Apple's Silicon Magic Is Over!
Summary
TLDRThe video script discusses the evolution of Apple's Mac lineup, particularly focusing on the significant impact of the M1 chip on the industry. It highlights how Apple's shift to its own silicon led to a dramatic improvement in performance and efficiency, allowing for sleek designs without compromising on power. The script also addresses the incremental improvements from the M2 and the challenges faced by the M3 due to the limitations in transistor density and the escalating costs of newer chip processes. It emphasizes the need for Apple to innovate beyond silicon and explore unique form factors that leverage the performance per watt benefits of their chips. The video further acknowledges the growing competition from other chip manufacturers like Qualcomm, which is making strides with its Snapdragon X Elite SoC. The summary calls for Apple to continue taking bold risks and to innovate in design to stay ahead of the competition.
Takeaways
- 🔥 The M1 chip was a game-changer for Apple, offering significant performance improvements and efficiency, without requiring a fan for cooling.
- 📈 Apple's M2 chip, while iterative, increased transistor count and moved to a more refined process, but also faced thermal challenges.
- 🌡️ The M2 MacBook Air was found to be more difficult to cool and experienced performance throttling due to increased heat and power draw.
- 📉 Despite higher peak energy consumption, the M2's performance per watt improved, allowing for quicker task completion and lower energy usage per task.
- 🚀 The M3 chip's launch on TSMC's 3nm process did not yield the expected massive performance gains, indicating a slowdown in process improvements.
- 💸 The cost of manufacturing on newer nodes is increasing, which may affect the pricing and efficiency gains of future chips.
- 🤝 Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite SoC is a new competitor in the market, aiming to provide performance between Apple's M2 and M3 chips with a focus on efficiency.
- 🔍 The era of significant performance improvements with each process shrink is over, with new nodes becoming more expensive and offering less density gains.
- 💻 Apple's MacBook lineup has become more uniform in design and features, but there's a call for more innovative form factors that take full advantage of Apple Silicon's capabilities.
- 🎮 The suggestion that Apple could explore creating a gaming-oriented laptop with an M3 ULTRA chip, offering high performance with excellent idle efficiency.
- 🚨 A call for Apple to continue taking risks and innovate beyond their silicon, to maintain their competitive edge as the industry catches up.
Q & A
What was the main issue with the Macs from just over 5 years ago?
-The main issue was that they had high TDP Intel chips paired with inadequate cooling, which led to overheating and a significant drop in benchmark scores, making them some of the worst Macs in decades.
What was the significance of the M1 chip for Apple's Mac lineup?
-The M1 chip was a revelation, addressing the overheating issues and providing a significant performance boost. It allowed Apple to keep Macs thin and light without the need for a fan and offered a 3.5x speed increase with a 50% longer battery life, all without a price increase.
What are the three main drivers behind the M1's incredible performance?
-The three main drivers are: (1) The use of the modern Arm64 instruction set architectures, (2) Apple's dedicated on-chip hardware blocks that handle specific tasks more capably, and (3) deep vertical control from hardware to application level which streamlined efficiency.
How did the M2 chip improve upon the M1?
-The M2 chip improved by moving to TSMC’s refined N5P process, which provided a 7% performance improvement and about 15% lower power consumption. Additionally, the total number of transistors was increased from 16 billion to 20 billion.
What was the challenge with the M3 chip's launch on TSMC’s N3E 3nm process?
-The challenge was that while expectations were high for a significant performance increase due to the smaller process size, the actual improvement was only slightly better than the jump from M1 to M2, which was disappointing given the new process technology.
Why might the era of massive improvements from one process shrink to the next be over?
-The era might be over because the improvements in transistor density are becoming smaller with each new node, and the time between each shrink is now years apart. Additionally, each new node is significantly more expensive, which may not yield the same efficiency gains as before.
What is the Snapdragon X Elite SoC and how does it compare to Apple's chips?
-The Snapdragon X Elite is a custom laptop chip built on TSMC’s 4nm process with a high-performance CPU, GPU, and NPU. It is designed to compete with Apple's chips, with benchmarks placing it between the M2 and M3 in performance. However, it targets a different segment and is not aimed at competing with Apple's Pro, Max, and Ultra chips.
What is the current challenge for Apple's silicon lineup?
