Apple Announces The Apple Silicon M1: Ditching x86 - What to Expect, Based on A14
The new processor is called the Apple M1, the company's first SoC designed with Macs in mind. With four large performance cores, four efficiency cores, and an 8-GPU core GPU, it features 16 billion transistors on a 5nm process node. Apple's is starting a new SoC naming scheme for this new family of processors, but at least on paper it looks a lot like an A14X.
[...] Apple made mention that the M1 is a true SoC, including the functionality of what previously was several discrete chips inside of Mac laptops, such as I/O controllers and Apple's SSD and security controllers.
[....] Whilst in the past 5 years Intel has managed to increase their best single-thread performance by about 28%, Apple has managed to improve their designs by 198%, or 2.98x (let's call it 3x) the performance of the Apple A9 of late 2015.
[...] Apple has claimed that they will completely transition their whole consumer line-up to Apple Silicon within two years, which is an indicator that we'll be seeing a high-TDP many-core design to power a future Mac Pro. If the company is able to continue on their current performance trajectory, it will look extremely impressive.
[....] Apple's usage of a significantly more advanced microarchitecture that offers significant IPC, enabling high performance at low core clocks, allows for significant power efficiency gains versus the incumbent x86 players. The graphic shows that at peak-to-peak, M1 offers around a 40% performance uplift compared to the existing competitive offering, all whilst doing it at 40% of the power consumption.
Apple's comparison of random performance points is to be criticised, however the 10W measurement point where Apple claims 2.5x the performance does make some sense, as this is the nominal TDP of the chips used in the Intel-based MacBook Air. Again, it's thanks to the power efficiency characteristics that Apple has been able to achieve in the mobile space that the M1 is promised to showcase such large gains – it certainly matches our A14 data.
[...] Apple claims the M1 to be the fastest CPU in the world. Given our data on the A14, beating all of Intel's designs, and just falling short of AMD's newest Zen3 chips – a higher clocked Firestorm above 3GHz, the 50% larger L2 cache, and an unleashed TDP, we can certainly believe Apple and the M1 to be able to achieve that claim.
See also: Apple is astonishingly confident in its new M1 Mac processors
The New M1 Mac mini Comes Apple's 8-Core & GPU, Delivers 3x More CPU Performance, and Only Costs $699
Apple's New M1 MacBook Air, Pro and Mini Can't be Configured with More than 16GB of RAM
The M1 MacBook Air Actually Has Two Chipset Variants to Buy, One With Smaller Number of GPU Cores
TSMC cannot meet the entire Apple M1 order volume, Samsung could jump to the rescue
macOS 11.0 Big Sur: The Ars Technica review
Parallels working on support for Apple's M1 Arm-based silicon, could bring Windows 10 back to the Mac
Apple Silicon Macs Can Run Any iOS App, but Major Developers Have Reportedly Decided Not to Offer Them for Now
Previously: Apple Will Reportedly Sell a New Mac Laptop With its Own Chips Next Year
Apple Announces 2-Year Transition to ARM SoCs in Mac Desktops and Laptops
Apple's New ARM-Based Macs Won't Support Windows Through Boot Camp
Embarrassingly Apple's Two-Year Old ARM Chip Benchmarks Faster Than Microsoft's Surface Pro X
Apple Has Built its Own Mac Graphics Processors
Related Stories
CNet:
Apple will start selling Macs that use in-house processors in 2021, based on ones in upcoming iPhones and iPad Pros, Bloomberg reported Thursday. The company is apparently working on three of its own chips, suggesting a transition away from traditional supplier Intel.
The initial batch of custom chips won't be on the same level as the Intel ones used in high-end Apple computers, so they're likely to debut in a new type of laptop, the report noted. These processors could have eight high-performance cores and at least four energy-efficient cores, respectively codenamed Firestorm and Icestorm.
Just another brick in the wall[ed garden]?
Apple announces Mac architecture transition from Intel to its own ARM chips, offers emulation story
Apple has just announced its plans to switch from Intel CPUs in Macs to silicon of its own design, based on the ARM architecture. This means that Apple is now designing its own chips for iOS devices and its Mac desktop and laptops. Apple said it will ship its first ARM Mac before the end of the year, and complete the Intel -> ARM transition within two years.
