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Hardware Apple

Apple's Chip Lab: Now 15 Years Old With Thousands of Engineers (cnbc.com) 68

Posted by EditorDavid from the in-the-chips dept.
"As of this year, all new Mac computers are powered by Apple's own silicon, ending the company's 15-plus years of reliance on Intel," according to a new report from CNBC.

"Apple's silicon team has grown to thousands of engineers working across labs all over the world, including in Israel, Germany, Austria, the U.K. and Japan. Within the U.S., the company has facilities in Silicon Valley, San Diego and Austin, Texas..." The latest A17 Pro announced in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max in September enables major leaps in features like computational photography and advanced rendering for gaming. "It was actually the biggest redesign in GPU architecture and Apple silicon history," said Kaiann Drance, who leads marketing for the iPhone. "We have hardware accelerated ray tracing for the first time. And we have mesh shading acceleration, which allows game developers to create some really stunning visual effects." That's led to the development of iPhone-native versions from Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Mirage, The Division Resurgence and Capcom's Resident Evil 4.

Apple says the A17 Pro is the first 3-nanometer chip to ship at high volume. "The reason we use 3-nanometer is it gives us the ability to pack more transistors in a given dimension. That is important for the product and much better power efficiency," said the head of Apple silicon, Johny Srouji . "Even though we're not a chip company, we are leading the industry for a reason." Apple's leap to 3-nanometer continued with the M3 chips for Mac computers, announced in October. Apple says the M3 enables features like 22-hour battery life and, similar to the A17 Pro, boosted graphics performance...

In a major shift for the semiconductor industry, Apple turned away from using Intel's PC processors in 2020, switching to its own M1 chip inside the MacBook Air and other Macs. "It was almost like the laws of physics had changed," Ternus said. "All of a sudden we could build a MacBook Air that's incredibly thin and light, has no fan, 18 hours of battery life, and outperformed the MacBook Pro that we had just been shipping." He said the newest MacBook Pro with Apple's most advanced chip, the M3 Max, "is 11 times faster than the fastest Intel MacBook Pro we were making. And we were shipping that just two years ago." Intel processors are based on x86 architecture, the traditional choice for PC makers, with a lot of software developed for it. Apple bases its processors on rival Arm architecture, known for using less power and helping laptop batteries last longer.

Apple's M1 in 2020 was a proving point for Arm-based processors in high-end computers, with other big names like Qualcomm — and reportedly AMD and Nvidia — also developing Arm-based PC processors. In September, Apple extended its deal with Arm through at least 2040.
Since Apple first debuted its homegrown semiconductors in 2010 in the iPhone 4, other companies started pursuing their own custom semiconductor development, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Tesla.

CNBC reports that Apple is also reportedly working on its own Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip. Apple's Srouji wouldn't comment on "future technologies and products" but told CNBC "we care about cellular, and we have teams enabling that."
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Apple's Chip Lab: Now 15 Years Old With Thousands of Engineers More

Apple's Chip Lab: Now 15 Years Old With Thousands of Engineers

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  • Enabling (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I wonder what sort of other things they are enabling.

    • Re:Enabling (Score:4, Interesting)

      by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @12:47AM (#64050343)

      VR and AI seem like they will be the biggest future demand for CPU power. Beyond that, increased battery life/lighter and thinner laptop could be a big one.

      • It's not VR what Apple is focusing on, it is AR. And I see a big need for processing power using ML models to enhance 3D imaging. Applying a photo realistic filter in realtime to created 3D scenes for video games and other applications. This will allow to create much simpler scenes without complicated lighting or ray tracing but photo realistic 3d scenes.

      • VR and AI seem like they will be the biggest future demand for CPU power. Beyond that, increased battery life/lighter and thinner laptop could be a big one.

        When not interpreting the the GP's "enabling" as a joke, look outside the traditional CPU and GPU. For example the Neural engine. As you indicate there is the ML support in there. There is also a bit of image processing support, correcting the brightness in photos, some motion stabilization for videos, etc. IIRC there is dedicated hardware for this, not merely GPU code.

        Its also interesting to note that the apple watch has a neural engine, however it is restricted to smaller ML models. However it can hand

  • Had To Re-Read The Headline (Score:4, Funny)

    by NoWayNoShapeNoForm ( 7060585 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @12:20AM (#64050317)
    I thought the /. headline said Apple has thousands of 15 year old engineers.

