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Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers
- harha 6y agoIs there any information on what type of software will run? Will it run things like R, Julia, Postgres, Docker (which I can work with reasonably well on my late 2013 MBP) and will we see any of the speed improvements or will some of the packages that work fairly well on the Intel-based models just not work?
- Aperocky 6y agoI'm sure a good amount of things won't work on ARM the first time around. But I also think they'll be fixed quickly. RIP my dependency packages...
- kingnothing 6y agoThere's a translation layer, so I'm hopeful everything will just work.
- harha 6y agoAt what speed? As far as I understood, all the presented performance increases are for optimized apps. I guess this is also where Apple sees the primary customer base. For developers, scientists, etc., it would be interesting if it improves any of their typical use-cases – memory is one big limitation (I don't necessarily need 32GB on the laptop, that's what I use a workstation for, but after using my current Macbook for 7 years, I don't want a new laptop that feels limited after a few years)
- saagarjha 6y agoGenerally reasonable speeds.
- jdkee 6y agoAnyone care to explain how they got to 5nm so quickly?
- zepto 6y agoTSMC https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315186-apple-books-tsmcs-entire-5nm-production-capability https://www.extremetech.com/computing/315186-apple-books-tsm...
- gjsman-1000 6y agoSimple. They booked 100% of TSMC.
- randmeerkat 6y agoJuicing apples.
- Covzire 6y agoIt's 7nm with some improved process. Or 10nm with 2 improvements, or 14nm with 3 improvements, etc. The process names are completely detached from reality in terms of actual transistor feature size. The only thing we can be reasonably certain of is that 5nm has some kind of improved density over 7nm.
- temp667 6y agoBy shoveling loads of cash at TSMC - does anyone know how much - it's got to be millions/billion?
- jonplackett 6y agoThey paid TSMC the most and bought up nearly all their capacity.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nikivi 6y agoVery curious when 16" ARM mac will surpass the latest 2020 Intel i9 mac. Hopefully 2021.
- deergomoo 6y agoI expect this CPU is already faster than the i9 in most metrics.
- izacus 6y agoWhat are you basing this on?
- DeRock 6y agoNot OP, but > Apple claims the M1 to be the fastest CPU in the world. Given our data on the A14, beating all of Intel’s designs, and just falling short of AMD’s newest 5950X Zen3 – a higher clocked Firestorm above 3GHz, the 50% larger L2 cache, and an unleashed TDP, we can certainly believe Apple and the M1 to be able to achieve that claim. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/5 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de...
- mmastrac 6y agoWhen they say "[faster than the] latest PC laptop chip", what exactly do they mean? Intel? AMD? EDIT: added [faster than the]
- rewtraw 6y agoPresumably, both.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wmf 6y agoProbably Tiger Lake-U. I definitely believe M1 is faster. Apple has a history of pretending things like Nvidia or Ryzen don't exist when it suits them so I'm sure there will be gotcha benchmarks down the line. Apple also compared against "best-selling PCs" several times, but the best-selling PCs are the cheapest junk so obviously Macs will be faster than those.
- ebg13 6y agohttps://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-unleashes-m1/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-unleashes-m1/ down at the bottom says: “World’s fastest CPU core in low-power silicon”: Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip and 16GB of RAM measuring peak single thread performance of workloads taken from select industry standard benchmarks, commercial applications, and open source applications. Comparison made against the highest-performing CPUs for notebooks, commercially available at the time of testing." So, "Comparison made against the highest-performing CPUs for notebooks, commercially available [one month ago]". I guess there could be wiggle room on interpreting "highest-performing", but this seems pretty good.
- sercand 6y agoAt the bottom of the macbook-{air,pro} page: > with up to 2.8x faster processing performance than the previous generation [2] > Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip, as well as production 1.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based 13-inch MacBook Pro systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Open source project built with prerelease Xcode 12.2 with Apple Clang 12.0.0, Ninja 1.10.0.git, and CMake 3.16.5. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gjsman-1000 6y agoWait, they pulled out the FAN?
- slugiscool99 6y agoThis is the best part
- r00fus 6y agoDoes your iPhone have a fan? It's a supercharged phone chip.
- bklyn11201 6y agoFor sure this was expected, but the fan was actually pulled out in the 12" MacBook 2015 edition (dual-core Intel Core M processor). https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/176391/which-macbook-doesnt-have-any-fans/176393
- abrowne 6y agoAnd the latest Intel MBA doesn't have a heat pipe connecting the fan to the CPU.
- justincormack 6y agonone of the 12" macbooks had fans, and the early Air's didnt, but the later ones did.
- sooheon 6y agoI was hoping they'd bring this form factor back with the ARM chips, it was one of my favorite machines.
- tibbydudeza 6y agoMac Mini still uses a fan (higher clock ???) but not the Macbook Air.
- motoboi 6y agoIf you think about it, it has the biggest cooling surface in any notebook. It's the aluminium case.
- dreamer7 6y agoThe iPhone-like speed of waking up from sleep itself is enough to convince many of us to go for the M1 macbooks
- highfrequency 6y agoHow long does it take the current gen of macbooks to wake from sleep, ~1 second?
- gabagool 6y agoI genuinely would love some info or statistics on this. AFAIC remember, laptops wake from sleep almost instantly to the lock screen. Is it a longer wait if one wakes directly to their desktop? I'm with you in not fully understanding the benefit. Maybe this is a technology that is hard to imagine, but is difficult to go back from (60hz, Retina displays).
- brundolf 6y agoI think there's a conceptual difference. Macbooks wake up after a brief pause of a second or two; phones act like they never went to sleep. There's this perception of locking your phone being a zero-cost thing, which isn't quite true of putting your laptop to sleep. I assume this is the gap they're talking about bridging.
- carstenhag 6y agoTakes some seconds in my experience. And about 10 in total for both of my external displays to be displaying useful stuff. Definitely annoying.
- FireBeyond 6y agoThe displays always seem to be the challenge. With my Mac Pro, as soon as I wake it, I can see the LED on my monitors are 'alive', but it still takes that same 10s or so to be displaying data. Also on macOS, if you have an always-on VPN, that can absolutely cause wake time challenges.
- m_a_g 6y agoAn 8 core processor on a Macbook Air that is also energy efficient? That is truly impressive. I never thought I would consider using Macbook Airs after all the years of using Macbook Pros, but Apple surprises me once again.
- BooneJS 6y ago4 high-power and 4 low-power cores.
- cornstalks 6y agoIt's 8-core, but they're 4 performance and 4 low-power cores, so it's not your normal 8-core chip. It's more like a big.LITTLE chip.
- semi-extrinsic 6y agoAnyone know how you interact with these cores as a developer/user? Say if I'm running some C code with OpenMP parallelism, can I bind it to three of the fast cores?
- saagarjha 6y agoBinding to specific cores is not exposed to userspace, but you can influence which kinds of cores it's likely to be run on by setting thread priorities and QoS classes.
- modeless 6y agoHuh, the form factors for the Macs seem identical. I expected them to be thinner or something. Fanless is nice for the Air. But I'm really waiting to see what they do on the high end with the top MacBook Pro and even Mac Pro. Will we see an Apple discrete GPU? I guess we'll have to wait a year or two for that.
- brundolf 6y agoThey just announced a 13" Pro. Same form-factor as before, still just the M1 inside. It does have a fan, unlike the Air.
- abrowne 6y agoApple seems to usually change one major thing at a time, internals or externals/form factor, but rarely both.
- robertoandred 6y agoThey left form factors the same when they switched to Intel. I'm sure it helps reassure people that there's a continuity of the platform.
- aledalgrande 6y agonot exactly the same, less ports
- google234123 6y agowow, 5nm, memory, gpu, and cpu on the same soc. RX 560 has the same 2.6 tflops as this gpu on this chip. They say 4x more efficient at 10w and 2x more powerful than intel.
- fulafel 6y agoRX 560 has about 100 GB/s memory bandwidth, how does that department stack up?
- The_rationalist 6y agoA 560 is low end in 2020
- r00fus 6y agoSame price as previous MB Air - $1k. That's a HUGE selling point to me. I was ready to see $2k for their newest kit. They're looking for marketshare gains.
- ziftface 6y agoI'm curious to know why you expected 2k. With more vertical integration, the cost normally goes down. Why would the cost go up for apple here?
- r00fus 6y agoI guess I was expecting a high margin, top-end product, typical of Apple. Some people would have paid more for iOS apps on their Mac. Given this is an architecture shift, I guess it seems to make sense to test it out with a midrange product.
- mrgordon 6y agoIt was to be expected because they save a lot of money that they were paying to Intel. It was estimated that they could shave something like $100 per computer by switching to an in house chip.
- jeffbee 6y agoThey are saving the money, but they're just keeping it. You save nothing.
- romanovcode 6y agoI don't get it. If we have same CPU on MacbookAir and MacbookPro - why would I get more expensive "Pro"? Can someone explain how is Pro faster than Air with same CPU? Also, the "Windows Guy" bit is a bit lame IMO. I have two MacBooks and one custom built PC. The PC is faster than both MacBooks combined.
- chrisseaton 6y agoBecause of all the other components which are different? A laptop isn't just a CPU.
- brundolf 6y agoThe article mentions that the new M1 contains the CPU, GPU, memory, I/O, etc. in a single chip.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> If you read the article Accusing people not not reading the article is against the rules here. > CPU, GPU, memory, I/O Screens, batteries, form-factors.
- JKCalhoun 6y agoYep. Like more USB ports....
- modeless 6y agoIt'll be way faster with the fan to cool it.
- IMTDb 6y agoBetter cooling. Faster SSD. Faster and more memory.
- ebg13 6y ago> Can someone explain how is Pro faster than Air with same CPU? Active cooling.
- ojosilva 6y agoApple mentions TensorFlow explicitly in the ongoing presentation due to the new 16-core "Neural Engine" embedded in the M1 chip. Now that's an angle I did not expect on this release. Sounds exciting! Edit: just to clarify, the Neural Engine itself is not really "new": > The A11 also includes dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls a "Neural Engine". This neural network hardware can perform up to 600 billion operations per second and is used for Face ID, Animoji and other machine learning tasks.[9] The neural engine allows Apple to implement neural network and machine learning in a more energy-efficient manner than using either the main CPU or the GPU.[14][15] However, third party apps cannot use the Neural Engine, leading to similar neural network performance to older iPhones. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A11#Neural_Engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A11#Neural_Engine
- wmf 6y agoIt's kind of sad that AMD spent years to get mediocre TensorFlow support and Apple walks in with this. It really shows how huge Apple is.
