Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

[Eug]

M1
5 nm
Unified memory architecture - LP-DDR4
16 billion transistors

8-core CPU

4 high-performance cores
192 KB instruction cache
128 KB data cache
Shared 12 MB L2 cache

4 high-efficiency cores
128 KB instruction cache
64 KB data cache
Shared 4 MB L2 cache
(Apple claims the 4 high-effiency cores alone perform like a dual-core Intel MacBook Air)

8-core iGPU (but there is a 7-core variant, likely with one inactive core)
128 execution units
Up to 24576 concurrent threads
2.6 Teraflops
82 Gigatexels/s
41 gigapixels/s

16-core neural engine
Secure Enclave
USB 4

Products:
$999 ($899 edu) 13" MacBook Air (fanless) - 18 hour video playback battery life
$699 Mac mini (with fan)
$1299 ($1199 edu) 13" MacBook Pro (with fan) - 20 hour video playback battery life

Memory options 8 GB and 16 GB. No 32 GB option (unless you go Intel).

It should be noted that the M1 chip in these three Macs is the same (aside from GPU core number). Basically, Apple is taking the same approach which these chips as they do the iPhones and iPads. Just one SKU (excluding the X variants), which is the same across all iDevices (aside from maybe slight clock speed differences occasionally).

EDIT:



M1 Pro 8-core CPU (6+2), 14-core GPU
M1 Pro 10-core CPU (8+2), 14-core GPU
M1 Pro 10-core CPU (8+2), 16-core GPU
M1 Max 10-core CPU (8+2), 24-core GPU
M1 Max 10-core CPU (8+2), 32-core GPU

M1 Pro and M1 Max discussion here:

Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

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M1 Ultra discussion here:

Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

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M2 discussion here:

Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

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Second Generation 5 nm
Unified memory architecture - LPDDR5, up to 24 GB and 100 GB/s
20 billion transistors

8-core CPU

4 high-performance cores
192 KB instruction cache
128 KB data cache
Shared 16 MB L2 cache

4 high-efficiency cores
128 KB instruction cache
64 KB data cache
Shared 4 MB L2 cache

10-core iGPU (but there is an 8-core variant)
3.6 Teraflops

16-core neural engine
Secure Enclave
USB 4

Hardware acceleration for 8K h.264, h.264, ProRes

M3 Family discussion here:

Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

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M4 Family discussion here:

Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

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M5 Family discussion here:

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[poke01]

Any rumours about whether M6 (the base chip) is chiplet or monolithic?

Probably monolithic.

 

[jdubs03]

Apple plans M5-based Private Cloud Compute architecture for Apple Intelligence - 9to5Mac

According to a new Private Cloud Compute software release this week, Apple is starting to use M5 chips in Apple...

9to5mac.com

Kind of surprising that it’s just a plain M5. Considering they were using M2 Ultras. I would’ve thought they would go with M5 Max/Ultra but perhaps that’s too expensive at the moment.

 

[mvprod123]

Kind of surprising that it’s just a plain M5. Considering they were using M2 Ultras. I would’ve thought they would go with M5 Max/Ultra but perhaps that’s too expensive at the moment.

I don't think the article is referring to the basic M5 chip. It refers to any chip with M5 architecture. Perhaps it's already M5 Ultra or a completely new custom chip based on M5 IP, specifically for PCC.

 

[Covfefe]

Isn’t a huge part of chiplet cost savings from using the same design for multiple products? Every separate monolithic die has to be laid out, taped out, brought up into high volume and then the entire chip has to be separately validated, even if large portions have huge blocks that were validated on previous dies.

With AMDs CPU dies, that only has to be done once for three products Apple has been somewhat getting around this with the chop for the Pros, but that still involves a lot of repeated work for each die.

Yes, die reuse is a big part of the cost savings with chiplets. Though not as big as you may think. AMD has four Zen5 CCDs.

• desktop 8-core
• server 8-core (apparently a different tape-out from desktop)
• server dense 16 core
• halo 8-core

 

[Doug S]

So I saw this reposted in another thread and it reminded me of something I noticed back when it was originally published that didn't make sense but I forgot to mention it.

What's up with the A19 vs A19P E cores here? The cores are clocked the same but performance really diverges in a way it didn't with A18/A18P.

Having somewhat higher scores makes sense since A19P has 50% more L2 for E cores and an SLC nearly 3x as large. But what's up with using half as much power to get nearly as good a score on FP? Gotta be a testing or transcribing error right? Though Geekerwan is pretty thorough and you'd think he'd catch it.