  • The M3 Max has over 90 billion transistors, which is more than the number of neurons in the human brain (86 billion). Of course neurons are more powerful than transistors. Also most of them are in the cerebellum (50 billion). That's right, you only use 42% of your brain (about 36 billion neurons in the cerebrum). The "small brain" (cerebellum) contains more than half of the neurons in the brain. They are very small.

    • The M3 Max has over 90 billion transistors ...

      Its not about how big is the transistor count, its about how you use them. And Apple customers are smiling. :-)

    • I'm not a huge fan of the macOS, but I give Apple credit for designing an ARM-based CPU/GPU chip that gives Intel and AMD a challenge.

      I might be tempted to try out an M3-based Windows machine running an optimized version of Windows natively rather than virtualized or emulated. It would be interesting to see how the performance compares to an Intel/AMD machine without all the Intel Management Engine/AMD Platform Security Processor overhead.

      * Would that lead to more or less security vulnerabilities in a Wind

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Entrope ( 68843 )

        I run the ARM64 version of Windows 11 under Parallels Desktop on my M2 Max MBP, and it's impressively smooth for normal desktop use like web browsing and Microsoft Teams. (I haven't tried gaming, but I expect that would not be so impressive.) I don't think anyone has an incentive to port Windows to run directly on the hardware, and Windows will have its security problems mostly by virtue of being Windows -- virtualization is an effective way to sandbox those. So if you can live with virtualization, the f

        • I don't think anyone has an incentive to port Windows to run directly on the hardware

          Apple sales doubled when they removed the "PC or Mac" question by introducing Boot Camp and allowing Windows to run natively on Mac hardware. Windows running natively on Mac hardware, Intel or ARM, makes picking a Mac over a PC so much easier. Legacy Intel software is not the issue it was is WinNT 4 days when MS support PowerPC and Alpha, Microsoft has a Intel binary to ARM binary translator just like Apple. So legacy software will be running natively on the hardware as well, its a little less efficient tha

          • While Boot Camp was useful for some people, I'd peg it as a niche feature. It seems more likely the Intel portables were a serious upgrade from the stagnating G4 line. Similarly M1 sales were good, those machines presenting attractive upgrades from older Macs, despite losing the ability to run x86 operating systems.

            I looked and couldn't find any details on adoption of Boot Camp. Could be I'm wrong, but I don't imagine anything but a minority of users wanting to dual-boot macOS and Windows. Certainly losing

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by drnb ( 2434720 )

              While Boot Camp was useful for some people, I'd peg it as a niche feature.

              Keep in mind its not merely about Boot Camp actually being used. Its about Boot Camp being there, just in case. Its about the removal of the PC or Mac question, formerly a barrier to buying Mac.

              It seems more likely the Intel portables were a serious upgrade from the stagnating G4 line.

              The switch to Intel and the ability to run Windows via Boot Camp were BOTH important to sales. However without Boot Camp there still was the "PC or Mac" barrier. Without Boot Camp the switch to Intel would have kept existing Mac users on Mac, but would not really cause many PC users to switch. It was Boot Camp that r

              • >Keep in mind it's not merely about Boot Camp actually being used. It's about Boot Camp being there, just in case. It's about the removal of the PC or Mac question, formerly a barrier to buying Mac.

                >The switch to Intel and the ability to run Windows via Boot Camp were BOTH important to sales. However without Boot Camp there still was the "PC or Mac" barrier. Without Boot Camp the switch to Intel would have kept existing Mac users on Mac, but would not really cause many PC users to switch. It was Boot

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by drnb ( 2434720 )

                  Sure, that likely was a factor for some people. My point is that I don't see evidence it was the big factor. Look at market share. Back in 2006 when the Intel transition began, Apple wasn't in the global top five for computers shipped since the mid 90s. It was only in 2015 they made an appearance with 7.2%.

                  The timing of a switch from PC hardware to Mac hardware isn't really tied to Apple's introduction of new products, it has more to do with a person thinking they need to replace their current PC. PCs and Macs are so incredibly overpowered for what most people do that they last a long time. A 7 or 8 year old PC or Mac is kind of common.

                  I also think you need to look at the number of Macs sold not marketshare. It the number of Windows users is growing faster than the number of Mac users then Apple can be sel

                  • >The timing of a switch from PC hardware to Mac hardware isn't really tied to Apple's introduction of new products, it has more to do with a person thinking they need to replace their current PC. PCs and Macs are so incredibly overpowered for what most people do that they last a long time. A 7 or 8 year old PC or Mac is kind of common.

                    Agreed, and that's my point. I don't think Boot Camp or its loss is particularly significant in terms of sales.

