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Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro
- tromp 3y agoApple announced the M3 on October 30 last year, roughly 6 months ago. Have they ever announced successive chip designs in such a short time frame? Unless Mark Gurman has a record of making reliable predictions about Apple, I wouldn't give this much credence.
- aurareturn 3y agoIt's not completely insane. 1. N3B TSMC node used by M3 is reportedly low yielding. Apple likely wants to move away from it asap and move to N3E, which is the higher yielding node. 2. Rumors are that M3 Ultra is not planned due to low yields. M3 Max die shot does not have UltraFusion silicon. This supports the first theory. 3. Apple base the M chips on the A series cores. A18 Pro has already finished in design because Apple always starts making A series chips in Spring before a Fall debut. Therefore, A18 Pro is already in production using N3E node. Given enough early planning, it isn't surprising that M4 can be released early. 4. Reportedly, Apple plans to focus on GenAI at WWDC. They're also behind in GenAI. In order to catch up, they need to be aggressive. M4 is likely to have a big improvement in inference speed via the NPU and/or GPU.
- CSSer 3y agoThink that whole major, unpatchable security flaw thing could also play a part? I could see them wanting to put distance between themselves on that fast too.
- aurareturn 3y agoI don't think so. I think M4 was planned years in advance to debut around this time. You can't change this stuff in a few months.
- saagarjha 3y agoI don’t recall any that affected silicon?
- kevlened 3y agoKey extraction from the HSM. It's unclear if this was ultimately patched in the kernel, but it appears patchable. [1] https://gofetch.fail/ https://gofetch.fail/ [2] https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/112238385679496096 https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/112238385679496096
- saagarjha 3y agoDefinitely not the HSM, this only affects the AP
- 1123581321 3y agoM3s have a flag to disable the caching vulnerable to GoFetch on p-cores. M1s and M2s are the ones that have no mitigation besides running workloads on slower e-cores.
- lwkl 3y agoThat‘s not true DMP can be disabled on M2 chips and probably also on the M1 chips. This was found by Hector Martin (@marcan) and will probably supported in Asahi Linux.
- 1123581321 3y agoThat's great news. Direct link for anyone else not up to date: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/112238385679496096 https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/112238385679496096
- listic 3y ago> They're also behind in GenAI Where can I read up on that and what's state of the art in consumer GenAI chips? Also thanks, all great points!
- TrainedMonkey 3y agoI think 4 is underrated. From what I've seen Apple is making a play for on device inference. Gains on better screen, thinner phone, better camera selling points are pretty incremental now. But with on-device inference they now have access to: doubled the number, no cloud we care about privacy, on device translation capability, etc.
- WoodenChair 3y ago> Unless Mark Gurman has a record of making reliable predictions about Apple, I wouldn't give this much credence. He does have a great record.
- skilled 3y agohttps://archive.is/hWVqB https://archive.is/hWVqB
- tazu 3y agoMaybe around M6 or M7 they'll release an external monitor that does more than 60hz.
- ant6n 3y agoMaybe never will they release a mobile computer with a non reflective screen.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoYou can do more than 60hz if you use HDMI. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/101571 https://support.apple.com/en-us/101571
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoNot sure for the downvote, but here is an excerpt for the M3 MBP from the link above: > One display up to 4K at 144Hz over HDMI The other M series have HDMI with similar speeds as long as it isn’t driving 8K. Thunderbolt seems to be limited to 6K and 60Hz, but HDMI isn’t similarly limited (well, it can only do 60Hz with 8K). Hopefully there will be a thunderbolt successor they fixed the problem.
- janderland 3y agoI run dual 2k monitors at 144hz from my M2 MacBook. Works even with the laptop monitor on.
- tazu 3y agoI meant the Studio Display. Most of the Pro phones/ipads/macbooks are 120hz now with high DPI. But the Studio Display is stuck at 60hz.
- retskrad 3y agoAt first I thought, it sounded crazy but then I realized that reports have told us that the M4 will be a key part of Apple’s reneweed AI strategy for 2024. The A18 and M4 in the iPhone 16 and the M4 MacBook Pros at the ens of this year will have much better neural engines to drive Apple’s WWDC 2024 AI features. Apple can’t leave the iPad Pro out to dry.
- aurareturn 3y agoFor the first time in a long time, consumer hardware is not even close to being fast enough for a new type of mass applications: GenAI. People have stopped caring about consumer chips because they have been "good enough" for a long time. Hardware is getting exciting again. We need significantly more compute, memory bandwidth, and memory capacity. There are huge bottlenecks everywhere.
- wvenable 3y agoFor GenAI, I wonder if we need consumer hardware to be that powerful. Isn't this exactly what "the cloud" is for?
- aurareturn 3y agoI think the best models will always require "the cloud" but there will be plenty of use cases where "good enough" local LLMs need to be on-device.
- kmeisthax 3y agoIt depends. If you're OpenAI, consumer hardware should never be powerful enough to run local models. If you're Apple, it should.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoThey need to stop calling these pro devices. They are barely functional for anything beyond casual use and artwork
- mikae1 3y agoThere are professionals in artwork?
