October 18th Apple Event - Unleashed - Apple Silicon, MacBook Pro upgrades, HomePod mini, AirPods 3rd Generation

[saltycaramel]

34 minutes ago, Video Beagle said:

Sizewise...would a pro or max fit into a M1? I know there's rumors of redesign, but I don't think they'd change the general footprint.

 

Into a M1-MacMini chassis? 

 

Keep in mind that in the next design they’re taking the PSU out of the machine, and in general the internal design will be laser-focused on these new custom silicon chips, more tailored for them, as opposed to the current M1-MacMini which is an afterthought designed in the late 00s for Intel CPUs, 2.5” HDDs, a slim optical drive, etc. It’s from another geological computer era. 

 

So, yes, totally an M1 Pro/Max would fit in the current mini size. They’re actually rumored to be slightly thinner actually. 

[Spindel]

Just as an example, I've been pinning the CPU and GPU in the M1 mini at 100% for 10 min this is fan speeds and temperatures with the M1 minis "low tech" active cooling. 

 

SOC 0-2 are the most interesting temperatures since it's the package temps. 

 

But yes with heat pipes I'm confident that the Mini design can handle the Pro and Max chips. 

[Video Beagle]

33 minutes ago, Spindel said:

But yes with heat pipes I'm confident that the Mini design can handle the Pro and Max chips. 

I just don't have a sense of size of the actull SOC...the pics make them look quite large compared to the m1 basic.

[Spindel]

1 hour ago, Video Beagle said:

I just don't have a sense of size of the actull SOC...the pics make them look quite large compared to the m1 basic.

The SOC of the Pro and specially the Max is very much bigger than OG M1, but that is an nonissue if we talk about the Mini since the M1 mini is mostly occupied by empty space. 

[saltycaramel]

Some insights about the storage system straight from Apple’s mouth

 

https://overcast.fm/+Fcm-UzuZA/39:39

 

imagine being constrained by a socketed format for a number of years instead of (like Apple is doing) just living at the bleeding edge of what’s possible and slapping NAND modules wherever.

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

I just don't have a sense of size of the actull SOC...the pics make them look quite large compared to the m1 basic.

M1 Max die itself is about the size of a Nvidia GA104 die (RTX 3070), package size a lot bigger since it's the SoC die and 4 memory stacks. But essentially just link of it like a larger GPU package, around the size of a Vega 56/64, so not so big it would cause any problems getting it in to a Mac Mini.

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

Some insights about the storage system straight from Apple’s mouth

 

https://overcast.fm/+Fcm-UzuZA/39:39

 

imagine being constrained by a socketed format for a number of years instead of (like Apple is doing) just living at the bleeding edge of what’s possible and slapping NAND modules wherever.

Heh, tell that to Samsung and their 980 Pro which performs better than the SSDs in any Apple device right now.

[HenrySalayne]

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Heh, tell that to Samsung and their 980 Pro which performs better than the SSDs in any Apple device right now.

I mean Apple is asking more than twice as much for 1 TB of additional storage, so it must be better, right?

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

I mean Apple is asking more than twice as much for 1 TB of additional storage, so it must be better, right?

Well to be fair to Apple their statements of justification of why they did something a certain way can have merits or be true to a degree but there is a difference between justifying why you did something and proving it is the best way or better than the way you just said was limiting you.

 

And regardless of what you do you can really only go as fast as the NAND itself can in high demand professional, non burst workloads, and the market leader by far is Samsung in that regard and Apple is either sourcing NAND from them or one of their competitors, Apple doesn't make or design NAND flash. So basically whoever has the most NAND packages will always win the who is faster war device vs device (current gen vs current gen NAND)

[gjsman]

48 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Heh, tell that to Samsung and their 980 Pro which performs better than the SSDs in any Apple device right now.

Egh... Do you have benchmarks for that? Apple rates theirs for 7.4 GB/s, Samsung 980 Pro for only 7 GB/s. 

[HenrySalayne]

21 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Well to be fair to Apple their statements of justification of why they did something a certain way can have merits or be true to a degree but there is a difference between justifying why you did something and proving it is the best way or better than the way you just said was limiting you.

I absolutely agree. But the new lineup starts with 512 GB (a little on the low side) or 1 TB (acceptable) for the better equipped base models. Compared to a joke called Mac Pro (256 GB for the base model) this is quite an improvement. Yet their pricing makes it seem like they have to throw away the 1 TB flash modules as well as the 2 TB flash modules if you decide to upgrade to 4 TB.

Quote

9. Testing conducted by Apple in September 2021 using preproduction 16-inch and 14-inch MacBook Pro systems, all configured with Apple M1 Max, 10-core CPU, 64GB of RAM, and 8TB SSD. Tested with FIO 3.27, 1024KB request size, 150GB test file, and IO depth=8. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro.

As the flash controller is part of the SoC, does that mean they could theoretically use the unified memory for caching?

[gjsman]

40 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

I mean Apple is asking more than twice as much for 1 TB of additional storage, so it must be better, right?

