By: Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar), June 23, 2020 2:27 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Jouni Osmala (a.delete@this.b.com) on June 23, 2020 1:48 am wrote:
> > > End user macs will ship end of this year (ie A14 based, IMHO). Two year transition
> > > probably means that A15 (next year) will be the one that scales larger (beyond
> > > 8+8?) cores via whatever mechanism (chiplets? separate die?)
> >
> > I think desktop parts really are the most challenging portion
> > of the Mac line. It'll be interesting to see what they do.
>
> Apple clearly said that Apple Silicon is in the corner of power/performance graph where it
> performs like desktop but consumes as little power as laptop. So we shouldn't expect them to deliver a variant
> which gets high performance because of its high power consumption like a traditional desktop machine.
>
> If they hadn't said that I would of just speculated that they would of added more memory controllers and cores
> and GPU "cores" and storage controllers to their laptop chips and call it a day. The high end desktops are
> probably just not worth the custom silicon that is way different from everything else they offer.
>
> Now I'm not certain that they even consider the form factor. Anyway if they could deliver in tiny box or
> laptop or integrated to display good enough performance and ram and storage it probably doesn't matter.
Combining multiple SoCs as 'chiplets' into a bigger package for something like a Mac Pro seems like the simplest solution. That way they automatically get more memory controllers, more PCIe lanes and so forth without needing a special die. They'd "waste" a little die area with the fabric to link multiple chips together that would only be used in a couple of high end machines but that's not really a big deal.
A single SoC may have laptop level power consumption but if you combine say four of them, and light up the fabric blocks on them that are useless on a laptop, then that larger package has desktop level power consumption...
> > > End user macs will ship end of this year (ie A14 based, IMHO). Two year transition
> > > probably means that A15 (next year) will be the one that scales larger (beyond
> > > 8+8?) cores via whatever mechanism (chiplets? separate die?)
> >
> > I think desktop parts really are the most challenging portion
> > of the Mac line. It'll be interesting to see what they do.
>
> Apple clearly said that Apple Silicon is in the corner of power/performance graph where it
> performs like desktop but consumes as little power as laptop. So we shouldn't expect them to deliver a variant
> which gets high performance because of its high power consumption like a traditional desktop machine.
>
> If they hadn't said that I would of just speculated that they would of added more memory controllers and cores
> and GPU "cores" and storage controllers to their laptop chips and call it a day. The high end desktops are
> probably just not worth the custom silicon that is way different from everything else they offer.
>
> Now I'm not certain that they even consider the form factor. Anyway if they could deliver in tiny box or
> laptop or integrated to display good enough performance and ram and storage it probably doesn't matter.
Combining multiple SoCs as 'chiplets' into a bigger package for something like a Mac Pro seems like the simplest solution. That way they automatically get more memory controllers, more PCIe lanes and so forth without needing a special die. They'd "waste" a little die area with the fabric to link multiple chips together that would only be used in a couple of high end machines but that's not really a big deal.
A single SoC may have laptop level power consumption but if you combine say four of them, and light up the fabric blocks on them that are useless on a laptop, then that larger package has desktop level power consumption...