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Comment by eis | Hacker News Reader

M1 and M2 actually are not produced on the exact same process node. M1 is N5 and M2 is N5P, an optimized version of N5.

I think Kuo might be misinterpreting the statement from TSMC regarding revenue from N3. The key is that they said it wont "substantially" contribute to revenue until 2023. Of course processors like M2 Pro/Max/Ultra wont generate the same amount of numbers like something more high volume like an iPhone and in the grand scheme of things can't represent a substantial contribution to TSMC revenue.

The fact is TSMC said they'll start N3 HVM in September. So they are producing something and we know Apple is expected to be the first customer for this node. It's too early for the A17 so either it's the M2 Pro/Max/Ultra or something new like the VR headset chip. Can someone see another possibility?

Apple still btw has to replace the Mac Pro with an Apple Silicon based model and their own deadline (2 years from first M1) is running out. It could make sense that they want to bring this one with a "bang" and claim the performance crown just to stick it to Intel :)

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I would expect that Apple would push its goldenchild (iphone) onto the node first. Its a small chip which they can use as a pipecleaner, makign sure they can get the yields up and optimise the process before pushing a larger die onto the node.

They easily could have been allocating risk production on the iphone for the past couple of months, ready for the launch. Apple being like yes we will take lower yields for less cost.

I do not expect any company to announce production 3N product, until apple has had one out for atleast 6-12 months. Look how long it took the rest of the industry to move to 5N. I swear part of that reason was an exclusivity agreement with Apple, and it massively paid off for their CPUs. Having a node advantage is always massive in terms of price / performance / power matrix.

Are you suggesting they might have produced millions of A16 chips on N3 during risk production phase and launched it before TSMC even reaches HVM? Highly unlikely. Risk production is a phase where they still make changes and fix issues. It's like a beta phase. It does not come at a lower cost, it would be more expensive to throw out a big chunk of chips. The iPhone chips are very high volume, you can't produce them before reaching... high volume manufacturing phase.

The iPhone contributes to TSMC revenue in a substantial manner so that also would totally not fit what TSMC said.

The M2 Pro/Max/Ultra are much lower volume and higher margin. It makes sense to start with them.

Except that they are much larger chips, that will be much more sensitive to yield issues. They could do that, but they will be expensive. Maybe that's ok.

Their biggest (m2 max in studio) are more like chiplets with interposers, which exponentially lowers the yield problems depending on how much you can split it up. Also larger chips can still set a threshold on gpu cores to disable due to defects and that kind of thing, where a mobile one might just throw out the chip with a much lower number of (or any?) defects.

Nvidia can make tons of tiers out of the same chip by just setting different thresholds on the number of usable cores, it isn't all just price discrimination (though sometimes I think they have been found to be fusing off much more than needed for the number of defects as a pure price discrimination play, or that might have been Intel with cache size).

M2 Pro/Max chips will be huge. Only the ultra is using an interconnect between dies, but that's two full max dies. M1 Max is 432 mm^2, that's enormous. M2 is 25% bigger than M1.

There's not a lot of lower core count SKUs for these chips either. There's a few GPU tiers and CPUs tiers but not lots of room to go down. Pro has 8/10 CPU cores and 14/16 GPUs. Max is 10 CPU and 24/32 GPU.

There is no 4-7 CPU core segments like AMD does with their chiplets. Intel has much lower tiers for their dies.

The dies are just huge huge huge.

The iPhone contributes the most to apple’s revenue and margin. It wouldn’t be a great pipe cleaner because they need a ton of chips on a committed launch schedule, and can’t afford any yield screw up there.

With the Mac, they could probably afford a 10% yield, can extend ship times, and in the worst case could even push back a launch.

While the bigger chip does push down yields, my bet is they have more wiggle room than needed to compensate.

I think a lot of people who watch these things suspect exactly what you wrote at the least. Apple funds much of TSMC’s research and development for a new node, pays for production for use in iPhones, both sides make tons of money and repeat the cycle on a new node and other companies come in and buy up capacity on that cutting edge node, seemingly comfortably coasting behind apple. I guess now Apple may use some capacity themselves for their mac cpus after the newest iDevices prove the tech.