- WanderPanda 6y agoBut they needed to, MacBooks are simply no option if you want to train models. I dont expect crazy performance but would be great if MacBooks would be an option again for prototyping / model development at least
- protomyth 6y ago16GB max it looks like.
- unionemployee 6y agoI don't understand this. Does the chip make up for it? Do I have to wait until the next generation for 32gb?
- fastball 6y agoThe RAM is in the chip, so presumably they just want to iterate a bit first before just throwing RAM at it.
- ninkendo 6y agohuge own-goal on Apple's part. It would be literally impossible for me to use this machine to do my job. I guess I'll have to wait until M2. Edit: If it wasn't clear, this was not a joke. I develop a relatively heavyweight service on the JVM, and between my IDE, the code I run, and all the gradle build daemon stuff, I regularly use up more than 32GB. Often over 50GB. (Although some swap is tolerable, having the majority of my resident set being swapped at any given time means things get very slow.)
- fulafel 6y ago"This affords faster performance on Mac computers using M1 versus separate CPU, GPU, RAM, and other components" Are they really saying this vs dGPU?
- jonplackett 6y agoI'm sure I heard them specifically compared it to other laptops with integrated graphics.
- StillBored 6y agoAnd very likely the intel integrated graphics in existing mac's (aka not Xe). The AMD integrated graphics are easily 3x faster in similar product lines in many benchmarks vs the intel's. Which means its probably roughly the same as the Amd product lines. Large parts of the presentation perf improvements are probably GPU related. Course i'm viewing this with a healthy dose of skepticism, having been around in the PPC days when you would think from apple's marketing that the PPC based macs were massively faster than your average PC. In reality they were ok, but rarely even the fastest device across a wide swath of benchmarks, mostly sort of middling.
- jonplackett 6y agoThe pricing is pretty impressive. Shame no 16 inch pro though. Surely they need to update that quick because who is going to want a 16 inch intel Mac now?
- twoodfin 6y agoRumors were it was just behind the initial rollout (though those rumors missed the new Mac mini, AFAIK). Signs point to another event in January, I'd expect it there with a heftier SoC.
- jonplackett 6y agoYeah, strangely no-one predicted the mini, despite them already making a tonne of them for developers. Bit of a no brainer really.
- ghaff 6y agoYes, but they seemed pretty ambivalent about the mini for a long time. Probably easier from a SKU perspective though than coming out with new iMac versions. (Even if iMacs overall outsell Minis--which I'm guessing they do--individual models may not.)
- twoodfin 6y agoI think they're targeting a more powerful SoC at the iMac, or at least they didn't want to announce new iMacs without being able to replace the whole range.
- mantap 6y agoMe and other people who want to run windows VMs.
- jonplackett 6y agoI guess you'll get a good deal now at least.
- AnonHP 6y agoAll the Macs looked quite impressive! It was well worth waiting for these (at least for me). But I was disappointed that the maximum RAM is 16GB. I would’ve preferred a 32GB option for better future proofing (especially with web applications needing more and more memory). Edit: Considering the fact that the RAM won’t be upgradeable (it’s part of the SoC), this limitation is a big bummer. What may be worse is that all these machines will start with an 8GB RAM configuration option at the low end, which isn’t going to age well at all in 2020.
- asimpletune 6y agoWas that for just mb air or all of them? I missed that part.
- kingnothing 6y ago13" Pro is also 16GB.
- pat2man 6y ago32GB is an option on the pro
- kingnothing 6y agoNo, it isn't.
- kevinherron 6y agoThis all looks very promising but unless a solution for running VMs with an x86 OS/apps materializes my 16" MBP might be my last :-/
- ghaff 6y agoWhile not impossible, I would guess that something like that would probably be unusably slow.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Shivetya 6y agoI did not see it mentioned but I hope an app comes with Big Sur which lets us see which apps will work with Rosetta2 through Finder or some sort of report
- stjo 6y agoNot a mac user, but at WWDC they showed you could check in your task manager / process viewer.
- gord288 6y agoIf it's anything like the transition from PowerPC architecture to Intel, you'll be able to see this information by selecting the app package in the Finder, and invoking the "Get Info" window (cmd-I) or palette (option-cmd-I).
- laurentdc 6y agoThe onboard graphics performance seems to be impressive (1050Ti - 1060 range). I wonder if Valve and Epic will start compiling games for ARM. This MacBook could be my first gaming laptop, who would have thought
- stjo 6y agoEpic precisely might not.
- mcraiha 6y agoI would guess that neither Valve or Epic will do that, it is up to game devs to do that. Mac is bad gaming platform, and dropping 32 bit x86 support from Mac OS didn't help https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/32-bit-mac-games/ https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/32-bit-mac-games/
- grovellogic 6y agoI think it is clear they dropped 32bit x86 support so it would be easier to develop Rosetta 2 (The x86 emulation layer). I don't really see why they would drop support otherwise.
- jagger27 6y agoUnity and Unreal already run on iOS so tons of games built on those engines should work well.
- daniel-thompson 6y ago> The onboard graphics performance seems to be impressive I agree, although caveat emptor until independent benchmarks drop. > I wonder if Valve and Epic will start compiling games for ARM There are plenty of other problems besides lack of raw processing power that prevent the mac and macOS from being good gaming platforms. And of course, Epic and Apple are fighting it out over App Store policies, so they're unlikely to do each other any favors.
- Zenst 6y agoWonder if they could pop one onto a PCIe card for exisiting Mac owners to a a copro for a VM.
- pantulis 6y agoWell... they did that decades ago http://tim.id.au/laptops/apple/misc/pc_compatibility_card.pdf http://tim.id.au/laptops/apple/misc/pc_compatibility_card.pd...
- Synaesthesia 6y agoIt would be a nice upgrade for my hackintosh
- think814 6y agoDid I understand correctly that MacBook Pro and Air will share the same M1 CPU? Previous models had a massive delta in CPU performance based on using low power (Air, no fan) or medium power (Pro, with dual fans) Intel chips
- mcintyre1994 6y agoI think there's still a no fan vs fan distinction so they'll still be able to run the Pro more powerful, but it looks like it. I half suspect the Air was the one they wanted to release and they just didn't want there to be no Pro faster than an Air in the lineup.
- paxys 6y agoSame CPU line, but doesn't mean they will have the same specs. Pro will definitely have its cores run faster/hotter.
- ziftface 6y agoIs there any indication at this point that they'll make that clear? It seems kind of strange to buy a computer without really knowing what you're buying. I guess apple didn't officially say what intel processors they have in their computers, but at least you could look it up and know what you're getting.
- paxys 6y agoThey have also never shared this info for iPhones/iPads, so no reason to believe they will do it for Macs going forward. But we should be seeing third party benchmarks soon enough.
- cmoscoe 6y agoYes, but they only replaced the lowest-end 13 inch pro at this point, and are still selling the higher-end Intels. The performance versions will follow next year.
- alg0rith 6y agoSo... will Homebrew work on it?
- garretraziel 6y agoI see no reason why it shouldn't. Most of homebrew is ruby script (that is architecture-agnostic), most of software installed through homebrew can be recompiled.
- saagarjha 6y agoWith a few hiccups, but it's coming along nicely.
- Yabood 6y agoI was thinking about building a new white box media server, but now I'm thinking I should get the mac mini instead.
- asimpletune 6y agoAlso, mb air has no touch bar, but includes fingerprint scanner. I’m sure a lot hackernews will be pleased with that, despite it not being in a machine with the pro moniker.
- aledalgrande 6y agoI was so hoping the Pro might have the same option, but no.
- eugeniub 6y agoTouch ID has been on the MacBook Air since 2018.
- Xcelerate 6y agoI've been using my Macbook Pro Retina ever since it was first released in 2012 and haven't been impressed enough to upgrade since then. It's on its last leg though and this upgrade looks exciting for a change. I hope they release the updated 16 inch soon. Not thrilled they insist on keeping the touch bar, but other than that this seems like they are headed in a good direction.
- nimeshneema 6y agoNo mention of processor speeds, just like iOS devices. This is the new normal now for Macs.
- chrstphrknwtn 6y agoIf you use it, and it is faster, do you care what the numbers are?
- nimeshneema 6y agoNot complaining. Those are exactly my thoughts too.
- aPoCoMiLogin 6y agoif you hear "3x times faster" would you like to know the baseline or just blindly trust that the metric is correct? if you don't care, they would never show the "3x times faster" metric at all, but they do for a reason
- dannyw 6y agoI want to know what I'm buying, like I want to know and compare the screen and DPIs of displays; or how much RAM I have. Clock speeds are another metric that would cost Apple nothing to disclose.
- Amorymeltzer 6y agoI think it's a much more useful metric. At the very basic level, I don't know what 2GHz or 5GHz will mean for my computer aside from bigger is better, but anyone can understand "2x faster." Beyond that though, processor speed is increasingly useless as a single metric. This thing has eight cores, half high-performance and half high-efficiency; GPUs are everywhere and doing seemingly everything; and RAM is always important. The speed cannot be summarized in Hz, but in standardized tests and "The stuff you care about is way faster now."
- yxhuvud 6y agoFaster at WHAT? It is a world of difference between apps that depends on single core performance and tasks that can easily be spread out over 8 cores.
- jonplackett 6y agoI wonder of they're going to try and pull the same 'no specs' thing that they do with the iPhone/iPad. I think I want to know how much RAM is in my MacBook Pro where I don't really care how much is in my iPhone. edit: Store is LIVE, and has lots of specs!
- jackson1442 6y agoThey didn't; the pricing page shows exactly how much RAM you're paying for.
- wmf 6y agoThey have pretty decent specs in the store, although there's nothing about clock frequency or TDP to explain the performance difference between the Air and Pro.
- azhenley 6y agoIf you didn't see the event, they've put the new chip into the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini that will start shipping soon.
- woah 6y agoWill existing programs run on this?
