So I’ve made quite a few videos last week
discussing what we should expect for the future
with Apple’s upcoming ARM-based Macs, but
I’m still getting comments where people
aren’t understanding the benefits of Apple
Silicon, with some people claiming that they’ll
ditch Apple once they transition away from
Intel.
Now what a lot of people don’t understand
is that Apple’s transition isn’t just
about switching to ARM-based processors, there’s
actually a whole lot more to it that will
greatly benefit Apple’s future Macs.
So in this video, I’m gonna dive deep into
how their upcoming SoC technology is gonna
work, how it compares to current x86 processor
technology, and why it makes sense for Apple.
But first, I want to let you know that our
limited edition Apple Silicon ARM T-shirt
is available in our merch shelf just below
this video!
Currently, Intel-based Macs like the 16”
MacBook Pro have a CPU, a dedicated GPU, memory
for each of them, and more recent Macs have
a T2 chip which adds things like a storage
controller and coprocessors.
With Apple Silicon, all of that is gonna be
built into one system on a chip, or SoC.
The main benefit is that all of those components,
from the CPU to the graphics, the memory,
the new neural engine and the machine learning
accelerators will all be able to communicate
with each other much more efficiently compared
to before.
So let me give you an example from intel-based
Macs. Current dedicated GPUs have to communicate
with the CPU using the PCI express bus, which
means there is added latency.
I found some white papers from semanticscholar.org
discussing this, so here’s a quote from
a paper named efficient data communication
between the CPU and GPU.
“Limited by low bandwidth and high latency
interconnects, larger page migration has longer
delay, which may reduce the overlap of computation
and transmission and cause serious performance
decline.”
So when there is more latency, like when you’re
using PCI express for the GPU, the rest of
the system like the CPU has to wait before
it can continue processing, reducing overall
performance.
Here’s a quote from another page titled
unlocking bandwidth for GPUs.
“In the near future, systems will appear
where software page migration is an optional
choice and hardware cache-coherence can also
support the GPU accessing CPU memory directly.”
And this is exactly what Apple is doing with
their new ARM-based Macs.
If you look at this old diagram from 2015,
you’ll see that at the bottom, the GPU and
CPU have a cache coherent link which raises
the bandwidth from 16GB/s to 100Gb/s, except
in Apple’s case, the GPU will now have direct
access to system memory on top of all of that.
So basically, Apple’s thought process is
that if they can greatly reduce the latency
in communication between all of these components,
then each component has less of a wait time
before it can start its specific task, and
system performance in general will go up thanks
to increased efficiency.
And this ultimately means that you can get
better real-world performance with less RAW
power, and that’s before accounting for
software optimization, which Apple Silicon
will greatly benefit from since Apple will
directly control both the hardware and the
software for the first time ever on a Mac.
That’s the exact same reason why the iPhone
is the fastest smartphone in the world, while
also getting great battery life.
And this is also why our 2020 iPad Pro is
now over 20% faster in terms of graphics performance
just by upgrading to iPadOS 14 beta, so control
over both the software and the hardware means
incredible optimization.
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Back to Apple Silicon, people are comparing
the A12Z chip from the 2020 iPad Pro to current
Intel chips to see if it’s worth it, but
this is actually a mistake.
First of all, the processor side of the A12Z
is basically unchanged from the A12X from
2018, since Apple chose not to improve it
again since the competition is still nowhere
near the 2018 iPad Pro.
That chip is made using 7nm tech built by
TSMC, the leader in ARM chip manufacturing.
Apple’s upcoming Mac family of SoCs will
actually use the 5nm fabrication process,
and according to TSMC, that should bring a
15% performance improvement per watt.
But it doesn’t stop there, TSMC has confirmed
that they’ll be shipping 3nm chips in 2022,
and that should give us another 10-15% performance
boost per watt.
So if we take the current A12X chip and change
nothing at all except for switching out the
7nm chip for a 3nm chip, the performance will
go from a Geekbench 5 multi-core score of
4,606 to between 5,757 to 5,987.
Those scores are much higher than Intel’s
brand new 10nm i7 quad-core chip from the
2020 13” MacBook Pro., and that’s coming
from a much smaller chip that is passively
cooled in an iPad Pro that’s 38% thinner
than the iPhone 11 Pro.