Starting HVM in Sept does not mean you get Revenue in Sept. It takes months before volume reached, testing, packaging done and shipped. TSMC isn't unusual in stating it they wont get revenue from N3 until 2023.

Well dosent Apple usually prepay? Thats normally why they get preferential treatment.

It's more complicated than this, accounting as a field exists pretty much because there's intricate sets of rules and ways to interpret them. Here, my understanding is a good accountant would say not to recognize the revenue until you consider it shipped -

i.e. if you agree to pay me a bajillion dollars for a time machine with an out clause of no cash if no delivery, that doesn't mean I get to book a bajillion dollars in revenue

over the top example, but this was the general shape of much Enron chicanery, booking speculative revenue based on coming to terms on projects they were in no shape to deliver, so its very much an accounting 'code smell' if 'code smell' meant 'attracts regulators attention'

I think this case is how do you book you paying one billion cash today for a time machine sometime next Tuesday of next year?

Accrual accounting says even if you have the money it’s not “yours” until the product ships.

In accrual accounting payment has very little connection to when revenue is recognized. In order for revenue to be recognized the product has to ship.

Yes. So either way, Kuo cannot deduce that M2 Pro wont be on N3. If the revenue is realized later or if the numbers are too low to justify calling it a substantial contrubution to TSMC revenue... same result. Kuo's argument does not seem to hold water. Now, that does not mean the inverse is true and M2 Pro is guaranteed to be on N3. I can only come up with the VR chip as alternative and so far I think nobody else came up with a suggestion.

The current assumption and his prediction, along with alignment on other data inside Supply Chains suggest new MacBook Pro, assuming it uses M2 Pro, would come out in Oct / Nov.

And if New MacBook Pro indeed uses M2 Pro, and M2 Pro uses N3, it would be classified as substantial revenue. Hence his word on M2 Pro wont be on N3.

TSMC isn't normally the one to spin words on substantial contribution to revenue. At least until now it means actual product shipment. As they do get N3 product revenue in terms of pilot project and and part of product R&D.

Edit: There were rumours of Intel being the first customer for N3 with their GPU. Using it as Tiles on their next gen Meteor Lake SoC. Personally I think that is likely the case.

> something new like the VR headset chip

My bet is on this one.

Given that there is an iPad with a M1-chip, I think Apple is smart and produces broad chips that fits in all the devices and potentially VR glasses.

It makes sense that their more expensive M2 Pro chip is made on the 3nm process, which is more expensive and has less capacity. It would go to more expensive Macbooks because those are less in demand and have a higher price. For the VR glasses it makes sense they release an expensive developer unit and wait for 3nm to ramp up for the mass consumer version.

> Apple still btw has to replace the Mac Pro with an Apple Silicon based model

At about the same price, I think 10x Mac Studios Ultra count as replacing much more than a single maxed-out Mac Pro. Though I do expect an Apple Silicon Mac Pro is still coming, I do not see any need for Apple to rush to meet some marketing deadline from almost 2 years ago.

They don't ,,have to'' be ready in 2 years. The M2 numbers from the N5P process were underwhelming, I wouldn't replace my M1 MacBook pro without seeing significantly superior performance / watt numbers, and happy to wait for the N3 process to be in production whatever it takes.

Of course nothing forces them to be ready within 2 years but alas, that's what Apple said they'd do. I agree the M2 numbers were not amazing. I guess after the big M1 shock it's hard to follow up with something that comes even close. You can't get similar gains like the transition from x86 to an integrated arm based SOC brought, doubly so when there's no substantial process node improvement (N5 -> N5P is a minor optimization). In the end they mostly bought better performance with a bigger die and increased power consumption. I'm pretty convinced they'll need N3 for the next jump but even that wont be on the level of the Intel -> M1 step.

The revolution has happened, now it's all about evolution.