- azhenley 6y agoYes, they have an Intel emulator (Rosetta I think they called it) and are pushing developers to produce "universal apps".
- randmeerkat 6y agoHere’s more details on Rosetta: https://www.theverge.com/21304182/apple-arm-mac-rosetta-2-emulation-app-converter-explainer https://www.theverge.com/21304182/apple-arm-mac-rosetta-2-em... It actually depends on the app and what it’s doing. For example they said photoshop wouldn’t be available on it until early 2021.
- wtetzner 6y agoThey said Photoshop won't be available as a universal binary until 2021. It wasn't clear if it would run on Rosetta 2 in the meantime.
- capableweb 6y ago"Universal apps" that only run on OSX and Apple's mobile OS I presume?
- alwillis 6y agoUniversal apps run on both Apple Silicon (ARM) processors and Intel processor-based Macs.
- capableweb 6y agoOh, so if I run Windows/Linux on the Intel based Mac I can run these Universal apps? Sounds very un-Apple-like if true. If not true, then my original comment seems to still stand.
- greenpresident 6y agoMax 16GB of RAM on these new machines is really not that great to be honest. The mini supported up to 64GB before.
- luis8 6y agoI agree, i was going to order one but 16GB is not enough for me. I guess i'll wait until 32 is available.
- whynotminot 6y agoSSD performance with their integrated IO controller might close the gap here, the same way that pretty fast storage on their iPhones makes the lack of RAM there not so debilitating. But yeah, agreed that not having a 32GB option is somewhat disappointing. (sent from my MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM)
- vmception 6y agommmmm yeah, I will let you all be the guinea pigs here and check back next month. I am very curious about the performance. If the macbook air is editing 6k videos and scrubbing smoothly, I am optimistic.
- whynotminot 6y agoHeh, I have no intention of being in the initial round of beta testing! I explicitly upgraded to an ice lake machine this summer in order to get the best Intel Mac while waiting for the dust to settle. But I do believe the dust will settle, and I'm optimistic about the future of Apple Silicon.
- mehrdada 6y agoWhile a valid workload for a segment, I would be a bit skeptical of generalizing the extraordinary video editing capability to general purpose computing, as those things are facilitated heavily by hardware decoders.
- 6y ago
- BucketsMcG 6y agoI (and my increasingly decrepit 2014 Macbook Pro) was hoping these would be compelling, and hoo boy, they are. First time in years I've actually wanted a new Macbook, as opposed to accepting what they have on offer.
- akritrime 6y agoSo, all of these new Macs have the same SOC across the board? Or will there be slight differences like the Macbook pro will have a higher-binned soc or maybe the Mac mini and Macbook air will have fewer graphics core?
- marricks 6y agoIf you look on the order page they're all described the same but the Air has different option on the GPU side of the chip, 7 vs 8 cores. It sounds like that is possibly the only binning they did, where one GPU core is disabled? Perhaps the 13" ones can run faster & more efficiently or something but they're not saying that.
- akritrime 6y agoThat is interesting. Both Mac Mini versions have a 8 core GPU. I wonder why they made the distinction for Macbook air.
- ValentineC 6y agoThe cheaper MacBook Air has a 7-core GPU instead of an 8-core one.
- lastofthemojito 6y agoMy uninformed guess is that those are chips where one of the 8 cores failed in testing, but allowing them to be used in low-end machines means they won't be scrapped completely. Seems incredibly unlikely that they produced a distinct 7-core GPU variant just for that machine.
- hanche 6y agoI wonder if the Air gets the chips with one faulty GPU core? They could just disable the faulty one and use the remaining seven. </idle-speculation> Edit: Whoops, I see I was not alone thinking that thought.
- hackerman_fi 6y ago
- sccxy 6y agoAny ideas how virtualization works? Can I run Windows VM?
- miohtama 6y agoUnlikely, or very slowly, because Windows x86 would need CPU emulation.
- gruez 6y agothere's arm64 builds for windows.
- iamacyborg 6y agoMicrosoft even released a Surface device with an ARM processor.
- eznzt 6y agoPeople generally want to run Windows because of its huge software catalogue. That's thrown out of the window if you use the arm64 version of Windows. Pun intended.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoThey aren't generally available, only to OEM's.
- pat2man 6y agoYeah, rosetta will support x86 emulation. Might be slow though.
- schoolornot 6y agoThis is the result of a decade of intense research and economies of scale with their A* architecture in iPhones and iPads. People liked to criticize Apple for putting overpowered processors in their devices and not having the software to leverage them. The day is finally here!
- ogre_codes 6y agoThe mini... such a great surprise and so welcome. It doesn't have internal expandability, but otherwise, it looks like a fantastic affordable desktop option.
- miohtama 6y agoFunnily enough, in the Macbook Pro section of the presentation: "Developers can compile up to 4x code"
- hackerman_fi 6y ago...on a single battery
- tourist_on_road 6y ago..without a fan
- mikkelam 6y agoThese macs will increase apples desktop/laptop userbase by a huge margin. I expect a lot over converts within 2 years.
- andy_ppp 6y agoI'm totally underwhelmed but maybe if they really are extremely fast I'd consider one. I guess we'll have to wait for the pro machines next year.
- sooheon 6y agoSame. Specs are underwhelming, but performance may be better than expected.
- KMnO4 6y agoWill the MBA have a different "M1" chip than the MBP? And the Mac Mini? Seems like they're all using the same processor.
- ValentineC 6y agoI think they're using the same M1 processor, but the cooling solutions are different. The Mac Mini and MacBook Pro will be able to sustain higher speeds for longer periods — this is already the case with the Intel versions of them.
- highfrequency 6y agoWould be interesting to see single-threaded performance (/processor speed), I assume this falls way short of the advertised "3x faster" number. Also, only two Thunderbolt ports down from four!
- saagarjha 6y agoI would expect single-threaded performance to be extremely good if this is in line with how Apple typically designs their processors. Also, you're comparing it to the wrong computer–this is clearly aimed at being a replacement for the 2-port MacBook Pro.
- ericls 6y agoI don't know if this will be a big success, but if it is, I think ARM will take over a large amount of server/cloud market.
- isoprophlex 6y agoWill the presence of ARM silicon over Intel mean these macbooks will be poorer developer machines?
- ericls 6y agoNot if servers are also runing ARM
- Closi 6y agoDepends what you are developing for - if you are developing for mobile then by that standard it's significantly better. If you are developing for web... it depends what you are writing and how you are deploying it, but it probably won't have much impact dependent on your toolchain.
- YetAnotherNick 6y agoFor app and web development, likely it will be par or better. For system development, there could be some issues at least for the near term. Till now many homebrew core formulas are not working for apple silicon, specially related to compilers.
- kllrnohj 6y ago> but if it is, I think ARM will take over a large amount of server/cloud market. Seeing as how Apple has zero presence in the server/cloud market, how do you figure? Are you hoping they bring back xserve? Otherwise I don't see how Apple having a custom power-efficient chip in a laptop is going to do anything at all in the server/cloud market?
- ericls 6y agoIf my dev environment and build pipline is all ARM, I might as well get a ARM based server in production if they are available at a reasonable price.
- Dunedan 6y agoI honestly expected more. While compute performance and power efficiency seems to be really good, the M1 chip is apparently limited to 16GB RAM, 2TB storage and 2 Thunderbolt/USB4 controllers. Comparing the new 13" MacBook Pro with the previous one that's a regression in every aspect as the Intel-based ones allow up to 32GB RAM and 4TB storage and offer 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports.
- stcredzero 6y agoWhile compute performance and power efficiency seems to be really good, the M1 chip is apparently limited to 16GB RAM, 2TB storage and 2 Thunderbolt/USB4 controllers. In other words, M1 is for the majority of consumers. - power efficiency - 16GB RAM - 2TB storage - 2 Thunderbolt/USB4 That looks like a really good feature set for ordinary consumers. My guess is that there's going to be 2 "Pro" variants for a high powered laptop and a professional workstation.
- beezle 6y agoLets be honest - Apple has not really expanded its share of PC/Laptop market in a long time. Ordinary consumers are not going to care about this, especially with the Apple premium tacked on. I think combined it runs 10% +/- year to year variation.
- billyhoffman 6y agoBe interesting to see what market share actually is now. Tim said at the beginning that 50% of Mac buyers were buying their first Mac. Apple’s quarter that just concluded at the end of Oct was massive for the Mac. $7.1B which is a 22% YoY growth. And 50% of those macs went to first time Mac buyers. That is insane growth in new users for a 36 year old product
- Dunedan 6y ago> My guess is that there's going to be 2 "Pro" variants for a high powered laptop and a professional workstation. My guess is that they'll introduce one other ARM-based chip for Macs in 2021, targeted at all remaining Macs (except for the Mac Pro). I believe the differences in performance can be achieved with a single chip simply by binning and different power envelopes. I expect (or rather I hope) that chip then supports at least 64GB of memory, 8TB of NVMe storage and 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports.
- mitjak 6y agoThe word "fast" appears 16 times on the page.
- jonplackett 6y agoOne for each CPU. Maybe it's a code...?
- mitjak 6y agoi think it's code for, we're definitely, positively, conclusively faster than the Latest PC Laptop Chip, for sure.
- kayson 6y agoI'm very curious to see some real benchmarks. I have no doubt that they've achieved state of the art efficiency using 5nm, but I have a harder time believing that they can outperform the highest end of AMD and Intel's mobile offerings by so much (especially without active cooling). Their completely unit-less graph axes are really something...
- saagarjha 6y agoSomeone will probably Geekbench it by next week.
- jonplackett 6y agoThey can probably out perform them, but only for a few seconds/minutes. That's why they put a fan in the pro.
- WanderPanda 6y agoWhich actually sounds like a good fit for a dev machine, where you only compile once in a while, but do not sustain high loads
- the8472 6y agolooks at 1-hour compile-test runs on a threadripper yes, of course, great fit.
