4 ms·

If M2 Pro is similar to M1 Pro (two M1s duct-taped together with very fancy duct tape), this is interesting because usually chips need to be significantly rewor

If M2 Pro is similar to M1 Pro (two M1s duct-taped together with very fancy duct tape), this is interesting because usually chips need to be significantly reworked for a newer process and this implies an M2 core complex will be printable both at 5nm and 3nm. It would be interesting to know how much of this is fabrication becoming more standardized and how much is Apple's core designs being flexible. If this is the latter, then Apple has a significant advantage beyond just saturating the most recent process node.

skavi 4y ago
The M1 Pro was not two M1s duct taped together. Their core configurations do not share the same proportions (8+2 vs 4+4). You may be thinking of the GPUs? Each step in M1 -> M1 Pro -> M1 Max -> M1 Ultra represents a doubling of GPU cores. Or you may be thinking of the M1 Max and Ultra. The Ultra is nearly just two Maxes. Regarding your point about flexibility, it’s hardly unprecedented for the same core to be used on different processes. Apple has at times contracted Samsung and TSMC for the same SoC. Qualcomm just recently ported their flagship SoC from Samsung to TSMC. Even Intel backported Sunny Cove to 14nm. And of course there’s ARM.
- wolf550e 4y ago
  - ttoinou 4y ago
    Thats what the parent said
    - paulmd 4y ago
      meta: HN constantly feels the need to be maximally pendantic even when what they're trying to say was already covered, and it's just very tedious and leads to an exhausting style of posting to try and prevent it. that's really why the "be maximally generous in your interpretation of a comment" rule exists, and the pedantry is against the spirit of that requirement, yet it's super super common, and I think a lot of people feel it's "part of the site's culture" - but if it is, that's not really a good thing, it's against the rules. Just waiting for the pedantic "ackshuyally the rule says PLEASE" reply.
      - phpnode 4y ago
        Well actually, it's not just HN, I see this pattern all over tech Twitter, programming subs on Reddit etc too. I think it happens when people want to participate in the conversation but don't have anything actually worthwhile to say, so rather than say nothing they nitpick.
      - 1123581321 4y ago
        I want to generously overlook any particular words you used and totally disagree with your main point. :) I think that it’s a positive feature of threaded comments to spin off side discussions and minor corrections. In this case, the correction was wrong, but if it was right, I’d have appreciated it in addition to whatever else ended up being written by others. What’s bad for discussion is when those receiving the reply feel attacked, as if the author of the minor point was implying that nothing else was worth discussing. I wish that neither parent nor child comment authors felt the urge to qualify and head off critical or clarifying responses.
        paulmd 4y ago
        > I wish that neither parent nor child comment authors felt the urge to qualify and head off critical or clarifying responses. I actually would go the other way and say that preemptively laying out a rebuttal to a common/superficial counterargument is an important supportive component of an argument. I personally wish that comment authors wouldn't take it as a personal slight when a common/weak counterargument is addressed preemptively. Any scientific paper has a "what came before and why it's wrong and sucks, and why my approach is awesome and cool and better in every way" section and those are really the same thing - preemptive addressing of criticisms that reviewers/etc would make. You wouldn't say those are dismissive and superficial because they "belittle the previous authors and dismiss their work and arguments", or that "preemptively rebutting an argument is offensive to the reviewer". Why is that a bad thing? "I am aware of a common concern X and I think it doesn't hold water because..." is a pretty reasonable thing to post in a casual debate and it really diminishes the discourse for people to take offense to it and for people to have to excessively censor or limit their discussion as a result. It's not good for the community. Anyway, the other thing is, a lot of debates really come down to "values differences", which is a kind of X-Y problem. For example, in a political debate, a lot of debates over a policy aren't really about the policy, but rather a fundamental disagreement about whether government can (or even should attempt to) efficiently perform an action or regulate a certain kind of conduct. And preventing certain underlying ideals or principles from being surfaced in the discussion tends to lead to rather pointless debates where nothing is agreed, because it was never about the policy in the first place. So the policy actually worsens that problem as well, you just end up with tilting at policy windmills instead of addressing the actual area of disagreement (which is not the policy at all).
- tooltalk 4y ago
  >> Apple has at times contracted Samsung and TSMC for the same SoC That was only once at 14nm(Samsung)/16nm(TSMC) as Apple outsourced US chip production in TX to Taiwan. Qualcomm uses both TSMC and Samsung on rotational basis to this date.
dont__panic 4y ago
I wonder if they'll also bump the M2 machines to 3nm silently, if the efficiency bump is minor? Apple previously split the A9 between TSMC and Samsung at two different node sizes, so it wouldn't be completely crazy. Or perhaps they're content to leave the M2 as 5nm for easy performance gains in the M3 next year. It also has the advantage of keeping the cheapest machines off of the best node size, which is surely more expensive and more limited than 5nm.
buu700 4y ago
There was some speculation in another thread not too long ago that the M2 design was originally 3nm, and was backported to 5nm after the fact.
msoad 4y ago
you are mixing M1 Ultra which is two M1 Max taped together with M1 Pro which is a weaker variant of M1 Max.
chippiewill 4y ago
There's no reason to assume that a 3nm and 5nm M2 core is identical in that way. It's probably similar to the changes Intel used to do for die shrinks when they were doing tick-tock.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sbierwagen 4y ago
I mean, Intel used a "tick-tock" model for a decade. (New microarchitecture, then die shrink, then new arch...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick%E2%80%93tock_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick%E2%80%93tock_model
minimaul 4y ago
I think you're thinking of M1 Ultra - which is 2x M1 Max on an interconnect. M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max are separate dies.