Part of it may be that the high-storage models are actually (somewhat) custom orders behind the scenes with much more small-scale production than the 5 standard models of the 14" and 16" MacBook Pros. It could also just be that Pros pay Pro prices and don't care because it's a work tool they use to make money.

[saltycaramel]

46 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Heh, tell that to Samsung and their 980 Pro which performs better than the SSDs in any Apple device right now.

Does it perform better than the 4TB and 8TB models in the new MBPs?

Is it available in 8TB size today?

Was it available in 8TB size back in November 2019 (when Apple started offering the 8TB size on laptops)?

 

Pretty sure these are 3 “no”. 

[saltycaramel]

This is the 4TB, the 8TB should be equal or faster.

 

[HenrySalayne]

2 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

This is the 4TB, the 8TB should be equal or faster.

 

Thanks for update. This strongly suggests they are using the unified memory as a write cache.

[saltycaramel]

Just now, HenrySalayne said:

Thanks for update. This strongly suggests they are using the unified memory as a write cache.

 

Wouldn’t that affect benchmarks on the 512GB, 1TB and 2TB as well?

[saltycaramel]

6 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

Thanks for update.

(that’s from a youtube review, not mine)

[HenrySalayne]

4 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

Wouldn’t that affect benchmarks on the 512GB, 1TB and 2TB as well?

I'm not familiar with the Blackmagic benchmark and how the different storage capacities are implemented. But it's unlikely writing data to a flash cell is faster than reading it back (this would be a really strange bottleneck).

It would affect the smaller capacities as well, but Apple could basically tweak everything to their liking, so who knows? Maybe the write cache size depends on unified memory as well.

 

[saltycaramel]

7 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

I'm not familiar with the Blackmagic benchmark and how the different storage capacities are implemented. But it's unlikely writing data to a flash cell is faster than reading it back (this would be a really strange bottleneck).

It would affect the smaller capacities as well, but Apple could basically tweak everything to their liking, so who knows? Maybe the write cache size depends on unified memory as well.

 

 

Apple should be tweaking this to gaslight us into thinking that lower capacity SSDs have consistent lower write performances? That would be weird.

[saltycaramel]

Meanwhile my dumb self managed to change his mind twice about what to order so now I will be receiving it mid December.

Final order

- 14” (lighter, and a 16” screen is not big enough anyway, for the future crossing fingers for a new Apple Thunderbolt Display 27” with miniLED and 120Hz, to connect to the MBP 14” in desk usage; incidentally Brydge said on twitter that they’re working on new vertical docks for the new MBPs)

- lowest end CPU (6p+2e) and GPU (14 cores), it has a slight edge on battery life and a noticeable edge on quietness (under stress) compared to a fully fledged M1 Pro 10/16 in a 14”; the 8/14 Pro will end a job a bit later but being quiet at all times. 

- 32GB RAM and 4TB flash (how many others in the world paired these to the lowest end binned SoC? must be a small club)

[leadeater]

51 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

Does it perform better than the 4TB and 8TB models in the new MBPs?

Is it available in 8TB size today?

Was it available in 8TB size back in November 2019 (when Apple started offering the 8TB size on laptops)?

 

Pretty sure these are 3 “no”. 

If there actually were 980 Pros of that size then yea it would, but there isn't. 980 Pro caps out at 2TB. And yes the 2TB performs better.

 

Also Blackmagic disk benchmark is not a good benchmark tool.

[HenrySalayne]

29 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

Apple should be tweaking this to gaslight us into thinking that lower capacity SSDs have consistent lower write performances? That would be weird.

Why? Don't be cheap and get the storage upgrade, Tim needs a new spaceship.

 

I have no idea what settings have been used in the screenshot you posted, but under the premiss that write speeds should not exceed read speeds one could assume that 25% of the data has been diverted to a cache. But this depends on so many factors and fluctuations that this is only a working theory and no proof.

[leadeater]

Just now, HenrySalayne said:

Why? Don't be cheap and get the storage upgrade, Tim needs a new spaceship.

 

I have no idea what settings have been used in the screenshot you posted, but under the premiss that write speeds should not exceed read speeds one could assume that 25% of the data has been diverted to a cache. But this depends on so many factors and fluctuations this is only the most likely scenario and no proof.

NAND write is never faster than NAND read, Blackmagic Disk benchmark just is not a good tool. CrystalDisk isn't either for that matter as well. If you want to know if something is actually good then you need to use fio or IOmeter with the correct settings and that kind of testing takes a really, really long time.

[saltycaramel]

If pigs had wings..

 

Thank you Apple for living at the bleeding edge of laptop flash storage and giving us fast 8TB non-QLC internal SSDs a good 2 years (there’s now a Sabrent contender) before the rest of the industry  

 

Waiting for you to pioneer 16TB as well while people here debate socket formats. And to deliver unstifled YoY speed improvements. 

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

If pigs had wings..

As a literal storage expert and engineer you are wrong if you think Apple's SSDs are faster than 980 Pro lol. The only pigs flying are those believing burst speeds mean anything at all, they do not.