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Two years ago, Apple skipped its typical second second-half-of-year event, focusing solely on a September 2022 unveil of new iPhones, smartwatches, and earbuds. Last year I thought the company might pull the same disappearing act, but it ended up rolling out the three-member M3 SoC family, along with an M3-based subset of its systems suite. And this year? Mid-September predictably brought us new iPhones, smartwatches, and earbuds. But as October’s end drew near with nothing but silence from Cupertino (tempting leaks from Russian vloggers aside), I wondered if this year would be a repeat of the prior or a reversion to 2022 form.

Turns out, October 2024 ended up being a conceptual repeat of 2023 after all…well, sort of. Apple waited until last Thursday (as I write these words on Halloween) to cryptically “tweet” (or is that “X”?) an “exciting week of announcements ahead, starting on Monday morning”. And indeed, the company once again unveiled new SoCs and systems (plus software updates) this year. But the news virtually (of course) dribbled out over three days this time, versus dropping at one big (online) event. That said, there were in-depth (albeit, as usual, with a dallop of hype) videos accompanying many of the releases. Without further ado, and in chronological order:

The iPad mini 7

The first unveil in the October 2024 new-product sequence actually happened two weeks ago, when Apple rolled out its latest-generation tiny tablet. That the iPad mini 7 would sooner-or-later appear wasn’t a surprise, although I suppose Apple could have flat-out killed the entire iPad mini line instead, as it’s already done with the iPhone mini. The iPad mini 6 (an example of which I own) is more than four years old at this point, as I’d mentioned back in May. And specifically, it’s based on the archaic A15 Bionic SoC and only embeds 4 GBytes of RAM, both of which are showstoppers to the company’s widespread Apple Intelligence support aspirations.

SoC update (to the A17 Pro) and memory update (to 8 GBytes, reflective of deep learning model storage requirements) aside, the iPad mini 7 pretty much mirrors its predecessor, although it does now also support the Apple Pencil, and the USB-C bandwidth has been boosted to 10 Gbps. Claimed improvements to the “jelly scrolling” display behavior seen by some iPad mini 6 users (truth be told, I never noticed it, although I mostly hold mine in landscape orientation) are muddled by iFixit’s teardown, which suggests the display controller location is unchanged.

And by the way, don’t be overly impressed with the “Pro” qualifier in the SoC’s moniker. That’s the only version of the A17 that’s been announced to date, after all. And even though it’s named the same as the SoC in the iPhone 15 Pros, it’s actually a defeatured variant, with one less (5, to be precise) GPU core, presumably for yield maximization reasons.

O/S updates

Speaking of Apple Intelligence, on Monday the company rolled out “.1” updates to all of its devices’ operating systems, among other things adding initial “baby step” AI enhancements. That said, Europe users can’t access them at the moment, presumably due to the European Union’s privacy and other concerns, which the company hopes to have resolved by next April. And for the rest of us, “.2” versions with even more enabled AI capabilities are scheduled for release this December.

A couple of specific notes on MacOS: first off, in addition to iterating its latest-generation MacOS 15 “Sequoia” O/S, Apple has followed longstanding extended-support tradition by also releasing patches for the most recent two prior-generation operating system major versions, MacOS 13 (“Ventura”) and MacOS 14 (“Sonoma”). And in my case, that’s a great thing, because it turns out I won’t be updating to “Sequoia” any time soon, at least on my internal storage capacity-constrained Mac mini. I’d been excited when I read that MacOS 15.1 betas were enabling the ability to selectively download and install App Store software either to internal storage (as before) or to an external drive (as exists in my particular setup situation).

But as it turns out, that ability is only enabled for App Store-sourced programs 1 GByte or larger in size, which is only relevant to one app I use (Skylum’s Luminar AI which, I learned in the process of writing this piece, has been superseded by Luminar Neo anyway). Plus, the MacOS “Sequoia” upgrade from “Sonoma” is ~12 GBytes, and Apple historically requires twice that available spare capacity before it allows an update attempt to proceed (right now I have not 25 GBytes, but only 7.5 GBytes, free on the internal SSD). And the Apple Intelligence capabilities aren’t relevant to Intel-based systems, anyway. So…nah, at least for now.

By the way, before proceeding with your reading of my piece, I encourage you to watch at least the second promo video above from Apple, followed by the perusal of an analysis (or, if you prefer, take-down) of it by the always hilarious (and, I might, add, courageous) Paul Kafasis, co-founder and CEO of longstanding Apple developer Rogue Amoeba Software, whose excellent audio and other applications I’ve mentioned many times before.

The 24” iMac

Apple rolled out some upgraded hardware on Monday, too. The company’s M1-based 24” iMac, unveiled in April 2021, was one of its first Apple Silicon-based systems. Apple then skipped the M2 SoC generation for this particular computing platform, holding out until last November (~2.5 years later), when the M3 successor finally appeared. But it appears that the company’s now picking up the pace, since the M4 version just showed up, less than a year after that. This is also the first M4-based computer from Apple, following in the footsteps of the iPad Pro tablet-based premier M4 hardware surprisingly (at least to me) released in early May. That said, as with the defeatured A15 Bionic in the iPad mini 7 mentioned earlier in this writeup, the iMac’s M4 is also “binned”, with only eight-core CPU and GPU clusters in the “base” version, versus the 9- or 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU in the iPad Pros and other systems to come that I’ll mention next.

