Apple Announces The M4 Chip With Up To 10 CPU Cores

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Apple Announces The M4 Chip With Up To 10 CPU Cores

While rolling out the new iPad Pro tablets today, Apple announced the M4 as their newest in-house silicon design...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Apple-Announces-M4

[avis]

"Cores" for the AI engine and the GPU make zero sense as they are inherently parallel. I don't understand why Apple's marketing insists on them. They could and should use teraflops/iops/whatever instead.

[sophisticles]

I decided to max out the specs on one of these iPad Pro tablets, the cost comes out to, hold on to your hats, just under $2700!

I will admit they look very interesting and if i had that kind of disposable income I would probably buy one but i can't imagine anyone buying one to install Linux on it.

More importantly, both NVIDIA and AMD are rumored to be releasing their own ARM processors in 2025, so if a Linux enthusiast is interested ARM power they would be well advised to wait a year and get better performance for half the price.

[Volta]

I will admit they look very interesting and if i had that kind of disposable income I would probably buy one but i can't imagine anyone buying one to install Linux on it.

I can't imagine buying this for macos and probably still having mediocre performance in native baldur's gate 3.

[saboya]

I can't imagine buying this for macos and probably still having mediocre performance in native baldur's gate 3.

If you buy a Mac for gaming, you're just wrong.

It's a beast work machine though.

[RejectModernity]

If you buy a Mac for gaming, you're just wrong.

It's a beast work machine though.

If you're an SMM-monkey, sure.

[TheJackiNonster]

If you buy a Mac for gaming, you're just wrong.

It's a beast work machine though.

Depends on your work. If you are a game developer, not so much...

[skeevy420]

"Cores" for the AI engine and the GPU make zero sense as they are inherently parallel. I don't understand why Apple's marketing insists on them. They could and should use teraflops/iops/whatever instead.

It makes perfect sense when you think about their target audience: People with slightly above average income with average to low intelligence. People like teens and trendy people. Well-to-do people aren't necessarily smarter and core count has been a common way to distinguish between better and worse product lines with PC CPUs for nearly decades now.

Those people getting that kind of marketing from Intel and AMD for so long are why we have to explain why a 7800X3D is a better choice than a 7950X for playing games.

But it has more cores it has to be better!!!

That one has PE cores so it really knows how to get some work out!!! I'm gonna get it instead.

They makes me sad

[rmfx]

If you're an SMM-monkey, sure.

If you work in audio, nothing beats a Mac. NO-THING.

For the rest...

[Jumbotron]

Apple proves once again that it is the most sophisticated CPU company in the world surpassing Intel, AMD and Nvidia. No other company in the world is capable of producing a CPU with a desktop performant integrated GPU as well as the world’s most performant NPU on a consumer device all tied together with a zero copy heterogeneous memory protocol. All on the smallest node with the best compute power to power draw efficiency of any platform from the Big 3. The only other company even close to being capable of this feat is Qualcomm and that’s only because they bought Nuvia three years ago and Nuvia was founded by ex-Apple Silicon engineers and designers.

And when I say the Big 3 are not capable of producing a chip as capable and on such a small node and with such power efficiency that it needs no fan I really mean that Intel and AMD and Nvidia are technically incapable of producing a chip like Apple Silicon’s M4.