Re:Apple Silicon M1 Die-Shots
by ksec on Sunday December 27, 2020 @03:00PM
(#25553785)
>Seems like heat isn't an issue, so can they increase the clock-speed of the M1?
They are running into their current node limits, so dont expect a 4Ghz+ coming unless they decide to remake the whole thing in High Performance Node. ( Which means it will cost a lot more for a relatively niche volume.)
>I wonder if they can make a 4xGPU
GPU increase should be given, and die size / yield would not be a concern / problem. The question is how will they handle the additional memory bandwidth requirement? As you can see in the Die-Shots those DDR I/O side are already take up much of the side space. Going with HBM2? Or LPDDR5?
>32xcore M1-family CPU, but I imagine the yield of such a beast would be horrible,
A 32x CPU / GPU Core M1 will only be 4x increase from its current form. If you exclude I/O part, the CPU + GPU + Cache is only a little more than 50% of die size, or ~60mm2. 4x That is only 240mm2+. The final product would be a sub 350mm2 if you include all the additional. Which is roughly inline with the current estimate of AWS Graviton 2 die size ( ~400mm2).
But yes, M1 ( A14X ) isn't really that interesting. The most exciting part is how they will go about doing high performance chip. Especially on iMac and Mac Pro.
They are running into their current node limits, so dont expect a 4Ghz+ coming unless they decide to remake the whole thing in High Performance Node. ( Which means it will cost a lot more for a relatively niche volume.)
>I wonder if they can make a 4xGPU
GPU increase should be given, and die size / yield would not be a concern / problem. The question is how will they handle the additional memory bandwidth requirement? As you can see in the Die-Shots those DDR I/O side are already take up much of the side space. Going with HBM2? Or LPDDR5?
>32xcore M1-family CPU, but I imagine the yield of such a beast would be horrible,
A 32x CPU / GPU Core M1 will only be 4x increase from its current form. If you exclude I/O part, the CPU + GPU + Cache is only a little more than 50% of die size, or ~60mm2. 4x That is only 240mm2+. The final product would be a sub 350mm2 if you include all the additional. Which is roughly inline with the current estimate of AWS Graviton 2 die size ( ~400mm2).
But yes, M1 ( A14X ) isn't really that interesting. The most exciting part is how they will go about doing high performance chip. Especially on iMac and Mac Pro.