BTW if Apple wants to increase the prices of the Pro macbooks like they did with the M2 Air due to inflation then they better justify it with some good gains. The big changes in terms of hardware redesign already happened last time.

> I agree the M2 numbers were not amazing.

What other CPU core design iteration managed to improve performance while also cutting power draw?

Anandtech's deep dive on the performance and efficiency cores used in the A15 and M2:

Performance:

>In our extensive testing, we’re elated to see that it was actually mostly an efficiency focus this year, with the new performance cores showcasing adequate performance improvements, while at the same time reducing power consumption, as well as significantly improving energy efficiency.

Efficiency:

>The efficiency cores have also seen massive gains, this time around with Apple mostly investing them back into performance, with the new cores showcasing +23-28% absolute performance improvements, something that isn’t easily identified by popular benchmarking. This large performance increase further helps the SoC improve energy efficiency, and our initial battery life figures of the new 13 series showcase that the chip has a very large part into the vastly longer longevity of the new devices.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16983/the-apple-a15-soc-perfo...

Intel and AMD seem to have both returned to the Pentium 4 days of chasing performance via increased clock speeds and power draws.

The report you quoted and linked to is about the A15 and not the M2. The M2 is based on the A15 but from what I've seen it does use quite a bit more power (~30%?) than the M1 when loaded. Anandtech did not analyze the M2 yet as far as I can see.

As previously noted, those core designs are used in both the A15 and the M2.

Just as the same cores were used in the A14 and M1.

Using more power overall comes from adding additional GPU cores and other non-CPU core functionality.

If the increase in power consumption comes from the additional GPU core, from increased frequencies in the CPU cores or other added parts to the chip imho is not that important for users (and depends on what they are doing). They see the system as a whole. They get x% more performance for y% more power usage. For the CPU x is smaller than y. This is totally normal when increasing frequencies.

Note: I'm not saying the M2 is bad. It's a very good chip indeed. All I said was it was not amazing. It was an iterational, yet welcome, improvement. And I think one couldn't expect anything amazing quite so quickly.

We're talking about CPU core design.

Would we say the Zen 4 core design is less efficient because AMD is going to start bundling an integrated GPU with Ryzen chips, or would we just talk about Zen 4 core power draw vs Zen 3?

Apple's performance cores managed to improve performance while cutting power.

What other iterative core design did this?

It helps to remember that Apple isn't playing the performance via clock increases no matter what happens to power and heat game.

I guess that's where the misunderstanding comes from. I was not talking about CPU cores alone. Only M1, M2 as a whole.

But I still am not sure if I can believe that the M2 CPU improved performance while at the same time cutting power. Can you link to some analysis? Would be very interesting. Though please not the A15 one, the cores are related but not the same and the CPUs have big differences.

Apple hardware updates are always and only moderate incremental improvements, since the very beginning. Apple is reasonably predictable in this regard. It is unrealistic to expect a generational and exponential leap in performance or efficiency in any of Apple's hardware refreshes. That has never happened, and it likely never will. What happens instead is whatever model gets a little bit better than the last revision. The M1 was not a massive leap forward, but instead an impressive lateral move. Subsequent Apple Silicon chips will only be a smidgen better than the newest previous revision.

> And I think one couldn't expect anything amazing quite so quickly.

I'm not expecting to see such a performance jump from another CPU transition again in my lifetime. The jump from x86 to M1 was a boost because of TSMC's fab process compared to Intel's, yes, but it was also from the ISA change, leaving behind a lot of the x86 cruft.

So how do you explain the M2 13 inch mbp throttling severely under load while the M1 13 inch mbp doesn't as heavily. It's the same chassis. It's impossible for the M2 to use less power, the heat has to come from somewhere. It's not the GPU since many benchmark use a CPU only load to show throttling behaviour.

Are you European? The price of the M2 Air did not increase. The USD price was exactly the same as for the M1 Air. Both debuted at $1199. The price went up in Europe because of a drastic reduction in the EUR/USD exchange rate.

The M1 Air launched at a price of $999. The increase to $1199 happened with the launch of the M2 Air.

