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Comment by bredren | Hacker News Reader

I had wondered what their first Apple Silicon powered data center would be.

I thought the company would wait and deploy a later gen chip. Though with the standardization of M1 across such a wide array of products makes me think it is going to be the M1.

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I was bit surprised to see M1 in the iMacs. I thought the M1 was going to be a very capable proof of concept. But now we've got it in iMacs, iPads, and Macbooks. So I wouldn't be shocked if they spread it far and wide.

Ya, part of the reason I presumed there would be at least one rev was because there have been reports of system hangs and restarts on some M1 machines.

So I had thought there may be something learned in the mass deployment that would trigger even minor design changes.

Perhaps those are software issues. Or maybe the M1 as a product name should not be taken literally to describe the SoC in the current lineup.

We know the Secure Enclave component appears to have been updated mid-production this past fall for a host of A-series chips.

Perhaps, if light changes were needed Apple would not see them a sufficient to designate a new moniker.

Or perhaps they are but the iMac and (theoretical) apple silicon-based data centers are intending to build consumer confidence in this bold foray.

https://9to5mac.com/2021/04/12/apple-security-a12-and-s5-pro...

Same. With only 16GB of RAM, many of the tasks that upper-end iMac users perform are rather hindered.

Given the competition for fab capacity at TSMC, I'm not so sure Apple would want to use that capacity to supply servers. If things were less tight in that department I'd agree the time is right.

I can see this playing into the constraints, to this end, perhaps there is efficiency to making the most out of a single system type and assembly?

Also do you know how many machines it would take to outfit a reasonable demonstration scale facility?

Is that number so large that it constrains the ability to just go that much further?

I'm not really sure about the answers to your questions, but it vaguely seems like the type of thing they'd want to go big on or not at all, for economies of scale. I also suspect they can get a better margin on each M1-based device selling them in consumer products.

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