- satysin 6y agoNo 32GB options on any of the models announced today is a shame. Or not I guess as it means I won't be buying anything today M1 looks impressive, hopefully it scales as well to higher TDPs. Pretty much what I expected today with all the low power models getting updated. With no fan I expect the Air will throttle the CPU quickly when using the high performance cores. Calling it an "8-core CPU" is a little cheeky IMHO but I guess everyone does it. Looking at the config options it seems the CPU/SoC is literally the "M1" and that's it. No different speeds like before so apparently the same CPU/SoC in the Pro and the Air? I guess the fans in the Pro will allow the high performance more headroom but still kinda odd. I wonder if that will carry over to the 16" MBP next year? I am disappointed to see the design is identical to what we currently have. I was hoping we would see a little refinement with thinner screen bezels, perhaps a slightly thicker lid to fit in a better web cam (rather than just better "image processing") and FaceID. Overall I am disappointed due to 16GB max RAM and the same old design. I guess we will see the bigger machines get updates sometimes between March and July 2021. Also are we calling it the M1 CPU or the M1 SoC?
- xienze 6y ago> Or not I guess as it means I won't be buying anything today Honestly, people who don't use their computers as Facebook machines or have very specific things they want to do with the ML engine should probably stay away from Arm Macs for a couple years. There's bound to be plenty of software that doesn't work or doesn't work well, Docker will have ~limited usefulness until more and more people publish Arm images, etc. Plus I'm waiting for the typical Apple move of screwing early adopters by announcing that next year's model is 3x as fast, $200 cheaper, etc.
- diehunde 6y agoI didn't watch the event, but if you have an Intel MacBook, will everything keep working as it is now? Even when upgrading to Big Sur?
- Kognito 6y agoYeah, there’s no change for Intel Mac owners really. Given Apple will still be selling Intel Macs through 2021 and likely 2022, I’d expect them to be fully supported through something like 2026/7 (though your exact model may vary depending on its current age).
- kevindong 6y agoCompletely unconfirmed speculation incoming: There's a solid chance that the logic board is exactly the same on all of the Macs announced today and the only difference is the cooling solution. If you play around with the Apple Store configurator, the specs are all suspiciously similar between every new Mac. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-air https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/13-inch https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-mini
- ogre_codes 6y agoThis makes sense. Most likely this is why the CPUs are all limited to 16GB. It's likely when they unwrap the 16 inch MacBook Pro, it will open up more configurations (more RAM in particular!) for the 13" MacBook Pro and hopefully the mini.
- zerkten 6y agoGoing into the event, my thinking was that they'd have two aims: 1. "Wow" the audience given the anticipation without a full overhaul of the range. 2. Deliver some solid products that enable the transition while being effective for non-enthusiasts. From my viewing they hit both. I expect they'll fill in the range next fall with bigger upgrades to the form factor.
- ogre_codes 6y agoI agree, It almost feels like they are going to have 3 main M Series CPUs. This one. One for the iMac and higher end MBPs. And perhaps a third for the high end iMac/ Mac Pro.
- hajile 6y agoRAM limits are pretty easy to explain. 16GB chips cost disproportionately more and use more power. I wonder if they use 2 4GB chips or 1 8GB chip in the low-end SKU?
- skohan 6y agoI'm interested to see the benchmarks vs. comparable AMD systems. Some of the claims, like 2x performance increase on the MBP are impressive, but intel laptops have been absolutely trounced by AMD 4000-series laptops of late. Also will be interested to see the benchmarks of the integrated GPU vs. discreet GPU performance.
- saagarjha 6y agoPsst…you want to use "discrete".
- microtherion 6y agoDepends on what they're rendering with that GPU…
- easde 6y agoAnandtech posted some comparisons of the A14 against Zen 3 today, which may be an interesting comparison: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/3 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... Seems like the A14 is within 10-20% of the desktop 5950X in single threaded workloads. The M1 will probably close the gap with higher clock speeds. AMD will probably still be ahead on multithreaded workloads until Apple releases a chip with 8 high-performance cores.
- skohan 6y agoDidn't they claim it's the fastest per-thread performance in the world?
- npunt 6y agoYes, Anandtech benchmarked the A14 chip from the iPhone. The M1 is as far as we can tell an A14X-like chip with much higher thermal headroom within a Macbook/MacMini for higher frequencies and has more L2 cache (12mb v 8mb), in addition to more CPU/GPU cores. So if Apple can get frequencies up 10-20% they'll be equal in single thread to Zen3. A14 has some important and kind of crazy architectural differences like being 8-wide and having double Zen's per-cycle throughput. It's a very different chip from anything else on the market.
- ksec 6y agoThe M1 is basically what would Apple would call A14X / A14Z if it was on iPad Pro. So they decided to reuse the A14X / M1 across all three products. And the only differentiation are their TDP cooling. The MacBook Air is 10W TDP, and both Mac Mini and MacBook Pro are likely ~35W range. The did mention MacBook Air's SSD performances is now twice as fast, so this isn't exactly an iPad Pro with Keyboard. That is great except I suddenly remember the 2019 MacBook Air actually had a slower SSD than the 2018 MacBook Air. Where the 2018 do Read at 2GB/s, 2019 could only do 1.3GB/s. So even at 2x / 2.6GB/s it is still only slightly better than 2018. And considering modern day NVME SSD, this is barely good enough. Pricing kept at $999, and same old ridiculous upgrade pricing of RAM and Storage. Although they did lower the Education Pricing to $899, a little bit better than previous ~$829. But for MacBook Pro, You are essentially paying $300 more for a Fan and Touch Bar. And Pro still limited to 16GB Memory ( because it is now using the LPDDR RAM as used on iPad ). I guess may be this is exciting for many, but extremely underwhelming to me. A Quote from Steve Jobs: “When you have a monopoly market share, the people who can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies, the product people get driven out of the decision making forums. Companies forget what it takes to make great products. The product sensibility, the product genius that brought them to this monopolistic position is rotted out... The people running these companies have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They've got no conception of the craftsmanship that's required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. They really have no feeling in their heart about wanting to really help the customers” And my small rant and wishes, Dear Tim Cook / Apple, Please Stop Saying you LOVE something. There is no need for you to tell me that, because if you did love something; We will know. Steve never said anything along those lines, but we all know he cares way more than any of us could even imagine.
- onepointsixC 6y agoI have to agree. While I'm sure the processors themselves are great, the anemic RAM and storage provided on base models (8GB in 2020, seriously?) is outrageous. Especially considering that the M1 chips should be much cheaper for them than the pricy intel processors.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
- Jtsummers 6y agoOut of curiosity, how many people are actually constrained by 16GB of RAM? What applications are you using it for that 16GB vs 32GB is actually a deal breaker for you? Thinking about your average end-users, like most of my family, 8 to 16GB is about all they need for their systems (and if software were better written they'd probably need less). So is this specific work like machine learning? Video and image processing?
- 0x53 6y agoI often use more than 16 GB of RAM. Generally, I have 3-4 Windows 10 VMs running which each take at least 4GB to be stable. So if I have 4 running that is all the RAM already.
- ebg13 6y ago> Generally, I have 3-4 Windows 10 VMs running What are you doing that needs them all actually running simultaneously? Disk-backed VM pause/resume is extremely fast when your SSD's sequential read/write performance is measured in GBps. I have a hard time imagining a workflow that actually uses multiple systems all at once, so to me what you're saying sounds like "Well of course my RAM gets filled if I fill it on purpose."
- threeseed 6y agoThat's assuming that your SSD is doing nothing else at the time that it is pausing/resuming. Often it is. And so whilst SSDs are fast they still aren't fast enough to not slow everything else doing under high load.
- 0x53 6y agoHaha. I will admit that it is sometimes just for convenience, but when testing networking code, or writing things to interoperate with large system I do really need 3-4 VMs running.
- Jtsummers 6y agoI was running a Windows VM on my laptop earlier this year (before some of the telework issues got worked out). While, yes, you need at least 4GB/VM, by the time I had two running the issue wasn't RAM. Laptop CPUs just can't keep up with that workload IME. Not unless you get, maybe, the latest 16" MBP (if restricting ourselves to Apple's hardware).
- asimpletune 6y agoIt’s pretty nice that the stats don’t list the CPU’s clock rate. We can finally enter an era of less misleading indicators of performance, in the sense of what the overall experience will be. That’s what really matters.
- DominikD 6y agoSo I have to assume that the GPU is another PowerVR offspring?
- saagarjha 6y agoIt's supposedly developed internally, Imagination of course claims that they stole their IP. The reality is likely somewhere in the middle.
- mariopt 6y agoFor the first time in a while I'm actually excited to see what is possible when the hardware and software are built by the same company. These CPUs aren't meant for professionals but 18 to 20 hours of battery without all the heat from Intel CPUs is really nice. Shame they didn't mention clock speeds
- joking 6y agoCurrent intel ones supposedly have 10-12 hours of battery, and many times i find that they don't even get to 3 hours, leave open a browser tab that uses webgl or an app that uses the discrete graphic card, and you are doomed. At least on the 16" inch, I'm very disappointed with the battery life.
- davrosthedalek 6y agoI can't shake the feeling that they try to pull a fast one. For example, Mac mini: 3x faster CPU than the old one, and 6x faster in graphics. At the same time 5x faster than the "top selling PC desktop". What is the top selling PC desktop that it's essentially at the level of a 2018 mac mini, or below? Is that desktop at the same price level? Also: People who use graphs without numbers on the axis should be shot on sight.
- xsmasher 6y agoThe slide doesn't say it, but the speaker said "in the same price range."
- heavyset_go 6y agoWhat happens when Apple deprecates support in macOS for these machines in 7 somewhat years? Is there an upgrade path to install Linux on them like you currently can with Intel-based Macs? Or are these SoCs like every other ARM SoC that requires a custom kernel and bootloader to get Linux running on them?
- mhh__ 6y agoYou don't get the privilege of controlling your Apple hardware for the most part so probably not easily.
- saagarjha 6y agoYou can turn off boot security.
- ValentineC 6y agoI really hope we will be able to. All the mentions of "security" in the keynote were making me cringe.
- saagarjha 6y agoYou will, they promised it during WWDC. (And it's available on the developer hardware they released.)
- heavyset_go 6y agoA locked bootloader is only part of the issue. The other part is most ARM SoCs don't have an enumerable bus, and thus require customized kernels to run Linux. As a result, they almost always require explicit Linux support from the vendor. There are millions of ARM devices out there that will never run Linux, or will only ever support an old and outdated fork of Linux, and will never have mainline support in the kernel. Are we going to see that vendor support for Linux from Apple? Or will these Macs end up like iPhones and iPads where no one will be able to get Linux to support them?
