[HN Gopher] Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis - Big Co...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis - Big Cost Increase and
A15 Based IP
Author : yurisagalov
Score : 224 points
Date : 2022-06-10 02:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (semianalysis.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (semianalysis.substack.com)
| drawingthesun wrote:
| A few comments here about how Apple is losing a lot of top talent
| to rival Rivos, a stealth startup.
|
| What would Rivos business model be? I'm genuinely interested
| seems interesting to me.
|
| Would they be positioning themselves as the next Qualcomm?
|
| Or perhaps sell a superior chip to Apple at some point?
| ece wrote:
| They could open up documentation and invite others to build an
| ecosystem around a RISC-V socket and variety of motherboards. I
| don't know what their plans might be, but this is the kind of
| RISC-V ecosystem I'd like to see, like early-x86.
| ParadisoShlee wrote:
| Excellent read into the realities of making a SOC.
|
| Every SOC I continue to keep my eyes open for MTE being used in a
| mainstream ARMv8.5 processor... If we're to believe that M3 is
| marked to be using ARMv9 as well. Maybe 2024 is the year?
| hemantv wrote:
| Apple generally pay very poorly for quality of talent.
|
| I would love to live in world where 10x engineers are rewarded
| 10x. Right now it's 25% better pay than median.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Most 10xers aren't constantly 10x. You might have a 10x year
| and then a 1.1x year.
|
| With tech it's a bit of a catch 22, most engineers really
| become effective after 18 to 24 months. At this point you know
| how to really get things done in your org.
|
| But after 2 years you can job hop and make significantly more,
| so your interest might not align 100% with the company's
| hunterb123 wrote:
| This. I'll make a product for someone in a few weekends,
| working 18 hours a day for a few weeks straight,
|
| Then I won't have the energy for a few months.
|
| Probably evens out to an employer, but imo you do better when
| the snowball is rolling longer without breaks.
|
| That's the secret to 10x. ADHD and don't stop. Stopping is
| the enemy, you can't see the forest.
|
| I hear regulation is nice, but tell my mind that.
|
| Been at my employer for 10 years making cool shit if that
| matters.
| postalrat wrote:
| You think it's rough being 10. Trying being 10,000x.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Sleep deprivation is the limit. Whatever multiplier you
| are, you're capped by that.
| koonsolo wrote:
| If you want 10x pay you need to start your own company. No
| other way to get a 10x.
| daguava wrote:
| There's a lot of claims of poached talent in the article,
| basically claiming [paraphrasing] "Apple, maintaining their
| stressful work env and not paying to shore that up lost some
| rockstars"
|
| How true is this? If they're on the money it's an excellent
| example of a talent retention miss leading to a demonstrable
| mediocrity in delivery.
| matwood wrote:
| Work culture can mean a couple of things though. Building and
| delivering the M1 was probably a great experience. Maybe like
| the hardware equivalent of greenfield development. The M1 is
| out, and now it's about continual refinements. The people who
| love going from 0->1 are not always the same people who enjoy
| going from 1->100.
|
| And while Apple isn't the max payer in SV, I'm sure they pay
| fine compared to other big tech. The issue is, chips are big
| right now and no existing big tech can compete compensation
| wise with shares in a growth chip startup. With VC drying up, I
| expect this to change back in Apple (and other big techs)
| favor.
| bombcar wrote:
| I suspect we're looking at Apple implementing tick/tock,
| whether because they're forced to or because they want to -
| they've already been doing something similar on the iPhones,
| and supply constraint may make them do it on the chips, too.
|
| Few people are going to upgrade from the M1 to the M2 anyway,
| so it makes sense to keep powder dry for the M3.
| innocenat wrote:
| Intel tick-tock was alternating microarchitecture change with
| process optimization every other year.
|
| It looks like M2 is neither of those, and it's already 2
| year.
| dagmx wrote:
| The author has been pushing this conjecture for a year over the
| past year or so, and has been repeatedly called out on the
| Hardware reddit.
|
| I would recommend not taking their business conjecture without
| a giant pinch of salt. Just today they were claiming Apple has
| lost hundreds of engineers in the chip division. The idea that
| a single division somehow lost hundreds without the industry
| noticing is ridiculous.
| skohan wrote:
| I agree, reading this it just seems like this author has
| found a market for people who want read news about how AAPL
| is going to drop tomorrow
| greedo wrote:
| I remember reading ESR's blog a decade (or more) ago where
| every single technical advancement was going to lead to
| Apple's doom. Every new competitor that popped up was going
| to lead to Apple's doom. Every legislative initiative was
| going to lead to Apple's doom. After awhile, I stopped
| reading his blog because despite a lot of good insight in
| some areas, his cheerleading for Apple's Doom had clearly
| created too much bias in his judgement for me to take
| anything he said seriously.
|
| Apple will eventually be overtaken by another company at
| some point, but there's a world of journalists and pundits
| who continue to cry wolf every day.
| wmf wrote:
| Why do you think the industry hasn't noticed? If it's not
| hundreds, how many Apple employees have moved to Nuvia and
| Rivos?
| dylan522p wrote:
| It has noticed. Look at Apple architects, validation,
| layout, etc engineers moving to Nuvia + Rivos + Google +
| Amazon + Microsoft + Meta + Intel + Nvidia + AMD + Apple +
| Qualcomm.
|
| It's there.
| dagmx wrote:
| In multiples of tens, I would believe it. Upto a hundred
| over a couple years? That's a stretch but possible if you
| count a very wide range of roles. Multiple hundreds as they
| imply on Reddit? That would be catastrophic to any company,
| even one as large as Apple. You would certainly see it
| reflected in their job postings after even a few, let alone
| hundred+
| Josteniok wrote:
| I wondered about this too and I like your advice about salt
| but apparently Apple is suing Rivos about this very thing:
| https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/apple-lawsuit-
| says-...
| dagmx wrote:
| I never said or implied that they didn't take many, just
| not hundreds. In the tens? I believe that. Up to a hundred?
| That's a tall order. Multiple hundreds? That's catastrophic
| to any org, including one as large as Apple
| drawingthesun wrote:
| The article says 40 employees not hundreds, but I imagine
| that 40 of Apple's top chip talent is going to hurt, that
| is a lot of brain power to lose!
|
| Seems some employees took more than themselves to Rivos.
| "at least two former Apple engineers took gigabytes of
| confidential information with them to Rivos."
