So I’ve been looking over some of the M1X MacBook Pro leaks from a couple of months ago
and I discovered a goldmine of information that I somehow didn’t properly understand until today!
And based on what I just realized, Apple is gonna absolutely dominate the market
starting this year and especially going into 2022.
Now if you saw my recent video on how x86 is starting to die,
you’ll know that many of the largest PC makers including Intel themselves are
beginning to follow Apple by ditching x86 chips and switching to ARM and RISC-based
chips for laptops in an attempt to compete with Apple’s MacBooks, starting next year.
But honestly, those other guys don’t really stand a chance, at least for the next couple of years,
because Apple is gonna be doing something that’s absolutely
genius and totally unique. Something that the other guys can’t copy.
So before I get deep into how Apple’s gonna pull off their custom M1X chiplets
to dominate the market, I want to explain the most important part of Apple’s strategy
that they’ve already implemented with the very first M1 chip.
Apple’s very first M1 Macs didn’t go up in price compared to the previous Intel models,
which is pretty impressive and surprising considering the massive
differences in performance, efficiency and reliability.
So the question is, how did Apple pull it off? Well, the secret is mass manufacturing
of the M1 chip which allowed Apple to basically subsidize the cost of the actual Macs themselves.
What I mean is that when Apple initially revealed the M1 chip alongside the M1 MacBook Air,
the MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini way back in November, Apple already knew that they were
planning on tossing that M1 chip into not only the M1 iMac, but also the M1 iPad Pro.
That’s 5 of Apple’s products that they know will be selling in huge volumes
for the next couple of years, especially since I personally believe that Apple will continue to
sell the base $999 M1 MacBook Air even after the redesigned M2 model comes out next year.
So because of that, Apple knew that they would need more M1 chips than probably any other chip
in Apple’s history, which allowed them to order massive amounts of the M1 chip from the get-go
from their manufacturer, TSMC, basically giving them a HUGE bulk order discount.
And on top of that, Apple is also saving a lot of money by using the same M1 chip
for so many different products, compared to having to design various sizes and versions
of chips like Intel has been doing for many years, like their i3, i5, i7, i9
and many Xeon chips, making it considerably more expensive to design and manufacture all of them.
But Apple only had to design a single chip, which ended up saving cash in various different areas
like labor for research, labor for designing the chip, labor for setting up the manufacturing of
everything from the silicon die to the chip packaging process, and much more.
So in reality, Apple knew how much cash they would save by going this single M1 chip route,
so much cash that Apple probably could have reduced the price
of each of these Macs and STILL made more profit than they made with the previous Intel Macs.
And that’s actually what they did with the M1 Mac Mini, lowering the base price by $100
and giving customers a MUCH more powerful Mac, especially in terms of the graphics performance.
So what’s great for Apple is that they no longer have to pay Intel
for their overpriced chips, which is awesome, but what people don’t
realize is that higher-end M1X and future Macs will save Apple even more money!
Not only will they not have to pay Intel for the CPUs, but Apple will no longer have to pay AMD
for their dedicated graphics chips like in the 16” MacBook Pro,
the 27” iMac and especially the Mac Pro.
So keep that in mind while I get into the main topic of how Apple is gonna leverage
chiplet technology with the M1X chip for their higher-end Macs, so let’s get right into it.
First off, if you don’t know what chiplet technology is,
Techquickie explained it very well in this video, but let me just give you a quick rundown.
Making much more powerful chips requires more cores, which increases the physical die size
of the chip that needs to be cut out of a silicon wafer. But the problem with that is
that the manufacturing process isn’t perfect, and sometimes, a couple of small sections of the die
could be defective, rendering the entire die worthless, leading to lost yields compared to
manufacturing smaller, less powerful chips which have very high yields.
So instead of making gargantuan chips and risking the chance of losing them to defects,
AMD started to use chiplet technology, which essentially involved making a bunch of small chips
and combining them together to make a huge chip package like in this example
where using chiplets would only cost 59% of the cost compared to building one huge chip.
This obviously gave AMD a huge advantage compared to Intel,
the company that still uses the traditional single huge chip process,
and it’s also a huge part of the reason why AMD is doing so well today.
But just a couple of months ago at Computex 2021, AMD took it to the next level by showing off their
new 3D chiplet technology, where they can stack dedicated SRAM directly on top of their CPU cores
to greatly improve performance. But here’s the most important part of that AMD announcement:
What you just heard is that the 3D fabric technology actually belongs to TSMC,
the same company that manufactures all of Apple’s chips.
And since we already know that Apple is by far, TSMC’s most important customer,
it makes sense for TSMC to offer this new 3D fabric technology to Apple,
and it makes sense for Apple to utilize it, because it truly is groundbreaking!
But now, let’s get into how I know Apple is gonna be utilizing it,
and why it’s gonna make Apple dominate the market for the next couple of years.