Apple will bring industry leading performance and performance-by-watt with its custom silicon. Apple's chips will combine custom CPU, GPU, SSD controller and many other components. The Apple silicon will include the Neural Engine for machine learning applications.
[...] "Most apps will just work".
The Next Phase: Apple Lays Out Plans To Transition Macs from x86 to Apple SoCs
[From] an architecture standpoint, the timing of the transition is a bit of an odd one. As noted by our own Arm guru, Andrei Frumusanu, Arm is on the precipice of announcing the Arm v9 ISA, which will bring several notable additions to the ISA such as Scalable Vector Extension 2 (SVE2). So either Arm is about to announce v9, and Apple's A14 SoCs will be among the first to implement the new ISA, otherwise Apple will be setting the baseline for macOS-on-Arm as v8.2 and its NEON extensions fairly late into the ISA's lifecycle. This will be something worth keeping an eye on.
[...] [In] order to bridge the gap between Apple's current software ecosystem and where they want to be in a couple of years, Apple will once again be investing in a significant software compatibility layer in order to run current x86 applications on future Arm Macs. To be sure, Apple wants developers to recompile their applications to be native – and they are investing even more into the Xcode infrastructure to do just that – but some degree of x86 compatibility is still a necessity for now.
The cornerstone of this is the return of Rosetta, the PowerPC-to-x86 binary translation layer that Apple first used for the transition to x86 almost 15 years ago. Rosetta 2, as it's called, is designed to do the same thing for x86-to-Arm, translating x86 macOS binaries so that they can run on Arm Macs. Rosetta 2's principle mode of operation will be to translate binaries at install time.
See also: Apple Announces iOS 14 and iPadOS 14: An Overview
Apple's First ARM-Based (Mac) Product Is a Mac mini Featuring an A12Z Bionic, but Sadly, Regular Customers Can't Buy It
Previously: Apple Will Reportedly Sell a New Mac Laptop With its Own Chips Next Year
Apple's New ARM-Based Macs Won't Support Windows Through Boot Camp:
Apple will start switching its Macs to its own ARM-based processors later this year, but you won't be able to run Windows in Boot Camp mode on them. Microsoft only licenses Windows 10 on ARM to PC makers to preinstall on new hardware, and the company hasn't made copies of the operating system available for anyone to license or freely install.
"Microsoft only licenses Windows 10 on ARM to OEMs," says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. We asked Microsoft if it plans to change this policy to allow Windows 10 on ARM-based Macs, and the company says "we have nothing further to share at this time."
[...] Apple later confirmed it's not planning to support Boot Camp on ARM-based Macs in a Daring Fireball podcast. "We're not direct booting an alternate operating system," says Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering. "Purely virtualization is the route. These hypervisors can be very efficient, so the need to direct boot shouldn't really be the concern."
Previously: Apple Announces 2-Year Transition to ARM SoCs in Mac Desktops and Laptops
Apple's A12Z Under Rosetta Outperforms Microsoft's Native Arm-Based Surface Pro X
Apple's Developer Transition Kit equipped with an A12Z iPad Pro chip began arriving in the hands of developers this morning to help them get their apps ready for Macs running Apple Silicon, and though forbidden, the first thing some developers did was benchmark the machine.
Multiple Geekbench results have indicated that the Developer Transition Kit, which is a Mac mini with an iPad Pro chip, features average single-core and multi-core scores of 811 and 2,871, respectively.
As developer Steve Troughton-Smith points out, the two-year-old A12Z in the Mac mini outperforms Microsoft's Arm-based Surface Pro X in Geekbench performance, running x86_64 code in emulation faster than the Surface Pro X can run an Arm version natively.
So the DTK with a two year old iPad chip runs x86_64 code, in emulation, faster than the Surface Pro X runs it natively 😅 Oh boy Qualcomm, what are you even doing? https://t.co/UAlZiwSsF8 — Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) June 29, 2020
Apple has built its own Mac graphics processors:
Like iPhones and iPads, Apple Silicon Macs will use an Apple-designed GPU – something that makes complete sense when you consider this is how current iOS devices work. But it could be a reason for pause by some high-end users during the transition period from Intel-based hardware.
[...] You see, while Intel Macs contain GPU’s from Intel, Nvidia and AMD, Apple Silicon Macs will use what the company seems fond of calling “Apple family” GPUs. These use a rendering system called Tile Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR), which iOS devices already use.