 

[name99]

Isn’t a huge part of chiplet cost savings from using the same design for multiple products? Every separate monolithic die has to be laid out, taped out, brought up into high volume and then the entire chip has to be separately validated, even if large portions have huge blocks that were validated on previous dies.

This is what I have termed optionality.
And yes it is real savings, but it is not savings because of YIELD issues.

 

[mvprod123]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2023868384426045447

 

[Eug]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2023408889644118375

Summary of the colours for the new A18 Pro MacBook described here:

Low-Cost MacBook Expected on March 4 in These Colors

Apple will announce its rumored low-cost MacBook at its event on March 4, with the device coming in a selection of bold color options, according to a known leaker. Earlier this week, Apple announced a "special Apple Experience" for the media in New York, London, and Shanghai, taking place on...

www.macrumors.com

 

[MerryCherry]

Summary of the colours for the new A18 Pro MacBook described here:

Low-Cost MacBook Expected on March 4 in These Colors

Apple will announce its rumored low-cost MacBook at its event on March 4, with the device coming in a selection of bold color options, according to a known leaker. Earlier this week, Apple announced a "special Apple Experience" for the media in New York, London, and Shanghai, taking place on...

www.macrumors.com

I fear this thing might be overpriced.

And/or

Apple cuts too much spec compared to the Macbook Air (like they did with iPhone 16 vs 16e).

 

[poke01]

I fear this thing might be overpriced.

And/or

Apple cuts too much spec compared to the Macbook Air (like they did with iPhone 16 vs 16e).

My guess is it will be $799USD.

With 8GBRAM/128GB SSD with A18 Pro.

It will come with one usb-c port and no MagSafe. That port will be usb-3 speeds.


Just get a MacBook Air at that point unless you really want the best battery life.

 

[Eug]

My guess is it will be $799USD.

With 8GBRAM/128GB SSD with A18 Pro.

It will come with one usb-c port and no MagSafe. That port will be usb-3 speeds.


Just get a MacBook Air at that point unless you really want the best battery life.

That $799 retail price estimate seems reasonable, but that 8/128 GB spec estimate seems too pessimistic. Are people predicting 8 GB RAM just because the iPhone 16 Pro with A18 Pro has 8 GB RAM? Hopefully they can do 12-16 GB base. Also, I don’t foresee 128 GB base storage unless we are talking about a cheaper institutional-only education model, not available to edu individuals. I’d predict 256 GB base storage for retail and edu individuals. As for lack of MagSafe, I agree that is a strong possibility, but while it would be disappointing, it wouldn’t be a deal killer at this price point IMO, at least if it came with two USB-C ports. They can remove the headphone jack. As I’ve said back from the 2015-2017 MacBook days, 2 USB-C without a headphone jack is much better than 1 USB-C + headphone jack.

 

[LightningZ71]

Unless the specifically spin the next A series chip with a second USB controller that no phone is ever going to use and will be a waste of silicon in 90% plus of it's applications, I don't think there will be a second controller. I don't think that they'll even bother giving this bargain basement MacBook it's own logic board and will just likely use the same board as the phones, just without some modules and with some pin headers added. It'll likely come in two revisions, based around the basic iPhone model it uses the board from and a slightly higher spec model that mirrors a higher spec phone from the stack.

If the base phone has 8GB and 128GB storage, than this will too. With RAM and SSD IC prices high, they'd never keep the BOM reasonable for their target market otherwise, unless lower density SSD chips just aren't being produced anymore because of the industry demand profile.

The other direction is to use a board that they already use in an iPad. Those are already almost laptops to begin with, and adapting it's internals seems trivial for Apple's demonstrated abilities.

 

[Eug]

Unless the specifically spin the next A series chip with a second USB controller that no phone is ever going to use and will be a waste of silicon in 90% plus of it's applications, I don't think there will be a second controller. I don't think that they'll even bother giving this bargain basement MacBook it's own logic board and will just likely use the same board as the phones, just without some modules and with some pin headers added. It'll likely come in two revisions, based around the basic iPhone model it uses the board from and a slightly higher spec model that mirrors a higher spec phone from the stack.

If the base phone has 8GB and 128GB storage, than this will too. With RAM and SSD IC prices high, they'd never keep the BOM reasonable for their target market otherwise, unless lower density SSD chips just aren't being produced anymore because of the industry demand profile.

