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Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
- dilippkumar 6y agoHow does one identify which regions of a die-shot is the CPU or GPU? Are the structures on silicon easily recognizable from such pictures? How far can someone with time and money go towards reverse engineering a chip from such pictures?
- wmf 6y agoFor very old chips reverse engineering is relatively easy; here's one example: http://www.righto.com/2020/04/inside-am2901-amds-1970s-bit-slice.html http://www.righto.com/2020/04/inside-am2901-amds-1970s-bit-s... For modern chips you need an electron microscope and there are a lot of metal layers to deal with.
- wtallis 6y agoYou don't need an electron microscope to discern large-scale repeated structures like CPU and GPU cores, or to tell the difference between random logic and highly regular memory arrays (usually cache, but sometimes you can see microcode or register files if you look at a small enough area). An electron microscope is only useful if you want to fully reverse-engineer the entire circuit schematic, but that's overkill for basically any purpose except manufacturing your own clone.
- MichaelZuo 6y agoSo none of the underlying layers matter much for the large and intermediate scale structures?
- wtallis 6y agoWith the right camera modifications, you don't have to remove any layers from a chip to discern the core count: https://www.flickr.com/photos/130561288@N04/48258310027/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/130561288@N04/48258310027/ That's an IR photograph taken with a Sony APS-C camera that the IR-blocking filter has been removed from. That's enough to make out the cores and L3 cache slices. (The rest of Fritzchens Fritz's flickr uploads are worth checking out too, especially the video showing how he preps a die for visible light photography.)
- MichaelZuo 6y agoThat’s cool! How would the major companies reverse engineer these chips?
- ngcc_hk 6y agoWhy not underestimate the engineering effort, could the problem is higher up in the chain (software api like Apple os) and lower (the equipment to produce the chip). Would the IP that important?
- dismalpedigree 6y agoTechInsights employee here. The chip design and fabrication firms have their own internal RE divisions mostly to QA their own chips. They do competitive RE, but its often less expensive for them to get a subscription to TechInsights. Economies of scale and all that. In terms of how its done, its very proprietary. I can tell you it involves clean rooms, ion beams, electron microscopes, chemistry, and bleeding edge software. If you want to come work for us (its enjoyable, you should :) ) check out our careers page. We are hiring like crazy in many positions. https://www.techinsights.com/about-techinsights/overview/careers-techinsights https://www.techinsights.com/about-techinsights/overview/car...
- duskwuff 6y agoIn short: educated guesswork. The lighter blocky regions in the die shot are recognizable as memory; a lot of the rest is based on recognizing duplicated or mirrored elements (like the two CPU1 cores) and making guesses based on their number, relative size, and what they're close to. Identifying the GPU, for example, is based on recognizing that there are eight repeated elements within it, and matching that with the known fact that there are eight GPU cores.
- mhh__ 6y agoI assume you could at least make an educated guess based on the layout and ratios of the area of the caches (assuming you know their topology and sizes) and therefore their proximity to non-cache stuff.
- sydney6 6y agoThis [1] is a Talk from John McMaster about "Low-Cost IC Emission Reverse Engineering" using, iirc, commodity cameras. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAuLXg2fVz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAuLXg2fVz0
- saagarjha 6y agoIn general, the other comments give an idea of how to do it. But Apple shared their own die shots in their presentation ;)
- ogre_codes 6y agoAnd they were actually accurate which is unusual for this sort of thing.
- baybal2 6y ago> How does one identify which regions of a die-shot is the CPU or GPU? Are the structures on silicon easily recognizable from such pictures? Infrared camera
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- systemvoltage 6y agoKind of sad to think about this - Why does marketing dept not actually show these and instead put up a cartoonized version of Apple's chips [1]? That's in every keynote. This is a rhetorical question, the real mystery is why does an average consumer want to see unreal things to convince them its cooler/better? You'd think seeing actual die shots would be more convincing to average consumer, but they love marketing that's untruthful, fake and exaggerated. Not the fault of the marketing department. This is what consumers want and this is what sells. Sad to think how shiny things sell and the whole luxury industry in general. [1] https://www.apple.com/v/mac/m1/a/images/overview/chip_cpu__dg71gt6zecya_large_2x.jpg https://www.apple.com/v/mac/m1/a/images/overview/chip_cpu__d...
- madeofpalk 6y agoAs a technical consumer I don’t know why I would want to see the actual die shots - it really doesn’t tell me anything at all. The graphics they put on slides or marketing sites aren’t supposed to be technical reference material, usually it’s just about conveying the idea of a SoC or performance improvements, or relative sizes, or whatever.
