On March 9, Beijing time, Apple held a spring 2022 conference online to release the M1 Super Cup.
Author | Yao Yongzhe
At 2:00 a.m. Beijing time on March 9, Apple held a spring 2022 conference online. At the press conference, in addition to the release of new iPhone SE, iPad Air, Mac Studio and other new products, a new member of the M1 series was also announced: the oversized cup M1 Ultra spliced by two M1 Max. Apple announced at the press conference that the M1 Ultra can reduce the power consumption of 200W compared to the 3090 while surpassing the graphics card performance ceiling RTX 3090.
M1 Super Cup: One plus one equals two
—
Contrary to the predictions of many relevant people before, Apple did not release an iterative version of M1 M2, but did a "simple addition", putting the two M1 Max chips together to get the "super cup" version of the M1 chip M1 Ultra.
At the press conference, Apple showed us this simple and rough logic with an intuitive schematic diagram: two identical M1 Max chips were connected, and an M1 Ultra chip with twice the area was obtained.
This structure allows the M1 Ultra to have twice as many parameters as the M1 Max. The number of transistors in one M1 Ultra chip reached a staggering 114 billion. This brings powerful performance to the M1 Ultra.
The M1 Ultra's memory is twice that of the M1 Max, reaching a maximum of 128GB, a figure that is still far from Apple's Mac Pro top-of-the-line ratio, but has been able to meet the vast majority of productivity scenarios.
At the same time, Apple claims that the M1 Max has achieved unprecedented breakthroughs in both CPU and GPU performance. In the presentation PPT at the press conference, Apple set the opponents of the M1 Ultra CPU and GPU to Intel's i9 12900K and Nvidia's RTX3090 respectively, and announced that it had defeated the latter on the CPU and GPU respectively.
The CPU portion of the M1 Ultra is powered by 16 performance-focused Firestorm cores and 4 Icestorm cores that are more efficient, which brings it powerful multi-threaded computing power. While the single-core capability may not be as advanced as Intel's more advanced architecture, Apple says the M1 Ultra's CPU is capable of achieving 12900K at 160W at 60W.
In the GPU segment, Apple integrated 64 GPU cores on a single chip, breaking the record of 32 GPU cores held by its predecessor, M1 Max. According to Apple, the M1 Ultra has surpassed NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 3090 and consumes a full 200W less power than the RTX 3090.
Behind Apple's use of this simple logic of "1+1=2" to achieve a product performance jump is Apple's UltraFusion packaging technology. According to tech media Anandtech, Apple used a 2.5D packaging technology to package two M1 Max dies into M1 Ultra, a technology apple calls UltraFusion.
Anandtech introduced that although the specific technical details of 2.5D packaging technology are different, the underlying logic is common: some kind of silicon intermediary was placed under two chips, and then the two chips communicated through the intermediary layer. Apple integrates more than 10,000 cablings in the intermediary layer, which makes it possible to achieve ultra-high-speed connectivity between the two chips.
With this technology, the communication speed between the two M1 Ultra chips has reached a staggering 2.5TB/S, which is also the basis for Apple to create new chips through this "1+1=2" approach.
The M1 family is branching out, and the A series chips are "part-time"
|| M1 chip "next-grafted" mid-range products
When the M1 chip first appeared on the iPad Pro last year, people were already speculating about whether there would be more tablet products equipped with M1 chips. Now, people's wishes have finally been realized, and the M1 chip has appeared on the new iPad Air in the form of "new wine in the old bottle".
The iPad Air is the mid-range product of Apple's tablet product line. The more high-end Pro series lacks facial recognition, a high refresh rate screen, and better stereo speakers. However, in terms of price, compared with the high-end version of the Pro series, which is close to the price of 10,000 yuan, the price of Air is much closer to the people.
The update of the iPad Air is only reflected in the chip, other configurations are almost the same as the previous generation, and the sale price is even 400 yuan lower than the previous generation, which allows more people to experience the M1 chip on the tablet at a cheap price.
In fact, the iPad Air series has always assumed the function of Apple's "technology decentralization". Starting from the third generation of the series, whether it is the shape, function, or support for accessories, it is inherited from the previous generation of Pro, and the new iPad Air equipped with the M1 chip can also be seen that Apple wants to make the M1 series "go off the altar" and be mounted on cheaper devices. It is conceivable that in the future, perhaps we will be able to see the M1 chip on more of Apple's mid-range products, and even entry-level products.
|| A13 blessing, screen performance beats mobile phones?
Apple also released a 5K resolution display called Apple Studio Display. Unlike the display we remember, this monitor is equipped with the A13 processor that Apple used on mobile phones.
The display is equipped with a 27-inch 5K resolution retina screen while featuring high-end display standard parameters such as a maximum brightness of 600 nits, a wide color gamut of P3 and 1 billion colors.
In terms of display performance, compared with the previous similar LG UltraFine 5K improvement, Apple claims that with the powerful computing power of the A13 chip, the camera and audio system of this display can provide an "amazing experience".
Let the mobile phone processor "part-time work" in the display product line, which is the first time in the industry, reflecting Apple's bold new ideas in products.
Whether it is the M1 chip turned out, to be applied to the tablet computer, and then today's final "marriage" of the cheaper Air series, or Apple's integration of A13 into the display, all reflect Apple's hope to promote its own M series and A series chips in more scenes in recent years. Apple is creating a more closed-loop, more perfect product system, under this system, whether Apple can bring more surprises in the future, let us wait and see.