skavi 4y ago

The M1 Pro was not two M1s duct taped together. Their core configurations do not share the same proportions (8+2 vs 4+4). You may be thinking of the GPUs? Each step in M1 -> M1 Pro -> M1 Max -> M1 Ultra represents a doubling of GPU cores. Or you may be thinking of the M1 Max and Ultra. The Ultra is nearly just two Maxes. Regarding your point about flexibility, it’s hardly unprecedented for the same core to be used on different processes. Apple has at times contracted Samsung and TSMC for the same SoC. Qualcomm just recently ported their flagship SoC from Samsung to TSMC. Even Intel backported Sunny Cove to 14nm. And of course there’s ARM.

wolf550e 4y ago
- ttoinou 4y ago
  Thats what the parent said
  - paulmd 4y ago
    meta: HN constantly feels the need to be maximally pendantic even when what they're trying to say was already covered, and it's just very tedious and leads to an exhausting style of posting to try and prevent it. that's really why the "be maximally generous in your interpretation of a comment" rule exists, and the pedantry is against the spirit of that requirement, yet it's super super common, and I think a lot of people feel it's "part of the site's culture" - but if it is, that's not really a good thing, it's against the rules. Just waiting for the pedantic "ackshuyally the rule says PLEASE" reply.
    - phpnode 4y ago
      Well actually, it's not just HN, I see this pattern all over tech Twitter, programming subs on Reddit etc too. I think it happens when people want to participate in the conversation but don't have anything actually worthwhile to say, so rather than say nothing they nitpick.
    - 1123581321 4y ago
      I want to generously overlook any particular words you used and totally disagree with your main point. :) I think that it’s a positive feature of threaded comments to spin off side discussions and minor corrections. In this case, the correction was wrong, but if it was right, I’d have appreciated it in addition to whatever else ended up being written by others. What’s bad for discussion is when those receiving the reply feel attacked, as if the author of the minor point was implying that nothing else was worth discussing. I wish that neither parent nor child comment authors felt the urge to qualify and head off critical or clarifying responses.
      - paulmd 4y ago
        > I wish that neither parent nor child comment authors felt the urge to qualify and head off critical or clarifying responses. I actually would go the other way and say that preemptively laying out a rebuttal to a common/superficial counterargument is an important supportive component of an argument. I personally wish that comment authors wouldn't take it as a personal slight when a common/weak counterargument is addressed preemptively. Any scientific paper has a "what came before and why it's wrong and sucks, and why my approach is awesome and cool and better in every way" section and those are really the same thing - preemptive addressing of criticisms that reviewers/etc would make. You wouldn't say those are dismissive and superficial because they "belittle the previous authors and dismiss their work and arguments", or that "preemptively rebutting an argument is offensive to the reviewer". Why is that a bad thing? "I am aware of a common concern X and I think it doesn't hold water because..." is a pretty reasonable thing to post in a casual debate and it really diminishes the discourse for people to take offense to it and for people to have to excessively censor or limit their discussion as a result. It's not good for the community. Anyway, the other thing is, a lot of debates really come down to "values differences", which is a kind of X-Y problem. For example, in a political debate, a lot of debates over a policy aren't really about the policy, but rather a fundamental disagreement about whether government can (or even should attempt to) efficiently perform an action or regulate a certain kind of conduct. And preventing certain underlying ideals or principles from being surfaced in the discussion tends to lead to rather pointless debates where nothing is agreed, because it was never about the policy in the first place. So the policy actually worsens that problem as well, you just end up with tilting at policy windmills instead of addressing the actual area of disagreement (which is not the policy at all).
tooltalk 4y ago
>> Apple has at times contracted Samsung and TSMC for the same SoC That was only once at 14nm(Samsung)/16nm(TSMC) as Apple outsourced US chip production in TX to Taiwan. Qualcomm uses both TSMC and Samsung on rotational basis to this date.

dont__panic 4y ago

I wonder if they'll also bump the M2 machines to 3nm silently, if the efficiency bump is minor? Apple previously split the A9 between TSMC and Samsung at two different node sizes, so it wouldn't be completely crazy. Or perhaps they're content to leave the M2 as 5nm for easy performance gains in the M3 next year. It also has the advantage of keeping the cheapest machines off of the best node size, which is surely more expensive and more limited than 5nm.

buu700 4y ago

There was some speculation in another thread not too long ago that the M2 design was originally 3nm, and was backported to 5nm after the fact.

msoad 4y ago

you are mixing M1 Ultra which is two M1 Max taped together with M1 Pro which is a weaker variant of M1 Max.

chippiewill 4y ago

There's no reason to assume that a 3nm and 5nm M2 core is identical in that way. It's probably similar to the changes Intel used to do for die shrinks when they were doing tick-tock.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sbierwagen 4y ago

I mean, Intel used a "tick-tock" model for a decade. (New microarchitecture, then die shrink, then new arch...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick%E2%80%93tock_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tick%E2%80%93tock_model

minimaul 4y ago

I think you're thinking of M1 Ultra - which is 2x M1 Max on an interconnect. M1, M1 Pro and M1 Max are separate dies.