                    >I also think you need to look at the number of Macs sold

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by drnb ( 2434720 )

                      While you can run Mac native software incredibly well, virtualising x86 is nowhere near what it was on x86 hardware.

                      There is no virtualization. Both Apple and Microsoft convert native x86 code to native ARM code, binary to binary conversion. A full one-time conversion on first execution. The resulting apps are completely normal native ARM apps. Just a little less efficient than if they had been compiled from source code.

                      Virtualization only occurs when you are running ARM Windows in an emulator, ie Windows is running as an app under macOS. That has more to do with the protected mode operations that operating systems mu

                    • Yeah, binary translation works pretty well on macOS. I've only rarely seen software that's unusable.

                      I meant virtualisation. Although the virtualisation framework is coming alone, it has some annoying limitations that prevent the kind of testing I was able to do with virtualised macOS.

            • I feel like the utility of Boot Camp went away once VMs reached a point where the hosted OS doesn't take a huge performance hit from running virtually. At that point, it doesn't make sense to have to reboot just to get into a different OS when I can just run it along with everything else in the same session.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by drnb ( 2434720 )

                I feel like the utility of Boot Camp went away once VMs reached a point where the hosted OS doesn't take a huge performance hit from running virtually. At that point, it doesn't make sense to have to reboot just to get into a different OS when I can just run it along with everything else in the same session.

                This is certainly true to a degree. If you don't have to emulate a CPU architecture, host and vm use the same CPU, then virtual machines often becomes practical. However there are still some hurdles. You may need to upgrade RAM to get reasonable performance. Some apps don't work under emulation. Video games, if they run, will probably be better under Boot Camp. If its a high performance app in general you may be better off in Boot Camp.

                Like I mentioned elsewhere, Boot Camp may simply be a security blanke

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Entrope ( 68843 )

                  Who's going to develop graphics drivers that work well under some other OS? Apple doesn't want to undercut their macOS ecosystem, and doesn't want to share the details of their graphics architecture (or other hardware) that would allow anyone else to do that. Apple Silicon hardware already supports bring-your-own boot images -- it is what Asahi Linux uses -- but Apple doesn't share the details to let anyone do useful things with that, and doesn't actively support other OSes either. Those are major impedi

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by drnb ( 2434720 )

                    Who's going to develop graphics drivers that work well under some other OS?

                    Apple has been doing such drivers for Windows for decades.

                    Apple doesn't want to undercut their macOS ecosystem ...

                    Any system needing such Apple drivers is a Mac sold by Apple. They are not undercutting their ecosystem.

                    Boot Camp does not replace macOS, it complements macOS, it increases the capabilities of Mac hardware.
                    Boot Camp makes it easier to bring new people into the Apple ecosystem by removing incompatibility fears.

                    Apple Silicon hardware already supports bring-your-own boot images

                    Boot Camp is more than that. It manages updating the disc partitions, the Windows installation, and adds Apple drivers. It makes the proces

    • Synaptic connections - that modify themselves through learning - number in the order of 100 trillion.

      That's right, you only use 42% of your brain (about 36 billion neurons in the cerebrum)

      I assure you, you use the rest of them too.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by vivian ( 156520 )

        I think the "you only use x% of your brain" claim mostly originates from the fact that a lot of your brain is busy doing stuff like running your body and making your autonomous muscles move, as opposed to doing stuff that we consider to be part of consciousness. I wouldn't want to do without it, but if you are trying to come up with a General AI that has the equivalence of human consciousness and thought, you probably don't need as many neurons and synapses as a healthy human brain, since you wouldn't need

        • I would argue that everything to do with our physical movements is part and parcel of human consciousness. Our ability to reason comes from manipulating idealized physical simulations in our brain, which we would use on actual physical objects, in a feedback loop.

          The whole "General AI" thing is a red herring. What people actually are looking for is "human-like AI", which is not general in the slightest, but highly adapted to our physical surroundings. And we approach everything from that "training", whic

          • The whole "General AI" thing is a red herring. What people actually are looking for is "human-like AI", which is not general in the slightest, but highly adapted to our physical surroundings.

            Forgetting the A part of AI for now. Yep, intelligence is a mixed bag. There's definitely a bunch of fixed purpose hacks in there (for example time to contact vision goes via a different and shorter neural circuit than the rest of the vision processing parts of your brain, to the point where people blinded by certain br

            • At some point though I reckon it gets easier to evolve

              There's simply no such thing happening. There is no selection pressure to go beyond being adapted to the physical world.

              A flock of sheep for example at their current level of evolution could never make any.

