrote:
| > quad-die Mac Pros
|
| I said quad- _Jade_ Mac anythings aren 't coming because
| _that_ die is only designed to go in pairs (that 's the M1
| Max die). Everyone keeps rambling on about that idea because
| that Bloomberg reporter said it was coming and got it wrong.
| It won't happen.
|
| Apple certainly can and probably will do quad dies at some
| point, it'll just be with a new die. The IRQ controller in
| _Jade_ is only synthesized for two dies, but the
| _architecture_ scales up to 8 with existing drivers (in our
| Linux driver too). I fully expect them to be planning a
| crazier design to use for Mac Pros.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| This article is a little nauseating in its low key drooling
| over Apple but I think articulates what you're saying somewhat.
| Basically build a product around the chip and move it down the
| product line, double capacity at regular intervals.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/22972996/apple-silicon-arm-double-s...
| gumby wrote:
| > This article is a little nauseating in its low key drooling
| over Apple
|
| The author ran Apple Europe and then moved to the US and was
| an Apple VP for a long time. If anyone is allowed to have
| this kind of attitude then it's reasonable in Gassee.
|
| In people in general, it's...weird.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Wasn't aware of that - thanks for the context!
| dom96 wrote:
| Side question but I'm curious if anyone knows, where are we
| heading with this constant decrease in nm for chip
| manufacturing processes? When will we hit a wall and where will
| gains in performance come from then?
| barbacoa wrote:
| >When will we hit a wall and where will gains in performance
| come from then?
|
| nm notation used to mean the width of the smallest feature
| that could be made. Even today there are processes such as
| atomic layer deposition (ALD) that allows singular atom thick
| features. The difference between nodes now are in shrinking
| macro features, you don't necessarily make them smaller, more
| important is density. This is currently done with 3d
| transistors (finfet) and perhaps in the future going full
| vertical. When all other optimization have been exhausted
| it's likely to see multiple layers of stacked transistors
| simulator to what they are doing with NAND memory chips.
| Eventually even that will hit a wall due to thermal
| limitations. Beyond that people have proposed using
| carbonnano tube transistors. That tech is very early but has
| been proved to function in labs. If we ever figure out how to
| manufacture carbon nanotubes chips, it will be truly
| revolutionary; you could expect at least another 50 years of
| semiconductor innovation.
| sharikous wrote:
| > If we ever figure out how to manufacture carbon nanotubes
| chips
|
| That's the problem. We can't. All those technologies are in
| such a primordial state, if at all, that we don't even know
| if we will ever be able to use them efficiently 20 years
| from now.
| whazor wrote:
| Besides shrinking and increasing size chips, there is
| another big problem that might cause us to hit the wall.
| When the transistor count increases, it also increases the
| amount of effort. This is a big problem because chips need
| to be profitable.
|
| Although if you just shrink the chips and keep the
| transistor count the same, then you have a more energy
| efficient chip. Which is especially useful for portable
| devices.
| sharikous wrote:
| We have already hit the wall. Decreases have been minimal,
| and came with a high cost. The numbers you hear about "7 nm",
| "5 nm", etc.. are just false. They do not represent anything
| real.
|
| The real numbers have been around 20 nm for a decade. They
| decreased a bit with Intel's competitors achieving better
| lithography than them before them. And we are in the realm of
| tons of little tricks that improve density and performance -
| nothing really dramatic but there are still improvements here
| and there. The tens of billions of dollars thrown at research
| achieved them but it is not comparable to the good old days
| of the '80s, '90s and the '00s
| kllrnohj wrote:
| > And we are in the realm of tons of little tricks that
| improve density and performance - nothing really dramatic
| but there are still improvements here and there.
|
| I don't think that's fair. Density is still increasing
| fairly substantially. Just going off of TSMC's own numbers
| here: 16nm: 28 MTr/mm2 10nm: 52.5
| MTr/mm2 7nm: 96.5 MTr/mm2 5nm: 173
| MTr/mm2
|
| Performance (read: clock speeds; but for transistors those
| are one & the same) are not really increasing, though,
| those have pretty much plateaued. And the density achieved
| in practice doesn't necessarily keep up, as the density
| numbers tend to be for the simplest layouts.