A couple of months back, Mark Gurman, who is by far the most reliable Apple leaker,
reported that Apple is getting new high-end Macs ready,
including the MacBook Pros, the Mac Mini, the large iMac and the Mac Pro.
But within that report, he gave us some very interesting details
in terms of the chips that Apple will be using for the MacBook Pros.
There will be two chips, codenamed Jade C-Chop and Jade-C Die, both with 8 high-performance cores,
two efficiency cores and either 16 or 32 graphics cores,
so the only difference between the two is the graphics.
But here’s what I only just now realized, Jade C-Die stands for the full die
with 32 GPU cores, and Jace C-Chop means that Apple will literally be chopping off
16 of the graphics cores from the full size chip to make a weaker chip,
which will probably be going into the base model 16” MacBook Pro as well as the 14” model.
This will essentially allow Apple to mass manufacture a single M1X chip
to save cash,while at the same time creating the illusion of a variety of chip options
which will give Apple the chance to upsell chip upgrades with better performance.
So for example, the base 14” MacBook Pro could get a binned 12-core GPU version of the Jade C-chop,
with Apple disabling up to 4 potentially defective GPU cores, which is something
Apple is already doing with the base M1 MacBook Air’s 7-core GPU to give them better yields.
Now on top of the base 14” model, Apple could allow you to upgrade to the 16-core Jade-C
Chop chip for maybe $150 more, or maybe even spend $300 more to upgrade to a
binned 24 or 28-core version of the full-size Jade-C Die chip.
And then for the 16” MacBook Pro, you’ll get the 16-core Jade-C Chop at the base price,
with the option of upgrading to the binned 24 or 28-core Jade C-Die, and then of course,
the ultimate 32-core version which will only be available on the 16”.
This will basically give Apple the ultimate variety of chip options
which will make it very easy for Apple to upsell you on better performing chips.
And not only that, but Apple is gonna be saving immense amounts of cash by first of
all mass producing a single M1X chip, and then of course, they’ll be utilizing chip binning so they
can still sell the chips that had defective cores instead of just tossing them out and losing money.
But now, here’s where the new chiplet 3D fabric technology comes in.
Mark Gurman reported that the new chips will include up to
64GB of memory, which means that Apple will be offering the new chips with either 16GB,
32GB or 64 gigs, and the way they can do this is by using TSMC’s 3D stacking
tech to place the different varieties of RAM on top of the actual cores to save space.
And this is gonna be very important for the next step in Apple’s master plan.
Mark Gurman reported that Apple is redesigning the Mac Pro and giving it new Apple Silicon chip
options, either with 20 or 40 computing cores, made up of either 16 or 32 high-performance cores,
either 4 or 8 high-efficiency cores, and either 64 or 128 graphics cores.
Now you might be wondering why the heck the desktop Mac Pro needs 8 efficiency cores.. And
the answer is that it really doesn’t, but it’s gonna save Apple a ton of cash, and here’s how!
Gurman says that these chips are codenamed Jade 2C-Die and Jade 4C-Die,
which literally means that Apple will be using chiplet technology to combine either two or four
of the regular M1X Jade-C Die chips together to make a huge chip package for the Mac Pro.
So for the high-end Jade 4C-Die,
simply take the 10-core M1X and multiply it by four to give you that 40 core CPU,
and take the M1X’s 32-core GPU and multiply it by four to give you the full 128 cores.
And that’s why it makes so much sense for the Mac Pro’s highest-end Jade 4C-Die chip to have
8 efficiency cores, since it’s literally gonna combine four of the regular M1X chips together,
which each contain two efficiency cores.
But here’s the absolutely genius part about all of this. Apple will essentially be mass producing
insane amounts of that same exact M1X Jade C-Die to cover a wide variety of Macs
like the lower-end 14” MacBook Pro, all the way up to a high-end 40-core Mac Pro.
They could even throw the 20-core Jade 2C-Die into other products like a new Apple Silicon iMac Pro
or a very high-end Mac Mini if they wanted to,
and they’re all gonna be using a single M1X chip design, saving them unspeakable amounts of cash.
This level of mass manufacturing is gonna allow Apple to subsidize their Macs
and keep prices impressively low for how much power these new chips pack,
making it very difficult for other PC makers like Qualcomm
to compete, since they won’t be able to mass manufacture chips like Apple is able to.
And THAT is how Apple is gonna be dominating the PC market for the next couple of years,
especially in the laptop market! The only question remaining is whether these chips will
be called the M1X or the M2X, especially since the Apple Silicon Mac Pro isn’t expected to come
until late in 2022, but either way, Apple’s gonna be killing it with this chiplet technology!
If you totally disagree with me, let me know down in the comments below, but if you enjoyed it,
click that circle above to subscribe for more videos like this one and definitely check out
one of those two videos right over there. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you in the next video!