It works differently from the Immediate Mode rendering system supported in Intel Macs: While the latter immediately render imaging data to device memory, the former makes more use of the GPU by sorting out each element first before submitting it to device memory.
You can find out more here.
The effect is that TBDR rendering delivers lower latency, higher performance, lower power requirements and can achieve higher degrees of bandwidth. The A11 chip and Metal 2 really consolidated this technique.
It’s important to note that the GPU in a Mac with Apple silicon is a member of both GPU families, and supports both Mac family and Apple family feature sets. In other words, using Apple Silicon and Rosetta, you should still be able to use software designed for Intel-based Macs.
[...] How will Apple exploit this? Will it ditch fans in order to make thinner Macs? Will it exploit the opportunity to explore a new design language for its PCs? At what point will an iPhone become all the Mac you ever need, given your choice of user interface and access to a larger screen?
Linus Torvalds doubts Linux will get ported to Apple M1 hardware:
In a recent post on the Real World Technologies forum—one of the few public internet venues Linux founder Linus Torvalds is known to regularly visit—a user named Paul asked Torvalds, "What do you think of the new Apple laptop?"
If you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, Apple released new versions of the Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, and Mac Mini featuring a brand-new processor—the Apple M1.
The M1 processor is a successor to the A12 and A14 Bionic CPUs used in iPhones and iPads, and pairs the battery and thermal efficiency of ultramobile designs with the high performance needed to compete strongly in the laptop and desktop world.
"I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux," Torvalds replied. "I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time. The new [Macbook] Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS."
[...] In an interview with ZDNet, Torvalds expounded on the problem:
The main problem with the M1 for me is the GPU and other devices around it, because that's likely what would hold me off using it because it wouldn't have any Linux support unless Apple opens up... [that] seems unlikely, but hey, you can always hope.
[...] It's also worth noting that while the M1 is unabashedly great, it's not the final word in desktop or laptop System on Chip designs. Torvalds mentions that, given a choice, he'd prefer more and higher-power cores—which is certainly possible and seems a likely request to be granted soon.
Previously: Apple's New ARM-Based Macs Won't Support Windows Through Boot Camp
Apple Claims that its M1 SoC for ARM-Based Macs Uses the World's Fastest CPU Core
Your New Apple Computer Isn't Yours
New report reveals Apple's roadmap for when each Mac will move to Apple Silicon
Citing sources close to Apple, a new report in Bloomberg outlines Apple's roadmap for moving the entire Mac lineup to the company's own custom-designed silicon, including both planned release windows for specific products and estimations as to how many performance CPU cores those products will have.
[...] New chips for the high-end MacBook Pro and iMac computers could have as many as 16 performance cores (the M1 has four). And the planned Mac Pro replacement could have as many as 32. The report is careful to clarify that Apple could, for one reason or another, choose to only release Macs with 8 or 12 cores at first but that the company is working on chip variants with the higher core count, in any case.
The report reveals two other tidbits. First, a direct relative to the M1 will power new iPad Pro models due to be introduced next year, and second, the faster M1 successors for the MacBook Pro and desktop computers will also feature more GPU cores for graphics processing—specifically, 16 or 32 cores. Further, Apple is working on "pricier graphics upgrades with 64 and 128 dedicated cores aimed at its highest-end machines" for 2022 or late 2021.
New Mac models could have additional efficiency cores alongside 8/12/16/32 performance cores. Bloomberg claimed the existence of a 12-core (8 performance "Firestorm" cores, 4 efficiency "Icestorm" cores) back in April which has not materialized yet.
The Apple M1 SoC has 8 GPU cores.
Previously: Apple Announces 2-Year Transition to ARM SoCs in Mac Desktops and Laptops
Apple Has Built its Own Mac Graphics Processors
Apple Claims that its M1 SoC for ARM-Based Macs Uses the World's Fastest CPU Core
Your New Apple Computer Isn't Yours
Linus Torvalds Doubts Linux will Get Ported to Apple M1 Hardware
Apple has announced two new Arm SoCs for its upcoming MacBook Pro laptops. Both share the same CPU, but differ in GPU and RAM size.
The Apple M1 SoC for Macs has 8 CPU cores: 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. The newly announced M1 Pro and M1 Max have 10 cores: 8 performance cores and 2 efficiency cores. CPU performance (multi-threaded) is about 70% faster, at around a 30 Watt TDP (M1 Pro) instead of 15 Watts for the M1. The 16-core "neural engine" with 11 TOPS of machine learning performance is unchanged from the M1.