-The challenge is that the jumps in performance from M2 to M3 and potentially from M3 to M4 are not as massive as expected. Apple is pushing against technological limits, and competitors are catching up, which means Apple needs to innovate beyond just silicon performance.
Why is it suggested that Apple should focus on hardware design in addition to silicon performance?
-Focusing on hardware design can allow Apple to take better advantage of the performance per watt provided by their silicon. This could lead to innovative form factors, such as even thinner and lighter laptops or more powerful laptops with better thermal management and longer battery life.
What is the potential market for a laptop with an M3 ULTRA chip?
-The potential market includes gamers and creators who typically opt for heavier-style laptops on Windows/Linux platforms. An M3 ULTRA chip could provide the necessary performance with better thermal headroom and maintain excellent idle efficiency.
What is the author's final suggestion for Apple?
-The author suggests that Apple should stop resting on the success of the M1 series and take more risks to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. This includes focusing on both silicon performance and hardware design to create truly differentiated products.
Outlines
😀 Apple Silicon's Impact on Mac Design
This paragraph discusses the significant transformation in Apple's Mac lineup following the introduction of the M1 chip. Previously, high TDP Intel chips coupled with insufficient cooling led to overheating issues and poor performance. The M1 chip, however, was a game-changer, offering faster performance without the need for a fan and with a 50% longer battery life, all at the same price point. The paragraph also touches on the improvements in the MacBook Pro and M2 MacBook Air, which corrected past design flaws and enhanced various features. It concludes by noting that while Apple's current lineup is one of the best ever, it must continue to innovate to maintain this status.
🤔 The M2 and M3: Incremental Improvements and Challenges
The second paragraph delves into the technical aspects of Apple's M1, M2, and M3 chips. It explains the three main factors behind the M1's success: the modern Arm64 instruction set architecture, dedicated on-chip hardware blocks, and Apple's deep vertical control over the hardware and software stack. The paragraph then explores the challenges faced by the M2 and M3 chips, which include the limitations imposed by transistor density and the trade-offs between performance, power consumption, and heat generation. It also discusses the M2's increased transistor count and the thermal issues it faced, contrasting this with the M3's more modest performance improvements despite being built on a newer, more expensive process.
🚀 The Emergence of Snapdragon X Elite as Competition
In this paragraph, the focus shifts to the competition emerging in the market, particularly with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite system-on-chip (SoC). The author shares their experience with Qualcomm's reference design laptops and notes the significant strides made in optimizing Windows for Arm architecture. The Snapdragon X Elite is described as a powerful laptop chip with a high-performance CPU, GPU, and NPU, capable of competing with Apple's M2 and M3 chips in benchmarks. The paragraph suggests that while Apple's Pro, Max, and Ultra chips will likely remain superior, the X Elite represents a serious challenge, especially with Microsoft's support and the potential for future integration of high-end GPUs from NVIDIA or AMD.
💡 Pushing the Boundaries of Apple Silicon
The final paragraph emphasizes the need for Apple to continue innovating beyond its silicon capabilities. It suggests that while the M1 series was a groundbreaking success, Apple must not rest on its laurels as competitors are catching up. The author proposes exploring new form factors that take full advantage of Apple silicon's performance per watt, such as a thinner and lighter laptop or a more powerful gaming-oriented laptop. The paragraph also reflects on Apple's past reliance on Intel chips and how the M1 series allowed Mac users to boast about their computers' speed for the first time. It concludes by encouraging Apple to take more risks and innovate further to stay ahead of the competition.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Apple Silicon
💡Thermal Throttling
💡Transistor Density
💡Instruction Set Architecture (ISA)
💡Unified Memory
💡M1 Max
💡Snapdragon X Elite
💡Process Shrink
💡Neural Engine
💡Efficiency
💡M3 Series
Highlights
Over 5 years ago, Apple's Macs faced overheating issues due to high TDP Intel chips and inadequate cooling.
Apple silicon's introduction with the M1 chip was a significant shift from the problematic form factor of previous Macs.
The M1 chip allowed for 3.5x faster performance without the need for a fan and with a 50% longer battery life.
Apple maintained the price while delivering significant performance improvements.
The redesign of the MacBook Pro and M2 MacBook Air corrected past design flaws and enhanced various features.
Apple's M1 iMac and iPad Pro demonstrated efficiency across various form factors.
