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Why is it "essentially" a phone CPU? Please don't say "because of the ISA". It has 24 CPU cores, 60+ GPU cores, an insanely fast memory bus and a purported 60 w

Why is it "essentially" a phone CPU? Please don't say "because of the ISA". It has 24 CPU cores, 60+ GPU cores, an insanely fast memory bus and a purported 60 watt power envelope. There's nothing "phone" about it.

microtonal 3y ago
And Thunderbolt. Show me all those phones with Thunderbolt :).
- gumby 3y ago
  Maybe the “pro max” version of next September’s iphones. The iPad Pro versions have had TB3 for a while (though they ship with M2 CPUs, not the A series). Not really sure how many ppl would use this but if apple switches to Type C connectors they’re more likely to strut it at the high end than just just mention it in passing. The use case isn’t that clear to me. Perhaps a photographer, for a phone with a couple of TB of SSD.
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    > The use case isn’t that clear to me. Perhaps a photographer, for a phone with a couple of TB of SSD. IMO, eventually, phones will replace low end desktop/laptop computers. Someone (probably Apple, since their CPUs are head and shoulders above the competition) will have to do the work of designing a mode switching UI, but once that's done, they'll really be able to cut into desktop volume. I'm sure the early devices will be... awkward to use - mostly limited to the browser[1]. But after a few iterations, I'm sure it'll mature into something that can stand on its own. No idea when it'll happen, but I do think that economics will push it into being sooner or later. --- 1. Presumably people would also be able to use other phone apps, but a lot of those look weird when scaled up. And transiting from touch to mouse/trackpad is not straightforward.
    - gumby 3y ago
      I disagree … or maybe I don’t. The trivial way I disagree is that I believe people don’t want this: they want to be able to use their phone while “computing”. Perhaps AirPods are enough for that (use Siri to make a call while otherwise mousing) and thus I’m wrong. The big way I disagree is that the phone is already many people’s only internet terminal and and for most has taken over almost all uses of a “computer”. Even I use my bank’s phone app when sitting in front of my computer because it has features the web interface doesn’t.
    - matwood 3y ago
      There's a bit of this version of the future in the iPad. Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and plug into a 5k monitor. It shouldn't be hard to open it up on the phone (along with the basic window management). It's also not really new, and has been tried many times in the past. I do think we finally have all the requisite technology in place though. BT peripherals mostly work, phones CPUs are powerful, phone apps are plentiful, etc...
      - nordsieck 3y ago
        > It's also not really new, and has been tried many times in the past. The trouble with the future is that, even if you know that it's inevitable, you may be too early for that to matter. There are a huge number of dot com busts that later became successes (different company, though) because we have the needed technology today.
    - detourdog 3y ago
      Before everyone went cloud crazy I thought everyone would have a "data furnace" in their basement with little interactive tablets. I still think that is true and will eventually be building my own on a Mac Pro. I will be combine various sources into a single context that will represent the building. VisionOS has changed a lot of my thinking. I would like to be able to access the hand-tracking separate from goggles.
ddalex 3y ago
the 60W envelope is the phone part I mean you can't style yourself a workstation if the lights don't dim when turned on
dhruvdh 3y ago
All fabs have libraries that their customers use to turn chip RTL to actual transistor layout to be fabbed. Apple silicon is made using mobile libraries, same as their iPhone and iPad chips. Even though they're made on these dense libraries, the chip is still very big, since they need to include CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, and all of their fixed function hardware. All of this puts a limit in terms of frequency and core count. You will find that other server hardware in this price range significantly outperforms Apple silicon , save for those video workloads they're missing fixed function hardware for. M2 Ultra has some 134B transistors, when you compare with an equivalent chip like MI300 (146B), you find that really, in terms of raw compute, there is no comparison. We will have more details on MI300 today, watch out for the news cycle. This is an excellent read in terms of what difference using dense vs performance libraries can make - https://www.semianalysis.com/p/zen-4c-amds-response-to-hyperscale https://www.semianalysis.com/p/zen-4c-amds-response-to-hyper...
- daneel_w 3y ago
  > "All of this puts a limit in terms of frequency and core count. You will find that other server hardware in this price range significantly outperforms Apple silicon , save for those video workloads they're missing fixed function hardware for." I think the power envelope, not the price tag, is the better metric when comparing how server-y or phone-y the silicon it. > "M2 Ultra has some 134B transistors, when you compare with an equivalent chip like MI300 (146B), you find that really, in terms of raw compute, there is no comparison. We will have more details on MI300 today, watch out for the news cycle." And unsurprisingly it will certainly come with an incomparable TDP.
- threeseed 3y ago
  > save for those video workloads they're missing fixed function hardware You do know that the Mac Pro is targeted specifically at those workloads.
varispeed 3y ago
> just without consideration for constraints imposed by the phone's footprint If you don't have those constraints it is easy to just "copy and paste" more cores and naturally this will have a higher power envelope, but in essence this is a phone tech that you pay extreme premium for.
unusualmonkey 3y ago
The memory bus is overblown. M2 Ultra has 800GB/s, which sounds like a lot until you remember a Xbox Series X has 560GB/s and costs $499. Or spend $800 and get a 7900 XT which has 800GB/s. Think of the Ultra more of a GPU that happens to have CPU built in.