While the M1 has an (up to) 8-core GPU with 2.6 TFLOPS FP32 of performance, the M1 Pro doubles that to 16 cores and 5.2 TFLOPS, and the M1 Max doubles it again to 32 cores and 10.4 TFLOPS. The M1 Pro is comparable to an Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti discrete laptop GPU, while the M1 Max is comparable to an RTX 3080 laptop GPU. These levels of performance are achieved at around 30 Watts for the M1 Pro and 60 Watts for the M1 Max, compared to around 100-160 Watts for laptops with discrete graphics.
The M1 Pro has around 33.7 billion transistors fabbed on TSMC "5nm" in a 245 mm2 die space, while the M1 Max has 57 billion transistors at 432 mm2. The M1 Pro will include up to 32 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and the M1 Max will include up to 64 GB.
Also at Wccftech.
See also: Apple Announces The M1 Pro / M1 Max, Asahi Linux Starts Eyeing Their Bring-Up
Previously: Apple Has Built its Own Mac Graphics Processors
Apple Claims that its M1 SoC for ARM-Based Macs Uses the World's Fastest CPU Core
Your New Apple Computer Isn't Yours
Why is Apple's M1 Chip So Fast?
ARM-Based Mac Pro Could Have 32+ Cores
Booting Linux and Sideloading Apps on M1 Macs
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Friday November 13 2020, @05:31PM (10 children)
During the last year, there were only a few articles covering the Digital Restrictions Managment (DRM) technologies baked into the T2 chip [soylentnews.org] inlcuded in the new systems. But there were some nonetheless. I've seen a more than a few press releases the last few days about the M1 but not one mentions the DRM that comes with the new hardware on the accompanying T2. Seriously, it was highlighted as a selling point up until recently. However, not even the EFF seems to have turned attention to it.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday November 13 2020, @05:39PM (2 children)
https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/11/apple-mac-m1-processor-details/ [9to5mac.com]
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/11/macos-11-0-big-sur-the-ars-technica-review/ [arstechnica.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Friday November 13 2020, @05:42PM
Secure enclave is slightly different, but related.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2020, @08:05PM
so about "external media". this is a arbitrarly chosen border in the form of a ... case? or is the border defined as a cable leaving the mainboard?
with apples paranoia that somebody might take a bit out of the other side too, maybe external means storage that isn't part of the M1 SoC? i mean the ram is in there already ... why not dump the harddisk nand in there too?
hmmm ... maybe in the future, when you buy a apple you just buy a ... chip (tho i wonder how they're going to fit a keyboard in there) ^_^
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Friday November 13 2020, @05:54PM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management [wikipedia.org] Know your enemy. I mean, they don't call it the Government and Police Power increase act, they call it the "Patriot Act".
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2020, @06:07PM (1 child)
At the risk of veering offtopic, it was the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act [antiwar.com]
As for these ARM parts, we're going to be eating some serious pi over the next couple of years. Apple was the past and Raspberry is the future.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday November 16 2020, @03:55PM
Yeah, no, Apple is still set to be a big player for a long time to come. Raspberry Pi isn't in the same league. Raspberry Pi is focused on cheap electronics that can be afforded by the most people, but while also still being a useful computer. Highly education market focused and a big thing in the UK.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2020, @08:02PM (3 children)
So you're saying it can't run Linux?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday November 14 2020, @12:39AM (2 children)
Sounds like it. Unless someone signs a Linux kernel. And keeps it signed through all upgrades.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @10:37AM (1 child)
Not because it couldn't, but because the wazzy bastards won't let it! This sounds like a hacking challenge! And, better than some stupid game console!!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday November 14 2020, @12:58PM
Hacking one of the game consoles to run Linux would make a great $500 PC. Hacking one of the new ARMacs to run Linux would make a great $1700 PC.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2020, @06:16PM (3 children)
where's ted kazinsky when you need him?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2020, @07:22PM
They threw him under the omnibus.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday November 13 2020, @09:53PM (1 child)
The same place he has been for the last 20+ years. Locked in his little cell at USP Florence ADMAX in Colorado.
https://www.bop.gov/inmateloc/ [bop.gov]
04475-046
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2020, @10:47PM
So he quarantined from Covid quite early, then.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by richtopia on Friday November 13 2020, @06:29PM (1 child)
Apple is one of the few companies I can envision succeeding in this type of an architecture shift. However, everything we've seen so far is from Apple in marketing presentations. I eagerly await production samples getting to reviewers so we can see if these claims are as great as they claim.