Apple's current computer lineup is considered one of the best ever from any company.
The M1's performance was driven by three main factors: modern instruction set architectures, dedicated hardware blocks, and deep vertical control.
The M2 chip improved on the M1 by using a refined process and increasing the number of transistors.
The M2, despite being more power-hungry, showed increased performance per watt.
The M3 chip's launch on TSMC's 3nm process did not yield the expected massive performance gains.
The era of significant improvements from process shrinks is over, with new nodes being more expensive.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite SoC is a new competitive force in the market, with promising benchmarks.
The X Elite chip is a custom laptop chip with high-performance CPU, GPU, and NPU, manufactured on TSMC's 4nm process.
Apple's focus on efficiency and performance with Apple Silicon faces new competition from Qualcomm and others.
Apple's MacBook lineup has become more uniform in design and features, lacking a machine that truly leverages Apple silicon's performance per watt.
There is a suggestion for Apple to innovate further by creating a thinner, lighter laptop or a more powerful 'gaming' laptop.
The M1 series is seen as a game-changer, but Apple needs to continue taking risks to stay ahead of the competition.
Transcripts
It's hard to believe that just over 5-years-ago, I was ripping into the internals of brand-new Macs
looking to hodge-podge a fix together, such that they wouldn’t overheat and cause benchmark scores
to plummet. High TDP Intel chips paired with inadequate cooling made for a deadly combo—one
that created the worst Macs in decades—but then this happened: [insert M1 unveiling]
Apple silicon was a revelation to what had been deemed an ill-suited
form factor. Not only did they *keep* things thin and light, but they launched with the
literal identical MacBook Air chassis just to prove—HEY—not only is this 3.5x faster,
but we don’t even need a fan. Oh, and by the way, we didn't touch the battery size
at all but it lasts 50% longer than before. Price increase? Nah. Send me a G and we coo.
The redesign of the MacBook Pro and M2 MacBook Air righted the wrongs caused by the butterfly
keyboard-sporting laptops of yore bringing back MagSafe and other I/O, improving displays,
speakers, keyboards, and more. Meanwhile, the M1 iMac and iPad Pro proved that no form factor was
too small for this master-class in efficiency. It’s not a stretch to say that Apple’s current
computer lineup is not just Apple’s best ever, but perhaps one of the best lineups ever from
*any* company. But be warned, because changes need to happen—and fast—if Apple wants that to
continue being true into the future. Let's tackle why the M3 series doesn't measure up
to the almost physics-defying standards the M1 set at launch; and, how for the first time ever,
real competition is just months away from almost every PC maker imaginable.
I’ve talked a lot about why Apple silicon has absolutely dominated since launch,
but there were really three main drivers behind M1’s incredible performance: (1) Arm64 itself uses
significantly more modern (ISAs) instruction set architectures that don’t carry the legacy baggage
of x86—nerdy crap like weakly-ordered memory models, a larger number of general-purpose
registers for parallelizable code, etc., (2) Apple’s dedicated on-chip hardware blocks like the
video engines, Neural Engine, matrix coprocessor, and unified memory pool, handle specific tasks
vastly more capably than a general-compute CPU or GPU, and, (3) deep vertical control
from hardware to kernel to OS to application helped eliminate cruft and streamline efficiency.
All of the work had to be paved for M1. Sure, M2 and M3 benefit from that work,
but they’ve been iterative—and Apple is now somewhat limited in the same way everybody
else is: transistor density. M1 launched on TSMC’s 5nm process and unlike the 90s
and 2000s when transistor density and node naming actually correlated with one another,
process names today like “5nm” don’t really mean anything. There’s more to chips than logic gates
and hardly any of those features precisely measure at the marketed process size anyways. Regardless,
the M1—not to even mention the M1 Max—was a an enormous die that was not just the biggest TSMC
5nm chip to date, but one of the largest Arm chips ever produced period. So what do you do
to get a faster chip like M2? There’s really three options: (1) shrink the size and power
consumption of the transistors so you can add more of them in the same envelope, (2) keep
the transistor size the same but increase the number of them which makes for a larger die with
greater heat and power drain, or, (3) keep the transistor size and count the same but increase
the voltage to push up the chip’s clock-speed which creates even more heat and power drain.