- 6y ago
- trixie_ 6y agoSo I guess Windows won't run on M1, so none of my Windows software/Steam games will work either. Will software developers start dropping support for Mac now that they'd need to maintain an ARM version as well? It's not clear how long Apple will support emulation with Rosetta before cutting it off. What's the Linux landscape look like for this chip? It's great that there's performance and battery life improvements, but Microsoft said the same things about WindowsRT and their move to ARM in 2012, and we know how well that turned out.
- gen3 6y agoWindows has an arm build, so I wouldn't count it out entirely. Edit: Never-mind, it looks like they are not porting bootcamp.
- CraftThatBlock 6y agoApple said that only virtualization will be supported on their ARM chips. Locked through the bootloader (although wouldn't be surprised if exploits are released to load up Linux/Windows)
- gen3 6y agoAh! You're right! No bootcamp. https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21302213/apple-silicon-mac-arm-windows-support-boot-camp https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/24/21302213/apple-silicon-ma...
- TheRealDunkirk 6y agoThat blows my mind. Microsoft has had an ARM version of Windows for years. I would have thought they would have lept to support Bootcamp on these new Macs. That being said, I bought my MBP with 64GB of RAM to run Windows VM's in Parallels, but I no longer have any need to run any software that runs only under Windows. I think the market for Bootcamp is basically just gaming now, and the new consoles are really eroding the performance reasons for choosing a Windows box for that.
- liminalsunset 6y agoFor those looking for some form of TDP estimate for the M1 in a relatively thermally unconstrained form factor: Apple's web site lists the following for the Mac Mini: "Maximum continuous power: 150W"
- slayerjain 6y agoPros: * Amazing chips. Probably more faster than both i9 MacBook Pro 16 and iMac Pros, and GREAT battery life! * Finally better camera and wifi 6 * same price Cons: * Wont not run all apps in full speed for now (temporary) * Memory expansion is expensive and limited to 16GB (temporary) Most limitations are temporary, I think these are amazing products unless you want more than 16GB memory.
- saagarjha 6y agoYou probably want two newlines between those bullet points.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoAlso looks like it only has 2 plugs
- mcintyre1994 6y agoThe 13" Macbook Pro lineup looks pretty weird on their store now, at least in the UK. The M1 with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD is at £1299, with a 512GB SSD option at £1499. To bump the RAM to 16GB is another £200(!), so £1699 for 16/512. The Intel options are £1799 for 16/512 or £1999 for 16/1024. So on the Intel side they seem to have cut out 8/256 options, and then they've re-introduced them for the M1 only - which makes the M1 look like it has a much lower starting price. It is cool if 16/512 M1 is £100 cheaper with more power and better battery life though. Intel can of course still increase the memory to 32GB (for £400 lol). The other downside is only 2 ports on the M1 ones, Intel have 4.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago>so £1699 for 16/512. My 2014 13inch MBP has 16GB and 512 storage and I'm almost certain it only cost me £1200 at the time. Back then we considered the storage upgrade expensive because SSD was still considered new tech... Today my desktop machine has a 2TB NVME m2 SSD in it, £285 on Amazon.
- mcintyre1994 6y agoYea, my 2015 13" MBP is 16/256 and I'm pretty sure it was close to £1000 with a small student discount. I have no idea when the price went up so much since then or why, but it definitely stops a midrange Pro being a no brainer for me as it was at that time.
- gmaster1440 6y agoDo the M1 computers support Docker Desktop?
- wmf 6y agohttps://github.com/docker/roadmap/issues/142 https://github.com/docker/roadmap/issues/142
- MangoCoffee 6y agoM1 - the gpu performance claim is questionable
- Synaesthesia 6y agoNot really. They already have class leading GPU's in ipad and iPhone.
- The_rationalist 6y agoHow uncompetitive will their igpu be?
- saagarjha 6y agoPerhaps you should wait until people get their hands on it before forming an opinion on it…
- The_rationalist 6y agoDid I state an assertion or did I ask a question?
- saagarjha 6y agoYou asked a loaded question, so both, really?
- fabianhjr 6y agoI am somewhat skeptical about total performance claims as many notebook manufacturers have been moving to ARM for efficiency and not total performance. Current top of the line for notebooks would be the Qualcomm 8cx (ARM, 7? Watts) and AMD 4800U (x86-64, 15 Watts TDP) from quick search around. Would be interesting to see independent reviewers benchmarking those 2 in comparison to Apple's first in-house processor. Here are some spec comparisons for the time being: - https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-amd_ryzen_7_4800u-1142 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-a... - https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-qualcomm_snapdragon_8cx-1664 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-q...
- pmart123 6y agoPerhaps it is due to less data copying and configuring the right processor for the job in Apple's benchmarks? Most CPU benchmarks wouldn't be testing the performance characteristics if the matrix heavy computations were done by the GPU, etc.?
- fabianhjr 6y agoBoth the Qualcomm 8cx and AMD Ryzen 4800U have integrated graphics.
- anentropic 6y agothis has a pretty good analysis https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... This is far from Apple's first in-house processor, and they were already way ahead of other ARM chips before the M1
- taf2 6y agoAmazing when Steve announced the transition to Intel, he also mentioned the transition to Mac OS X and how that should set up up for at least the next 20 years... That was almost 20 years ago... I can see a new OS for Mac soon that maybe brings OSX even closer to iOS?
- WoodenChair 6y ago> Amazing when Steve announced the transition to Intel, he also mentioned the transition to Mac OS X and how that should set up up for at least the next 20 years... That was almost 20 years ago... I can see a new OS for Mac soon that maybe brings OSX even closer to iOS? You're a little confused. Those were two very separate transitions. Mac OS X came out in 2001. Intel Macs came out in 2006.
- taf2 6y agoIn his announcement of Intel transition he referred back to the change from OS 9 to X and how it would be good for the next 20 years...
- jjmarinho 6y agoThat's Big Sur. It's actually versioned as Mac OS 11 and brings macOS much closer to iOS in terms of feel and looks.
- tiffanyh 6y agoNo FaceID, interesting. I thought they might use FaceID as a "Pro" only feature like they do on the iPads but nope, they also released an updated 13" MacBook Pro without FaceID.
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoI presumed they were holding all the good updates like Face ID, thinner bezels, modern webcam, 14 inch screen for this update to push adoption but yeah seems like we'll have another 6 months or a year for the 13" to resemble a modern laptop.
- dschuler 6y agoThe most important feature of an M1-based Mac will likely be OS support into the distant future. I'm still using a 2012 rMBP, which was the first-gen retina version, and it's held up much better than any other computer I've ever bought, partly due to OS support into 2020. I imagine Apple will stand behind this new generation for a long time as well. The new M1 SOCs max out at 16GB RAM, which seems like a major limitation, but the timing and latency of this integrated RAM is probably much better than what you could otherwise achieve. Meanwhile, improved SSD performance will probably have a larger impact on the whole system. I remember when I bought a 15k RPM hard drive ca. 2005 - it was like a new computer. Upgrading the slowest part of the storage hierarchy made the largest difference. One slight disappointment in the Mac mini is the removal of two USB C / Thunderbolt ports and no option for 10G ethernet vs. the Intel model. An odd set of limitations in 2020. Overall, at the price they're offering the Mac mini (haven't really considered the other models for myself), I think it's ok to take the plunge. - Sent from my Dell hackintosh
- BossingAround 6y ago> Overall, at the price they're offering the Mac mini (haven't really considered the other models for myself), I think it's ok to take the plunge. I thought the same. I actually wonder whether the low prices aren't due to the App support being extremely limited at this point (basically only first party stuff)
- xsmasher 6y agoApplications for intel macs will still run by way of Rosetta 2, so I wouldn't say " App support [is] extremely limited."
- beervirus 6y agoIt sucks that the SSD is (presumably) not upgradeable anymore. Apple generally charges a ton for the larger SSD offerings, but it used to be that you could just buy a base model and replace the thing later.
- 6y ago
- hidd 6y agoSeems there are two variants of the M1 chip in the MacBook Air, one with 7 GPU cores and one with 8. Wonder why that is the case. https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs/
- Rebelgecko 6y agoMaybe they only manufacture the 8-core version and bin the ones that have defects?
- travis729 6y agoProbably to get better yield. If one of the GPU cores has a defect, they can still use the die. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning#Semiconductor_manufacturing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning#Semiconductor_...
- linuxhansl 6y agoDo I need to worry now that a walled-garden company - with all its advantages - pulls ahead of open ecosystems? I only use Linux at home. Will I be doomed to inferior H/W going forward? This is not a rhetorical question or a flame... It's an honest question... Is Apple pulling ahead of everybody else and soon going to be our only option?
- john_minsk 6y agoI doubt it. When they talk about performance - they always said it in terms of compute/watt. In absolute numbers these CPUs and GPUs will still be less performant - just my guess. On top of it for a foreseeable future I think a lot of professional software will stay on x86 architecture simply because most of it must be also available on Windows.
- pmart123 6y agoI'd agree, but Apple's position with the iPad likely will ensure enough professional developer mindshare? Most enterprise apps I use typically have a fairly built out version for the iPad (and most only support Windows otherwise). I agree that developers themselves will likely stick with x86 architecture to write code on for the most part given that's what servers will run.
- elicash 6y agoYour situation won't be worse than what would exist had Apple not moved so far ahead of the others. In fact, Apple moving ahead only encourages others to up their game. So you're better off, due to Apple, even if you don't buy their machines.
- linuxhansl 6y agoThat's an excellent point, I didn't consider that.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoIt does appear Intel has become rather complacent in recent years, more competition can only be a good thing.
- bangonkeyboard 6y agohttps://youtu.be/5AwdkGKmZ0I?t=1660 https://youtu.be/5AwdkGKmZ0I?t=1660 "Immersive, graphically-intensive titles!"
- oseityphelysiol 6y agoI wonder what's the chance of running Linux on these, probably slim to non-existant, but they would make an exelent Linux machine. I've been waiting for an AMD laptop with thunderbolt/USB4 for GPU passthrough for ages. Sadly we're still far away from gaming on ARM.