              Yeah... not the point I was making.

              We are slaves to the physical world, and we need computers with software that doesn't have a need to deal with physical representations to do the maths for us. To transcend our blindspots developed from physical intuition, which even the top mathematicians and physicists suffer from. They haven't managed to make real progress on String Theory or Loop Q

              • There's simply no such thing happening. There is no selection pressure to go beyond being adapted to the physical world.

                I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. Evolution is never going to push things beyond what help for being adapted to the physical world, but after a certain point abstract reasoning assists problem solving in the physical world.

                To transcend our blindspots developed from physical intuition, which even the top mathematicians and physicists suffer from. They haven't managed to make rea

        • It actually came from century-old self-help books which told you you were only using ten percent of your potential, with the solution being to buy the self-help book to unlock the rest of it. Over time this mutated into "... of your brain" rather than "... of your potential", and you no longer needed to buy self-help books to fix the problem.

        • Even the vast majority of your "thinking" neurons in your brain do not participate in the production of consciousness. The "unconscious" neurons are programmed when you do things repeatedly (like opening a door or doing math problems) by creating and reinforcing paths, so there need to be a lot more of those compared to the "consciousness" participating neurons.

          I find it fascinating that your conscious brain literally writes programs into the unconscious brain, which are then quickly executed later. Turns

      • Well, YOU do.
        HE probably not :P

    • Each neuron is probably like a few hundred transistors of computation.

  • AI chip designer (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @12:51AM (#64050349)

    Once the materials spec is provided by the fab, it seems like AI should be able to design a CPU, especially digital (analog maybe not) better than any human.

    • "better than any human"
      Better than you? Sure.
      Better than me? Well, there's a reason they're still paying me the medium bucks...

  • Real life Tyrell Corporation (Score:3)

    by gizmo2199 ( 458329 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @01:37AM (#64050377) Homepage

    If there was a company approximating Blade Runner's Tyrell Corporation it has to be Apple, right?

    They're sitting on over $60 billion dollars in cash (those iPhones were VERY profitable). That's about 50% of Intel's market cap. Not including Apple's own market cap of almost $3 Trillion dollars--more than the GDP of most countries.

    Instead of buying Intel, they decided to build their own! How long before they decide to build "replicants" iPeople, lol!

    • Re:Real life Tyrell Corporation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @01:55AM (#64050399)

      How long before they decide to build "replicants" iPeople, lol!

      Yeah, here's how that would go...

      Scenario 1

      You: Hi there, Sally Apple! How are you doing today?

      Sally: (after a pause) Here's what I found on the web about "how are you doing today?"

      Scenario 2

      You: Sally Apple, I think I love you! Why don't you stay over at my place tonight?

      Sally Apple (some time later that evening): It appears you are attempting to use a non-Apple-approved connector. I will remove it from you now.

  • Because all that so called AI stuff on their current chips is just child's play dipped in a lot of marketing.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      Tell that to the llama.ccp [github.com] people, who treat Apple Silicon as roughly the gold standard for their work. The combination of available RAM size and bandwidth forgives a lot of other quirks. My M2 Max is much faster for any LLM size than my Threadripper 3960X with an RTX 2080 Super.

      Yes, the "Apple Neural Engine" is heavily focused on certain problems, so it needs other things to run on the GPU or the CPU -- but Apple abstracts that behind an API so that application developers can defer worrying about it unti

  • ...[joke]Where's the haddock!?[/joke]

  • ...backward compatibility

    They change processors and OS design whenever they feel like it, and expect the fanbois to throw out their old, perfectly good hardware and software, and buy all new stuff...every few years

    They also oppose right to repair and sue recyclers who reuse parts. Yeah, they occasionally issue press releases claiming to support right to repair, but then use every trick in the "malicious compliance" book to make it nearly impossible to actually repair anything

    They are truly the distilled ess

  • ARM was used in Apple's Newton 30 years ago! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Paul Fernhout ( 109597 ) on Sunday December 03, 2023 @12:49PM (#64051039) Homepage

    And the StrongARM in particular used in the MP2000 was amazing for its time.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    But sadly the Newton was discontinued in 1998. Big loss for a lot of reasons -- including ending use of ARM processors in Apple devices.

    Apple returned to the ARM in 2007 with the iPhone (almost ten years later). And recently with the Mac.

    A missed decade (and more) of opportunity there though.

  • It would be nice if the next chip design included expanded RAM. 8gb is not enough to allow Macs to work for 10+ years, and Apple seriously must address the electronic waste created by an industry which thrives on selling This Year's Model.

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