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I wonder if tha'ts subject to criminal prosecution or
| merely civil remedies.
| walterbell wrote:
| Remember Apple cancelling their contract with Imagination
| (GPU) and hiring their employees to work on Apple's GPU?
| willis936 wrote:
| Hurts donut.
| dhanna wrote:
| The youngest, strongest RTL engineer I know jumped from Apple
| to Rivos.
| exhilaration wrote:
| I'm still amazed at how jumping to a rival firm like this is
| possible in California, those of us in pretty much the rest
| of the country are locked behind non-competes.
| wbl wrote:
| Horace Greely had the answer 150 years ago.
| krasin wrote:
| I am curious. Would it be possible to provide a more
| direct reference?
| wbl wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_West,_young_man
| krasin wrote:
| Thanks! Apparently, I knew the quote, but not the author
| of it.
| happyopossum wrote:
| That's quite an exaggeration - many states disallow or
| severely limit non-competes, and in many of the states that
| allow them, they are often unenforced, or easy to get
| around. So yeah - some people in some parts of the country
| are locked behind non-competes (if they aren't willing to
| move), but it's hardly everyone.
| wikibob wrote:
| That is a gross exaggeration of the situation.
|
| California has a total ban on non-competes.
|
| A very small handful of other states put restrictions on
| non-competes, but even those generally allow non-
| competition agreements if time limited, and the employee
| makes over ~$100k.
|
| It's widely accepted that prohibiting non-competes has
| been a significant factor in the tech industry success in
| California.
|
| As one example, it is well known that Amazon aggressively
| enforces non-competes, even against line engineers.
| matwood wrote:
| Non-competes without a monetary attachment are hard to
| enforce from the employer side. Judges don't look kindly
| to preventing someone from making a living. Of course
| companies hope the threat of going to court makes people
| back down - like Amazon who is known bully in this area.
|
| But yes, I wish all states would just ban them outright.
| Or at least make them require compensation. If an
| employee is important enough to require a non-compete,
| then they are important enough to pay during the non-
| compete time period.
|
| Does CA also ban them as part of an acquisition? I've
| seen them as part of the sale so everyone doesn't quit
| the day after the acquisition and start a competitor.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| Looking at another article from the same author[0], we'll have
| a pretty solid answer to the impact in September with the
| release of the A16. Apparently the A15 had very minimal CPU
| gains clock-for-clock over the A14.
|
| To quote from that article:
|
| "SemiAnalysis believes that the next generation core was
| delayed out of 2021 into 2022 due to CPU engineer resource
| problems. In 2019, Nuvia was founded and later acquired by
| Qualcomm for $1.4B. Apple's Chief CPU Architect, Gerard
| Williams, as well as over a 100 other Apple engineers left to
| join this firm. More recently, SemiAnalysis broke the news
| about Rivos Inc, a new high performance RISC V startup which
| includes many senior Apple engineers. The brain drain continues
| and impacts will be more apparent as time moves on. As Apple
| once drained resources out of Intel and others through the
| industry, the reverse seems to be happening now."
|
| I was very optimistic on Apple on the CPU front until I read
| this today. Now I'm waiting to see how the A16 pans out for
| them to see if it's a two generation loss of progress, or just
| a single generation stumble.
|
| 0: https://semianalysis.substack.com/p/apple-cpu-gains-grind-
| to...
| skohan wrote:
| Reads like FUD to me
| AgentOrange1234 wrote:
| I don't know Apple's turnaround, but processors are released
| in products only long after their design is completed. Think
| at least several months, even likely a year+ between design
| and release.
|
| Nuvia started early enough to be a factor here. But Rivos
| wasn't even founded until June 2021. To release now, M2 would
| already have been at finished with design by then.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| Chip manufacturing is difficult, this reminds me of the
| Japanese entry into the semiconductor market.
|
| There is an excellent video on this for anyone interested in
| Japanese culture and the war against USA via semiconductors:
|
| https://youtu.be/bwhU9goCiaI
| somethoughts wrote:
| Likely its a bit of hyperbole to get views.
|
| I think there's always a desire to work at a startup in SV and
| in a low/zero interest rate environment - VCs could probably
| fund something in the chip design space.
|
| But now that interest rates are going up, I think that will be
| a lot tougher and Apple will be a better position due to their
| direct access to free cashflow - to either compete or acquire
| them at a later date.
|
| Its also an observation that w.r.t. chip design and consumer
| electronics, the pay is general lower than say Google,
| Facebook, Salesforce, Web 2.0 based startups (i.e. AirBnb,
| Uber, DoorDash), etc.
|
| My presumption is that this is because as a chip designer or
| embedded software/hardware engineer, the capital costs to do
| anything interesting on your own as a startup (i.e. tape out a
| chip, mass production in Asia, etc.) are very very high and
| very fixed and very up-front. Even fabless semiconductors and
| factory-less product design companies that outsource
| manufacturing to Asia would need to go find outside capital for
| IC masks or HW prototypes. You also need a cadre of supply
| chain, biz dev, marketing, ad spend, channel sales
| distribution.
|
| Compare that to AirBnb, Dropbox where you need a good idea, a
| handful of 10x SW engineers and an AWS account that can scale
| as you grown and a free tier for onboarding customers.
| Therefore, Google/FB etc. need to pay more to prevent these
| folks from going off and starting their disruptor (i.e. Insta,
| WhatsApp, SalesForce).
| Sirened wrote:
| ++, totally. I think a lot of people are linking CPU
| engineering with SW engineering because they both work with
| the same product at the end of the day, but the industries
| are radically different both from a business and culture
| standpoint. The "go fast and break things" mentality that
| pervades the SV software startup scene is, in my experience,
| no where to be found in hardware because it's both incredibly
| costly to make any mistakes and because most CPU divisions
| are lead by people with decades of experience (rather than
| the mishmash that is startups).
|
| The author's argument here about talent leaving after having
| "gotten Apple off x64" is such an odd take. It's not as if
| Apple started designing these chips after the M1 launched--
| the pipeline for even small SoCs is often five or more years.
| The bit about Rivos is especially bizarre because _that_
| company was founded in 2021, well after this chip must have
| been taped out.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Yep - also was going to add but it was getting kinda
| long...
|
| With respect to Rivos, reading the about page - it seems an
| interesting take on RISC-V.
|
| My take is that this will be rolled back into either Apple
| or Google at a later date - mostly as a hedge against
| someone (like Nvidia) acquiring the ARM IP now that its in
| play - or to provide some realistic alternative that can be
| used as a counter bid in licensing discussions with ARM.
|
| Two of the founders of Rivos were involved in PA Semi which
| was acquired by Apple and Agnilux which was acquired by
| Google ChromeBook team.
| modeless wrote:
| Seems silly to me. CPU designs are important, but these
| companies have more than enough engineers to make competent
| designs even with some people leaving. There's another factor
| that completely dominates. It's all about the fabs. Intel lost
| the performance lead, was it because of their designs? No, it's
| because they lost the lead in fabs. AMD passed Intel, was it
| because of their designs? No, it's because they use TSMC's fabs
| and TSMC passed Intel. Apple blew everyone away with M1, was it
| because of their designs? No, it's because they paid TSMC
| boatloads of money for exclusivity on their latest fabs. Apple
| M2 disappoints on CPU performance, is it because of their
| designs? No, it's because TSMC's next fab isn't ready yet so
| they're still using the same fabs as M1.
|
| These days I care more about which TSMC process node my chips
| came from than which company designed them. I need a new
| computer but I'm waiting until next year because there will be
| a wave of new CPUs and GPUs coming out with much better
| performance. Better designs? Maybe a little, but it's really
| because they're all moving to TSMC N4.
|
| I really hope Pat Gelsinger can save Intel's fab business
| because we really need another company that can compete in fabs
| and Samsung isn't doing too hot either.
| iosystem wrote:
| I thought AMD succeeded because they managed to get Jim
| Keller and other great engineers? Unsure why you're placing
| your hope on a CEO.
| wmf wrote:
| No one person deserves the credit for a processor and if
| Intel had delivered on their roadmap (Ice Lake in 2017 and
| Alder Lake in 2019) AMD would be dead today.
| BackBlast wrote:
| AMD survived bulldozer. They survived not because of the
| quality of their chips, but because there exists a
| sizable x86 market that is literally anything except
| Intel.