The other direction is to use a board that they already use in an iPad. Those are already almost laptops to begin with, and adapting it's internals seems trivial for Apple's demonstrated abilities.

You don’t need 2 USB controllers to have 2 USB ports.

Basically all I’m suggesting here is one USB port for charging and one for peripherals, or else shared data bandwidth for two peripherals. Just eliminate the headphone jack. You can convert a USB port to a headphone jack but you can’t convert a headphone jack into a USB port, iPod shuffle notwithstanding.

 

[LightningZ71]

While I agree that two ports are better for the specific reasons that you state, I doubt that they'll do that. It'll likely just be a modification of the existing ipad design, which gets away with one port. They MIGHT retain the wireless charging capability of the iphone to obviate the charge while use issue.

 

[Eug]

While I agree that two ports are better for the specific reasons that you state, I doubt that they'll do that. It'll likely just be a modification of the existing ipad design, which gets away with one port. They MIGHT retain the wireless charging capability of the iphone to obviate the charge while use issue.

The current iPad Airs and iPad Pros have two USB-C ports... if you add the Magic Keyboard.

And it would be a lot cheaper and a lot less awkward to have 2 USB ports than it would be to implement wireless MacBook charging of course.

 

[Mopetar]

Isn’t a huge part of chiplet cost savings from using the same design for multiple products? Every separate monolithic die has to be laid out, taped out, brought up into high volume and then the entire chip has to be separately validated, even if large portions have huge blocks that were validated on previous dies.

Sure to some degree, but they still need to create separate IO dies for desktop/server or any other product lines. That still requires validation, etc. AMD isn't just making one chiplet either since they've got their c-core variant now. The amount of validation they need to do is probably fairly similar. I suppose that they do save on mask costs though.

Even if AMD were only making Epyc CPUs they'd still be better off with chiplets. The odds of making a giant monolithic die where all cores can operate at desired frequencies within given power constraints is very low for any targets that aren't incredibly low themselves. Being able to combine chiplets after the fact to produce a bunch of CPUs that would be 99th percentile with a monolithic design is where the money is at.

Apple has a lot of different dues they're making and could see some savings from reuse, but several of those are incredibly high-volume products so the extra cost of monolithic is a wash when spread out over a hundred million dies. They tend to be pretty good at finding more niche products like an AppleTV that can use dies that would otherwise not be good enough for a phone or tablet.

 

[Doug S]

That $799 retail price estimate seems reasonable, but that 8/128 GB spec estimate seems too pessimistic. Are people predicting 8 GB RAM just because the iPhone 16 Pro with A18 Pro has 8 GB RAM? Hopefully they can do 12-16 GB base. Also, I don’t foresee 128 GB base storage unless we are talking about a cheaper institutional-only education model, not available to edu individuals. I’d predict 256 GB base storage for retail and edu individuals. As for lack of MagSafe, I agree that is a strong possibility, but while it would be disappointing, it wouldn’t be a deal killer at this price point IMO, at least if it came with two USB-C ports. They can remove the headphone jack. As I’ve said back from the 2015-2017 MacBook days, 2 USB-C without a headphone jack is much better than 1 USB-C + headphone jack.

No way it is as high as $799. I think $699 is the ceiling, and $649 is possible. It will be 8 GB RAM, and I would have said 256 GB NAND until prices went crazy. So it might be 128 GB, but if so they'll temper the blow by throwing in 200 GB iCloud free for a year or three. 8 GB is fine for entry level; Macs are more efficient with their RAM than Windows so it isn't as tight as it sounds.

As I've argued before, the BOM for this is probably pretty much on par with the BOM of a iPhone 16e that's currently being sold for $599. A18P costs a few bucks more than A18, and the display/battery are bigger, along with a keyboard and more materials for the case. However the display is LCD not OLED and a lot less complex with no touch layer and far lower pixel density, and there is no cellular (and associated cellular patent licensing they still have to pay with 16e even when using their own modem) and the engineering/manufacturing is easier when you don't have to cram everything into a phone sized slab.

 

[smalM]

Does someone with an ASi MacBook know how keyboard, touchpad, and wlan/BT chip are connected internally?

 

[Eug]

Does someone with an ASi MacBook know how keyboard, touchpad, and wlan/BT chip are connected internally?

M4 MacBook Air

M4 MacBook Air Teardown: Apple, When Will MacBooks Finally Get Repair Upgrades?