- _ph_ 6y agoThe M1 looks very promising, looking forward for real-life reviews. The biggest winner might be the Air - going to 4+4 cores and longer battery life while dropping the fan sounds like the perfect portable laptop. It will be interesting how much performance difference the fan in the MB Pro brings. The Mini at a lower price point is also great news. When introduced, the Mini brought a lot of new users to the mac at 499. While it is still far from that, bringing the starting price of the Mini down is great, especially with the fast CPU/GPU. The big letdown are the upgrade prices for RAM and SSD. Even at half the prices Apple would make a decent profit. As a consequence, the excitement about the affordable entry prices quickly vanishes and many people might not get the amount of storage they should - or they go somewhere else. At least for the Mini, you would probably only upgrade the RAM and buy a TB SSD. For the Mini and the MB Pro, not having a 32GB option hurts. These are machines which should be made for real workloads.
- varispeed 6y agoIf you can't buy it on Mouser or digi-key then it is another attempt at expanding the walled garden. If for some reason you CPU dies in your PC you can just buy a new CPU without having to replace an entire computer. I bet that it will not be possible with Apple product. They are focusing on forcing consumers to buy new products instead.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jpeg_hero 6y agoi don't understand how you're supposed to develop server-side x86 code on this machine. isnt this an important market for the mac?
- neurostimulant 6y agoA few months ago I build a personal linux server and use it via ssh and VSCode's remote development feature, which mount the server filesystem and do port forwarding so it feels as if it's a local machine even while working outside my home network. My usual workflow doesn't change at all, and I got the benefit of a fast server while using laptop form factor. The new arm laptop is probably perfect for this setup, allowing you to build for intel arch whenever you need it.
- randyrand 6y agorosetta is apparently really fast. just compile to x86. If you normally boot into x86 linux, you might be in a tricky spot. Emulation will be your only bet.
- pram 6y agoCross compilation is a thing, JFYI. You don't need to be on an arm64e system to generate an arm binary today. This is the case for xcode, gcc, go, etc etc
- yashksagar 6y agoi'm just glad they still kept the headphone jack
- fabianhjr 6y agoCould the like be change to Apple's more detailed press release? https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-unleashes-m1/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-unleashes-m1/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- reilly3000 6y agoI think the big news for developers is: - iOS apps run on M1 desktops - x86 apps are supported and sometimes outperforms vs Intel.
- centimeter 6y agoHow many years has the 13” MBP been stuck at 16GB RAM now? 7?
- Synaesthesia 6y agoPeople keep saying this but with super fast SSDs and I/O is it really necesssry? Especially in a small laptop. You have to remember more ram means more power consumption and also a longer time to sleep/wake.
- saagarjha 6y agoLike negative 2? There’s been models with more RAM than that for a while.
- sneak 6y agoI’m really worried that we have finally reached the point in computing where you can buy a machine that is fast/efficient, or you can buy a machine that is private. Apple sends the hash of every binary you execute to Apple in current (and presumably future) macOS, and the changes in macOS 11 mean that Little Snitch will continue to work for all processes, except OS/system processes. This means that it may be impossible to disable the telemetry without external filtering hardware. This situation is extremely troubling to me, because Stallman and Doctorow have been predicting just this for about twenty years. Today, it’s here. I really hope these things can boot OSes other than macOS, or that a way to do such can be worked out.
- dheera 6y agoI'm not a Mac user, but what does this mean for virtualization? Does it spell the end of Macs being used by developers who need to run x86 VMs in them?
- krzyk 6y agoSo there was no AirTags introduced? There were rumors that they will release them during the November event
- lowbloodsugar 6y agoWhat is value proposition of Air vs Pro? Touchbar? 18 vs 20 hours batter?
- sz4kerto 6y ago"Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with prerelease Final Cut Pro 10.5 using a 55-second clip with 4K Apple ProRes RAW media, at 4096x2160 resolution and 59.94 frames per second, transcoded to Apple ProRes 422. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Air." This is relevant. This means that the performance increase vs Intel is using the extremely throttled 1.2 GHz i7 as the baseline.
- belval 6y agoPersonal opinion, no insider info I think it's a good CPU, but I don't think it'll be a great CPU. Judging by how heavily they leaned on the efficiency, I am pretty sure that it will be just good enough to not be noticeable to most Mac users. Can't wait to see actual benchmarks, these are interesting times.
- therealmarv 6y agoYou skipped the keynote parts where they say faster 2x, 4x, 8x... and they say faster than every other laptop CPU and faster than 98% of laptops/PCs in their class sold last year? They said it several times. But I agree... let's wait for the benchmarks (btw. iPads already overturns nearly all laptop CPUs)
- oblio 6y agoBased on what Apple says. Is there an independent cross platform benchmark which is actually relevant and that says the same?
- favorited 6y agoNo, because it hasn't shipped yet.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
- blue_box 6y agoApple M1: 192KB I-Cache, 128KB D-Cache, 12MB L2 Cache AMD Ryzen 9 5950X: 32KB I-Cache, 32KB D-Cache, 8MB L2 Cache Isn’t this difference huge? What am I missing here?
- monocasa 6y agoTSMC 5nm versus 7nm. Process advantages win most chip fights.
- n_jd 6y agoThe L2 cache on the M1 is the last level cache (LLC), where the 5950X has a 64MB L3 cache for LLC. Also I'm not sure we know yet how much of the chip is using that L2, it might be more than just the four high perf cores. A closer comparison is probably Intel's 10900K which has a 20MB L3.
- Xni9ne 6y agoI think you must wait till the work with this devices How you know ? we have m1 here and how you know it is not like a series ? in iphone we have 6gb of ram at performance of 12 or more apple doesn't work at numbers and it is stil supporting more rams on intel processors wait and see ehat was apple magic
- pgib 6y agoI've been using an older 2016 MacBook Pro (1st with TouchBar) and was excited about something faster. Given that most people are working from home now, and the fact that the new MacBook Pro is virtually identical physically to what I got four years ago, I'm actually considering just getting the Mac mini to save about CAD $1,000. I also have a 12" MacBook which I adore, and so the times I do need something portable, it doesn't get more portable than that. (And it's surprisingly capable for my dev environment.)
- ChuckMcM 6y agoI think Apple has done an amazing job of pulling off their own silicon. At Sun I got to be involved peripherally in the effort that created SPARC and it was way more work than I had suspected. So kudos to Apple's design, engineering, and QA teams! I am also noting that they have killed the "ARM SoC's will never match what Intel can do" story line. That always reminded me of the "Microcomputers will never be able to do what minicomputers can do" story line that everyone except DEC and HP seemed to realize wouldn't hold up over time. "Never say never" is a good motto in the computer business. That said, as the integration continues apace re-usability and repairablilty reach all time lows. When you consider that you could take a 1970's minicomputer, disassemble it to the component level, and create an entirely different (and functional) computer out of those components, you get a sense of how quaint that notion seems these days. I doubt anyone will ever desolder an M1 chip and put it onto a new board of their own design. And that reminds me more of the IBM "die on substrate" modules that they started using in mainframes which made them basically nothing more than low grade gold ore if they no longer worked as a mainframe.
- Corrado 6y agoI agree about the upgradability/repairability. However, if you look at like a cell phone maybe it makes more sense. No one has ever complained that you couldn't update the RAM or the CPU in a iPhone. In order to upgrade the hardware of your cell phone you have to purchase another one. I'm guessing Apple is looking at the Mac hardware in the same light. "Want more power? Buy a new laptop!" The more interesting question is how does this affect the Mac desktops? It would be a shame to throw out a whole Mac Pro machine just because it only has 64GB RAM. Then again, this event did release the Mac Mini, which is a desktop and does not have upgradable RAM or storage or CPU. Hmmmm...
- the_duke 6y agoI dropped the Apple ecosystem many years ago, but the pricing never ceases to intrigue me. 230€ for 8GB to 16GB RAM. (and RAM is shared between CPU and GPU) 230€ for 512 to 1TB SSD. They sure know how to milk their customers. So while the starting price seems surprisingly low, an acceptably specced 13 pro comes in at 2139€. And that's without knowing how the GPU will hold up. The presentation is brilliant marketing though and so much better than the competition. As long as you disable your brain for claims like "Universal Apps are the fastest and most powerful apps you can get!", and never mentioning specifics like the chips the benchmark actually compared with or what that game is that runs faster under emulation than native.
- readams 6y agoReading between the lines of their announcement, it seems that they'll do well in performance per watt and battery life, which is where ARM is traditionally good. They will not do well in raw performance for workstations or workstation-replacement laptops.
- m0zg 6y agoAnd just like that, within a year pretty much all of Apple's lineup will become the best available platform for AI inference, since each and every one of the new machines will have a TPU.
- dang 6y agoAll: there are multiple pages of comments; if you're curious to read them, click More at the bottom of the page, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079&p=5 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049079&p=5
- rafaelturk 6y agoMy expectation for the #AppleEvent was actually a MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar.
- unstatusthequo 6y agoI'll be waiting for the 16" MBP which will hopefully have a reasonable RAM option. 16GB is fine for normal MacOS use I suppose, but I'm also curious how this virtualization situation will play out. Having Windows on boot camp and VMWare is a nice thing to have.
- swat535 6y agoFYI boot camp won't be supported, only virtualization for ARMs
- rufname 6y agoDoes anybody know if it can run Windows?
- offtop5 6y agoBrought the air at first, was concerned about CPU throttling and switched to the Pro. To be honest I'm a bit skeptical about performance here. I'm going to assume the Air is under clocked to prevent over heating. Anyway, considering I've had my mac mini for about 8 years, I jumped at buying this. Looking forward to getting some 4k !
- longstation 6y agoWould this basically be APU but with an ARM core?
- myrandomcomment 6y agoSo there is an interesting trend here in the comments because HN is very developer focused. Everyone seems to say "well this does not work for my XXX because of RAM, etc." I would say yes, no surprises there! With this line up Apple is fine with that, because the Air and 13" are not targeted at you. This is the laptop for my wife or kids that use it for school, web, some music and video, nothing at a professional level. That battery life will make both of them very happy. The reality of this is that it is very likely they focused on yield for the chip vs market segment for what they can ship today. For the professional user I would very much to expect to see follow on products with more RAM and cores in 1Q21 (MacBook Pro 16" and iMacs).