| paulmd wrote:
| Yes, to emphasize: "nm" marketing is just marketing. There
| is no dimension on a 5nm chip that is actually 5nm. It used
| to represent gate length and half-pitch but that stopped
| being true about 20 years ago and officially became
| nonsense about 10 years ago, it's "what size planar node do
| we think these features would perform like" now.
|
| Because it's all subjective now, companies went wild with
| marketing, because consumers know "lower nm => better".
| But, say, GF 14nm is much more comparable to Intel 22nm,
| and GF 12nm is still solidly behind late-gen 14++, probably
| more comparable to TSMC 16nm. Generally Intel has been the
| most faithful to the "original" ratings, while TSMC has
| stretched it a little, and GF/IBM and Samsung have been
| pretty deceptive with their namings. Intel finally threw in
| the towel a year or so ago and moved to align their names
| with TSMC, "10nm ESF" is now "Intel 7" (note: no nm) and is
| roughly comparable with TSMC 7nm (seems like higher clocks
| at the top/worse efficiency at the bottom but broadly
| similar), and they will maintain TSMC-comparable node names
| going forward.
|
| Anyway, to answer OP's question directly though, "what
| comes after 1nm" is angstroms. You'll see node names like
| *90A or whatever, even though that continues to be
| completely ridiculous in terms of the actual node
| measurements.
| corey_moncure wrote:
| 900 angstroms = 90 nanometers
| akmarinov wrote:
| Good bot
| querulous wrote:
| nm is purely a marketing term and has been for 10 years or 25
| years depending on what you think it measures
|
| future improvement is going to come from the same place it
| mostly comes from now: better design that unlocks better
| density and a revolutionary new litho process that as of yet
| doesn't exist
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| No one has a crystal ball, but here's the industry road map:
| https://irds.ieee.org/editions/2021 (start with executive
| summary).
|
| TL;DR: things get really murky after a notional 2.1nm
| generation. Past that we'll need a new generation of EUV
| sources, advancements in materials, etc, that AFAIK are still
| quite far from certain (but I am not an expert on this stuff
| by any means).
|
| I personally think we're headed to a stall for a while where
| innovation will focus mostly on larger packaging/aggregation
| structures. Chiplets and related are definitely here to stay.
| DRAM is moving in package. Startups are playing around with
| ideas like wafer scale multiprocessors or ssds. I think
| clever combinations of engineering at this level will keep us
| with momentum for a while.
| monocasa wrote:
| Like most curves that looked like exponentials initially,
| Moore's law turned out to be an s curve. We're already on the
| top half of that curve where gains are increasingly more
| difficult and increasingly spread out over time. There's
| still a more or less direct road map for another five or so
| full nodes, and we'll probably come up with some cute way to
| increase density in other ways.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| It looks like Qualcomm is bailing out of Samsung's leading edge
| node, so competition for TSMC's leading edge node is higher
| than ever with Intel, Apple and Qualcomm all in the running.
|
| >Qualcomm has decided to switch back to TSMC for the Snapdragon
| 8 Gen2 Mobile Platform. Samsung's 4nm process node is plagued
| by a yield rate of as low as 35 percent.
|
| https://www.techspot.com/news/93520-low-yield-samsung-4nm-pr...
| auggierose wrote:
| I was thinking the same. Once UltraFusion has been designed,
| why not use it for 3nm later on as well?
| AltruisticGapHN wrote:
| I wonder how usable those new Apple displays will be with PCs or
| Linux - as they add more and more builtin chips and software.
|
| I have an old 27" LED Cinema which I used with a PC for many many
| years, and then with Ubuntu native... and now back to the mac on
| a Mac Mini.
|
| I'm ithcing to replace it eventually with its "double pixel
| density" big brother, which is essentially what this new Studio
| Display is (exactly double of 2560x1440). Personally I love the
| glass pane, and I really dislike those "anti glare" bubbly/grainy
| coatings I've seen on PC displays.
