Yes, in the unveiling video they showed the thunderbolt controller as one of the things they'd put in the SoC. I'm not sure if this is reflected in the documentation, but in the video itself it was pretty clear.
Obviously the M1 memory would be faster, but e.g. Xbox series X has 16GB memory of which 10GB is considerably faster than the remaining 6GB.
So I guess it becomes a software challenge then... can they make the necessary changes to MacOS to manage different classes of memory efficiently?
IIRC the 16GB could be configured as an "L4 cache" for the rest of the memory.
I assume the same approach could be taken.
OTOH, it shouldn't be too complicated to just add more memory dies to the package as higher densities become available.
Yesterday's models just replace the Air and lowest spec Pro
Seems likely that next year or so there would be an "M1X" chip with more RAM to support the higher end Pro models - the 16" and rumoured 14", hopefully both with four ports
Genuine question from someone who doesn't know hardware architecture that well:
It seems clear that we'll see non-PoP variants of their SoC's, for instance to support multiple RAM configurations in the high-end models.
However, at this point, if Apple's own GPU scales well, should we except 3rd party dGPU at all? Can't Apple ship SoCs with multiple times the M1 core count and graphics units, package 8 or 16GB of fast memory (GDDR or HBM), and call it a day? They're going to push their own software stack anyway, why bother with AMD GPUs fabbed on a previous generation TSMC process.
Look at the architecture of AMD SoCs in the PS5 and Xbox. Obviously Apple cannot get away with unified memory in the higher-end machines, but what would make them prefer an AMD dGPU when it seems they have everything they need internally. Again, assuming the GPU scales well.
Apple could absolutely choose to make better cooling, but they've demonstrated time and time again that they'd rather just let thermal throttling happen and trust that their users will continue to buy a product that doesn't live up to its spec sheet's promises.
Any cooling that could support dedicated-GPU-level performance would require making the chassis dramatically thicker - take a look at some of the gaming laptops out there today with desktop-class GPUs, they can get be like 2 inches thick in pursuit of cooling good enough to support a full-power GPU without massive throttling.
The Radeon Pro 5600M with 8GB of HBM2 has a pretty significant power envelope, and is coupled to 6 or 8 core Intel H series that are equally power hungry.
The fact 16" MBPs are undercooled is beyond the point. Apple ships laptops with a ~95W TDP. Why would they not ship a SoC with 16/24/32 graphics units for high-end laptops and iMacs?
In that case, you're not talking about a Radeon Pro 5600M but rather a desktop-class RTX 3090 with 24GB of high-performance RAM and a TDP of 350W. A MBP couldn't hope to power or cool one of those with a built-in GPU, never mind come close to matching the performance or supporting CUDA without nVidia sueing Apple out of existence.
But if the last few years of Apple's new hardware is telling us anything, is that Apple is now strictly casual-oriented, and if you're in any capacity a professional, you need to start thinking about getting a PC again.
Was the new Mac Pro not 'professional' enough for you? Up to 28 core CPU, 1.5 TB of RAM, capable of driving six 6K monitors and so on? Even the iMac Pro is absurdly overpowered for 'casual' usage.
I agree that Apple isn't trying to serve the market for "portable workstation", but they never really have, so why do you say they have lost their way?
It's also worth saying you can still buy a 16" MacBook Pro with an 8-core i9 processor, 64GB of RAM, a Radeon Pro 5600M with 8GB of RAM, 8TB of SSD storage - a specification that's hardly "casual".
The 17" lunch trays were that product, and were bought by people who wanted to edit photos in the field or get a lot of spreadsheet cells on the display. They had the highest performance as well.
That's because the base model doesn't come with Apple Wheel. They're only 700$.
As a "professional", getting a PC is a deal breaker. It's not a Mac. It doesn't run macOS. That's the whole point.
Apple currently is making it clear that they are not actively targeting those people anymore (max 16GB of memory, really?) and professionals are finally noticing, which is why in the last few years you see more and more professionals moving back to PC after being on macOS for many years.
Again, this is the first iteration of the M1 chip. Again, you can buy a different Mac and spec it out to 32GB if you have that requirement.
I'm a professional. I'm "noticing". I'm still buying a Mac.
Every professional group has different bottlenecks. For me, the amount of memory is more of a problem than CPU speed and I couldn't care less about GPU, although I like having more screens. These Pros would be a tight fit for me, but other people may want a faster CPU more than large memories, so everyone's mileage may vary. I suppose the next generation will bump it up to 32 or 64GB, so they may be more comfortable for me.
One thing I'd love would be more low-power cores. I don't do heavy lifting on VMs and, because of that, these cores seem like perfect for that little MySQL container. Also, the lower the single-thread performance, the sooner you'll see concurrency issues.
the biggest concern to me is the on die memory. while nice from a performance perspective I do not understand how they will do this going forward for true Pro models where users want 64g or even more memory. I also await their on dGPU solution.
A few users have also commented on the lack of ports and while I have not dug into this, are the controllers for these also all integrated in the chip?