- Aperocky 6y agoI'm a dev and I have the air as my personal, side-project computer, and I have already ordered the new one. I use vim to develop primarily in python/js. So my need for performance is super low.
- myrandomcomment 6y agoI was going to point out something like that but figured I would get shouted down. For me, check in to bitbucket and Jenkins pulls the build and does it on a rack full of servers dedicated for the process...and yes to VIM. :) One of my colleagues placed an order for the Air about 10 seconds after you could.
- sooheon 6y agoYes, developers with cloud backed infra have the most to gain from this architecture change. All we need is huge battery life (check), better heat management (check), and snappy enough performance for our thin client machine (check). We're not training the next GPT on our laptop anyways.
- cheeze 6y agoHah, this reminds me of college. I remember some of my first CS courses, everyone either had a brand new mbp or an ALIENWARE super beefy laptop. I had a 300 dollar 7" netbook. Turns out that unless you're doing deep learning, etc. (which you might as well just run remote IMO), a bottom of the line intel atom processor can handle the workloads that a CS program throws at it no problem. I mean, in reality you're doing things like solving sudoku puzzles or making some syscalls 95% of the time. Admittedly, I ended up buying a desktop because I wanted the screen real estate when things got more complex, but I thought it was funny how many people had this conception that they would need to run their ray tracer from CS101 on their i7 with 32gb RAM
- jbverschoor 6y agoI'm actually surprised by the price. I thought it'd be more expensive. I'd easily had paid another $250 extra for 2 ports on the other side, and even some more for 32GB ram. Better camera + 14" screen would also be nice. Basically I was expecting to pay between 3-3.5k for a new macbook :-)
- sam0x17 6y agoSo real question -- is Apple aggressively marketing this as "Apple Silicon" instead of ARM just a marketing gimmick, or have they done something substantive that makes this no longer and/or more special than regular ARM processors?
- person_of_color 6y agoWell, it IS different to a rebadged Cortex big.LITTLE solution. They use the architecture but reimplement the CPUs themselves. Further, they have a bunch of their own cores on their chip.
- sam0x17 6y agoGotcha, this is the first real information I've been able to find. Thanks!
- userbinator 6y ago...for portable Mac non-general-purpose computers... How much are you willing to bet that there will be next to no public documentation for this SoC, just like with all the other tablet/phone ones out there? This is a scary turn of events - I still remember when Apple introduced their x86 transition and focused on how you could also run Windows on their "branded PCs", and the openness and standardisation was much welcomed... but then Apple slowly started to change that, and now they are on their way to locking down everything under their control.
- rurban 6y agoTo put the 3.5x faster CPU into perspective. I added various machines to my hash benchmarks. My MacAir with an i7 CPU is about 2x slower than a desktop CPU or AMD laptop cpu, and has about the same speed than my ordinary Cortex A53 phone. That's mostly the 2 vs 4 GHz difference. Their latest A14 Chip is described here https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... and it's with its 3Ghz entirely plausible that it is 3x faster than the MacAir or my current A53 phone. https://browser.geekbench.com/ios_devices/ipad-air-4th-generation https://browser.geekbench.com/ios_devices/ipad-air-4th-gener...
- justasking123 6y agoHey guys, Anyone knows if the M1 would be faster for GPU bound work than 2020 MacBook Pro 16-inch with AMD Radeon 5600? I just spent over $4K and just got it delivered yesterday. Thinking of returning it if it does not compare favorably on GPU performance to the new M1 13-inch MacBook Pro. Insight/advice?
- swiley 6y agoIf the mac is on an arm SoC now why the heck does anyone have to tolerate iOS on their phone?
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI think this will rock; just not right away. I'll get one when the M2 has worked things out.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- faebi 6y agoHow will this affect the prices of their high end models? Will the be cheaper?
- whatanattitude 6y agoI hate the Touch Bar
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoEnd of year 2020, and still you can have a Macbook Pro with 16 GB of RAM at most. Why not 32 yet?
- theodric 6y agoYou can have a 13" with 32GB or a 16" with 64GB. Just not with Apple Silicon.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hitpointdrew 6y agoSuch a damn shame they went with ARM and not AMD Ryzen. Mac quality has really suffered the past few years, and ARM is just the nail in coffin for me.
- jrobn 6y agoAll I care about is the hardware acceleration of video codecs. If a $1400 M1 powered MacBook Pro can edit and cut 8K Canon RAW Light And ALL-I HEVC from the Canon R5, it’s very attractive to me.
- d33lio 6y agoVERY curious to see if apple silicon will support pytorch or other common GPU based ML libraries?
- mark-r 6y agoSo Apple will be shipping 5nm chips while Intel is barely able to produce 10nm? Must hurt to be Intel right now.
- celeritascelery 6y agowhile it certainly hurts to be Intel right now, be aware that the generation notation does not mean what it used to. They just mark new generations, not actual transistor size. Intel's 10nm is roughly equivalent to TSMC 7mn, and Intel 7nm should be equivalent to TSMC 5nm. So yes, Intel is behind, but not as much as it might seem.
- mark-r 6y agoIf what you say is correct, Intel appears to be a generation and a half behind right now. Isn't that the kind of lead Intel used to have that made them untouchable?
- celeritascelery 6y agoused to be. But no more.
- coayer 6y agoI don't think that it's an apples-to-apples comparison between TSMC's and Intel's processes. I believe Intel's 10nm is closer to TSMC 7nm, but you're right, they're behind either way.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- limeblack 6y agoIt states the following. > the end of Intel inside Apple notebooks and desktops Is this really a good idea for Desktops? Notice the graph is for laptops.
- 0-_-0 6y agoThese benchmark scores claim that the only CPU faster than the Apple A14 is the recently released Ryzen 9 3950X: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... What's the catch here? Did Apple just blow x86 out of the water?
- b20000 6y agoOK, 8 cores, but big little config, so probably 4x A53 + 4x A72. So nothing revolutionary new here IMHO. Where is the 16 core A72 SoC we all want?
- saagarjha 6y agoApple designs their own cores.
- b20000 6y agoreally, do you have a reference?
- saagarjha 6y agoUh, I guess I figured this to be fairly common knowledge so the easiest thing I can point to is Wikipedia, which names their custom cores: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A14. They’ve been designing these since the A6 in 2012 (“Swift”).
- b20000 6y agoread this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#ARMv8-A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#ARMv8-A
- ertucetin 6y agoI bought a new Macbook Pro 13 with i7 chip and 32GB RAM, 3 weeks ago. I hope I'm not missing anything...
- surfcao 6y agoSo what to do if a powerful working machine is needed now, buy the current MBP 16" or go to thinkpad? Disappointed they didn't even upgrade the intel CPU on MBP 16" to the newer version.
- hocuspocus 6y agoWhat newer version are you thinking about? Intel 11th gen H series are nowhere near available.
- pgib 6y agoI placed an order this morning for a new MacBook Pro to replace my 2016 with Touchbar, but after humming and hawing all day, I cancelled it. Since I'm working from home these days without any prospect of that changing, I've decided to get a new M1 Mac mini instead. It's actually going to eliminate the need for this Elgato Thunderbolt dock I have, and really the only think I'll really miss is TouchID. Some things allow me to use my Apple Watch instead, so that'll have to do to. At the end of the day, after four years, I want to be buying a replacement laptop that feels even moderately evolved from what I already have. I have a 12" MacBook that I love, so that will be my on-the-go computer for the times I need that. With the money I'm saving going with the mini, I'm upgrading my daughter's iPad and still have some left over after that. I'll re-evaluate in the future when hopefully Apple puts some more energy into the laptops. I do actually like the TouchBar but I would expect that after four years, they could at least add proper haptic feedback. As well, the USB-C ports only one side (and the wrong side for me) feels like a downgrade from my 2016 model which has two on each side.
- fatzeus 6y agoAny indication on how the performance of the MBP with the M1 compares with the more expensive MBP with the i5?
- heisenbergs 6y agoThe responses here seem to not really acknowledge what a rabbit apple has been pulling out of the hat. 2-3x the performance both from a CPU and GPU perspective, whilst being far more energy and thermally efficient. Of course this was kind of known and rumoured, but now we know. Finally real competition for intel. If only these chips were available to others. they are literally running laps around the competition. Curious where Apple's pro offerings will go, and whether these will be available as servers...
- yborg 6y ago>Real competition for Intel AMD would like a word.
- 0xcoffee 6y agoI'm really worried that AMD has won the battle, but lost the war in terms of x86 being replaced by ARM in the next decade.
- Joeri 6y agoThere is no danger to AMD in the PC market from ARM. Apple will not sell their cpu’s to other PC vendors, and other ARM chipmakers aren’t even competitive with intel, let alone AMD. What this shows most of all is that the instruction set is not what matters, it is all about the core architecture. Intel is still dragging the ghost of skylake along, while AMD has something better with zen, apple has their A cores, and everyone else is forced to use ARM reference architecture because they don’t have the resources to design their own core. Only nvidia has the ability to upset things.
- bjohnson225 6y agoNo danger? It seems a very precarious position over the next five to ten years. If Apple find success with their strategy, then money is going to flow into the development of ARM chips from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Nvidia, etc for their own products/servers.
- martimarkov 6y agoI don’t know if this was already mentioned but... omg... M1 does not support eGPUs. The Mac is becoming just an more powerful iPad with an integrated keyboard. Apart from the the software and design difference. I can believe how stupid and backwards that’s is and I would classify myself as a fanboy.
- Wazzymandias 6y agoWould anyone happen to have an ELI5 of how the M1 chip achieves greater power efficiency?
- sethgecko 6y agoIt uses the ARM architecture which is much more power efficient than the x86 architecture used by intel
- kerabatsos 6y agoJust tell me if I need to buy one?
- Teknoman117 6y agoI didn't see any units for their "the GPU has 2.6 TFLOP/s of throughput". 2.6 TFLOPS/s at what precision? FP16, FP32, something else? Nvidia labels their Tegra AGX Xavier part as 5.5 TFLOP/s (FP16) and AMD's APUs say 1.8 TFLOP/s (FP32). They also say "up to" 3.5x CPU performance (total performance) of previous generation macs, then make references to a Mac with a 1.2 GHz quad core Core i7 (MacBook Air) and a quad core 3.6 GHz Core-i3 (Mac Mini). I would like to see some independent benchmarks personally...
