I’m a bit worried every time I hear this. We are setting our expectations so high... doesn’t seem like it’s possible for the M2 to be as much of a leap over the M1 as the M1 was over the status quo. The M2 might be amazing, but now that we are all awake to what’s possible I doubt it’s going to blow our socks off quite as much as we hope.
But the fact that we have anything to look forward to at all is awesome. These are super exciting times in the computing space. Processors have been boring for way too long.
I think what’s so impressive about M1 though is the increase in (at least perceived) single threaded performance. We know core counts scale and that’s been the industry focus for some time. So yeah I am not expecting a huge perceived speed up from M1x/M2...but hey M1 feels nearly instantaneous I’m not really sure how big a difference a faster cpu would actually have.
So while the M1x is using the same CPU and GPU cores as the M1, the M2 will get an additional performance boost from having a newer generation of core designs.
I think we'll see more changes to other parts of the system just based on the fact that now they control the entire silicon. The next machines will probably have incredible demos with flawless "always on" face recognition that happens in microseconds and locks/unlocks your computer as you step away or sit down. Or impossibly good voice recognition that's always listening even while the machine is 'asleep' in your bag or on your desk. We'll keep seeing more and more little coprocessors, accelerators, etc. running whatever fancy machine learning model Apple engineers can dream up. And because all of this is done in the hardware it will be impossibly fast and have almost no hit to battery life. The world is their oyster now, they aren't held back by Intel's whims anymore.
Unless the M2 is a higher core version with 16-32 cores? M1 is already built on a 5nm process and you're right about the upgrades being incremental and small. But apple can bump up the core count significantly to make the m1x/m2 a big leap.
How much will the average user notice the difference between 4 and 23 high-performance cores? This will have a huge impact for highly parallel tasks like rendering, but isn't it still the case that most software still isn't designed to scale horizontally in a meaningful way?
I think the M1 is so impressive because the normal user will mostly notice the single thread and the low thread count performance, so the 4+4 configuration of the M1 hits that sweet spot. The most obvious gain would be from all the multicore loads. But for more and more heavy computing tasks, those get more common too. And I would expect any variation of the M which is tweaked towards performance rather than low power as the M1 is, to also offer a little higher clock speeds. Considering the M1 runs at 3 GHz and the most recent x86 at up to 5, there should be quite some clockspeed headroom, if Apple chooses to use it.
I feel like the M1 chips kind of broke the timeline. It's like the past ~10 years of Great Intel CPU Stagnation never happened, and we finally now get the mobile computers we thought 10 years ago that we would have in 10 years.
I think the M1X - or whatever they call the chip line with a much larger thermal envelope - will blow our socks off.
During those 10 years, mobile went huge and PC demand stagnated. You can look up corporate revenues and news coverage to verify that for yourself, if you don't believe me. It's easy to see how that market environment gave Apple a leg up. Anecdotally, I bought one or two new laptops in the 10 years prior to the pandemic, but I probably bought eight or nine different phones. And while there was a little PC innovation (mainly at the earlier part of that decade), phone hardware got sooo much better. Snapdragon SoC, waterproof flagship phones, awesome cameras, 4G, the whole nine yards. In my mind, M1 is kind of an extension of that smartphone innovation, bridged from iPad and iPhone to the Mac.
If you look at the leaps in CPU perf the iPhone/iPad has had year over year, why wouldn’t we expect this to continue with these chips which are similar in many important ways?
I’d also expect the first release was relatively conservative and restrained to ensure a low risk debut. I’m optimistic for the next few generations.
Seems like they achieve double digit performance gains in each A series chip the last few generations.
I’m excited for a 16” MacBook Pro but hoping Microsoft brings a production version of Windows 10 arm to the market. I need it for various aspects of the work I do. I can keep a spare windows box around but it’d be great to have one system.
But the fact that we have anything to look forward to at all is awesome. These are super exciting times in the computing space. Processors have been boring for way too long.