Now what a lot of people don’t realize is
that the Apple Silicon chips that will be
used in Macs are going to be a brand new family
of chips, which means that Apple is most likely
going to scale the size of the chip much larger
now that they don’t have to fit it into
a thin tablet.
And they’re also gonna allow it to use more
power, since the batteries in Macs are much
larger than the ones in the iPad Pro, and
they’ll be able to add active fan cooling
giving them a lot more thermal heatroom.
However, these Apple Silicon Macs are gonna
have better battery life since they’ll use
asymmetric cores, meaning that they’ll have
both high performance and efficiency cores.
And those scores from before don’t factor
in any other improvements made by Apple which
could be memory speed improvements and further
optimizations.
So that was just the future potential of the
processor side of the Apple Silicon chip.
Now let’s get into the graphics side.
I already made a video explaining why Apple
is no longer gonna use dedicated graphics
chips for their consumer Apple Silicon Macs.
The graphics will be built-into the main chip,
which like I mentioned earlier, will greatly
reduce the latency in terms of communication
with the CPU and the other components.
So like I said, you can get more real-world
performance with less RAW graphics power.
If you don’t believe me, let me prove it
to you.
We recently compared our Mac Pro to a Windows
PC in terms of video editing.
As far as RAW performance, you can see that
the PC had over twice as much processor performance,
and over 60% more graphics performance than
the Mac Pro’s AMD Vega 2 GPU, so the PC
is clearly much faster.
However, when we tested video editing in Davinci
Resolve 16 Studio, which is a cross-platform
program, the Mac Pro was actually faster at
exporting a 5min RAW 6K clip.
And even while stabilizing a 1 minute 4K clip,
the Mac Pro was yet again faster than the
PC, showing that RAW performance doesn’t
always mean more real-world performance.
And this is without considering all of the
technology that’s coming to Apple Silicon
Macs.
But let me remind you again, the A12Z chip
in the super thin iPad Pro currently has about
20% more graphics performance than Intel’s
brand new 10th-gen i7 processor in the 2020
13” MacBook Pro. Now imagine if they scaled
the processor up and added the benefits from
everything being packed into one main chip,
like the unified memory architecture.
Some users commented that this shared memory
is too slow compared to the current GDDR6
memory in dedicated graphics chips, but they’re
completely forgetting that Apple Silicon Macs
will have their own dedicated on-chip Tile
Memory, which could very well be the incredibly
fast HBM2 memory.
So check out this example by Apple showing
how developers can optimize the graphics to
access the tile memory more often so that
it won’t have to access the system RAM as
often, reducing the use of DRAM bandwidth.
So Apple’s goal is to streamline graphics
processing to free up as much system memory
bandwidth as possible, which will reduce the
chances of a bottleneck, and then combined
with incredibly low latency, every component
in the entire system can be utilized much
better than on a traditional x86 Intel processor.
Like the T2 chip which currently takes care
of HEVC transcoding, which will now have reduced
latency since it’s built into the main chip
instead of being somewhere else on the motherboard
like it is in current Intel-based Macs.
These are the types of improvements that will
allow Apple to achieve great real-world performance
even if they have less RAW performance due
to no longer using large dedicated graphics
chips.
So now let me finish off with two more major
benefits of Apple Silicon, Macs will be even
more secure than ever before now that they’re
ditching Intel and it’s MANY hardware vulnerabilities
like Meltdown, Spectre, Zombieload and much
more.
And a huge benefit to Apple Silicon is that
we no longer have to deal with AMD graphics
driver issues, the same issues that cause
your 16” MacBook Pro to overheat when connected
to a display. With Apple’s ARM-based Macs,
all of that is going away.
But of course, this is a major transition
and it won’t be perfect right out of the
gate, since it could potentially take developers
a year or two before they fully optimize their
apps for Apple Silicon.
So hopefully you learned something new from
this video, and if you did, go ahead and click
the circle above to subscribe for more videos
like this one. And if you’re as excited
as I am for Apple’s ARM-Based Macs, be sure
to check out our limited edition ARM shirt
right below this video. And if you’re wondering
how this will affect gaming on Mac, definitely
watch that video right over there. Thanks
for watching, and we’ll see you in the next
video!
