One wrinkle: The entry level MacBook Air comes with 7 GPU cores, while the 512GB version comes with an 8 core GPU.

No word on speeds and feeds for the internal storage, but Apple has been a leader in SSD performance. StorageĪll the new systems come standard with 256GB of fast flash storage, configurable to 512, 1024, and 2048GB at Apple's usual exorbitant prices: about $0.40/GB. Wide busses mean that more data gets moved with every clock cycle for higher performance. The four high efficiency cores make do with a shared 4MB L2 cache, a 128KB instruction cache, and a 64KB data cache.īoth sets of cores offer what Apple calls an ultra-wide execution architecture, which I take to mean that the busses within the CPU are at least 128 bits wide and perhaps even 256 bits wide. They also sport a 192KB instruction cache and a 128KB data cache. The four high performance cores get a respectable 12MB of shared L2 cache. Also, there is no commercial DRAM being produced on a 5nm process, and there may never be since capacitors, like flash memory cells, are analog devices that need physical space to store charge, and 5nm is currently too small. First, each DRAM cell has a transistor and a capacitor - which needs regular refreshing, hence the Dynamic in the name - and with 16 billion transistors on the chip, there would be none left over for the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, etc. This is unlikely for several reasons, and I'll give two here. Update: Some writers are speculating that the M1 chip has up to 16GB of onboard DRAM, probably thanks to a confusing slide in the Apple announcement. Since the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the Mini have fans, I doubt the 16GB limit is thermal. I'll expect the future 16-inch Mac Pro to have a more powerful chip - M2? - and support 64GB or more memory, with or without a discrete GPU. So the performance is improved over discrete GPUs, but the shared memory may throttle some graphically intense applications. Graphics resources, such as textures, images and geometry data, can be shared between the CPU and GPU efficiently, with no overhead, as there's no need to copy data across a PCIe bus. means that the GPU and CPU are working over the same memory. What is Unified Memory? According to Apple: What's more, the touted Unified Memory Architecture just means that 16GB is shared between the CPU and graphics.

The new M1 iMac highlights everything that's wrong with AppleĪpple spent a lot of time emphasizing the power of the new M1 chip, but barely mentioned the 16GB memory limitation.

M1 MacBook Air: After 3 months use, here's what I wish I'd known.Apple M1: Will storage and memory limits be a problem for pros?.Mac Mini review: Most affordable M1 Mac offers great value.M1 MacBook Air review: Doesn't beat my Intel MacBook Pro.Apple's M1 chip launch raised more questions than it answered.

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