- dmix 3y agoiPad Pros are often used in music production too. There’s plenty of heavier duty non-casual sitting on the couch watching TV type use cases it’s used for and it’s targeted at.
- jayd16 3y agoArt professionals usually don't use iPads although I'm sure some do. Most seem to prefer Wacom. Unlike, eg a laptop, portability isn't usually a major professional need for an art workstation.
- crazygringo 3y agoTo the contrary, art professionals use the top-tier iPads professionally more than anyone else, in my experience. You use a Wacom for some things, but the iPad has the gigantic advantage that your image is directly underneath your Pencil. And, of course, that you can take it with you. The iPad isn't a substitute for a workstation. But it's a huge complement -- both for creating things visually, as well as managing/showcasing all your media on the go. Professional artists are often going to a lot of meetings with different clients or team members around the city.
- jayd16 3y agoWacom makes Centiqs which are very popular pen on screen monitors if you prefer that style, so the iPad doesn't bring much there. I would say the vast majority of artists do not travel and do not need to draw mid-meeting. Certainly there are exceptions but they are just that, exceptions.
- Jam-O 3y agoMy guess is that M4 and forwards will not be so much about CPU and GPU performance but have some sort of local LLM in ROM. So every year you should upgrade to get the best hardware LLM ever released.
- ZiiS 3y agoThe whole article hinges on them adding more inference power to the Neural Engine, but the is no benifit or plausable reason to burn weights into ROM.
- Jam-O 3y agoiPhone/iPad 16GB RAM + 64GB hardware local LLM ROM. Apple can phrase it as both a benefit and a reason to upgrade and reduce its costs over suddenly bumping RAM by 400%.
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoOut of all the hardware manufacturers, Apple is the worst candidate to pin planned obsolescence on. Its devices are supported longer than its competitors, and they get better at lasting longer over the years.
- wmf 3y agoI don't know if mask ROM even exists any more or what its density would be. Realistically your choices are DRAM or flash and flash will probably never be fast enough to hold model weights. The toolbox ROM was a great hack in 1984 though.
- Tepix 3y agoSpeaking of the Mac Studio M4, Apple is considering having it support up to a half-terabyte of memory. In comparison, the existing Mac Studio and Mac Pro top out at 192GB of unified memory (RAM). (according to Tom's guide). I wonder if it will still be on-chip.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- alberth 3y agoMy bet, Apple begins designing chips specific to each product line. Meaning, - iPad get their own unique chip - MacPro, unique chip - etc And this iPad rumor is just the first Apple Silicon unique product chip.
- aurareturn 3y agoWhy does the iPad Pro require a unique chip from a base Mac? Remember that it costs tens/hundreds of millions to tape out a chip.
- kmeisthax 3y agoThey already do this with fuses to lock each chip to a specific iBoot, OS, and release[0] set. Changing the configuration of the chip is unnecessary. iPhones, iPads, and Macs use roughly the same balance of compute. The thing that does need to change is how many cores in each compute device, but they already do this with A17 vs. M3 vs. M3 Pro/Max/Ultra. That already segregates the product lines a bit: iPads aren't getting anything bigger than an M3/M4, Mac Pros aren't getting anything smaller than an M3 Max, etc. [0] e.g. production devices vs. Apple internal devkits vs. that weird Security Research Device they released a few years ago to compete with Corellium
- alberth 3y agoThe M3 Pro is already a custom chip vs the M3 (base) or M3 Max. The M3 Pro is the only chip that has 6E cores. Both the M3 base and M3 Max only have 4E cores.
- heywoodlh 3y agoHaving an iPad Pro with an M1, I grow increasingly frustrated each year with how incapable my iPad is compared to my Macbook/Linux laptops. iPadOS still feels like iOS with some visual tweaks to the larger screen real estate. It’s absolutely not a laptop killer for a sysadmin or developer (unless your preferred language is Swift). Maybe it’s a laptop killer for creative professionals? I think my iPad is an excellent thin client, however — but a Pro device should be more than just a thin client for me, imo. Some things that would be a huge improvement for me: 1. Ability to do development locally 2. Virtualization (might circumvent the need to do local dev) 3. Install/build local applications Apple seems determined to never allow anything outside of the App Store on i[Pad]OS, and with iPadOS being over four years old and still feeling like a giant iPhone, I don’t think I could recommend anyone should buy an iPad as a power user device.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jijijijij 3y agoSame. Don't buy an iPad! For real. It's a ridiculous device. Effectively no more useful than any other cheap tablet. Those tempting hardware features, you won't be able to use them in the end anyway, because of software limitations. You just can't do serious work with the iPad in practice. Trust me, after a short honeymoon period, and another few weeks of frustration, it will end up collecting dust and you will only ever rarely use it to watch movies at most. If you buy one still, don't forget to turn it off completely, or you will find it someday, the battery completely drained and you realize it must have been months. Not good for battery health.
- galleywest200 3y agoAn iPad for drawing vs a cheap tablet for drawing are a mile apart in capability. Maybe for technical work your statement is true, but for artistic work an iPad with Procreate/Dreams is absolutely a viable primary workstation.
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- TrainedMonkey 3y agoI really want a new iPad mini, way overdue for a refresh.
- angela-misan 3y ago[dead]