The M4 24” iMac comes first-time standard with 16 GBytes of base RAM (to my earlier note about the iPad mini’s AI-driven memory capacity update…and as a foreshadow, this won’t be the last time in this coverage that you encounter it!), and (also first-time) offers a nano-texture glass display option. Akin to the Lightning-to-USB-C updates that Apple made to its headphones back in mid-September, the company’s computer peripherals (mouse, keyboard and trackpad) now instead recharge over USB-C, too. The front camera is Center Stage-enhanced this time. And commensurate with the SoC update, the Thunderbolt ports are now gen4-supportive.

The Mac mini and M4 Pro SoC

Tuesday brought a more radical evolution. The latest iteration of the Mac mini is now shaped like a shrunk-down Mac Studio or, if you prefer, a somewhat bigger spin on the Apple TV. The linear dimensions and overall volume are notably altered versus its 2023 precursor, from:

• Height: 1.41 inches (3.58 cm)
• Width: 7.75 inches (19.70 cm)
• Depth: 7.75 inches (19.70 cm)
• Volume: 84.7 in3 (1,389.4 cm3)

to:

• Height: 2.0 inches (5.0 cm)
• Width: 5.0 inches (12.7 cm)
• Depth: 5.0 inches (12.7 cm)
• Volume: 50 in3 (806.5 cm3)

Said another way, the “footprint” area is less than half of what it was before, at the tradeoff of nearly 50% increased height. And the weight loss is notably too, from 2.6 pounds (1.18 kg) or 2.8 pounds (1.28 kg) before to 1.5 pounds (0.67 kg) or 1.6 pounds (0.73 kg) now. I also should note that, despite these size and weight decreases, the AC/DC conversion circuitry is still 100% within the computer; Apple hasn’t pulled the “trick” of moving it to a standalone PSU outside. That said, legacy-dimension “stacked” peripherals won’t work anymore:

And the new underside location of the power button is, in a word and IMHO, “weird”.

The two “or” qualifiers in the earlier weight-comparison sentence beg for clarification which will simultaneously be silicon-enlightening. Akin to the earlier iMac conversation, there’s been a SoC generation skip, from the M2 straight to the M4. The early-2023 version of the Mac mini came in both M2 and M2 Pro (which I own) SoC variants. Similarly, while this year’s baseline Mac mini is powered by the M4 (in this case the full 10 CPU/10 GPU core “spin”), a high-end variant containing the brand new M4 Pro SoC is also available. In this particular (Mac mini) case, the CPU and GPU core counts are, respectively, 12 and 16. Memory bandwidth is dramatically boosted, from 120 GBytes/sec with the M4 (where once again, the base memory configuration is 16 GBytes) to 273 GBytes/sec with the M4 Pro. And the M4 Pro variant is also Apple’s first (and only, at least for a day) system that supports latest-generation Thunderbolt 5. Speaking of connectors, by the way, integrated legacy USB-A is no more, though. Bring on the dongles.

MacBook Pros, the M4 Max SoC and a MacBook Air “one more thing”

Last (apparently, we shouldn’t take Apple literally when it promises an “exciting week of announcements ahead”) but definitely not least, we come to Wednesday and the unveil of upgraded 14” and 16” MacBook Pros. The smaller-screen version comes in variants based on M4, M4 Pro and brand-new M4 Max SoC flavors. This time, if you dive into the tech specs, you’ll notice that the M4 Pro is “binned” into two different silicon spins, one (as before in the Mac mini) with a 12-core CPU and 16-core GPU, and a higher-end variant with a 14-core CPU and 20-core GPU. Both M4 Pro versions deliver the same memory bandwidth—273 GBytes/sec—which definitely can’t be said about the high-end M4 Max. Here, at least on the 14” MacBook Pro, you’ll again find a 14-core CPU, although this time it’s mated to a 32-core GPU, and the memory bandwidth further upticks to 410 GBytes/sec.

If you think that’s impressive (or maybe just complicated), wait until you see the 16” MacBook Pro’s variability. There’s no baseline M4 option in this case, only two M4 Pro and two M4 Max variants. Both M4 Pro base “kits” come with the M4 Pro outfitted with a 14-core CPU and 20-core GPU. The third variant includes the aforementioned 14-core CPU/32-core GPU M4 Max. And as for the highest-end M2 Max 16” MacBook Pro? 16 CPU cores. 40 GPU cores. And 546 GBytes/sec of peak memory bandwidth. The mind boggles at the attempt at comprehension.