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| Why does that market exist?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Because, before the mobile explosion, we had the PC
| industry explosion which created a huge demand for X86
| PCs and Macs in every home.
|
| And even after the mobile revolution shrank the demand
| for X86 PCs, the cloud revolution further entrched X86 in
| the cloud.
| inkyoto wrote:
| > _No, it 's because they lost the lead in fabs. AMD passed
| Intel, was it because of their designs? No, it's because they
| use TSMC's fabs and TSMC passed Intel. Apple blew everyone
| away with M1, was it because of their designs? No, it's
| because they paid TSMC boatloads of money for exclusivity on
| their latest fabs_.
|
| The fixation on the fab process is bewildering. Yes, it does
| help, but it is also an optimisation step that is decoupled
| from and that bears no relevance on the chip design. Yes, the
| smaller node size also brings the increased density along and
| an increased number of things that can be whacked into the
| same sized piece of silicon, but it will not magically
| improve the overall system performance or result in the
| linear architecture scalability.
|
| The article is specifically calling out a potentially
| decreased ROB size in M2 cores, and ARMv9 also potentially
| not arriving until M3 which are crucial to the speed or
| software performance. There is absolutely nothing the fab
| process can do to make SVE2 and matrix instructions
| automagically appear in lithographic chip designs - those are
| the <<silicon>> design time decisions. As we have recently
| been seeing more and more practical, mainstream use cases of
| the advanced use of the SIMD instructions at the C/C++/Rust
| runtime level that bring an order of magnitude level
| performance gains, having the SVE2 implementation at the ISA
| level is becoming somewhat critical.
| ezconnect wrote:
| Fab process is very important. The fast design is nothing
| if you can't build it.
| brigade wrote:
| Android flagships are shipping with SVE2 as of this year,
| which I actually didn't realize until like two weeks ago
| because there's been nearly zero buzz about it. What's SVE2
| being used for over NEON as of now?
| inkyoto wrote:
| Low level runtime optimisation that yields substantial
| performance gains in the user facing or system level
| software, ranging from cryptography through to data
| processing algorithms and very high throughput JSON
| parsing.
|
| Take OpenSSL as an isolated example. By simply fiddling
| with the C compiler flags to allow it to use NEON on M1,
| the sha256 calculation speed-up is 4x for 128 and 256
| block sizes, with performance gains quickly tapering off
| for larger block sizes and resutling in a modest 10%
| increase only. And that performance increase happens
| without the involvement of hash functions having been
| manually optimised for NEON/SVE1.
|
| SVE2 with its variable vector size support could improve
| performance for larger unit sizes. Perhaps it is the time
| to spin up a Graviton3 instance and poke around with
| clang/gcc to see how actually good or faster the SVE2 is.
| brigade wrote:
| Yeah that's NEON. And there's instructions that literally
| calculate SHA256 so generalizing that is moot. My point
| was first, what real benchmarks are there of SVE2's
| benefits over NEON with mainstream CPUs that M2 would
| compete against? Unlike AVX-512, NEON was already pretty
| rich, so the new instructions have rather specialized
| usefulness.
|
| Because outside of servers where little cores don't
| exist, 256b ALUs in big cores mean 256b registers in
| little cores, and Cortex-A510 is _way_ smaller than
| Gracemont. And then you 're giving Samsung another
| opportunity to screw up big.LITTLE...
|
| And even the server CPUs with SVE are 2x256b except A64FX
| which is HPC exclusive, so no better than 4x128b.
| adrian_b wrote:
| SVE2 does not increase the maximum speed. That depends
| only on the width and number of the ALUs, on the number
| of cores and on the clock frequency.
|
| The purpose of SVE2 is to simplify the writing of the
| software that exploits the data parallelism, both when
| that is done manually and when that is done automatically
| by an autovectorizing compiler.
|
| With SVE2 it should become much easier to deal with data
| structures where the sizes and the alignments are not
| multiples of the ALU width and it will also no longer be
| necessary to write many alternative code paths, to take
| advantage of any future better CPUs, like when optimizing
| for Intel SSE/AVX/AVX2/AVX-512.
|
| There are still a majority of programs that do not
| utilize as frequently as possible the existing SIMD
| units. With SVE2, their number should diminish.
| modeless wrote:
| Stuff like adding SVE2 can be great for specific
| applications but it's really marginal when looking at whole
| system performance. What's not marginal are the
| improvements in power efficiency and room for more cache
| that come with new process nodes. These chips are power
| constrained in almost everything they do, because of heat
| dissipation or battery life or both. Less power and more
| cache benefits _everything_ automatically, not just the
| very few things that actually start using new SIMD
| instructions or other new hardware blocks each year.
| inkyoto wrote:
| > Stuff like SVE2 is really marginal when looking at
| whole system performance.
|
| It is not. A recent paper
| (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2205.05982.pdf) from Google
| engineering has compared performance of a vectorised
| (SIMD) vs non-vectorised implementation of the quick sort
| in the Highway library as well as the performance
| difference of the AVX-512 vs NEON/SVE1 implementations.
| By switching to the SIMD processing alone, the 9-19x
| speedup has been reported, depending on the SIMD unit
| size (32/64/128-bit numbers have been sampled and
| measured up). Even the smallest of the two, the 9x
| perfomance gain factor, is far from being _marginal_.
|
| On the SIMD unit size of things, the performance
| difference between AVX-512 (the average of 1120 Mb/sec
| has been measured) and NEON implementation (the 478
| Mb/sec throughput on average) is 2.4x smaller for
| NEON/SVE1 largely due to the smaller width of the units
| of processing. Again, the 2.4x factor is not in the
| marginal territory.
|
| > What's not marginal is the improvements in power
| efficiency that come with new process nodes.
|
| And that is an optimisation step, albeit a very important
| one. However, it will not make a quick sort
| implementation run 2.4x faster alone.
| brigade wrote:
| Soo... basically a 2x speedup in going from 4x128b to
| 2x512b ALUs, after discounting the frequency difference.
| But realistically, Intel's client configurations are
| 3x256b, which is only 25-40% faster in that paper.
|
| (I suspect any application doing enough quicksort that
| the 2x speedup is significant, would be even happier
| going slightly off-core to a coprocessor more specialized
| in vector processing, like Hwacha. There's plenty of
| space between "tightly-coupled CPU SIMD" and "GPU" that I
| think makes more sense than needing to implement 512-bit
| registers in little cores.)
| inkyoto wrote:
| > Soo... basically a 2x speedup in going from 4x128b to
| 2x512b ALUs, after discounting the frequency difference.
| But realistically, Intel's client configurations are
| 3x256b, which is only 25-40% faster in that paper.
|
| 2.4x difference was, in fact, reported, however I still
| find it somewhat difficult to interpret the reported
| results. The processing unit size difference alone and
| the number of LU's can't account for such a big
| difference in _transfer_ speeds as the M1 Max that was
| used in the assessment has a very wide memory bus (256
| bit wide for a performance core _cluster_ or 512 bit wide
| for the _entire SoC_ ) as well as unusually large L1-D
| cache and a large L2 cache, with both caches having deep
| TLB's. The test set they used could also fully fit into
| the L2 cache. I have asked the Google engineer a question
| in a separate thread about what else could influence the
| observed performance difference but have not received a
| satisfactory explanation.
