Post #2890708
2026-04-02 15:41 UTC
@illustro@mastodon.social @atpfm@mastodon.social
Apple's monolithic designs made sense, and scaled up to well to the Max.
With the M5 Pro/Max, Apple is now on heterogenous chiplets, but Apple's not scaling multiples of them (I think it is just a CPU die and a GPU die).
We don't know how they'll scale up to Ultra (or even Quadra... my preferred term), without designing NEW chiplets.
With the M7 and M8 we'll see if Apple gets to multiple CPU dies and multiple GPU dies to allow true efficient scaling.
Replies (1)
-
@illustro@mastodon.social 2026-04-02 15:53
@dschaub@mstdn.social @atpfm@mastodon.social oh yes, for the majority of their line, a monolithic design likely makes sense (see the first whitepaper I referenced, early on, for a discussion of the downsides of chiplets). That's why I specifically referenced relating to the Mac Pro. I do posit they ran into the issues with their monolithic design prior to the Mac Pro: their ultra fusion interconnector meant they got some of the disadvantages of chiplets without the yield & process benefits of true chiplets.