M2 did a combination of options 1 and 2. They were able to move to TSMC’s refined N5P process
which netted both a 7% performance improvement over N5 while drawing about 15% lower power;
and then to speed things up even more, they increased the total number of transistors
from 16 billion to 20 billion. But this increase didn’t come free. Do some shotty,
“not really the full story” napkin math, and the data would suggest the M2 is more power-hungry
than M1—running hotter and drawing more energy as a total package over its predecessor. And
that’s not theoretical: we proved back when the M2 MacBook Air launched that the chip was more
difficult to keep cool and experienced more rapid and more severe performance throttling
due to those thermals. So why wasn’t this more widely reported? Well, because M2’s performance
per watt increased as well—not just total package consumption. Imagine a high-performance sports
car. The car runs hotter and consumes more fuel when it reaches its top speeds, much like the M2;
however, because it's so fast and efficient, it can complete a 'race' much quicker than a regular
car, reducing the total time it is running at its hottest most fuel-consumptive state. So,
while yes, the M2 consumed more total energy at its peak, that extra compute was able to
get tasks done more quickly—reducing time spent at peak and therefore maintaining lower energy
consumption per task relative to M1. Sounds like a win-win—so what’s the problem? Sand, man.
When M3 launched on TSMC’s N3E 3nm process, it was the first chip to do so—and performance
expectations from pundits were high. I mean, doing napkin math anew would suggest a 2.8x increase in
transistor density—HUGE performance gains! But then M3 came out and we got… a slightly better
jump than we did from M1 to M2—and those on the same process! Huh? Well, I guess we learned our
lesson – using napkins for calculations can be as messy as using a lipstick for math. First of all,
TSMC’s 3nm node uses transistors that are much physically larger than 3nm—they’re
closer to 3.5. Okayyy, but even that would suggest a 2x density increase. Ah, but only
the logic density comes close at 1.7x. SRAM and IO density barely increases at
all. And chips—even magical ones—contain all of these components. Realistically,
there’s only about a 1.3x shrink. The era of massive improvements from one process shrink
to the next are over. The shrinks themselves are now YEARS apart. And even worse, each new node
is orders of magnitude more expensive than the prior, per unit area. It’s estimated that Apple’s
cost on these N3E chips is greater—not lesser—than just using a bigger area on an older node. Alas,
that would not yield the same efficiency gains we’ve come to
expect from Apple. More transistors on a bigger chip means more heat. So what do?
We’ve spent several minutes getting really nerdy and into the weeds on a lot of stuff
that normal people don’t care about—and at the end of the day, normal people buy
the vast majority of Apple’s products. Sure, the jump from M2 to M3 wasn’t as massive as
expected and the jump from M3 to M4 will likely be even smaller, but might I suggest something
heretical for a minute? That’s OK! The silicon isn’t the problem in Apple’s lineup any longer.
Look, Qualcomm invited me out to San Diego a few weeks ago and I got to check out their
reference design laptops (which basically means they’re not real—they’re prototypes)
for the Snapdragon X Elite SoC. You may recall, a year-and-a-half-ago,
we bought Microsoft’s Arm-based Windows Dev Kit. It utilized the same Microsoft SQ3
chip (which was just a rebranded Snapdragon 8cx gen3) found in a few quirky low-power,
low-performance Windows laptops. No offense to the folks at Qualcomm or Microsoft, but this thing
sucked. Its performance under ideal conditions was mediocre and ideal conditions were hard to
come by because so much of the Windows experience was wildly unoptimized for Arm—even after a decade
following the original release of Windows RT. But that was then—we live in the now. Not only
has every single native app for Windows made the transition to Arm, but massive quantities
of 3rd party apps have too—including big ones—like Google Chrome. Graphics APIs like DirectX, Vulkan,
and OpenGL are said to work through mapping layers and both Microsoft and Qualcomm have made
huge efforts to ensure a smooth transition—they were quick to volunteer that Apple is better at
this than anyone and they hope to be compared to them this summer when the X Elite laptops ship.