| brigade wrote:
| If something is bound by memory/cache bandwidth, then
| increasing ALU width wouldn't help in the first place.
| modeless wrote:
| You completely ignored the "whole system performance"
| part of my statement. What percentage of your CPU time is
| spent running SIMD-optimized implementations of
| Quicksort? Now apply Amdahl's law.
| inkyoto wrote:
| <<Whole system performance>> is a meaningless term as it
| is a function of many, usually poorly controlled, input
| variables, and _your_ whole system is different from _my_
| whole system. If _my_ VPN tunnel allows _me_ to have
| faster transfer speeds simply by virtue of having ISA
| assisted optimisations in the cryptographic library it
| uses, the net result will be very noticeable to _me_ but
| perhaps not for you unless you also have to use the same
| VPN client.
|
| Even the web browser you are using right now to comment
| on HN likely makes use of the very same Highway library
| (Chrome and Firefox certainly do, unsure about Safari)
| the speedup gains have been reported for. The <<overall>>
| browser performance will also improve as the result due
| to it receiving gains transparently, by simply dropping
| an optimised implementation into the browser build.
| modeless wrote:
| The idea that my overall browser performance might
| improve in a noticeable way because it is switching from
| NEON optimized Quicksort to SVE2 optimized Quicksort is
| simply laughable. On the other hand, switching to a
| processor fabbed on a better process node could easily
| have a noticeable impact on overall browser performance,
| or battery life while browsing, or both.
| inkyoto wrote:
| It is certainly not laughable to me. You have singled out
| Quicksort as the sole example of performance gains
| whereas I have used it as a single isolated example of
| very large performance gains that can be had. SIMD
| instructions have seen a lot of other mainstream use
| cases recently which also includes the memory copying or
| memcpy(3) optimisations amongst others. Your browser has
| a Javascript engine, and since it a Javascript engine, it
| has a garbage collector. Garbage collectors move memory
| blocks around all the time, and a SIMD optimised memcpy
| will yield substantial performance gains. Or faster JSON
| processing. Therefore, SIMD + an improved fab process
| will result in much larger _overall_ performance gains
| for _you_ and _me_ as browser users as opposed to an
| improved fab process alone. It is also a realistic
| example of the <<whole system performance>> improvements
| if the browser is treated as a <<whole system>>.
|
| And an optimised QuickSort can also come in handy if one
| pokes around a large browser history or uses it as a
| knowledge base, which I do and use it on a regular basis.
| My browser keeps a uninterrupted record of all visited
| websites over the last 15+ years and being able to zoom
| in on a particular time span to find something within
| that temporal range quickly is important to me. I am
| almost certain that a sorting of sorts is involved
| somewhere behind the scenes.
| modeless wrote:
| Forget Quicksort. What percentage of your CPU time is
| spent running SIMD-optimized implementations of
| _anything_? And what percent of _those_ are upgraded to
| new SIMD instructions each year? And what real world
| percentage gains are they getting considering other
| constraints like memory bandwidth, power, etc? The
| answers to these questions, multiplied together, put a
| _very_ small upper bound on the overall benefit of new
| instructions per year.
| Sakos wrote:
| Key talent is incredibly important. If you lose enough senior
| engineers, it doesn't matter how talented the rest are.
| You've lost so much institutional knowledge that is either
| extremely difficult or impossible to regain. And Apple is
| notoriously under-staffed for a lot of their projects. With
| the staffing losses to Nuvia, I wouldn't be surprised if they
| lost enough key talent that it's going to take them a long
| time to recover and be able to deliver significant
| performance improvements again. That's what happens when you
| treat software developers/engineers like commodities.
| MBCook wrote:
| Thanks to being based on their phone chips Apple came out of the
| gate with the M1 and cleaned everyone's clock on performance-per-
| watt while putting in good to great numbers in general (as a
| CPU).
|
| But their rate of improvement on the A series has been slowing on
| general tasks. They're on the same process node, and only
| increased frequency a bit.
|
| Is it really that surprising that performance didn't take a
| massive jump? You can't keep up a 20% increase in normal stuff
| every release for long.
|
| You can use accelerators like they do for video and ML to help
| some tasks. You can improve your GPU some and make it a little
| bigger.
|
| It seems like in some places people are trying to push a "the M2
| is a failure because it's not a huge leap above the M1"
| narrative. But no one exits that from Intel or AMD every year
| anymore. Or Apple's A-series.
|
| So why here?
| highwaylights wrote:
| Get that performance from where though?
|
| The big M1 numbers came from getting ahead of the rest of the
| market on 5nm TSMC, and critically from packing everything into
| the SOC so physical distances were reduced by multiple orders
| of magnitude (which has already been the case for the A
| series). That's been done now, so the low hanging fruit is gone
| there.
|
| Performance gains from _here_ should be expected to be
| identical to AMD as they'll be moving on TSMC's cadence (it's
| AMD who might actually see similar jumps on the low end if they
| go the Apple route and move everything to the package).
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if Apple has already started looking to
| stand up it's own fab. They have large and very predictable
| needs now, and could likely get ahead of ASML's queue by
| throwing money and scale at the problem - not least because it
| would help them muddy the waters as to what Apple Silicon
| actually is more, which fits the marketing better.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > and critically from packing everything into the SOC so
| physical distances were reduced by multiple orders of
| magnitude
|
| I don't think that reduces chip power so much as it reduces
| latency. Apple's "power" here comes entirely from using the
| 5nm node and refining a stupid-high IPC.
|
| > it's AMD who might actually see similar jumps on the low
| end if they go the Apple route and move everything to the
| package
|
| No? Again, making everything an SOC has
| advantages/disadvantages, but your raw performance metrics
| are almost never significantly influenced by distance of the
| components (unless the distance is significant enough). AMD's
| _real_ advantage will be jumping ahead 1.5 generations at
| TSMC, and then later it will be an architectural change (eg.
| big.LITTLE). I think Apple is the only one interested in
| shipping computers with SOCs.
| boringuser1 wrote:
| epolanski wrote:
| > But no one exits that from Intel or AMD every year anymore.
|
| I've been hearing that since Skylake, at every single processor
| generation that the gains are too modest. That's more than a
| decade at this point.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Skylake (6th) came out in 2015. It's just that due to the
| 10nm delay we then had Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake and Comet Lake
| all being refreshes of Skylake on the same process until we
| got to Rocket Lake (11th) - a backport of a 10nm uarch to
| 14nm with the somewhat predictable power issues. Only with
| Alder Lake (12th) we actually got the first _real_ new uarch
| on the process it was designed for since Skylake.
| tyrfing wrote:
| > They're on the same process node, and only increased
| frequency a bit.
|
| It's going from N5 to N5P, chosen by Apple over N4.
|
| > But no one [expects] that from Intel or AMD every year
| anymore.
|
| That's not accurate, a minor performance upgrade after almost 2
| years is the exact thing Intel has gotten a lot of flack for in
| recent years. The fact that people are willing to defend it is
| really exclusive to Apple and their unbeatable marketing.