Speaking (one last time, I promise) of memory, what about that “one more thing” in this section’s subhead? Apple has bumped up (with one notable Walmart-only exception) the baseline memory of its existing MacBook Air mobile computers to 16 GBytes, too, at no price increase from the original 8 GByte MSRPs (or, said another way, delivering a 16 GByte price cut), bringing the entire product line to 16 GBytes minimum. I draw two fundamental conclusions:

• Apple is “betting the farm” on memory-demanding Apple Intelligence, and
• If I were a DRAM supplier previously worried about filling available fab capacity, I’d be loving life right about now (although, that said, I’m sure that Apple’s purchasing department is putting the screws on your profit margins at the same time).

With that, closing in on 2,000 words, I’ll sign off for now and await your thoughts in the comments!

—Brian Dipert is the Editor-in-Chief of the Edge AI and Vision Alliance, and a Senior Analyst at BDTI and Editor-in-Chief of InsideDSP, the company’s online newsletter.

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• Apple’s latest product launch event takes flight
• Workarounds (and their tradeoffs) for integrated storage constraints
• Apple’s (first) fall 2022 announcement event: half-steps provide only prior-gen augment (vs fuller advancement)
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The post Apple’s fall 2024 announcements: SoC and memory upgrade abundance appeared first on EDN.

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Intel is at the crossroads, again, and so is its charismatic chief, Pat Gelsinger, who was brought for a turnaround of this American semiconductor giant more than three years ago. Is trouble brewing at the Santa Clara, California-based chip industry icon? According to a recent Reuters story that chronicles Gelsinger’s three years at the helm, it looks more so.

The Reuters story titled “Inside Intel, CEO Pat Gelsinger fumbled the revival of an American icon” comes soon after the news about a possible patch-up between the foundry operations of Intel and Samsung, two outfits competing with fab market leader TSMC at cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing processes.

While the hookup between these two TSMC rivals isn’t without merits, industry watchers mostly see it as a non-starter. Samsung, which entered the foundry business in 2017, has been able to grab an 11.5% fab market share compared to TSMC’s 62.3%. Intel, on the other hand, is just at the starting gate when it comes to the foundry business it set up in 2021.

While Gelsinger sought to transform Intel by venturing into the foundry business, the chipmaker steadily lost ground to AMD in the lucrative data center processors business. Meanwhile, its bread-and-butter PC processors business is still reeling from the post-pandemic glut. But Intel’s troubles don’t end here. Another elephant in the room, besides Intel Foundry, is the struggling artificial intelligence (AI) chips business.

Apparently, Intel is late to the AI party, and just like data center processors, that puts it behind companies like AMD and Nvidia. Intel, which launched three AI initiatives in 2019, including a GPU, hasn’t much to show so far and its Gaudi AI accelerator manufactured at TSMC seems to be falling short of expectations.

Figure 1 Gaudi was touted as an alternative to Nvidia’s GPUs. Source: Intel

While Gelsinger declined to be interviewed for this Reuters story, Intel’s statements published in this special report seem to have come straight from Gelsinger’s corner office. “Pat is leading one of the largest, boldest and most consequential corporate turnarounds in American business history,” said the Intel statement. “3.5 years into the journey, we have made immense progress—and we’re going to finish the job.”

Is Gelsinger in trouble?

Intel Foundry seems to be all Gelsinger is betting on, but this premise has proven easier said than done. As Sandra Rivera, now CEO of Altera and then head of Intel’s data center business, said while talking about Intel’s GPU foray, “It’s a journey, and everything looks simpler from the outside.” This premise perfectly fits Intel’s fab gambit as well.

Soon after taking the charge, Gelsinger vowed to form a foundry business to compete with TSMC and promised to develop five manufacturing nodes in five years. However, its 18A processing node has been facing delays, and one of its early customers, Broadcom, reportedly has yield issues. A mere 20% of its chips have passed the early tests.

Intel maintains that 18A is on track for launch in 2025. But as Goldman Sachs analyst Toshiya Hari notes, semiconductor vendors have little incentive to bet on Intel’s manufacturing when TSMC continues to serve them well.

Figure 2 The news about problems with the launch of 18 processing doesn’t bode well for the company’s foundry ambitions. Source: Intel

When a large company becomes an acquisition target, it generally spells doom. So, in another statement in the Reuters story, Intel said that it won’t let merger speculation distract it from executing its five-year turnaround plan. That clearly shows the pressure and how Gelsinger is asking more time to put the house in order.

Will Gelsinger get more time? He acknowledges a lot of work ahead but is confident that Intel will pull it off. But if the foundry business betting on Intel’s chip manufacturing prowess takes longer to bear fruit, Gelsinger’s rocky tenure may end sooner than later.

Related Content

• Change of guard at Intel Foundry, again
• Intel Paints Their AI Future with Gaudi 3
• Intel 3 Represents an Intel Foundry Milestone
• Computex 2024: Pat Gelsinger vs. Jensen Huang
• Intel unveils service-oriented internal foundry model

The post Intel: Gelsinger’s foundry gamble enters crunch appeared first on EDN.

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