So, what is the Snapdragon X Elite? Well, they gave me one in a cute little acrylic trading
card. It is a bespoke laptop chip—not based on a mobile chip—built on TSMC’s 4nm process coming
with a 12 high-performance core CPU, Adreno GPU, and in-house Hexagon NPU. Additionally,
the on-board sensing hub houses an additional ISP, on-board WiFi 7 by default, and the capability to
be paired with up to 64GB of LPDDR5 memory, a Snapdragon X65 5G modem, and NVMe storage
over PCIe. The specs suggest Qualcomm is not messing around—and from the benchmarks I saw,
it consistently placed itself in between the M2 and M3. Not shabby at all. Now,
Apple is still certainly going to have the upper hand with their Pro, Max, and Ultra chips,
but this doesn’t aim to compete with those. While OEMs can push the X Elite to run up to 90W for an
extra performance boost, its reference-design consumes just 24W peak. Very, very close to M3.
Now do I think that Qualcomm’s going to come out blazing with the best laptop chips within the next
3-years? Not really, no. But they’re hungry, they’ve got Microsoft behind them, and they
alluded to the fact that using heavy-duty GPUs from NVIDIA or AMD wouldn’t be off the table in
the future—something Apple has zero aspirations for. And just like Apple, Intel,
and everybody else, they’re really leaning into their NPU for tasks that can use software-defined
hardware for maximum efficiency and speed. It’ll be exciting to see what form factors
the Snapdragon X Elite embodies given its massive power envelope available to OEMs—from netbooks to
power-hungry beasts. Layer in the fact that this is just their first foray into the X Elite line
and that higher-performance chips are on the roadmap, and well, we’ve got competition, baby.
So what’s Apple to do? Rush TSMC to the next process shrink? Pivot to developing hotter
more consumptive chips in the name of speed? No. And Apple knows that’s not their core
competency. Apple Silicon has always been about sufficient performance with extreme efficiency,
but physics are a cruel mistress and many watching this channel don’t realize they’re
already pushing up against boundaries that didn’t exist for the M1 series. I still see comments that
Apple silicon laptops are dead silent and that’s just… dead wrong. We edit videos for
this YouTube channel on a 14” M3 Max MacBook Pro and the fans run at full-tilt nearly all
the time—not just when exporting. And even with fans ablaze, our NLE struggles to get exports
out even close to the time the 16” MacBook Pro can. It’s throttling—hard. Now, does it
throttle to the point that it’s no faster than an M3 Pro 14” MacBook Pro? No, but its sometimes
slower than an M1 Max Mac Studio—something that benchmarks would very much suggest is impossible.
My point here is that for years, Apple had the exact same Intel chip SKUs as other
computer makers. The silicon was never their selling point. That is until M1,
when that formula got flipped on its head and Mac owners were—for the first time ever—able to
be braggadocios about their computer’s speed. But Apple is pushing against technological limits and
others are catching up—so lets sit the silicon aside for a minute and focus again on Apple’s
hardware design. As I see it, the entire MacBook lineup is basically the same. Sure,
the Air has a lower-quality display and worse speakers than the 14” MacBook Pro and the 15”
Air is cheaper than the 16” Pro, but I mean come on… these machines are closer in design,
size, footprint, weight, and feature-set than ever before. There’s no laptop that truly takes
advantage of the form-factor provided by Apple silicon’s insane performance per watt. Imagine
a laptop even thinner, smaller, and lighter than the 2015 12” MacBook—a computer that still feels
impossible today—nearly a decade after its release. Only this time, it doesn’t have to be
hamstrung by a crappy low-TDP Intel chip and lousy I/O. Would it be slower than an M3 Air? Sure. But
how many people own—heck—a base M1 MacBook Air and have never even approached the limits of that
chip? I’d venture to say MOST—and if your silicon can enable those impressive form factors… do it!
On the other end of the spectrum, why not put an M3 ULTRA in a 16” laptop that’s a
bit on the hefty-side—the style that gamers and creators buy all the time on team Windows/Linux?
A chip that just absolutely screams when needed with the thermal headroom to do it,
but while maintaining the excellent idle efficiency offered by Apple’s low-power
cores. It could be the first “gaming” laptop with a battery that doesn’t die in like 4 hours.
What I'm getting at is this - when Apple decided to make their own silicon,
it was a bold, risky move. It paid off massively. The M1 series will be remembered as some of the
greatest computers ever. But it also feels like that was the last time Apple really took a risk,
and I think its time they stop sitting on their laurels and get back to work before
the rest of the industry catches up. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below,
but most importantly—and as always—stay snazzy.
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