  > With its sleek wedge-shaped design, stunning Retina display, Magic Keyboard, and astonishing level of performance thanks to M1, the new MacBook Air once again redefines what a thin and light notebook can do. And it is still just $999, and $899 for education.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/introducing-the-next-...

The euro is not doing great, but the dollar is falling as well.

The dollar is not falling. It has been extremely strong against any standard world currency basket. So strong it hurts exporters.

Actually the dollar is falling as well (in real purchasing power) due to inflation. It's doing quite a bit better at the moment compared to e.g. Euro. One factor could be the increased interest rates. Why would I keep Euros and get still nothing when I could get at least a little bit on the USD. Also the war in Europe does not help their currency.

Almost nobody should update from one generation of CPUs to the next one though. Incremental upgrades are fine.

After the November 2020 launch day chaos, with not that much existing software available was working on those machines at the time like Docker, Java, Android Studio / Emulator, VSTs, etc a typical developer would have to wait more than 6 months just to do their work with fully supported software on the system and to take full advantage of the performance gains rather than using Rosetta.

At that point, they might as well skipped the M1 machines and instead waited to purchase the M1 Pro MacBooks. Now there isn't a rush in getting a M1 Macbook anymore as now Apple is already moving to the M2 line up.

By the time they have made an Apple Silicon Mac Pro, they are already planning ahead for the new series of Apple Silicon chips; probably M3, which will be after the M2 Pro/Ultra products.

After that, it will be the beginning of the end of macOS on Intel.

>…not much existing software was working [lists a few nerdy dev tools used by 0.01% of the Mac user bsse]…

Surely software developers (and other people using x86-only software like Photoshop) are more than 0.01% of the mac user base.

Apple has specifically said that vim users are the reason they put back the physical escape key…

Photoshop worked on M1 on day 1. What is the argument even about here? Someone is upset that all software developers didn’t port everything to M1 overnight?

> Photoshop worked on M1 on day 1.

Complete and absolute nonsense.

From [0]:

As of March 2021, Photoshop now runs natively on Apple computers using the Apple Silicon M1 chip with 1.5X the speed of similarly configured previous generation systems.

Even before that it wasn't supported or designed to run on M1, hence the frequent crashes and freezing users were getting. Therefore, it wasn't working.

So how exactly is waiting until March 2021 for a stable M1 version of Photoshop, "working on day 1"?

[0] https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/photoshop/kb/photoshop-for-apple-...

Working != being a native app. The latter may be an interesting technical detail, but absolutely no user of the app will really care. They care about “does it open and not crash” (which _everything_ did b/c Rosetta) and - in a very distant second place - is it faster than before (which it also was).

So no: There was no one saying “but no software works”

This is just nonsense, there is tons of performance critical software. A lot that hasn't been ported to native still doesn't run properly or at all. DAWs that run on rosetta have many problems with VST plugins and performance. Just because something opens and doesn't crash, doesn't mean it works properly at all.

> Apple has specifically said that vim users are the reason they put back the physical escape key…

Do you have a source for this ?

I’m pretty sure I saw this somewhere, but now I can’t find it, so I accept the possibility (though I think it’s low probability) that I’m misremembering.

I thought the same thing, but I can't find the source. Bernstein bear effect.

What’s the point of this comment? Every consumer electronic product has a new version a year or 2 away.

Apple products also have a long reputation of having a sweet spot for buying a new product. The Mac Buyers guide has existed for like a decade or more.

> What’s the point of this comment? Every consumer electronic product has a new version a year or 2 away.

So after 9 months releasing the M1 Macbooks, the M1 Pro Macbooks came out afterwards, already replacing the old ones in less than a year. Given this fast cycle, there is a reason why the Osborne effect precisely applies to Apple's flagship products rather than 'Every consumer electronic product'.

This is a new system running on a new architecture and it must run the same apps on the user's previous computer. Unfortunately, the software for it was just too early to be available on the system at the time and if was there, it didn't run at all in Nov 2020. Even a simple update will brick the system.

