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New Apple Silicon (M1 Pro and M1 Max)
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Capella
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2021-10-18, 12:24

Mac Updates

M1 Pro
  • Talks about traditional chips having CPU working with system memory and GPUs working with GPU memory but having to pass information between them over a slower connection
  • M1 is able to support 32GB of unified memory and has up to 200GB/s of memory bandwidth (nearly 3x the M1)
  • 8 high performance cores and 2 high efficiency (10 core total) + a 16-core GPU
  • Also supports a DisplayEngine for multiple displays, additional Thunderbolt controllers, the NeuralEngine, and ProRes encode and decode for the Media Engine

M1 Max
  • M1 is able to support 64GB of unified memory and has up to 400GB/s of memory bandwidth (nearly 3x the M1)
  • 8 high performance cores and 2 high efficiency (10 core total) + a 32-core GPU
  • More powerful version of the Media Engine
  • Claims to use 70% less power when using max performance – example 30W versus 70W at an 8-core PC laptop
  • Claims to use 100W less power when using max GPU performance vs a powerful discrete graphics

They’re both 5nm processes and support multiple external displays.

(updates filtering in)

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chucker
 
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2021-10-19, 03:10

Quote:
Originally Posted by Capella View Post
400GB/s of memory bandwidth (nearly 3x the M1)
That would be 6x, I'm guessing.

So, based on early benchmarks, it looks like the performance cores run at the same clock; there's no change in single-threaded performance compared to the M1. Which I find slightly disappointing, given that a year has passed.

For multiple threads, the two legit results I'm seeing so far suggest either a 67% or 55% improvement. Given that they're doubled the performance cores (and halved the efficiency cores, which should barely play into this), that's also not quite the improvement one might hope for. 100% is unrealistic, but something closer to 80% would've been nice.

They talked a lot more about GPU performance, and that does look impressive based on their charts. Personally, I would have benefitted more from CPU improvements.

Supporting more external displays again is nice. This was my bet — they didn't get around to it on the M1, but for the higher-end models, they figured it's an important feature to have. That said, no eGPU support at this point, possibly never. Hardware-accelerated ProRes encoding makes sense (this is exactly the sort of thing where Apple's hw+sw integration shines), and is probably pretty great if you do that sort of thing.

I'm told these massive memory bandwidth numbers are mostly something the GPU benefits from; perhaps also the Neural Engine (and it may have been necessary to make hardware-accelerated ProRes encoding useful at all). I guess we'll have to wait for the AnandTech analysis, but it's indeed looking like the CPU doesn't really make much use of the higher memory bandwidth; the need just isn't there.

Now, to put all that in perspective, though, Intel's fastest notebook CPU currently benched at Geekbench is 18% slower on single-threaded and 55% slower on multi-threaded tasks. AMD's Ryzen 9 5980HX seems to be doing similarly. So Apple is well ahead of the competition here.

Intel claims a roughly 20% IPC improvement with the upcoming Alder Lake, which we should see start shipping late this year. But that would only let them catch up with the M1's single-threaded performance. It would still be slower than the M1 Pro on multi-threaded tasks, and it's looking like it'll only accomplish its goal by burning even more power. This was Intel's rare shot at a significant performance boost and, it's not enough.

So, to be clear, I'm not down on the M1 Pro. I was really hoping we'd see a single-threaded boost every year, even if it's just 5-10%. It's not clear to me what Apple's further plans are. Will there only be major Mac CPU designs every other year? Or are we seeing an M2 early next year, and it just wasn't ready in time for these Pro laptops?
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kscherer
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2021-10-19, 10:53

I'm guessing that, while Apple is no longer new to the processor space, they are new to the desktop-class processor space, and are still working on their long-term roadmap. Let's give this thing 5 years and see what comes of it. The first iterations cannot be our guide-post for the future.

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chucker
 
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2021-10-19, 11:22

Quote:
Originally Posted by kscherer View Post
I'm guessing that, while Apple is no longer new to the processor space, they are new to the desktop-class processor space, and are still working on their long-term roadmap. Let's give this thing 5 years and see what comes of it. The first iterations cannot be our guide-post for the future.
That's my hope: that they need another year or two to actually set up a cycle. Probably an M2 in early 2022 and then maybe already the M2 Pro in late 2022.
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kscherer
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2021-10-19, 11:58

Quote:
Originally Posted by chucker View Post
That's my hope: that they need another year or two to actually set up a cycle. Probably an M2 in early 2022 and then maybe already the M2 Pro in late 2022.
Don't forget the M2 Maxi Pro for the Mac Pro.