|
| Zen 4 on an almost identical timeline will be ~ 30-40%
| performance, and people were widely disappointed by the
| announcement of ">15%" S/T - very close to Apple's +18% M/T.
| Intel will have gone from Rocket Lake to (almost) Raptor Lake,
| doubling performance.
| uluyol wrote:
| Intel got criticized for minor improvements year after year.
| It's important to look at these on 5+ year timescales, since
| the improvements aren't evenly spread out. Especially since
| gains often depend on manufacturing process improvements.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Actually the reason why Intel got criticized is not that
| their improvements were minor because Intel could not do
| better than that.
|
| When studying the evolution of Intel CPUs over many years,
| it is obvious that most of the time they could have done
| greater improvements, but as long as their competition was
| weak they delayed the improvements that they could have
| done in a single year over 2 or 3 yearly CPU generations,
| in order to minimize their manufacturing costs, therefore
| maximizing their profits.
|
| Only during the many years that have passed between Skylake
| and Alder Lake, Intel was no longer able to implement all
| the improvements that they would have wanted, due to the
| failures in the development of the new CMOS processes, so
| they were forced to make random minor improvements because
| greater improvements were impossible and they did not have
| a good Plan B as an alternative to the erroneous Plan A,
| which was every year that the next year will be the year
| when the Intel "10 nm" CMOS process will become
| competitive.
| chippiewill wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not personally surprised by there not a massive
| jump in an 18 month span.
|
| It looks as though Apple are gearing up for armv9 and
| smaller process node for the next round of chips which
| would be more of the "large jump" people are expecting. I
| think as long as Apple alternate the big jumps with the
| small jumps then they're not doing anything different from
| anyone else.
|
| They needed to deliver M2 to show they're not resting on
| their laurels. If M3 is a similar kind of improvement then
| that's when to be worried.
| kemotep wrote:
| I would agree. Third times the charm an all that. Looking
| at AMD, with Zen 1 that was a huge leap but their second
| generation Zen+ was quite small in comparison. Zen 2
| showed the path forward and Zen 3 showed they could
| continue to deliver performance with their methods. I
| would hold Apple Silicon to the same test (as well as
| Intel's dedicated GPUs), M3 or whatever the third
| iteration is will be the true test of Apple's vision.
| eigen wrote:
| 2015 Sky Lake i5-6600K single core 1092 [1]
|
| 2017 Kaby Lake i5-7600k single core 1157 [2]
|
| 2017 Coffee Lake i5-8600k single core 1206 [3]
|
| 2018 Coffee Lake i5-9600k single core 1233 [4]
|
| 2020 Comet Lake i5-10600k single core 1307 [5]
|
| 16% improvement over 5 years, average 4.6% improvement per
| release, range from 2.2% to 6% per step. didn't realize
| that they released 2 Coffee Lakes.
|
| [1] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-
| core-i5-6600k
|
| [2] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-
| core-i5-7600k
|
| [3] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-
| core-i5-8600k
|
| [4] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-
| core-i5-9600k
|
| [5] https://browser.geekbench.com/processors/intel-
| core-i5-10600...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Those are all _Skylake_ CPUs with very minor tweaks. The
| biggest change being clock frequencies steadily
| increasing due to 14 nm evolving into the ultra-mature
| 14+++ nm process.
| bin_bash wrote:
| Intel didn't get flack because of minor improvements, they
| got flack because they couldn't release 10nm or any other
| major improvements for the better part of a decade.
| prvc wrote:
| >It's going from N5 to N5P, chosen by Apple over N4.
|
| Any info as to why?
| Kognito wrote:
| N4 is still (despite the name) part of TSMC's 5nm process
| family and offers little to no performance/efficiency
| improvement over N5P.
|
| N4 increases the number of EUV layers so the main
| improvements should be in cost and yield which would have
| been interesting to Apple, but N5P hit volume manufacturing
| earlier allowing Apple to ship the M2 earlier and with more
| capacity.
|
| Waiting for N3 would have offered a considerable
| performance and efficiency boost but that'd realistically
| have delayed M2 to the first half of 2023.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| _You can't keep up a 20% increase in normal stuff every release
| for long._
|
| But this chip is literally 18% faster "in normal stuff"
| boringuser1 wrote:
| ip26 wrote:
| When M1 came out, I remember a lot of excitement around the
| past progress of performance in the A* core line; people
| extrapolated future performance and thought they were going to
| get +20% (ST) every 18 months on top of M1.
|
| I think this expectation of sustained performance gains was a
| part of some of the more glowing reviews, rather than a narrow
| evaluation of M1 itself.
|
| Anyway, it wasn't a reasonable expectation. But I think people
| expected it anyway.
| danieldk wrote:
| And yet, the M2 has 18% performance improvement in about 18
| months. Presumably also single-threaded, since the CPU core
| configuration is the same as the M1. 18% is close enough to
| 20%.
| awill wrote:
| AMD, releases CPUs every 2 years, so it's still impressive that
| in just 1 year Apple can have these gains.
| nixgeek wrote:
| Apple announced M1 in November 2020 and the new MacBook Air
| M2 isn't currently available to order in June 2022. It's not
| accurate to say M-series iterations are annual.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_silicon
| Gigachad wrote:
| Tech journalism needs a dramatic story. So every product is
| either world changing or a complete failure.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| SemiAnalysis may be burying the lede and underhyping the
| story of the decade here: head of apple arch leaves and takes
| 100 process engineers to start stealth risc startup and its
| creating a delay effect in consumer tech innovation,
| bombshell!
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Someone will probably mention that "it's not tech journalism,
| but all journalism", and I would probably agree. However
| please keep in mind that there is a significant selection
| bias here itself -- non-dramatic stories will be less
| frequently featured here on HN, and even if they are, attract
| less comments.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| To their credit, with many billions on the line, products do
| have a bit of a tendency to be a failure if all they can do
| is tread water.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Not if the rest of the market is the same. Most products
| get yearly updates that are completely unremarkable. No one
| gets hyped up for the next year edition of a car.
| tssva wrote:
| M1 to M1+ would be like the release of the next year
| edition of a car. M1 to M2 would be like the release of
| the next generation of a car. A lot of people get hyped
| up for the release of the next generation of a car.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The MacBook Pro M1+ Pro is just too much.
| hx833001 wrote:
| Major car models are introduced every ~6 years with
| refreshes at 3 years.
| tssva wrote:
| Different types of products have different product cycle
| times, but that doesn't make the comparison between
| stages of the product refresh inaccurate.
| skohan wrote:
| Does anyone seriously think the performance of the M2
| processor will have any meaningful impact on Apple's
| success?
|
| They made a big splash with the M1 macbook air, which was
| at the time an incredible value, and the clear best laptop
| on the market in terms of price/performance hands down.
| Apple was able to get splashy headlines, and assert their
| silicon was not just competitive with, but better than
| Intel and AMD. That's the critical goal they had to reach
| to validate Apple Silicon as a valid contender in the
| market.
|
| This year, they're iterating on the design, and getting the
| market to accept a 20% price increase on the macbook air,
| which is their mass-market product.
|
| Does anything they do from here on out actually depend on
| them continuing to win in the semiconductor space? It's not
| as if these chips are competing for server slots, where
| winning comes down to raw numbers in terms of
| performance/Watt.
