Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable Mac computers

Re:Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable... by atq2119 on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @07:10PM (#25053902)

SRAM is 6 transistors per bit, so you're taking about 48 billion transistors there, and that's ignoring the overhead of all the circuits around the cells themselves.

DRAM is denser, but difficult to build on the same process as logic.

That said, with chiplets and package integration becoming more common, who knows... One die of DRAM as large cache combined with a logic die may start to make more sense. It's certainly something people have tried before, it just didn't really catch on.

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Re:Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable... by Pet_Ant on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @10:26PM (#25055186)

> DRAM is denser, but difficult to build on the same process as logic.

What makes it so difficult to have on the same chip?

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Re:Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable... by elihu on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @11:44PM (#25055562)

I don't know the details, but the manufacturing process is pretty different. Trying to have one process that's good at both DRAM and logic at the same time is hard, because they optimize for different things.

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Re:Apple unveils M1, its first system-on-a-chip for portable... by janekm on Wednesday November 11, 2020 @04:58AM (#25057044)

Or, well, how about putting all your ram on the package as Apple says they are doing with the M1?

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