News Mac Studio Dissected: M1 Ultra About 3x Bigger Than AMD's Ryzen CPUs

[Admin]

Mac Studio dissected: A masterpiece of high-precision engineering that will obstruct repairability.

Mac Studio Dissected: M1 Ultra About 3x Bigger Than AMD's Ryzen CPUs : Read more

 

[PiranhaTech]

I agree with the article. There's SSDs that have a very small form factor like the 2242.

 

[Historical Fidelity]

There are many grammar errors in this article. “But what these design hides are Apple's massive M1 Ultra processor package”
“some of the latter dissect these PCs to find out their internal design and architecture.”
“Since we are two M1 Maxes”
“But with Mac Studio, the company decided that change the design bit and use modular SSDs”

where is the Tom’s Hardware editor? Pretty much every article I’ve read has some form of grammar error, but this article is particularly guilty. Producing articles free of language error is one of the oldest requirements of journalism. A little bit of quality control would be nice.

 

[Geef]

Imagine a Ryzen 7 processor of that size...

Lets see, 512 cores, 256MB L1 cache, 1GB L2 cache, 32GB L3 cache...

There is also a Ryzen X3D series which doubles the cache and lets you overclock 511 cores. It keeps one core at normal to keep the AMD Haters at bay by giving them something to hate on.

 

[Co BIY]

The heat spreader is huge but the cooling system doesn't seem to make contact with that much of it based on the shadow that remains.

 

[hotaru.hino]

It's a promo shot, but it does show how the package is laid out

So the heat sink only needs to make contact with the middle. There's probably some thermal pads or whatnot for the RAM, but they likely don't dissipate enough heat to be a problem.

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

That is a wild CPU, truly amazing.

Reminds me of Intel's failed IA64 CPUs, that were massive compared to their AMD64 ones, but this is even bigger. Incredible.

 

[Deleted member 1353997]

The M1 Ultra may be 3x bigger than a Ryzen CPU, but 2/3 of it is just the RAM, which a Ryzen CPU doesn't have.

 

[escksu]

Its rather inaccurate to say that M1 Ultra is 3x the size of Ryzen. 2/3 of the space in that heat spreader is taken up by 8 RAM modules.

What really incredible about the M1 Ultra is that despite its die size, it uses even less power than the Ryzen (M1 CPU alone is around 60W, Ryzen 105W).

The GPU is even more impressive. No doubt its not as powerful as RTX3090 (nowhere near it). But its pretty close to RTX3070 at a fraction of its power. Now imagine what it could do with Apple decides to add more "cores" increase the power envelope to 200W..

 

[escksu]

The M1 Ultra may be 3x bigger than a Ryzen CPU, but 2/3 of it is just the RAM, which a Ryzen CPU doesn't have.

Yes, and Ryzen does not have GPU too (unless its the G series). ITs GPU is also way more power than any AMD/Intel equivalent.

So, here we have. A powerful CPU with integrated GPU thats incredibly powerful and yet low power consumption (low compared to Intel/AMD/Nvidia equivalents).

 

[Historical Fidelity]

Yes, and Ryzen does not have GPU too (unless its the G series). ITs GPU is also way more power than any AMD/Intel equivalent.

So, here we have. A powerful CPU with integrated GPU thats incredibly powerful and yet low power consumption (low compared to Intel/AMD/Nvidia equivalents).

Most of the additional power that AMD/intel CPU’s use is for the added transistor complexity and transistor real estate needed for backwards compatibility of all of x86’s instructions. X86 processors must be able to utilize seldom used instructions dating all the way back to the 1980’s. That is the #1 difference in power consumption vs ARM. That’s why comparing arm/Apple vs x86 is apples and oranges.

 

[hotaru.hino]

What really incredible about the M1 Ultra is that despite its die size, it uses even less power than the Ryzen (M1 CPU alone is around 60W, Ryzen 105W).

The GPU is even more impressive. No doubt its not as powerful as RTX3090 (nowhere near it). But its pretty close to RTX3070 at a fraction of its power. Now imagine what it could do with Apple decides to add more "cores" increase the power envelope to 200W..

A thing to consider with Apple's power efficiency is that they're using a 5nm process. Considering the first M1 computers were released back in late 2020, it's likely that TSMC has had time to make improvements, though there hasn't been any literature on that. NVIDIA is using an improved 10nm process and AMD is still on a 7nm process.