|
| These macbooks are going to be absolutely fine for the
| foreseeable future for everything anyone needs a mac to do:
| video editing, coding, content consumption etc. run
| absolutely great on these devices which have excellent
| battery life and great user experience.
| gumby wrote:
| Also Apple has lots of knobs to turn due to the high
| degree of vertical integration. There is a lot of slack
| they can pick up in OS performance (e.g. process
| scheduler, memory management). So their overall
| benchmarks can continue to trend up even if the locus of
| improvement varies.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| As a casual reader, I notice the "die shot bleeding" and wonder
| if that was intended. I hope it wasn't, but I also hope not to
| have to wonder this about the posts here.
| dylan522p wrote:
| Author here. What do you mean die shot bleeding?
| ganbatekudasai wrote:
| What do you mean? "die shot bleeding"?
| [deleted]
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > The bleeding hasn't stopped in recent years as Apple's work
| culture simply isn't the best and other firms, namely the
| hyperscalers such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, are
| paying more than Apple was to poach talent.
|
| I really hate that word "poach". Using "attract" works much
| better in that sentence.
|
| I find it appalling how entering into a free contract with
| someone to give them more money for their work is called
| "poaching".
|
| Words matter, and how we describe something has an impact in how
| it is viewed ("piracy" is another example).
| walterbell wrote:
| Poaching expresses a specific viewpoint that was challenged by
| the U.S. Department of Justice, https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2014/06/should-tech-work...
|
| _> A group of big tech companies, including Apple, Google,
| Adobe, and Intel, recently settled a lawsuit over their "no
| poach" agreement for $324 million. The CEOs of those companies
| had agreed not to do "cold call" recruiting of each others'
| engineers until they were busted by the Department of Justice,
| which saw the deal as an antitrust violation. The government
| action was followed up by a class-action lawsuit from the
| affected workers, who claimed the deal suppressed their wages._
| dymk wrote:
| Seems like quibbling over words that everybody understands the
| meaning and intention of
| GoOnThenDoTell wrote:
| Words matter. Apple failed to retain these employees with
| cash, its not some hunting game where you catch some
| unsuspecting engineer
| compiler-guy wrote:
| ... who is owned by some other firm.
| ulfw wrote:
| So what is it? Work culture or pay?
|
| How many really move from Apple to Amazon for the work culture?
| ianai wrote:
| It's corporate America. "Performance improvement plans" and "at
| will states" are also part of the same lexicon. (Judge that as
| you will.)
|
| On poaching though, Apple could choose to respond to the market
| signal by improving their work culture and policies to retain
| talent. I do wonder about the supply for these highly skilled
| hardware engineers though.
| butterisgood wrote:
| My thoughts are it doesn't even matter that much. Apple is not
| selling me a CPU - they're selling me a laptop. Yeah it's a
| critical piece but Apple is all about your overall outcome.
|
| If they were a CPU "arms dealer" like Intel or AMD it'd matter
| more I think.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| If the author had taken the time to define some acronyms, this
| would have been way more accessible to a layman. Had to give up
| halfway through.
| kzrdude wrote:
| What does the M2 mean for linux support, any porting needed?
| GeekyBear wrote:
| From Anandtech's deep dive into the performance and efficiency
| cores in the A15, which are reused here in the M2.
|
| Performance Cores:
|
| >Apple A15 performance cores are extremely impressive here -
| usually increases in performance always come with some sort of
| deficit in efficiency, or at least flat efficiency. Apple here
| instead has managed to reduce power whilst increasing
| performance, meaning energy efficiency is improved by 17% on the
| peak performance states versus the A14. If we had been able to
| measure both SoCs at the same performance level, this efficiency
| advantage of the A15 would grow even larger. In our initial
| coverage of Apple's announcement, we theorised that the company
| might possibly invested into energy efficiency rather than
| performance increases this year, and I'm glad to see that
| seemingly this is exactly what has happened, explaining some of
| the more conservative (at least for Apple) performance
| improvements.
|
| Efficiency Cores:
|
| >The A15's efficiency cores are also massively impressive - at
| peak performance, efficiency is flat, but they're also +28%
| faster.
|
| The comparison against the little Cortex-A55 cores is more absurd
| though, as the A15's E-core is 3.5x faster on average, yet only
| consuming 32% more power, so energy efficiency is 60% better.
|
| Conclusions:
|
| >In our extensive testing, we're elated to see that it was
| actually mostly an efficiency focus this year, with the new
| performance cores showcasing adequate performance improvements,
| while at the same time reducing power consumption, as well as
| significantly improving energy efficiency.
|
| The efficiency cores of the A15 have also seen massive gains,
| this time around with Apple mostly investing them back into
| performance, with the new cores showcasing +23-28% absolute
| performance improvements, something that isn't easily identified
| by popular benchmarking. This large performance increase further
| helps the SoC improve energy efficiency, and our initial battery
| life figures of the new 13 series showcase that the chip has a
| very large part into the vastly longer longevity of the new
| devices.
|
| https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo...
| sushicat wrote:
| This is a really great article from Anandtech with benchmarks
| and analysis, it explained a lot of things.
|
| > The overall performance gains are quite disappointing when
| you factor in the raw cost increase that comes with this new M2
| and the fact that it has been nearly 2 years since the M1's
| introduction.
|
| Also the logic of article in the title is little weird to me.
| M1 was introduced in the same year as A14, they use the same
| core; while M2 uses the same core as A15, which introduced 1
| year after M1. So technically M2 increased the performance by
| 18% in one year, not two years.
|
| Though I'm curious why Apple didn't use A16's core in M2.
| chippiewill wrote:
| > Though I'm curious why Apple didn't use A16's core in M2.
|
| Probably the smaller process node. There's low capacity and
| low yields for the first year or two of the smaller node. It
| might not be an issue for the base-level M2s, but they'll be
| expected to update the Pro/Max/Ultra line up as well in the
| next 8 months which have much larger die sizes and they'd end
| up throwing away most of the wafer.
| BackBlast wrote:
| Phones are the flagship product. They will always get the
| latest and greatest first, including cores, die shrinks, etc
| etc.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Which is weird because most iPhone users use all the power
| for stuff like WhatsApp. iPhones are plenty fast already
| (honestly probably mostly due to a well cared-for UI).
| macintux wrote:
| I assume Apple wants the phones to have the most
| efficient CPUs, since battery life is much more critical
| than laptops & desktops.
| mnholt wrote:
| It's my opinion that Apple sees putting the best
| processors in iPhones as being able to extend the life of
| the product. With that available compute overhead today
| it will feel "faster" longer and can take advantage of
| software features they develop 1-3 years down the line.
| dylan522p wrote:
| M1 2020, M2 2022?
| hjnilsson wrote:
| It is looking like A16 will be on a smaller node. Likely
| manufacturing it on the current node would be too expensive
| due to increased transistor count.
|
| Available volume on the new node will be much smaller, so
| they had to prioritize. This is likely why only the iPhone
| pro will get the A16.
| brokencode wrote:
| Why does the biggest and richest company in the world ever have
| to suffer from talent leaving because they don't get paid enough?
