6 ms·

To your main points, they have yet to fully utilize advanced packaging (TSMC 3D for example) to get much more RAM in the SOC. They could also go off package at

To your main points, they have yet to fully utilize advanced packaging (TSMC 3D for example) to get much more RAM in the SOC. They could also go off package at the expense of power, a good tradeoff for a desktop system. The die size is also small compared to competitive processors (120 mm^2) so they can certainly add more cores. I think with a larger cost budget they'll make the high end sing. I don't mean to pick on you as you're not alone in what is a very natural skepticism. However, it is somewhat amusing to watch the comments about the M1 over time. When Apple announced the M1 based products many critics were crying impossible, faked, rigged benchmarks, etc... Now that the products have proven to have performance at least as good as claimed, lots of people are suggesting this is some kind of low end fluke result and the higher end systems won't be so great. Just wait. I think we are seeing a tipping point event where RISC (fueled by great engineering) is finally fulfilling its promise from many years ago.

socialdemocrat 6y ago
Interesting, where do you find the size of these dies? I was really curious about how large the Firestorm cores are compared to say Zen3 or Intel cores. How many cores do you think Apple can realistically add? Can they get up to something like threadpiper. or are we talking more about something along the lines of a 12 core upper limit?
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  There isn't any fundamental limit. Threadripper's don't have GPUs taking up space and heat budget though.
- dev_tty01 6y ago
  https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... https://www.techarp.com/computer/amd-zen-3-tech-report/ https://www.techarp.com/computer/amd-zen-3-tech-report/ https://www.tomshardware.com/news/der8auer-intel-core-i9-10900k-runs-cooler-with-liquid-metal-delid https://www.tomshardware.com/news/der8auer-intel-core-i9-109... Here's a summary of numbers from the articles. The M1 is about 120 sq mm. The Zen 3 is interesting. It has a separate IO chip coupled with one or two 8 core processors. The 8 core version has a total die area of about 80 + 125 = 205 sq mm. The 16 core is 285 sq mm. Intel chips are all over the place depending on core design and number of cores. As an example from the reference above, a 6 core i7-8700K is about 154 sq mm. The i9-9900K is 180 sq mm and the 10 core is 206 sq mm. How many cores can they add? From the die photograph of the M1, a very rough estimate of area dedicated to the 8 cores and associated cache is maybe 40 percent or 48 sq mm. Compared to the 205 sq mm for the 10 core i9, they could add about 16 more cores. Seems unlikely of course because of all the other things you have to do to support that. It is reasonable though to imagine a 180 to 200 sq mm Mx chip with maybe 16 CPU cores and perhaps a few more GPU cores. Fun. The fundamental limit to die size is what's known as the reticle size. That's the maximum size of the stepped design that is repeated over the wafer. This is a limitation of the lithography equipment. That limit is around 850 sq mm, but no one builds a high volume chip anywhere close to that big because the yield and therefore the cost would be atrocious. Instead, several repeats of the design are included in the reticle and then that is stepped over the entire wafer.
  - greenknight 6y ago
    One thing you havent mentioned in that the Zen 3 processor, is on the 7nm process from TSMC, whereas the M1 is on the 5nm process.
  - ip26 6y ago
    More interesting is comparing core size, I think. Just spitballing in MS Paint, if we chop off the FP the Zen 3 core plus 1MB L2 is probably ~ 3 sq mm. The M1 seems to be about 2 Firestorm complexes high and 4 wide, so a complex would be 15 sq mm, or ~ 3.75 sq mm for a core plus 3MB L2. https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-5000-zen-3-vermeer-undressed-high-res-die-shots-close-ups-pictured-detailed/ https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-5000-zen-3-vermeer-undressed-...
ogre_codes 6y ago
> To your main points, they have yet to fully utilize advanced packaging (TSMC 3D for example) to get much more RAM in the SOC. The big problem is as you get larger and larger amounts of RAM, the demand drops precariously. The number of people who need 16GB of RAM? Very large. The number who need 32GB is at least an order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 64GB another order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 256GB of RAM or more is likely in the low thousands or even hundreds. Making a custom package for those kind of numbers becomes prohibitively expensive. > I don't mean to pick on you as you're not alone in what is a very natural skepticism. However, it is somewhat amusing to watch the comments about the M1 over time. When Apple announced the M1 based products many critics were crying impossible, faked, rigged benchmarks, etc I've figured from the start that Apple wouldn't make this transition unless there were a significant win here. In my above comment, I think I made it quite clear that I expect Apple's upcoming CPUs to outperform Intel. I'm just not as certain the delta between Apple's top end CPUs and Intel/ AMD will be as great as the delta between the M1 and the Intel CPU it replaced. So for example, the M series chip might be 20-30% faster than the Intel in the 16" MacBook Pro, not double the performance as it was in the MacBook Air.
- astrostl 6y ago
  > The number of people who need 16GB of RAM? Very large. The number who need 32GB is at least an order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 64GB another order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 256GB of RAM or more is likely in the low thousands or even hundreds. "need" can be a combination of objective and subjective takes, but I would posit that the amount who would at least purport to need 256GB+ is radically, radically higher than the low thousands.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    In a laptop, low thousands might be about right. And for RAM, need captures it pretty well. Either you will once in your life need to do something that uses 256GB ram, in which case you need it, or you don't.
    - 6y ago
kllrnohj 6y ago
> To your main points, they have yet to fully utilize advanced packaging (TSMC 3D for example) to get much more RAM in the SOC. The M1 is using off the shelf LPDDR4 modules on the package but not on the die. 3D stacking is possible for denser DRAM modules but wouldn't make much sense compared to just adding 2 more DRAM modules and spending the physical space on it - there's more than enough room especially in devices like the Mac Mini. A boring ol' daisy chain setup would work perfectly fine here.