Also consider that desktop parts tend to not be designed for efficiency, they're designed for raw performance. If you tune or design the part for efficiency to begin with, you can get some interesting results. For example, the notebook RTX 3080 can get up to 80% performance of a 3070 Ti desktop, while using around half the power. And then there was that jump from Kepler to Maxwell 2 where NVIDIA manage to get the same performance out of ~25% fewer transistors.

Most of the additional power that AMD/intel CPU’s use is for the added transistor complexity and transistor real estate needed for backwards compatibility of all of x86’s instructions. X86 processors must be able to utilize seldom used instructions dating all the way back to the 1980’s. That is the #1 difference in power consumption vs ARM. That’s why comparing arm/Apple vs x86 is apples and oranges.

If those transistors aren't being fired up, they're not sucking any power. If anything, most of the inefficiencies of x86 is simply because it's a CISC ISA and it takes more to figure out what an instruction is actually doing.

 

[jp7189]

Transistor count is a useful metric to add to the discussion:

M1 Ultra = 114b transistors
Ryzen 5950x = 19b
RTX 3090 = 28b

 

[maik80]

PERFECT, in addition to a powerful video card, whoever made this article tried to make a stupid comparison.

 

[waltc3]

It's two M1 CPUs put together, apparently. Apple is discovering that going into the CPU business is not a simple matter at all... But when Apple marketing gets involved--it's always the "best/fastest" widget "in the world," which is pretty much never true at all. I don't know why people like buying from a company that thinks they are idiots...

 

[spongiemaster]

The M1 Ultra may be 3x bigger than a Ryzen CPU, but 2/3 of it is just the RAM, which a Ryzen CPU doesn't have.

I think they mean the actually die is 3x larger which is certainly believable since it's two CPU's glued together, each with a giant GPU. Looking at the picture, the heat spreader looks at least 4x bigger than the Ryzen, though I don't see what importance that information is.

 

[Co BIY]

With everybody going for tiles in the future heat speaders are going to get big everywhere.

I want to see the back cooling.

 

[dwn2brasstacks]

This is more of the same. It is a direct result of apple not advancing technology so much as Apple once again proprietizing. They are essentially taking existing technology and making their own products with the first thought, "how can we make this only serviceable/upgradable/controllable in every way by only us." This was a bad precedent from the beginning, this is why I despise Apple.
You give up a lot when you support hand holding and catering to the Karens. If you are the type to fix things yourself, build your own pc and generally be independant then you should not be supporting companies like Apple.

 

[JamesJones44]

Imagine a Ryzen 7 processor of that size...

Lets see, 512 cores, 256MB L1 cache, 1GB L2 cache, 32GB L3 cache...

There is also a Ryzen X3D series which doubles the cache and lets you overclock 511 cores. It keeps one core at normal to keep the AMD Haters at bay by giving them something to hate on.

It's only 3x bigger and houses two processors + GPU. Simple math, 5950x * 3 is 48 cores and probably generates 500 watts of heat that would need liquid cooling... but yeah sure lets make it 512 for fan boy reasons and go jerk it in the shower.

 

[Giroro]

Hold up, this computer has TWO entire fans?
That must be a VERY advanced cooling system!

But more seriously, in what way is the Apple heat spreader 3x bigger than the Ryzen heat spreader? By length/width? By area? How big is the heat spreader, in general? How big is the M1U die?
How about we take some real measurements to accompany the 9 paragraphs of marketing copy?

 

[Giroro]

It's only 3x bigger and houses two processors + GPU. Simple math, 5950x * 3 is 48 cores and probably generates 500 watts of heat that would need liquid cooling... but yeah sure lets make it 512 for fan boy reasons and go jerk it in the shower.

AMD makes a product that is literally a 48 core 5950x * 3. It is the Epic 7643. It has a TDP of 225 W, costs $5500 (GPU not included), and it probably outperforms the M1 Ultra.

 

[hotaru.hino]

But more seriously, in what way is the Apple heat spreader 3x bigger than the Ryzen heat spreader? By length/width? By area? How big is the heat spreader, in general? How big is the M1U die?
How about we take some real measurements to accompany the 9 paragraphs of marketing copy?

They probably took the screenshot and counted the pixels between the two. Which if you do that, it comes out to about 3x the area.

 

[JamesJones44]

AMD makes a product that is literally a 48 core 5950x * 3. It is the Epic 7643. It has a TDP of 225 W, costs $5500 (GPU not included), and it probably outperforms the M1 Ultra.

Well 48 * 3 isn't 512 and 225 * 3 is over 500 watts, so again... Fanboy dreaming jerking it in the shower.