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More Firestorm cores means more die area, which means the SOC gets significantly more expensive and/or supply won't keep up with demand. Obviously it would be
by simondotau 5y ago
More Firestorm cores means more die area, which means the SOC gets significantly more expensive and/or supply won't keep up with demand.
Obviously it would be great to have 8 Firestorm cores in a desktop Mac—and this will probably be what we'll get in a future A1X—but as long as we're doing silicon fan fiction, why not ask for 32 Firestorm cores? That would be cool.
- webmobdev 5y agoThe M1 is cheaper than previous Intel i7 Mac Minis. So I don't think it would have mattered if the CPU was slightly more expensive. People would have been willing to pay that price. It was just less riskier, and cheaper, for Apple to use the same chip on both laptops and Desktop PCs even though the CPU trade-offs and consumer expectations of both are different.
- simondotau 5y agoIt’s worth remembering that the M1, a chip which has exceeded all expectations of performance, is still just a low end CPU, not merely a “laptop” part. It’s purpose is to be efficient in respect to cost. And this includes the parts cost of higher wattage power delivery and the parts cost of more aggressive heat dissipation. Future M1 derivatives and successors will offer higher performance at a higher price.