Locator: 47993TECH.
Note: in a long note like this, there will be content and typographical errors.
Note: in all my notes, I miss facts, factoids, memes and opinions -- it is often hard to separate one from others; and, I seldom point out facts vs opinions. In other words, everything I post needs to be fact-checked.
M4 launch, May 20, 2024 -- today we'll see.
Incredibly difficult for Tim Cook to articulate all of this. Apple is playing the long game.
Chips, semiconductor: link here.
- Home page for tech: link here.
- The cloud: link here.
- Streaming: link here. Streaming wars.
- Spatial computing: link here.
- Generative AI: link here.
- Apple Silicon: link here.
- tech: chip count updates.
- Supercomputers: link here.
- Data centers: link here.
- System on a chip (SOC): link here.
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M4
Inverse, February 24, 2024: gaming.
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Cores
Intel CPUs with P cores and E cores, March 24, 2023. A forum. Nice background for early discussion.
- One comment, from an individual who doesn't get it:
E Cores are actually quite powerful by themselves. Even if the processors only had E Cores, they would still perform nicely and powerfully. Intel are adding up E Cores so that the total Power Usage and heat dispersion of said generations of CPUs are lowered down, while at the same time the number of Cores is high. If we had 24 P Cores instead of 8 P and 16 E Cores, the power draw and temperatures would increase dramatically, so the P cores would have to be downclocked in order that the processor outputs the same heat and intakes the same amount of electricity as in the scenario with 8 P Cores at a much higher frequency and 16 E Cores at a lower one.
E Cores are quite powerful and give out the possibility for more cores with an overall lesser effect on power draw and heat dispersion. If there were no E Cores and Intel wanted there to be P Cores only, they'd have to decrease the clocks of the P Cores significantly in order to obtain the same specifications (in regards to TDP and temperature) they would with the addition of E Cores (differing from P Cores in the margins they leave out for heat and power consumption by running at lower speeds and harboring a pertinent architecture).
- Raptor Lake = 13th gen Core, Alder Lake = 12th gen Core, Rocket Lake = 11th gen Core, Comet Lake = 10th gen Core.
Comment: the above links helped me understand what Apple / Tim Cook are doing with regard to M4.
Apple M4 is an ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series, including a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU), a neural processing unit (NPU), and a digital signal processor (DSP).
It was introduced in May 2024 for the iPad Pro (M4), and is the fourth generation of the M series Apple Silicon architecture, succeeding the Apple M3.
According to Apple, the M4 SoC's Neural Engine is capable of 38 trillion operations per second, "which is 60x faster than Apple’s first Neural Engine in the A11 Bionic chip."
The SoC is built upon a 3-nanometer process, and features 3 or 4 performance cores, 6 efficiency cores, and 10 graphics processing cores. [Note: I am unaware of any other "brand-name/big-name building 3-nanometer chips."]
The M4 is the world's fastest consumer SoC in single core performance according to the Geekbench benchmarking suite, (beating Apple's M3 Max and Intel's Core i9 desktop CPUs), and rivals Apple's M3 Pro desktop CPU in multi-core performance. [Note: emphasis on CPU -- so yesterday.]
It is the first iPad SoC to support AV1 decode, and has a new display controller that Apple claims is necessary to support the iPad Pro (7th generation)'s Tandem OLED display.
It is rumored the Apple M4 is Apple's first SoC which uses the ARMv9 architecture for its CPU cores, ARMv9.4 to be specific.
It also could support Arm's SME2 extension, which was announced in 2022 and is a superset of SME and SVE2, to accelerate matrix operations. This is likely the cause of the majority of the estimated 7.6% Instructions Per Cycle (IPC) uplift from M3 Max, which would only be 3.0% without the new matrix extensions.
Posted previously, if Apple's market cap it $3 trillion, one can look at this like this:
- hardware: $1 trillion; predominantly iPhone; Apple is struggling how to balance laptop vs tablet; desktop targets "Hollywood" as well as US government intel agencies;
- generally, analysts -- publicly -- only focus on iPhones;
- services: $1 trillion; ecosystem unparalleled; in fact, the "heat sheet" shows only one consumer electronic, Apple
- Apple Silicon: chip company; partnered / joined at the hip with TSM
- playing the long game
- seems to have accelerated push from M1 to M4
- partnership with Google, OpenAI
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Data Centers
This is incredibly important. Do this. Google: apple acdc.
See the first hit. It's not often that a "generic" search or "specific" search like apple acdc would deliver this hit. This is incredible remarkable.
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Challenge
Incredibly difficult for Tim Cook to articulate all of this. Apple is playing the long game.
I think it's important to remember the history of Steve Jobs / Apple and Microsoft / Xbox.
One link here. Additional links pending.
Some suggest Elon Musk is juggling too many balls: Tesla, X, SpaceX, the Boring Company, etc.
One could argue that Apple / Tim Cook is in that same bind:
- long game / short game
- research / marketing
- music / gaming
- sports / movies
- more partners / fewer partners
Advantage? Apple.
- the 3-nm M4 bridges all of Apple's interests and strategic plans.
- the 3-nm M4 has set the bar for the industry
- among everything else, what folks seem to want most in mobile environment: at least a full-day without re-charging
- remember years ago -- all that emphasis on wireless (NFC) charging?
- that research continues, but Jobs / Cook / Apple went a different route while waiting for NFC charging to be a real deal
Spaceholder.
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Disclaimer Briefly Reminder
- I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market,
- I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple.
- See disclaimer. This is not an investment site.
- Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them.
- Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market,
- I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple.
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