What use is a system that bricks on an update; losing your important file or for power users having to wait 6 months for the software they use everyday to be available and supported for their work?

Going all in on the hype fed by the Apple boosters and hype squad doesn't make any sense as a buyers guide.

>So after 9 months releasing the M1 Macbooks, the M1 Pro Macbooks came out afterwards, already replacing the old ones in less than a year.

The M1 Air and 13" Pro are really entry level machines. The first model with a M1 Pro costs $700USD over the base model 13" M2 MBP. The M1 Pro still has much better performance compared to a base M2. The M1 Pro, Max and Ultra didn't replace anything. No one with a budget is going "Oh, the M1 Pro only cost an extra $700USD, I'll get that".

>What use is a system that bricks on an update; losing your important file or for power users having to wait 6 months for the software they use everyday to be available and supported for their work?

What's the point of this comment? Things happen. It sucks. Apple isn't the first and won't be the last company to make a mistake. Don't get sucked into the shininess of their latest product.

> The M1 Pro still has much better performance compared to a base M2. The M1 Pro, Max and Ultra didn't replace anything.

Exactly. Hence, why many skipped the M1 and bought the 14-inch Mac with M1 Pro instead. With the time it took for all the existing software to work properly on Apple Silicon, the 14 inch M1 Pro was available and little to no-one bothered with getting the old broken 13 inch M1 MBP.

> No one with a budget is going "Oh, the M1 Pro only cost an extra $700USD, I'll get that".

No one on a "budget" would get a computer that would cost more than $1,000 and it bricks on a system update / restore or chooses an Apple machine in the first place. Plenty of money saved up by then or financing options for the next version, instead of wasting it all on launch day and losing all your files next week.

> What's the point of this comment? Things happen. It sucks. Apple isn't the first and won't be the last company to make a mistake. Don't get sucked into the shininess of their latest product.

It is the truth of the matter and it happened very frequently on launch day with lots of users complaining that their shiny new computer bricked on an update / restore, etc and have lost all their files and are unable to use the computer. So once again...

What use is a system for users that bricks on an update / restore; losing all your files and waiting months for the software one uses everyday to be available and supported for basic work?

> Don't get sucked into the shininess of their latest product.

Don't tell that to me, tell that to these people who fell for it. [0] [1] [2]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28090774

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28940358

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27065953

Well actually, the Osborne Effect is s myth

http://www.thesoftwareunderground.com/2005/06/osborne-effect...

idk, I feel like most people don’t replace their expensive MacBook Pros every single time there’s a new one

> I wouldn't replace my M1 MacBook pro without seeing significantly superior performance / watt numbers

What makes you think that this will happen in one generation? The point of the M2 is not to get M1 users to migrate, it’s to keep improving so that MacBooks are still better products than the competition. Apple does not care that you don’t get a new computer every year, they are most likely planning for 3 to 5 years replacement cycles.

> The M2 numbers from the N5P process were underwhelming.

No, they weren't. Performance improvements are precisely in line with every previous hardware update. Apple hardware updates are always and only incremental improvements, since the very beginning. Apple is reasonably predictable in this regard. Expecting more than what Apple has always given in hardware updates is overtly unrealistic.

The Mac Studio is the obvious Mac Pro replacement. It's hard to do a fixed system and also charge much more than $5k for it, and Apple has failed over and over at any kind of non-fixed Mac Pro.

They might just leave it as is. The studio is a very capable machine at the high end, and if given a beefier GPU/CPU and _maybe_ more DRAM it probably replaces the bulk of the professional use cases.

Apple explicitly said that a Mac Pro that isn't the Studio is coming.

> The Mac Studio is the obvious Mac Pro replacement.

No it is not. Mac Pro users wouldn't not migrate to a system that doesn't allow removable or extra drives.

The trash can Mac Pro was exactly that. It had very little expandability.

The Mac Studio is a good trash can replacement. The trash can was a poor cheese grater replacement.

(speaking as a happy user of both a trash can Mac Pro and a [non-Apple] full-tower workstation)

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