| It just doesn't make any sense.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Why would compensation be the decisive factor for top talent in
| a highly compensated field? They have probably already made
| enough money that they don't have to work for living, and they
| are probably genuinely interested in their work because they
| made it to the top. Apple processors are already in the market,
| so the most interesting work is done, and it may be time to
| start looking for new challenges.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The article specifically lists culture and money as the
| reasons people are leaving. It also adds that there is a need
| for a challenge amongst a successful and accomplished group.
|
| " The bleeding hasn't stopped in recent years as Apple's work
| culture simply isn't the best and other firms, namely the
| hyperscalers such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, are
| paying more than Apple was to poach talent."
| riffraff wrote:
| If you consider Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you have
| "esteem" at a high place. Money becomes a proxy for that.
|
| Big management negotiate higher pay all the time not because
| there is a difference between earning 30 or 40 millions, but
| because they need to feel their own "value" go up.
|
| This is discussed at length in "thinking fast and slow",
| iirc.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Spending goes up with compensation in general. Then it
| becomes the norm and you don't want to lose it. Sure you can
| retire but probably not at a level where you can fly first
| class everywhere, stay in five star hotels and stay on
| private islands.
|
| That aside once people have kids the sky is the limit for
| giving them the "best life possible." Nanny, private tutors,
| private schools (and/or a house in Cupertino since it's
| Apple), college funds, house with good amenities nearby, etc.
| I probably missed some costs in there.
| postalrat wrote:
| Well they aren't the richest and certainly aren't the biggest.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Depending on how you define richest Apple could very well be
| the richest. It has something like 200 billion dollars in
| cash in hand. I would be surprised if any company could match
| that.
| green-eclipse wrote:
| Often unreported, Apple also has $100B in debt. Google and
| Microsoft have a better net cash and cash equivalents
| position than Apple.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/long-
| te...
| ezconnect wrote:
| Getting debt is the only way they could bring their cash
| home to avoid tax.
| adrr wrote:
| Can you explain the process? I can't make it work to
| avoid tax. I assume Apple's debt is credit lines to fund
| inventory.
| macintux wrote:
| Repatriating cash earned outside the U.S. involves a
| hefty tax (afraid I don't recall the number).
| Occasionally the government offers a tax holiday to
| encourage companies to do so.
|
| So, rather than bring the money home at the high rate,
| Apple has been taking on debt for U.S. operations while
| waiting for (and perhaps lobbying for) another tax
| holiday.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| And I hope you know that the phrase "repatriating"
| implies something false. The cash is not stuck in a box
| overseas. Even though Apple (and google and others) would
| transfer their profits to a company they set up overseas
| where there is a lower tax rate, that money ends up in
| banks and holdings in the US. The hitch, to Apple or
| Google, is those monies have restrictions on its use, eg,
| they can't use that pile of cash to build a factory or
| pay dividends. But what the can do is use that money as
| collateral for a nearly equivalent amount as a loan which
| is not so encumbered. It just becomes a game for them to
| avoid paying most taxes until they are able to get an
| administration / congress which gives them a tax holiday
| so they can convert all that deferred money back into
| normal cash holdings at a much lower tax rate.
| green-eclipse wrote:
| Jony Ive would call it courage.
| Jyaif wrote:
| There are a downsides to paying a lot:
|
| * you attract/retain more people that are interested in
| money/status.
|
| * the employees become entitled.
|
| Also, just like Apple's customers are OK with paying a premium
| price because it's Apple, employees are OK with paying a
| premium price to be an employee of Apple (by accepting lower
| salaries).
| gnicholas wrote:
| Economists call it 'psychic income'; it's often cited as a
| reason why salaries for teachers are not higher.
| davidgould wrote:
| John Kenneth Galbraith called this phenomenon "convenient
| social virtue".
| TylerE wrote:
| Things don't become the "est" anything by being wasteful.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| That's such a contradictory statement given the facts I don't
| even know where to begin.
| riffraff wrote:
| My dad used to tell a story when as a kid he worked at a gas
| station. Guy shows up with a Ferrari, asks for a full tank,
| pays with a large note and my dad asks him to keep the
| change. The guy replied
|
| - boy, I got a lot of money Really, a lot. You know how I got
| them? I never gave anything away for free. Hand that change
| over.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| If someone asked to keep my change I would say no too.
|
| Why the fsck? Is it normal to beg during work where you're
| from?
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Is it normal to beg during work where you're from?
|
| Yes - but they call it _tipping_ 'round these parts. They
| even have prominently displayed tip jars and everything.
| dEnigma wrote:
| Interesting. Was it common in the past, or in your region,
| for the service worker to actually ask for the change? I've
| never heard of that, or experienced it in my own life.
| Usually the customer plays the only active part in the
| "keep the change" interaction.
| heurisko wrote:
| Reminds me of the Simpsons episodes when Bill Gates "buys
| out" Homer's internet business.
|
| "Well I didn't get rich by writing a lot of cheques!"
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE
| otikik wrote:
| That just illustrates that a lot of rich guys are entitled
| assholes. The correlation between assholery and driving an
| expensive car in particular has been studied.
|
| https://youtu.be/1EHhFwGeQLc
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I know! People shouldn't feel entitled to their own
| change! It's such a dick move.
| otikik wrote:
| The assholery part here is not about who keeps the
| change. It's about telling a gas station boy "that's how
| you got rich". What makes you rich is first of all being
| born rich, which most rich people tend to ignore. On the
| few cases were we are really talking about people with
| humble beginnings, it's all about making your time count.
| If the guy was really rich, the time it would take the
| boy to get inside, take 2 dollars from the cash register
| and give them to him was just not worth it. It was all
| self aggrandising bravado.
| cft wrote:
| Jeez, do we have to turn the discussion about a
| microprocessor die shot into a forum to push your
| socialist agitprop? What did your post contribute to the
| technical discussion?
| edgyquant wrote:
| The majority of wealthy Americans were not born rich.
| Almost half of Americans own stock and a significant
| portion of retired Americans are millionaires.
| cstejerean wrote:
| A retired American with a $1M+ in their retirement
| account but who needs to stretch that over 20+ years
| isn't what I'd consider rich.
| nicky0 wrote:
| I doubt it's even a real story. I've heard variations of
| it. The basic idea is "just because I'm rich doesn't mean
| I'm giving stuff away, how do you think I got (and stay)
| rich?". The ferarri, the $50 note, and other details are
| just embellishments in this version of the tale.
| fastball wrote:
| https://www.ramseysolutions.com/retirement/how-many-
| milliona...
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-
| riche...