microtonal 3y ago

And Thunderbolt. Show me all those phones with Thunderbolt :).

gumby 3y ago
Maybe the “pro max” version of next September’s iphones. The iPad Pro versions have had TB3 for a while (though they ship with M2 CPUs, not the A series). Not really sure how many ppl would use this but if apple switches to Type C connectors they’re more likely to strut it at the high end than just just mention it in passing. The use case isn’t that clear to me. Perhaps a photographer, for a phone with a couple of TB of SSD.
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > The use case isn’t that clear to me. Perhaps a photographer, for a phone with a couple of TB of SSD. IMO, eventually, phones will replace low end desktop/laptop computers. Someone (probably Apple, since their CPUs are head and shoulders above the competition) will have to do the work of designing a mode switching UI, but once that's done, they'll really be able to cut into desktop volume. I'm sure the early devices will be... awkward to use - mostly limited to the browser[1]. But after a few iterations, I'm sure it'll mature into something that can stand on its own. No idea when it'll happen, but I do think that economics will push it into being sooner or later. --- 1. Presumably people would also be able to use other phone apps, but a lot of those look weird when scaled up. And transiting from touch to mouse/trackpad is not straightforward.
  - gumby 3y ago
    I disagree … or maybe I don’t. The trivial way I disagree is that I believe people don’t want this: they want to be able to use their phone while “computing”. Perhaps AirPods are enough for that (use Siri to make a call while otherwise mousing) and thus I’m wrong. The big way I disagree is that the phone is already many people’s only internet terminal and and for most has taken over almost all uses of a “computer”. Even I use my bank’s phone app when sitting in front of my computer because it has features the web interface doesn’t.
  - matwood 3y ago
    There's a bit of this version of the future in the iPad. Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and plug into a 5k monitor. It shouldn't be hard to open it up on the phone (along with the basic window management). It's also not really new, and has been tried many times in the past. I do think we finally have all the requisite technology in place though. BT peripherals mostly work, phones CPUs are powerful, phone apps are plentiful, etc...
    - nordsieck 3y ago
      > It's also not really new, and has been tried many times in the past. The trouble with the future is that, even if you know that it's inevitable, you may be too early for that to matter. There are a huge number of dot com busts that later became successes (different company, though) because we have the needed technology today.
  - detourdog 3y ago
    Before everyone went cloud crazy I thought everyone would have a "data furnace" in their basement with little interactive tablets. I still think that is true and will eventually be building my own on a Mac Pro. I will be combine various sources into a single context that will represent the building. VisionOS has changed a lot of my thinking. I would like to be able to access the hand-tracking separate from goggles.

ddalex 3y ago

the 60W envelope is the phone part I mean you can't style yourself a workstation if the lights don't dim when turned on

dhruvdh 3y ago

All fabs have libraries that their customers use to turn chip RTL to actual transistor layout to be fabbed. Apple silicon is made using mobile libraries, same as their iPhone and iPad chips. Even though they're made on these dense libraries, the chip is still very big, since they need to include CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, and all of their fixed function hardware. All of this puts a limit in terms of frequency and core count. You will find that other server hardware in this price range significantly outperforms Apple silicon , save for those video workloads they're missing fixed function hardware for. M2 Ultra has some 134B transistors, when you compare with an equivalent chip like MI300 (146B), you find that really, in terms of raw compute, there is no comparison. We will have more details on MI300 today, watch out for the news cycle. This is an excellent read in terms of what difference using dense vs performance libraries can make - https://www.semianalysis.com/p/zen-4c-amds-response-to-hyperscale https://www.semianalysis.com/p/zen-4c-amds-response-to-hyper...

daneel_w 3y ago
> "All of this puts a limit in terms of frequency and core count. You will find that other server hardware in this price range significantly outperforms Apple silicon , save for those video workloads they're missing fixed function hardware for." I think the power envelope, not the price tag, is the better metric when comparing how server-y or phone-y the silicon it. > "M2 Ultra has some 134B transistors, when you compare with an equivalent chip like MI300 (146B), you find that really, in terms of raw compute, there is no comparison. We will have more details on MI300 today, watch out for the news cycle." And unsurprisingly it will certainly come with an incomparable TDP.
threeseed 3y ago
> save for those video workloads they're missing fixed function hardware You do know that the Mac Pro is targeted specifically at those workloads.

varispeed 3y ago

> just without consideration for constraints imposed by the phone's footprint If you don't have those constraints it is easy to just "copy and paste" more cores and naturally this will have a higher power envelope, but in essence this is a phone tech that you pay extreme premium for.

unusualmonkey 3y ago

The memory bus is overblown. M2 Ultra has 800GB/s, which sounds like a lot until you remember a Xbox Series X has 560GB/s and costs $499. Or spend $800 and get a 7900 XT which has 800GB/s. Think of the Ultra more of a GPU that happens to have CPU built in.