New silicon, same old buried keyboard. Full service manuals on launch day, though? Still cool.

www.ifixit.com

iPhone 16 Pro

More Modular Than Ever Before: iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max Teardown

The iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max got major repairability upgrades: The Pro features a metal-encased battery, and both phones are now built so you can do most repairs without risking your screen.

www.ifixit.com

 

[Eug]

No way it is as high as $799. I think $699 is the ceiling, and $649 is possible. It will be 8 GB RAM, and I would have said 256 GB NAND until prices went crazy. So it might be 128 GB, but if so they'll temper the blow by throwing in 200 GB iCloud free for a year or three. 8 GB is fine for entry level; Macs are more efficient with their RAM than Windows so it isn't as tight as it sounds.

As I've argued before, the BOM for this is probably pretty much on par with the BOM of a iPhone 16e that's currently being sold for $599. A18P costs a few bucks more than A18, and the display/battery are bigger, along with a keyboard and more materials for the case. However the display is LCD not OLED and a lot less complex with no touch layer and far lower pixel density, and there is no cellular (and associated cellular patent licensing they still have to pay with 16e even when using their own modem) and the engineering/manufacturing is easier when you don't have to cram everything into a phone sized slab.

I know the BOM estimates out there are somewhat suspect, but FWIW, the BOM of the iPhone 16 8/256 GB has been estimated at a little over US$400, which presumably means that the BOM of the iPhone 16e 8/256 GB may be well under $400. In contrast, the BOM of the M2 MacBook Air 8/256 GB was a little over $500, which may suggest the BOM of an A18 Pro MacBook x/256 GB is well under $500. That makes for a difference of somewhere in the ballpark of $100.

In general, those BOM calculations represent roughly about 40-60% of the device retail cost. So, if you take that $100 BOM difference and double it, you get a $200 retail price delta between the 16e and hypothetical A18 Pro MacBook 8/256 GB or even 12/256 GB:

BOM difference = $100
Retail difference = $200
$599 iPhone 16e + $200 retail difference = $799 A18 Pro MacBook

Individual education pricing of the A18 Pro MacBook will likely be lower than $799 though, and the institutional edu pricing will be even lower.

 

[jdubs03]

I just saw the standard 11in M5 iPad Pro (12GB/256GB) on sale for $799 yesterday. And frequently goes on sale for $899.

So it seems $699 would give it enough space between higher end device (though less full featured OS).

 

[DZero]

My guess is it will be $799USD.

With 8GBRAM/128GB SSD with A18 Pro.

It will come with one usb-c port and no MagSafe. That port will be usb-3 speeds.


Just get a MacBook Air at that point unless you really want the best battery life.

AN olde M1 Air would be way cheaper...

 

[name99]

What do we think of the idea of a new design language for the A-chip MacBook Air?
I'm thinking of say the AirPods Pro design language - shiny white hard plastic that looks almost like ceramic.

I'm guessing that is cheaper than aluminum monobody, while also creating the sort of visual distinction Apple tends to like between the different tiers of their products: "this is a nice looking laptop, yes we know -- but it's also no M-class laptop, it's a teenager laptop not a work laptop".

 

[johnsonwax]

What do we think of the idea of a new design language for the A-chip MacBook Air?
I'm thinking of say the AirPods Pro design language - shiny white hard plastic that looks almost like ceramic.

I'm guessing that is cheaper than aluminum monobody, while also creating the sort of visual distinction Apple tends to like between the different tiers of their products: "this is a nice looking laptop, yes we know -- but it's also no M-class laptop, it's a teenager laptop not a work laptop".

Apple is so invested in CNC at scale I'm not sure aluminum unibody would be more expensive than tipping up a new production method for a single product line that will probably not be a huge volume product.

I think it's also important to think about this product in terms of the markets it's trying to reach and where it's going to be made. Windows is looking as weak as it has in some time - the AI requirements drive up the cost of PCs, and Windows ARM hasn't landed as well as it probably needed to. This may be less a play for western marketshare and more one for emerging markets. If this is an opportunity to shift more manufacturing out of China, that could influence how it's made - their CNC benefits are somewhat dependent on China where there's a huge number of trained workers.

 

[Doug S]

I know the BOM estimates out there are somewhat suspect

Once I saw a BOM estimate for A20P of $280 it became clear some of the people doing these know even less about it than I do (the real number is around a quarter of that)

Yes there are good ones out there but I would want to see BOM estimates for an iPhone and Mac made by the same company/analyst so one could do a direct side by side comparison and see where they thought the differences lie (and note areas where they costed same/similar items differently in the two)