- FartyMcFarter 6y agoBecause it's more real, and more inspiring to look at real technical material.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> Because it's more real Why is more real better for this purpose? Isn't a big idea of diagrams that they aren't real so can be simpler and easier to understand? Otherwise we'd just use photos or actual schematics. > more inspiring Most people just need to get the info so they can get on with their job and day and get home to their kids. They aren't looking to be inspired right now. That's fine.
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- FartyMcFarter 6y agoWhat is a "system cache" ? Is that an L3 cache?
- chrisseaton 6y agoIt's L3, but I think it's called 'system cache' because it is also used for the bus that loads memory from RAM into the GPU.
- bullen 6y agoI would really like to know where the L1 caches are for proportions!
- my123 6y agoThe system-level cache isn't an L3 cache specific to the CPU only, it's common across all the blocks in the SoC. It is used by the GPU, neural engines,... in addition to the CPU itself.
- segfaultbuserr 6y agoI know nothing about chips, but I guess it's probably the last-level CPU cache but the GPU shares it as well, similar to Intel iGPU, so they decided to call it "system cache".
- segfaultbuserr 6y agoOnly a die-shot, it's disappointing that there's no comment or explanation. But the website advertises: > A DFR report will be available to TechInsights subscribers on Apple's M1 disruptive chip architecture in January 2021. So I assume the actual write-up is still a work-in-progress. Perhaps we just need to be patient and come back a month later.
- dannyw 6y agoThe actual report will be thousands of dollars because it's for industry professionals trying to compete with Apple's M1.
- dismalpedigree 6y agoThe “reports” are targeted at competitors who want to know how and what Apple did. They are quite expensive for a consumer or casual user. The are more than just a document. A DFR includes in depth analysis, hundreds of supporting images, and usually access to the Circuit Vision for it. CV is a viewer that allows drilling into the chip down to viewing individual transistors along with the chip schematics. Think map tiles but for a chip. Disclosure: I work at TechInsights.
- jsjohnst 6y ago> Only a die-shot, it's disappointing that there's no comment or explanation. A die shot that Apple themselves showed at the event. Which has had the same level of annotations previously by Anantech. Sure, the DFR in early 2021 will be much more detailed, but also expensive to the point 0.001% of HN viewers will actually be able to see it. As such, I think your skepticism of this being worthy of home page billing is not out of line. For the record, this is not meant to be a dig at TechInsights. I’ve seen a DFR before and they really are good for what they are, it’s just not something most HNers would gain value from, even if it were free.
- kbumsik 6y agoInteresting to see the CPU isn't actually that big in the chip. What are the uncommented parts? Maybe peripheral interfaces?
- als0 6y agoCache, GPU, Secure Enclave, Neural processors, peripheral controllers. GPU takes the lion’s share.
- coder543 6y agoThe Cache, GPU, and NPU are all already labeled in the image. The Secure Enclave is a good one to point out that is in the unlabeled space. Certainly some non-DDR peripherals are in the unlabeled space, but it would be neat to have a more comprehensively labeled diagram. I wouldn't expect most peripherals to take up so many transistors compared to the processor cores.
- als0 6y agoSorry, was looking at the marketing image. The enclave would be quite tiny though. Id say most of the undocumented part is custom glue logic which isn’t particularly identifiable.
- yokem55 6y agoThere's probably 4 lanes of pcie to connect the nvme ssd to, a couple more lanes to run the thunderbolt controllers, 2-3 usb controllers + a hub to connect the keyboard and touchpad, an audio dac and some thermal and power usage monitoring. They might even put the ethernet controller that shoes up on the Mac mini in there.
- texse 6y agoIt may be interesting to look at a more completely labeled die image (eg. a recent AMD laptop chip [1]). I/O controllers, various PHYs, the display pipeline and the media engine account for a significant fraction of chip. We also know the M1 has an integrated SSD controller, ISP and Thunderbolt which probably take a good chunk of room too. [1] https://potatopc.net/amd-renoir-die-annotation-raises-hopes-of-desktop-chips-featuring-x16-peg/ https://potatopc.net/amd-renoir-die-annotation-raises-hopes-...
- Waterluvian 6y agoWhat's all the stuff that isn't annotated with a yellow rectangle?
- deaddodo 6y agoThis is a SoC, not a CPU. The majority of the non-annotated is glue logic, I/O, etc.
- bullen 6y agoThat's alot of glue! I would say ~50%! What is the system cache? nm, see question below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25547796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25547796
- Synaesthesia 6y agoIt has a lot of roles. You have memory controllers, i/o controllers. Not sure if the SSD controllers is also part of it. Then the dedicated video encode/decode the image processing the neural engine. There's a lot of features.
- RantyDave 6y agoIt lists the nvme drive as being attached to "Apple Fabric" so that sounds like an internal bus of some description....