socialdemocrat 6y ago

Interesting, where do you find the size of these dies? I was really curious about how large the Firestorm cores are compared to say Zen3 or Intel cores. How many cores do you think Apple can realistically add? Can they get up to something like threadpiper. or are we talking more about something along the lines of a 12 core upper limit?

gameswithgo 6y ago
There isn't any fundamental limit. Threadripper's don't have GPUs taking up space and heat budget though.
dev_tty01 6y ago
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-deep-dive https://www.anandtech.com/show/16226/apple-silicon-m1-a14-de... https://www.techarp.com/computer/amd-zen-3-tech-report/ https://www.techarp.com/computer/amd-zen-3-tech-report/ https://www.tomshardware.com/news/der8auer-intel-core-i9-10900k-runs-cooler-with-liquid-metal-delid https://www.tomshardware.com/news/der8auer-intel-core-i9-109... Here's a summary of numbers from the articles. The M1 is about 120 sq mm. The Zen 3 is interesting. It has a separate IO chip coupled with one or two 8 core processors. The 8 core version has a total die area of about 80 + 125 = 205 sq mm. The 16 core is 285 sq mm. Intel chips are all over the place depending on core design and number of cores. As an example from the reference above, a 6 core i7-8700K is about 154 sq mm. The i9-9900K is 180 sq mm and the 10 core is 206 sq mm. How many cores can they add? From the die photograph of the M1, a very rough estimate of area dedicated to the 8 cores and associated cache is maybe 40 percent or 48 sq mm. Compared to the 205 sq mm for the 10 core i9, they could add about 16 more cores. Seems unlikely of course because of all the other things you have to do to support that. It is reasonable though to imagine a 180 to 200 sq mm Mx chip with maybe 16 CPU cores and perhaps a few more GPU cores. Fun. The fundamental limit to die size is what's known as the reticle size. That's the maximum size of the stepped design that is repeated over the wafer. This is a limitation of the lithography equipment. That limit is around 850 sq mm, but no one builds a high volume chip anywhere close to that big because the yield and therefore the cost would be atrocious. Instead, several repeats of the design are included in the reticle and then that is stepped over the entire wafer.
- greenknight 6y ago
  One thing you havent mentioned in that the Zen 3 processor, is on the 7nm process from TSMC, whereas the M1 is on the 5nm process.
- ip26 6y ago
  More interesting is comparing core size, I think. Just spitballing in MS Paint, if we chop off the FP the Zen 3 core plus 1MB L2 is probably ~ 3 sq mm. The M1 seems to be about 2 Firestorm complexes high and 4 wide, so a complex would be 15 sq mm, or ~ 3.75 sq mm for a core plus 3MB L2. https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-5000-zen-3-vermeer-undressed-high-res-die-shots-close-ups-pictured-detailed/ https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-5000-zen-3-vermeer-undressed-...

ogre_codes 6y ago

> To your main points, they have yet to fully utilize advanced packaging (TSMC 3D for example) to get much more RAM in the SOC. The big problem is as you get larger and larger amounts of RAM, the demand drops precariously. The number of people who need 16GB of RAM? Very large. The number who need 32GB is at least an order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 64GB another order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 256GB of RAM or more is likely in the low thousands or even hundreds. Making a custom package for those kind of numbers becomes prohibitively expensive. > I don't mean to pick on you as you're not alone in what is a very natural skepticism. However, it is somewhat amusing to watch the comments about the M1 over time. When Apple announced the M1 based products many critics were crying impossible, faked, rigged benchmarks, etc I've figured from the start that Apple wouldn't make this transition unless there were a significant win here. In my above comment, I think I made it quite clear that I expect Apple's upcoming CPUs to outperform Intel. I'm just not as certain the delta between Apple's top end CPUs and Intel/ AMD will be as great as the delta between the M1 and the Intel CPU it replaced. So for example, the M series chip might be 20-30% faster than the Intel in the 16" MacBook Pro, not double the performance as it was in the MacBook Air.

astrostl 6y ago
> The number of people who need 16GB of RAM? Very large. The number who need 32GB is at least an order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 64GB another order of magnitude smaller. The number who need 256GB of RAM or more is likely in the low thousands or even hundreds. "need" can be a combination of objective and subjective takes, but I would posit that the amount who would at least purport to need 256GB+ is radically, radically higher than the low thousands.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  In a laptop, low thousands might be about right. And for RAM, need captures it pretty well. Either you will once in your life need to do something that uses 256GB ram, in which case you need it, or you don't.
  - 6y ago

kllrnohj 6y ago

> To your main points, they have yet to fully utilize advanced packaging (TSMC 3D for example) to get much more RAM in the SOC. The M1 is using off the shelf LPDDR4 modules on the package but not on the die. 3D stacking is possible for denser DRAM modules but wouldn't make much sense compared to just adding 2 more DRAM modules and spending the physical space on it - there's more than enough room especially in devices like the Mac Mini. A boring ol' daisy chain setup would work perfectly fine here.