Now, if we assume this M1 chip is all Apple touts, I wonder if this will shake up computing beyond Apple devices. The current application of laptops and i-devices needs low power and ever increasing performance, but I could also see server applications leveraging a cool and fast chip. Maybe we'll start seeing Apple branded server racks in the coming years.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dak664 on Friday November 13 2020, @09:42PM
I know nothing about this chip, but Apple shot themselves in the foot when they transitioned from the Motorola 68K to the IBM PowerPC architecture. Yes, the PowerPC was much faster...except for interrupt latency. That was so bad that they had to wait in the ethernet driver for a possible back-to-back packet, locking up the screen and mouse for seconds at a time.
In my app video transfers from PowerPC to 68K worked fine, but transfers from 68K to PowerPC aborted every 8 seconds on a full ethernet buffer.
And that is when I ditched the order for 12 Macs and moved to x86 for process control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2020, @07:07PM (4 children)
Audio producers want to know - is it safe to go back to Apple yet? Will it ever be?
Not that all of us will want to. There's a lot you can do on BSD, these days.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Friday November 13 2020, @07:20PM (3 children)
I've been done with Apple for a long time but know a few people who haven't yet completed their migration from macOS to GNU/Linux. It may take them some time as the lock-in is getting worse. But in the off chance that some of them will only be able to make their move after the new M1 becomes ubquitous, I have to ask, which GNU/Linux distros can it run?
It looks like the hardware (or firmware) is set up to prevent booting unsigned systems. So any such distro will have to have been signed by Apple first. I have not seen any discussion of that either, yet. I would hope that at least one of the big ones like Linux Mint or even Ubuntu make that move or at least publish details on what the obstacles have been.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2020, @08:44PM (2 children)
Even if they did it, it might involve DRM contraventions.
I'd rather have a ten year old embedded system running FreeBSD with Audacity, Rosegarden and Muse (plus MuseScore, of course). It would be more maintainable, less subject to the mood swings of Apple High Command, and probably higher quality hardware construction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @12:33AM (1 child)
You could always buy a brand new system that isn't from Apple. Intel doesn't provide an option to get rid of IME, but hackers have managed to remove it. AMD BIOSes allow disabling PSP (assuming you believe them). Not sure if the PSP disable functionality has been verified independently.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday November 14 2020, @12:43AM
Actually, the hackers found the mechanism for disabling the IME in an Intel database of responses to customer requests.
Now I don't know who the customer is, nut some suspect the NSA.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday November 13 2020, @09:59PM
Will you be able to get one that isn't already soldered into/onto a motherboard? As in will you be able to build you own. We all know Apple hates the clone market. So it is highly unlikely. So you are stuck using whatever they create and I wouldn't be all to surprise if they make that hardware as tamper proof as they possibly can so one should probably just forget about adding anything to it, removing it, using something not approved by Apple or running anything on it that they have not signed for.
So in that regard it might not matter all that much if it's the fastest, or not -- even tho it's a completely uninteresting claim since it won't be the fastest forever or for that matter for a very long time -- if at all since apparently the latest AMD is already faster.
But still it could be nice if you could buy one, put in on some non-apple hardware board and do with it what you like. If you have to buy an Apple product to use it then it has sort of already lost some of its luster.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by istartedi on Saturday November 14 2020, @01:25AM (2 children)
If you can't load an arbitrary OS on it, if you can't code "to the metal" according to your own desires, I would argue that in some sense it's not a computer. Their infamous ad campaign even hinted at that.
So. Congratulations, Apple. You've got the fastest toaster on the market.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Sunday November 15 2020, @09:36AM (1 child)
Agreed. Fuck Apple, and their fisher price, locked down iToys. If you want an ARM laptop, buy a Pinebook for $100.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday November 15 2020, @11:49AM
Pinebook SoC is slow. Pinebook Pro is on the right track. But today, November 15, 2020, Pine64 may announce [pine64.org] upcoming SoCs/products.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]