- xet7 6y agoTechinsights page returns error. Archive.org seems to work: https://web.archive.org/web/20201227010504/https://www.techinsights.com/blog/two-new-apple-socs-two-market-events-apple-a14-and-m1 https://web.archive.org/web/20201227010504/https://www.techi...
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- commandpaul 6y agoDoes anyone know if its possible/ tried to do ram upgrades with higher capacity chips by replacing the dram like one does in the newer chip stacked iphones?
- JohnJamesRambo 6y agoCan we step back and marvel at the absurdity that one of the most powerful CPUs ever created was for a phone?
- chrisseaton 6y agoBut these devices aren’t ‘phones’ any more are they? That’s disingenuous. They’re hugely powerful general purpose computing devices - many people’s primary computing device if you go outside the tech bubble. They do compute intensive tasks like photo manipulation, on-line video editing, grading, and compression, they do face detection, depth estimation, etc etc. I don’t know why people still say ‘wow all this for a telephone’ like all it does is make analog phone calls.
- JohnJamesRambo 6y agoBecause it fits in your hand and runs on a battery and is called a phone. iPhone As an aside, I was wondering what things does the iPhone 12 do that can even begin to tax all this horespower?
- manderley 6y agoI assume there are some games that can utilize the power.
- chrisseaton 6y agoRight - 'one of the most powerful CPUs ever created was for a phone' sounds funny, so to get your head around it think instead 'one of the most powerful CPUs ever created was for a miniaturised 4k on-line editing suite and live broadcast system' and it doesn't sound so absurd anymore does it?
- murukesh_s 6y agoits a shame we can't 'dock' em to a larger monitor to do desktop work yet. There are attempts by few players, but if Apple can do that it would be another revolution..
- joakleaf 6y agoI wonder what they'll do for "M1X" and pro-machines? Seems like heat isn't an issue, so can they increase the clock-speed of the M1? And will they create a larger die with 2xGPU and 2xCPUs, or will they "stitch" multiple M1 dies together on one package to have a higher yield and reduce supply chain concerns? An M1X with 2xGPU will bring it to Radeon 5500M level which is what I have in my current 16", but still not quite to Nvidia 1080 level. So they'll definitely need a more powerful GPU for the pro-users. I wonder if they can make a 4xGPU, or if the yield will become poor as the die size increases. Maybe they'll have to do a discrete GPU, but that doesn't seem to match their current trajectory. And then there have been "leaks" (rumors, really) about an 32xcore M1-family CPU, but I imagine the yield of such a beast would be horrible, with all the other SOC components on the same die. Especially, if they put a 32xcore GPU on the same die.
- Hamuko 6y agoWell, the prevailing rumor currently is a processor with 8 high-performance cores (as opposed to the 4 on the M1). I don't know if the amount of high-efficiency cores would also be doubled so that it's like 2xCPU when compared to the M1.
- joakleaf 6y agoYes, that's the M1X rumor, but that isn't going to be enough to compete with high-end CPUs in iMac and Mac Pros. For those, we have the 32-core rumor (but that is a massive die). And doubling the M1-GPU will not be enough to even surpass current Macbook Pro offerings. So they'll also need to do something more on that front.
- valuearb 6y agoFor the truly high end they will need an external GPU. Removing the integrated GPU should get up enough space for lots more Firestorm cores. And given that Firestorm is the fastest available CPU core, they probably don’t need 32 of them to match the highest multicore performance levels of existing AMD and Intel CPUs.
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- dismalpedigree 6y agoI work at TechInsights. Depending on what the community is looking to know, there may be some things we can share publicly. I’m in the software group and not intimately involved with the RE parts, but I will act as an ambassador and see if I can get the right people involved. Throw some comments on this thread and we’ll see what we can do to help. Might be next week due to holidays.
- ksec 6y agoI am actually interested in the Non-Labeled part which no one on the Internet have even guessed what they are. Image Signal Processors ( ISP ), Video Decoder and Encoder, there should be a FPGA somewhere, Secure Enclave, NAND Controller, PCI-Express Controller / USB3 / Thunderbolt etc. Mostly because all the other part are already well known.
- kharak 6y agoCan someone explain to me, what the term "bionic" means in this context? How is the chip derived from nature / natural systems?
- sradman 6y agoPure speculation: the word bionic means using an artificial body part. The A14 Bionic includes a new Neural Engine for Artificial Intelligence. EDIT: the name Bionic has been used since the A11 when the Neural Engine was introduced. Fusion introduced big.LITTLE.
- studius 6y agoCould a genetic algorithm have been partially used in the chip design also? For example, in the layout to the right of the DDR on the M1, it looks like some significant optimization was done, but only in certain areas.