Remember the iPad jokes?

This naming stuff is gonna get weird. "Introducing the new Mac Pro with Maxi Pro inside."

"When you have Maxi Pro inside, what could go wrong?"

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chucker
 
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2021-10-19, 12:18

“I have a Mac mini with an M1 Max”
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psmith2.0
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2021-10-19, 12:30

My head is already hurting.

"I've got a iMac Pro Max with the M2 Pro, maxed out...".

I'm sure you do.
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kscherer
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2021-10-19, 12:49

Max out your Max.

Macs out your Macs?

Looks like you've got Max coming outta your Macs.

All your Max are belong to us!

Boy, there's a lot of Max in these new Macs.

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psmith2.0
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2021-10-19, 13:00

Yeah, they probably should've gone with other names, IMO.

Tying "Max" to your Mac is just gonna result in a lot of impromptu, aggravating Abbot and Costello routines...as we've already demonstrated above.

They chose two words - Pro and Max - that are already part of, or similar to, words used far various Mac models. How does that not degenerate into a twisted "Who's on Max?" headache?

"Wait...when you say 'max', are you saying 'max' with an 'x', as in 'maximum'...or are you saying 'Macs', as in the computer? Plural? Spell it. And we haven't even gotten to the 'pro' part of your statement yet. Seriously, WTF Mac do you have?! You know what...just write it down - don't say it - or we're gonna be here all afternoon."



It's gonna be a jumbled, confusing mouthful if they're not careful.

Personally, I think Plus and Extreme might've worked. Standalone words, not already in use or similar to the machines they're going on. No way anything gets jumbled or confusing.

The "Plus" is more than, a step up from, the M1 (and M2, M3, etc.) and makes sense. And then the extreme being even beyond that...extreme meaning the nth, top degree of something?

"I ordered the new MacBook Pro with the M1 Plus. I thought about going with the M1 Extreme, but it is overkill for my needs...". No head-scratching or "slow down and say that again" required.

I already don't like the "Pro" and "Max" naming just for the confusion it'll likely bring about down the road.
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kscherer
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2021-10-19, 13:05

M1

M1X

M1X Pro

Done. No confusion.
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psmith2.0
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2021-10-19, 13:20

But does that that imply that first M1X isn't "pro" level? Having that word only show up in the highest tier makes the M1X maybe look "less than pro". The entire MX line would be "pro" specs/performance.

M1
M1 Pro
M1 More Proer

Solved. You're welcome.

In all seriousness, I'd be okay with something like:

M1
M1X
M1X Plus

The "x" being accepted shorthand for "pro" level AS (eXtra), and the "Plus" being even an additional step beyond that.

M2
M2X
M2X Plus

...and so on.

They never check with us about this shit, do they?
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chucker
 
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2021-10-19, 14:08

They should’ve just done t-shirt sizes. M1, M1L, M1XL.
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psmith2.0
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2021-10-19, 14:25

I never expected two levels of the pro AS. That rumor hit over the weekend, even (correctly) naming them "Pro" and "Max".

I just assumed it would be a single thing, with 2-3x whatever the M1 had/did (more RAM, more cores, etc.).

Two things, and then each of those available in several variants...buying a MacBook Pro got really interesting (and required some thinking/planning as of yesterday). When you max one of those things out, it gets expensive real quick. But, for those users, that's what they want/need. Good for them.

I always like to lose my mind and spec out the beefiest model of anything...$6,099 for the 16" with 64GB RAM and 8TB SSD.

I'll take two, please!
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PB PM
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2021-10-19, 14:44

Apple is being consistent with the naming of the CPU. It matches the iPhone/iPad naming convention, so people get it.
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709
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2021-10-19, 15:00

Yeah but are you getting the Max with 24 GPU cores or the MaxerMax with 32?
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kscherer
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2021-10-19, 15:05

I'm getting the Maxi-Maxer-Max with 64GB of RAM.
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chucker
 
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2021-10-19, 15:07

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
Apple is being consistent with the naming of the CPU. It matches the iPhone/iPad naming convention, so people get it.
I mean, sort of? There were previously AX CPUs, like the A12X. And even the weirder A12Z.

