from Hacker News

Apple M2 Die Shot and Architecture Analysis – Big Cost Increase and A15 Based IP

by yurisagalov on 6/10/22, 2:40 AM with 199 comments

by MBCook on 6/11/22, 4:17 AM
Thanks to being based on their phone chips Apple came out of the gate with the M1 and cleaned everyone’s clock on performance-per-watt while putting in good to great numbers in general (as a CPU).
But their rate of improvement on the A series has been slowing on general tasks. They’re on the same process node, and only increased frequency a bit.
Is it really that surprising that performance didn’t take a massive jump? You can’t keep up a 20% increase in normal stuff every release for long.
You can use accelerators like they do for video and ML to help some tasks. You can improve your GPU some and make it a little bigger.
It seems like in some places people are trying to push a “the M2 is a failure because it’s not a huge leap above the M1“ narrative. But no one exits that from Intel or AMD every year anymore. Or Apple’s A-series.
So why here?
by GeekyBear on 6/11/22, 4:39 AM
From Anandtech's deep dive into the performance and efficiency cores in the A15, which are reused here in the M2.
Performance Cores:
>Apple A15 performance cores are extremely impressive here – usually increases in performance always come with some sort of deficit in efficiency, or at least flat efficiency. Apple here instead has managed to reduce power whilst increasing performance, meaning energy efficiency is improved by 17% on the peak performance states versus the A14. If we had been able to measure both SoCs at the same performance level, this efficiency advantage of the A15 would grow even larger. In our initial coverage of Apple’s announcement, we theorised that the company might possibly invested into energy efficiency rather than performance increases this year, and I’m glad to see that seemingly this is exactly what has happened, explaining some of the more conservative (at least for Apple) performance improvements.
Efficiency Cores:
>The A15’s efficiency cores are also massively impressive – at peak performance, efficiency is flat, but they’re also +28% faster.
The comparison against the little Cortex-A55 cores is more absurd though, as the A15’s E-core is 3.5x faster on average, yet only consuming 32% more power, so energy efficiency is 60% better.
Conclusions:
>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.
The efficiency cores of the A15 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...
by daguava on 6/11/22, 2:06 AM
There's a lot of claims of poached talent in the article, basically claiming [paraphrasing] "Apple, maintaining their stressful work env and not paying to shore that up lost some rockstars"
How true is this? If they're on the money it's an excellent example of a talent retention miss leading to a demonstrable mediocrity in delivery.
by butterisgood on 6/11/22, 11:30 AM
My thoughts are it doesn’t even matter that much. Apple is not selling me a CPU - they’re selling me a laptop. Yeah it’s a critical piece but Apple is all about your overall outcome.
If they were a CPU “arms dealer” like Intel or AMD it’d matter more I think.
by drawingthesun on 6/11/22, 3:55 AM
A few comments here about how Apple is losing a lot of top talent to rival Rivos, a stealth startup.
What would Rivos business model be? I’m genuinely interested seems interesting to me.
Would they be positioning themselves as the next Qualcomm?
Or perhaps sell a superior chip to Apple at some point?
by brokencode on 6/11/22, 3:43 AM
Why does the biggest and richest company in the world ever have to suffer from talent leaving because they don’t get paid enough? It just doesn’t make any sense.
by RcouF1uZ4gsC on 6/11/22, 2:17 AM
> The bleeding hasn’t stopped in recent years as Apple’s work culture simply isn’t the best and other firms, namely the hyperscalers such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, are paying more than Apple was to poach talent.
I really hate that word “poach”. Using “attract” works much better in that sentence.
I find it appalling how entering into a free contract with someone to give them more money for their work is called “poaching”.
Words matter, and how we describe something has an impact in how it is viewed (“piracy” is another example).
by travisgriggs on 6/11/22, 5:42 AM
It’s dated, and the subject has shifted to processor design, but
The Apple Product Cycle (https://misterbg.org/AppleProductCycle.html)
still sums it all up pretty well.
by hemantv on 6/11/22, 2:54 AM
Apple generally pay very poorly for quality of talent.
I would love to live in world where 10x engineers are rewarded 10x. Right now it's 25% better pay than median.
by ParadisoShlee on 6/11/22, 11:02 AM
Excellent read into the realities of making a SOC.
Every SOC I continue to keep my eyes open for MTE being used in a mainstream ARMv8.5 processor... If we're to believe that M3 is marked to be using ARMv9 as well. Maybe 2024 is the year?
by kzrdude on 6/11/22, 8:51 AM
What does the M2 mean for linux support, any porting needed?
by Invictus0 on 6/11/22, 4:27 AM
If the author had taken the time to define some acronyms, this would have been way more accessible to a layman. Had to give up halfway through.
by thimkerbell on 6/11/22, 3:17 AM
As a casual reader, I notice the "die shot bleeding" and wonder if that was intended. I hope it wasn't, but I also hope not to have to wonder this about the posts here.