6 ms·
The talent behind M1 left Apple years ago, because they weren't giving enough stocks, bonuses. So, Apple is left with fixers. I don't expect Apple to bring anot
by perfecthjrjth 4y ago
The talent behind M1 left Apple years ago, because they weren't giving enough stocks, bonuses. So, Apple is left with fixers. I don't expect Apple to bring another revolution in chips.
- hooo 4y agoDo you know where they went or what they're up to now?
- nexus7556 4y agoSome went to Nuvia which was later acquired by Qualcomm. Ian Cutress gave some history in this video: https://youtu.be/zhQ_ytzLUnc https://youtu.be/zhQ_ytzLUnc
- philjohn 4y agoIf they can make Qualcomm competitive with the Apple SoC's that would be great for everyone that isn't Apple, and by extension, the market as a whole. Here's hoping.
- ksec 4y agoMost people on the Internet, inclusive but not limited to HN over estimated the lead Apple has. The Cortex X3 at TSMC N4 used in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 clocked at 3.26Ghz gets you about ~1500 GB5 Single Core at ~4W. The Apple A16 on the same TSMC N4 clocked at 3.6Ghz gets you about ~1900 GB5 Score using ~5W. The Cortex X3 is much smaller in die size, and only just started optimising specifically for AArach64. Compared to Apple which is on their forth or fifth iteration. I would not be surprised if the Cortex X4 breaks the 1800 barrier using under 5W. Compared to a few years ago Apple SoC vs Snapdragon where single core performance differ by more than 2x. The projected difference between the two will be less than 20%. The more interesting question would be, what happens when Cortex X4 and Cortex X5 reaches these sort of performance, which is good enough to be used in PC and only cost a a few dollars per core in licensing?
- philjohn 4y agoWhilst that's true, it ignores their GPU and, crucially, their fixed function blocks - TPU, ISP, hw decode/encode etc. So it's amazing to see the bread and butter catch up, what we really need are those other blocks available under license from someone akin to ARM.
- ksec 4y ago> what we really need are those other blocks available under license from someone akin to ARM. There are plenty to choose from. Samsung or Mediatek didn't invent all the stuff in their SoC, and neither did Apple. GPU IPs are available from ARM ( Mali ) and IMG ( PowerVR ). FPGA form Lattice which Apple are using. DSP and other 5G modem solution from CEVA. There are plenty of options to choose from. And as far as I am concern, none of them are as far ahead, or as difficult to overcome than CPU design.
- philjohn 4y agoDidn't Apple start using their own GPU core, after being a PowerVR customer for some time?
- ksec 4y agoAre they still using PowerVR's design? No. Are they still using their Technology and IP [1]. Yes. [1] https://www.imaginationtech.com/news/imagination-and-apple-sign-new-agreement/ https://www.imaginationtech.com/news/imagination-and-apple-s...
- dilyevsky 4y agohttps://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/apple-lawsuit-says-stealth-startup-rivos-poached-engineers-steal-secrets-2022-05-02/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/apple-lawsuit-says-...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- justinator 4y agoThose are some bold predictions based on no evidence and Apple's track record of doing just what you say will now be impossible.
- scrlk 4y agoThe talent exodus from Apple and its subsequent effects on their ability to keep delivering have been suggested for a while now: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/apple-cpu-gains-grind-to-a-halt-and https://www.semianalysis.com/p/apple-cpu-gains-grind-to-a-ha... https://www.semianalysis.com/p/apple-m2-die-shot-and-architecture https://www.semianalysis.com/p/apple-m2-die-shot-and-archite...
- mistrial9 4y agoI have no horse in this race, and.. isn't there a lot of backroom reason to cast suspicion, fear, uncertainty and doubt on Apple about CPU and chip design?
- dagmx 4y agoI would take anything from SemiAnalysis with a heavy grain of salt. The author has a very biased view on companies and often states conjecture as fact. A lot of their numbers of company attrition are based on questionable extrapolation of a few high level employees that left.
- novok 4y agoThat is so typical apple, penny pinching on compensation and worker experience with things like mandatory office commutes and charging for food. I've heard they've changed their tune recently at least comp wise, is that true?
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoAt staff+ levels, Apple pays aggressively IIUC.
- pmalynin 4y agoNot aggressively enough
- ladberg 4y agoMaybe that's true (I don't know one way or the other), but my personal opinion as someone who left Apple is that the majority of the best/most positively influential engineers were not staff+ and didn't have amazing comp.
- conanbatt 4y agoIs IIUC the International Islamic University Chittagong?
- geodel 4y agoSpecially when best worker experience companies have delivered best consumer product experience.
- satvikpendem 4y agoI know someone who worked on the original M1, he's now at Google. He said they just booted macOS on the iPad's processor and it seemed to mostly work aside from some bugs, so they refactored that into a more complete solution for macOS-specific things that were broken.