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > I know! People shouldn't feel entitled to their own
| change! It's such a dick move.
|
| Back when I was driving cabs I just assumed whatever they
| handed me was mine and if they wanted the change they had
| to ask for it. Mostly worked but plenty of times I gave
| them their change back and got no tip.
|
| My absolute favorite was this guy taking a girl out to
| the fancy part of town and making a big deal about giving
| me a bunch of money then as soon as she was out of
| earshot asking for the change. Guess you gotta pay for
| those overpriced drinks somehow.
|
| Some people just don't ever tip and when the non-tipping
| profile groups collide in a single person but they do
| leave a tip it messes with your mind a bunch.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I worked in the service industry in UK for a few months
| for the richest and most privileged people out there. I
| got the chance to work in events where members of the
| royal family were present or events where the most famous
| and rich people in the world were the guests.
|
| My observation is, the assholes are everywhere but also
| the nice and polite people. I can't really generalize it
| for rich or poor, I did not see that simple pattern.
|
| At that time my hourly wage was about 8 pounds and a lady
| at an extravagant event gave me 5 pounds and told me to
| keep extra good care of the table. She somehow expected
| to have private waiter for the night for 5 pounds
| sterling but I took extra good care for about 45 minutes
| and when she asked me why I wasn't working for her
| specifically any longer, I explained that 5 pounds will
| do just that much and she agreed.
|
| I recall once a very rich person screaming at the waiter
| because did not like the foam of the coffee and a few
| instances of rudeness but overall these were rarities.
|
| If anything, the managers were much much bigger arsholes
| towards the employees because they could afford
| it(because the employees were mostly students or
| immigrants like me who need the money to sustain life
| until they find a proper job). Employees with higher
| status were big assholes towards the more junior ones.
|
| Most social interactions with the rich or famous that I
| had or have seen were very positive and polite.
|
| In some instances I was at fault and they were very
| understanding and tolerant. Once I failed to deliver the
| coffee of a famous F1 racer at breakfast and he didn't
| make a big deal of it(If I was him, I would probably be
| much more rude). Victoria's Secret models were just fine
| too when received flat champagne.
|
| I'm not convinced that rich people being assholes in
| social interactions is a real thing. IMHO the pattern is,
| people who are privileged in their own social group are
| the assholes.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| People in privileged positions often have the support of
| others like themselves. "Enablement" is probably a more
| accurate term.
|
| There's an old family in my town that came from the kind
| of wealth that had each of their children for a few
| generations married into important or powerful families
| across the state. Today, the main family has no income
| other than from what they inherited, but they maintain
| their position and membership in society through being
| horrible to deal with. The center of the family is a vile
| gossip and has nothing but time to hear about everything
| that happens and think up ways to use it to her
| advantage.
|
| They're notorious for showing up to functions uninvited,
| sitting at your table and ordering, and leaving before
| the bill comes. They hire the best local artisans and
| builders, complain to everyone about how shoddy the work
| is until they get extra for free, and then never pay,
| threatening to sue for imagined problems. When the grand
| children were in school, the family would try to walk
| into functions without tickets because "their child was
| performing", as if no one else's were.
|
| When their daughter married a pro athlete, no one in town
| would build them a house, so they had to hire from other
| parts of the state. Their reasoning? No one in town was
| skilled enough to build them what they wanted.
|
| They wrote a letter of complaint to the White House about
| a cavalcade driving through town during a family member's
| wedding reception and were sent an apology and a bottle
| of champagne by the POTUS. The family apparently sent
| back a letter letting him know that they didn't vote for
| them.
|
| No one here even needs TV. Just hold a dinner party at a
| place they like and they'll show up and entertain for the
| cost of a few drinks and a meal.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I think we can point out horrible people from all kind of
| backgrounds. Wealth can definitely amplify their impact
| on others.
| epolanski wrote:
| > I can't really generalize it for rich or poor, I did
| not see that simple pattern.
|
| My SO works as a consultant in a bank here in Rome,
| Italy.
|
| She moved from a bank in the periphery to a very central
| one in the Parioli neighborhood.
|
| There was a night and day difference between her old and
| new clients in wealth (with the Parioli ones being
| largely millionaires).
|
| Old clients would treat her with the utmost respect and
| call her doctor, "dottoressa", and always listen to what
| she had to say. New ones were on average much more rude,
| pretending and overall uneducated. She would have to
| explain them that she couldn't activate them some service
| because she needed their signatures and they would go all
| mad and call her director or some friend in the bank.
|
| They are on average much worse people and they're also
| much more money aware.
|
| Another anecdote she recalled me was how some rich woman
| wanted to set up a bank account for a no profit to send
| money to some african country. Not only there was no way
| to explain her that it was not that easy to do such
| operations, especially for large sums because this would
| have to automatically trigger money laundering controls,
| she would just not listen and blame her, but the client
| was MAD she had to pay 8 euros commissions on 60k+ euros
| wire transfer, pretending it to be free because it was a
| "no profit".
|
| Yes, there's good and bad people in each wealth tier, but
| rich people on average are _much_ worse assholes. There
| 's no comparison.
| nickpp wrote:
| When working with money, the rich are also more likely to
| hit the countless rules and limitations the banking
| regulations impose on us "for our own good".
|
| Just like as a programmer I am going mental when
| encountering absurd and ineffective account password
| rules lets say (one special char, one upper case, one
| non-letter, etc) while a lay person would just sigh and
| comply.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| exactly, on the other side of this, the rich person
| should have learned how to get better banking service
| that doesn't encumber them with these fund movement
| limitations
|
| most "anti money laundering" or "security" stuff is
| actually just that one bank's poor and inaccurate
| implementation of a law. most of it is just company
| policy and nothing related to the law.
|
| with electronic funds, the entire banking system relies
| on assuming that the prior and next bank has already done
| the checks necessary
|
| because the law only creates a firewall of reporting at
| the deposit and withdrawal of physical notes (its same
| across europe, across us, and elsewhere)
| yieldcrv wrote:
| some banks waive fees for non profits
|
| your bank did not
|
| one of my biggest pet peeves is how low-level employees
| cant tell that their organization isn't doing the normal
| thing
| theplumber wrote:
| The more we automate the better. Computers don't ask to
| keep the change.
| danuker wrote:
| Google doesn't ask whether you agree to account
| suspension either.
| latexr wrote:
| Instead, computers will keep the change without asking
| and point you to an unreachable (or unhelpful) customer
| support number. You'll either give up on trying to
| recover your change or you'll regret not having done it
| sooner, after spending more of your time and sanity than
| the money was worth.
| silvestrov wrote:
| This could be self-selecting: entitled assholes with
| money buy Ferraris while non-asshole rich people drives
| normal cars.
|
| How would you know that the person in the normal family
| car is rich?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| anybody would say something snarky if the _clerk_ asks
| _you_ if they dont have to give you the rest of your
| money back
|
| summer child labor conscript: your total is $15 and your
| change is $85, lemme keep that
|
| you: ..... uhhhh you kidding me?
|
| audience: rich people are assholes!
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| Not even the poorest?
| [deleted]
| smcleod wrote:
| Also their push to try and make people work from the office
| again went down like a lead balloon.
| koonsolo wrote:
| So you claim that 10 well paid engineers are better than 15
| average paid engineers?
| brokencode wrote:
| Apple has enough money that they don't have to reduce
| headcount to be able to afford higher salaries.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Steve was notoriously and sometimes arbitrarily cheap. Apple
| retains some of that.
| pdnell wrote:
| Yet they'll buy their own quarry or glass factory...
| colechristensen wrote:
| Because it's cheaper...
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| Shame that the market is slow to punish and inertia continues
| to reward.
| prvc wrote:
| They lack a culture of advancing technology _per se_ , as
| opposed to making use of it.
| walterbell wrote:
| New companies offer an absence of technical and cultural debt.
|
| Nuvia was purchased for $1.4 billion by Qualcomm, a couple of
| years after being started.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| It's dated, and the subject has shifted to processor design, but
|
| The Apple Product Cycle
| (https://misterbg.org/AppleProductCycle.html)
|
| still sums it all up pretty well.
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