- eugeniub 6y agoIf you go to the MacBook Pro 13" page (https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-13/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-13/) and click on "See how M1 redefines speed" there are some more numbers for specific use cases (Xcode project build, Final Cut Pro ProRes transcode, etc). The footnotes for these numbers say the tests were done with the maxed-out previous-generation 2-port MacBook Pro: > Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip, as well as production 1.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based 13-inch MacBook Pro systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. I think it's a fair comparison, since the new M1 MacBook Pro 13" is a 2-port model that replaces the existing 2-port models, while Apple still sells Intel 4-port models. Similar situation on the MacBook Air page. The tests are done with the maxed-out previous-generation MacBook Air: > Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction MacBook Air systems with Apple M1 chip and 8-core GPU, as well as production 1.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based MacBook Air systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD.
- codelord 6y agoThe chip seems to be A14 + 2 extra high performance cpu cores + 4 gpu cores. That's cool, but that's not a great leap for Apple. The real news here is that macOS now runs on ARM processors. Keep your old tablets around, you may soon be able to make it into a hackintosh.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoMaybe we can also get MacOS emulation working on Raspberry Pi soon.
- ngcc_hk 6y ago16g max? Really? I bought my mini as mini as I can except the ram as this is limitation if you do not have enough ram. Xcode. Video. At least one should have an option.
- mmackh 6y agoAll the right ideas, just the execution is lacking. No new designs, no touchscreen and no mention of how you could combine multiple M1s into a powerful desktop machine. Prediction: it’ll take years again.
- mraza007 6y agoI’m just curious why do developers end up using macs when they can install linux on a custom hardware with more specs
- daniel-thompson 6y ago> why do developers end up using macs To develop apps for macOS and iOS.
- mraza007 6y agoAgreed but besides developing apps for macOS or iOS
- nxc18 6y agoI’m about to build a new Linux desktop. I came dangerously close to pre-ordering a mini instead - RAM and I/O is what held me back from that impulse buy. Reasons to not use Linux: getting hardware working right is a PITA - note that I already have a powerful desktop PC, but I haven’t been successful in making it work reliably with Linux after several attempts. I’m going to build a new one, specifically researching user experience with Linux for each part because it really is a minefield. I’m also going to have to buy a new 4K monitor, because while Linux DEs can handle high DPI, they really struggle with mixed DPI. The desktop experience on macOS is quite nice, and you don’t need to worry about whether apps will work most of the time. It handles mixed and high DPI beautifully - you don’t have to think about it and you don’t have to mess with X.Org configs. I like the idea of Linux, and I am going to move forward with it, but I do that knowing I’m paying a heavy price in my time to do so.
- camdenlock 6y agoFor many, the human interfaces offered by macOS running on Apple hardware are unmatched.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoThe same reason as everyone else, to run macOS.
- christian12345 6y agoasdasd
- techaddict009 6y agoDoes anyone has idea why they do not have 32 or 64 GB RAM option? And Max out at 16 GB RAM?
- lathiat 6y agoFor MacBook Air and MacBook Pro "Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display in millions of colours and: (Only) One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz". Mac Mini supports 2 displays, one via thunderbolt the same as above plus a second 4K display on the HDMI port only which I'm guessing internally uses the same output as the laptop displays. That’s a little disappointing - probably won’t be getting this first generation model :/ Apparently eGPUs are not supported either (https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/10/new-apple-silicon-macs-with-m1-chip-dont-work-with-thunderbolt-egpus/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/10/new-apple-silicon-macs-with-m...) although perhaps there will be some "traditional" USB display adapters that would work? Use case being docking the machine to my desk the majority of the time. I'd like at least 2 and preferably 3 display outputs to match my current setup.
- gbil 6y ago>Although I can imagine some USB video card of eGPU option fixing that issue (use case being docking the machine to my desk the majority of the time seems like external GPUs are not supported https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/10/21559200/apple-m1-macbook-pro-mac-mini-16gb-ram-memory-limit https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/10/21559200/apple-m1-macboo...
- anoncow 6y agoWill the comparisons (M1 has a 3.5 times faster CPU than the previous MBA and similar comparisons for the MM and MBP) help us figure out what is the actual difference between the processor performance between the 3 systems?
- didibus 6y agoWow, is this the beginning of the end for x86/64 architecture? Are PCs and all going to move to ARM? I feel this could be the start of a shift.
- Svetlitski 6y agoI can't seem to find mention of the clock frequency of the chip anywhere. Am I missing something or is Apple withholding this information for the time being?
- AgentOrange1234 6y agoHrmn... Does it matter? Without IPC, does clock rate tell us much? The real-world benchmarks will be very interesting to see.
- zelly 6y agoIf Apple is so good at chip design why don't they just pivot to that? Then we can all standardize on the single (objectively superior) software stack that is Android. There is a lot of money to be made with licensing and they wouldn't need to run a huge supply chain anymore. It doesn't seem right that the best architecture in the world is locked in to a very specific ecosystem when the whole world could be benefiting from their innovations.
- Sutanreyu 6y agoNo PCIe, meaning no eGPUs. How did they look past that? Are there any M.2 slots in these or will they'll just be set in stone with the storage they have?
- lostlogin 6y agoThe internal storage they have is set in stone in the Intel machines.
- cpmsmith 6y ago> No PCIe, meaning no eGPUs. How did they look past that? With ease, I imagine. eGPUs are niche at best, and user-serviceable hardware and GPU vendors are two of Apple’s least favourite things. Macs’ support for eGPUs, such as it is, has always struck me as a strange aberration. I say this as the owner of an eGPU, which I’ve given up any hope of using outside Boot Camp.
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoThey're not niche at all when your presentation mentions Machine Learning work and has Cinema4D as one of the examples of pro-apps you'll be running on this machine. Either it's a machine that will serve those professionals, in which case it needs to be able to access a real GPU somehow or it's not a machine for those "Pro"-fessionals, in which case why make it part of your sales pitch.
- gigatexal 6y agoAnandtech did a write-up and concluded: “ Apple claims the M1 to be the fastest CPU in the world. Given our data on the A14, beating all of Intel’s designs, and just falling short of AMD’s newest 5950X Zen3 – a higher clocked Firestorm above 3GHz, the 50% larger L2 cache, and an unleashed TDP, we can certainly believe Apple and the M1 to be able to achieve that claim. This moment has been brewing for years now, and the new Apple Silicon is both shocking, but also very much expected. In the coming weeks we’ll be trying to get our hands on the new hardware and verify Apple’s claims. Intel has stagnated itself out of the market, and has lost a major customer today. AMD has shown lots of progress lately, however it’ll be incredibly hard to catch up to Apple’s power efficiency. If Apple’s performance trajectory continues at this pace, the x86 performance crown might never be regained.”
- bunnie 6y agoI note that the official press release from Apple does not mention ARM even once...
- kristopolous 6y agoMaybe they want to own the brand and if they move to another chip they can do so with more consistent (and confusing) naming? This is, depending on how far back you want to go the 4th change. 6800 > 68k > PPC > Intel > Arm ... The idea that there will be a 5th one eventually isn't unreasonable
- titzer 6y agoAs a technical person, the cartoonish performance graph is kinda infuriating. It's so infantilized I feel embarrassed and insulted. Errg!
- chmike 6y agoIf the camera of the MacBook Pro 13 is as shitty as it is today, it's not worth it.
- tech2 6y agoI'm a little surprised that there's so little mention here regarding this being a possible precursor to the end of the hackintosh. One comment mentions the possibility of using old ARM tablets in a hackintosh build, but this seems to run against one of the two reasons for using hackintosh over Mac directly - performance. Cost would definitely be a benefit, but I'm less convinced of the value here. I imagine though that this is literally the end of the hackintosh entirely. With control over basically all the hardware, there are no more workarounds or backward compatibility aspects. Hell, even external GPU aren't supported as-yet.
- kohlerm 6y agoDo I understand it correctly, that memory is packaged together with the CPU? So no memory upgrades ever? And what does that mean for the max memory configuration?
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoHow many people still upgrade their own memory? I honestly don't believe it's a use case anymore, even with the hostile design making it difficult. Would you add a feature to an application or hardware if you knew that less than 1% of your users would make use of it?
- tmd83 6y agoDoes anyone have any clue how/why Apple has such different architecture than others and if it's so useful for power/perf. why are others not following the trend. Even if it's not applicable for x64 due to different instruction set, it should still apply to other ARM vendor. I'm referring to Anandtech article's claim that they have a 8 wide decode (vs. zen 3's 4), 600+ estimated ROB and 192KB instruction cache. Note I'm not a cpu expert but I know these are hugely different from other high performance chips out there.
- anentropic 6y agoA part that seems interesting to me is the "unified memory" architecture At first it seems like just a cost/power/size saving measure, like not having dedicated RAM in a discrete GPU But the CPU-vs-GPU RAM distinction means there's a cost to moving work to the GPU as data has to be copied, leading to it only be used in cases where you can either do the whole work purely on the GPU or queue up batch jobs of work so that the cost of copying data can be amortised over the faster parallel GPU They sort of hinted at it in the presentation, but the unified memory architecture potentially allows more flexible distribution of tasks between CPU and GPU and "Neural" cores, because the data doesn't have to be copied. I wonder if this is then potentially something compilers will be able to do take more advantage of, automatically. It will be interesting to see how useful the "Neural" cores are for non-ML workloads.
- jrib 6y agowill be interesting to see how these fare for developer workloads, but dropping 2 usb ports on one side of the laptop is annoying.
- chartpath 6y agoI keep waiting for each new generation to offer more RAM than my 2015 MBP which has 16GB and is still going strong. How else can I run a bunch of docker containers? But every new release is the same or worse for memory. Is there something about these new architectures that I'm missing which should negate my desire? Why can't I get a machine with 32GB RAM for under $3k or whatever they are now?
- alexdowad 6y agoI found it interesting, and curious, that Apple has included hardware specifically for "machine learning" on the M1 chip. It's hard to imagine that anyone will be training ML models on their Mac laptop. So presumably, this must be some kind of accelerator for executing models which have been trained elsewhere... right?? What do they expect those models will be used for?