And the iPhone Pro Max has… both Pro and Max. Which makes sense (it's Pro compared to the non-Pro, and it's Max in terms of size).

I really think an M1X and M1XL nomenclature would've worked better. I'm also not sure what they'll do with the high-end desktops. M1 Maxxx Pornstar Edition?
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kscherer
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2021-10-19, 15:08

Quote:
Originally Posted by chucker View Post
M1 Maxxx Pornstar Edition?
I had typed something very similar, but decided not to go there.

Pervert! You are banned for 1/10th of 1 second!

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Bryson
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2021-10-19, 15:28

M1
M1 Pro
M(ax)1
M(ax)1 Pro?
M(ax)1 Pro(duct)(RED)?*



Darn it, superscript doesn't work.



* = The branding guidelines for Product Red drive me insane. It seems obvious to me that what they should do is have you substitute your product name for "Product" so instead of saying "iPhone 12 Product (RED)" you're supposed to say " iPhone 12 (RED)". But they dont seem to give that guideline.
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kscherer
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2021-10-25, 11:44

Well, Anandtech thinks pretty highly of these new SOCs. In terms of content creation workflows, they had this to say:

Quote:
"The combination of raw performance, unique acceleration, as well as sheer power efficiency, is something that you just cannot find in any other platform right now, likely making the new MacBook Pro's not just the best laptops, but outright the very best devices for the task," the site wrote.
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chucker
 
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2021-10-25, 13:15

(Notice how the screenshot says "macOS version 12.0.1". As I expected, these come with a special build, not the one everyone else is getting today.)

(edit) To clarify: not quite. Everyone is getting 12.0.1, but before, these machines and apparently only these machines shipped with 12.0.0. They get an insta-update.

Last edited by chucker : 2021-10-26 at 03:31.
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kscherer
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2021-10-25, 15:58

Another interesting tidbit regarding pro apps in content creation:

Quote:
Overall, it’s clear that Apple’s ongoing experience with GPUs has paid off with the development of their A-series chips, and now their M1 family of SoCs. Apple has been able to scale up the small and efficient M1 into a far more powerful configuration; Apple built SoCs with 2x/4x the GPU hardware of the original M1, and that’s almost exactly what they’re getting out of the M1 Pro and M1 Max, respectively. Put succinctly, the new M1 SoCs prove that Apple can build the kind of big and powerful GPUs that they need for their high-end machines. AMD and NVIDIA need not apply.
And:

Quote:
On the CPU side, doubling up on the performance cores is an evident way to increase performance – the competition also does so with some of their designs. How Apple does it differently, is that it not only scaled the CPU cores, but everything surrounding them. It’s not just 4 additional performance cores, it’s a whole new performance cluster with its own L2. On the memory side, Apple has scaled its memory subsystem to never before seen dimensions, and this allows the M1 Pro & Max to achieve performance figures that simply weren’t even considered possible in a laptop chip. The chips here aren’t only able to outclass any competitor laptop design, but also competes against the best desktop systems out there, you’d have to bring out server-class hardware to get ahead of the M1 Max – it’s just generally absurd.

Last edited by kscherer : 2021-10-25 at 16:15.
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psmith2.0
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2021-10-25, 16:26

But...but...they need to go back to Intel!

"Hey, they're not gonna just walk in here and [fill in the blank]...".

Apple: hold my organic, racially-sensitive mocha latte.

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chucker
 
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2021-10-26, 03:39

There's some "hurr durr Intel has Apple beat" stuff going around, and, yeah, you could argue that.

A leaked benchmark shows Alder Lake-H beating M1 Max on both single-threaded and multi-threaded tests.

But even if accurate:
  • this is not a shipping product. I wouldn't be surprised if this particular part (the 12900HK) doesn't ship until spring, at which point Apple may already be shipping M2
  • it'll draw much more power. Absolutely impractical to put this in a chassis that looks remotely like a MacBook Pro, or a Dell XPS, etc.
  • for the same reason, the "battery" on such a laptop only exists as an alibi.
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PB PM
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2021-10-26, 09:13

Alder lake is going to be an energy hog, at least on the desktop. Isn’t Intel pushing 150W (rated) but Intel 125W chips are known to pull over 200W from the wall stock. What is the power rating of the M1 Pro and M1 Max again? I’d bet neither even hits 100W from the wall. It’s not even a contest to see who’s got the more efficient design, and who has more room for improvement.
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kscherer
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2021-10-26, 14:17