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| There's an article[1] on The Verge where an Apple spokesperson
| talks about this. Apparently, you can use the camera (without
| Center Stage) and the display. That's it. No 3D audio, no True
| Tone, no updates.
|
| Of course, the PC would need an appropriate USB-C connector
| with support for 5K resolution.
|
| [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/9/22969789/apple-studio-
| disp...
| monitron wrote:
| Nice, that's good enough for me.
|
| Now if only I could find a box with a button on it to switch
| the monitor between two or three computers, at full
| resolution, retaining Power Delivery and attached USB
| devices. I'd buy one right now.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Why not just pick up the LG 5k or any number of 4k displays
| that are cheaper (and better) then the apple 27" in the
| case though?
|
| This new Studio 27" isn't really a good display on its own.
| It's an 8 year old panel and is missing a host of modern
| display upgrades like higher refresh rates, variable
| refresh rates, HDR, or local dimming
| holmium wrote:
| There is only one other monitor on the market with the
| pixel density and screen size equal to or greater than
| the Studio 27", eight year old panel or not.[0] If you
| want high PPI, right now, you get this, or you buy the
| 16:9, 60Hz 8K 32" Dell monitor and pray you can get the
| dual DP cables to work with your setup.
|
| Unfortunately, Apple no longer sells the LG Ultrafine 5K
| [1], and no one knows if LG is even going to restock
| them.[2] So, you'll have to find one used, and you'll
| have to hope that LG continues to service this incredibly
| flaky series of monitors when you inevitably run into an
| issue.
|
| On the flip side, if you don't care about the pixel
| density, you could have bought any of the low res gaming
| monitors, or 4k 28" monitors, or whatever other
| ultrawide, low PPI monstrosity the market has coughed up
| in the past eight years. They've been waiting this long
| for a reason.
|
| You are stuck choosing between those modern features you
| listed and a >200ppi display. That is the state of the
| market right now. Until Apple solves this issue and
| charges you like $3,000 for the privilege later this
| year.[3]
|
| ----------
|
| [0] https://pixensity.com/list/desktop/
|
| [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2022/03/12/apple-lg-
| ultrafine-5k-d...
|
| [2] https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-27md5kl-b-5k-uhd-
| led-monit...
|
| [3] https://www.macrumors.com/2022/03/10/studio-display-
| pro-laun...
| sbr464 wrote:
| a usb-c to displayport cable works well/reliably, with full
| resolution support for the 6k pro display xdr (windows).
| cruano wrote:
| I think some of the Nvidia Cards do come with a USB-C port,
| which should work [1]
|
| > We also tried connecting a 4K monitor with a USB-C to
| DisplayPort adapter, and that worked well - as expected.
|
| [1] https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2019-02
| -28...
| howinteresting wrote:
| The USB-C connector was present with the 20xx series, but
| was sadly abandoned for the 30xx series.
| codeflo wrote:
| Multiple dies integrated with an interconnect on a single chip is
| how you build big processors these days. AMD has been doing the
| same thing for years, and I'm sure the largest M2 will as well.
|
| What I find interesting is that there's no desktop Mac with an M1
| Pro, leaving a gap between the entry-level M1 in the Mac mini,
| and the Mac Studio with its M1 Max.
|
| For those who might not remember the full lineup: the M1 Pro and
| M1 Max have the same CPU part, the main difference is the number
| of GPU cores. For many CPU-bound applications, the Pro is all you
| need.
|
| I wonder if this is an intentional strategy to sell the more
| expensive product or if it's supply related.
| NhanH wrote:
| There is probably an updated mac mini with m1 pro and m1 max
| soon alongside the mac pro.
| danieldk wrote:
| Why would anyone buy the baseline Mac Studio if there was a
| Mac Mini with the M1 Max (or even M1 Pro)?
| klausa wrote:
| I don't think there'll be a Mini with a Max, for exactly
| the reason you mentioned, but going from Pro to Max gets
| you more RAM, more I/O, more GPU, and more displays
| controller, if any of those are things you care about.
| hajile wrote:
| I'd guess that there's a market for an iMac with an M1/M2 Pro
| chip.
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