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
Alder lake is going to be an energy hog, at least on the desktop. Isn’t Intel pushing 150W (rated) but Intel 125W chips are known to pull over 200W from the wall stock. What is the power rating of the M1 Pro and M1 Max again? I’d bet neither even hits 100W from the wall. It’s not even a contest to see who’s got the more efficient design, and who has more room for improvement.
From the Anandtech article I linked above:

Quote:
Comparing the M1 Max against the competition, we resorted to Intel’s 11980HK on the MSI GE76 Raider. Unfortunately, we wanted to also do a comparison against AMD’s 5980HS, however our test machine is dead.

In single-threaded workloads, Apple’s showcases massive performance and power advantages against Intel’s best CPU. In CineBench, it’s one of the rare workloads where Apple’s cores lose out in performance for some reason, but this further widens the gap in terms of power usage, whereas the M1 Max only uses 8.7W, while a comparable figure on the 11980HK is 43.5W.

In other ST workloads, the M1 Max is more ahead in performance, or at least in a similar range. The performance/W difference here is around 2.5x to 3x in favour of Apple’s silicon.

In multi-threaded tests, the 11980HK is clearly allowed to go to much higher power levels than the M1 Max, reaching package power levels of 80W, for 105-110W active wall power, significantly more than what the MacBook Pro here is drawing. The performance levels of the M1 Max are significantly higher than the Intel chip here, due to the much better scalability of the cores. The perf/W differences here are 4-6x in favour of the M1 Max, all whilst posting significantly better performance, meaning the perf/W at ISO-perf would be even higher than this.

On the GPU side, the GE76 Raider comes with a GTX 3080 mobile. On Aztec High, this uses a total of 200W power for 266fps, while the M1 Max beats it at 307fps with just 70W wall active power. The package powers for the MSI system are reported at 35+144W.

Finally, the Intel and GeForce GPU go up to 256W power daw when used together, also more than double that of the MacBook Pro and its M1 Max SoC.
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chucker
 
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2021-10-26, 14:33

Yeah, but that's Tiger Lake — Alder Lake will burn even more power than that!

https://wccftech.com/intel-alder-lak...4-core-at-45w/

An ostensibly 45W CPU would previously go up to 135W (which is already questionable). Now, it can be configured to go up to 215W.
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psmith2.0
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2021-11-05, 10:08

Interesting story out on the AS front.

The future sounds bright.

Quote:
Apple is planning a "much bigger leap" with its third-generation chips, some of which will be manufactured with TSMC's 3nm process and have up to four dies, which the report says could translate into the chips having up to 40 compute cores. For comparison, the M1 chip has an 8-core CPU and the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips have 10-core CPUs, while Apple's high-end Mac Pro tower can be configured with up to a 28-core Intel Xeon W processor.
I suppose "third generation" is M3? Or is the new M1 Pro/Max considered the second generation and what's coming next (M2 in 2022?) considered third-generation? I assumed the "generation" count would be designated by the M1, M2, M3, etc. labeling, but I'm the first to admit that I don't understand anything about this stuff beyond the lightest surface.

I did find this interesting, though:

Quote:
Meanwhile, the report says the next Mac Pro will use a variant of the M1 Max chip with at least two dies, as part of the first generation of Apple silicon chips.
Assuming a new, redesigned Mac Pro is coming by summer (to meet that two-year transition goal), it'll be using an M1 Max of some sort (with More Everything™), vs. any sort of M2. So the M1, the basic "bed", is less about being an initial "less than" chip and can be built on and expanded to where, in its most powerful form, is "better" than an M2 and maybe even some of its beefier variants?

I just assumed any new Mac Pro coming in 2022 would be on an M2 Pro/Max, but maybe that's not how it works? The M1, and all its variations, could be in the picture for some time and it won't be a yearly M1, M2, M3 type of thing at all.

I sure will be happy in another year or so, once it's a little more obvious how all this stuff shakes out and what the names mean, and how things are stacked, etc.



PS - Every post I make in this thread will be 3-6x as ignorant/clueless as the ones I make elsewhere. Heads up! If AN has an "ignore user by thread" feature, now would be the time.
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kscherer
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2021-11-05, 10:59

Ignorance is bless, my friend.
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psmith2.0
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2021-11-05, 11:04

I wrote the manual, brother man.
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