Wednesday, March 9th 2022
Apple M1 Ultra Chip Uses Multi-Chip Module Design to Create a Massive Software Agnostic Processor
Apple yesterday announced its M1 Ultra processor. It is designed to be one of the most powerful solutions ever envisioned for desktop users, and it leverages some of the already existing technologies. Essentially, the M1 Ultra chip combines two monolithic dies containing M1 Max designs. They are stitched together to create one massive chip behaving in a rather exciting way. To pair the two M1 Max dies together, Apple has designed a package called UltraFusion, which is a die-to-die interposer with more than 10,000 signals. It provides 2.5 TB/s low latency inter-processor bandwidth and enables seamless sharing of information across two dies.
What is more interesting is that this approach, called multi-chip module (MCM) design philosophy, allows the software to view these two dies as a single, unified processor. Memory is shared across a vast pool of processor cache and system memory in a single package. This approach is software agnostic and allows hardware to function efficiently with loads of bandwidth. Apple notes that no additional developer optimization is required for the new processor, and the already-existing stack of applications for M1 Max works out-of-the-box. Talking about numbers, the M1 Ultra chip has a potential main memory bandwidth of 800 GB/s, with up to 128 GB of unified system memory. We are yet to see how this design behaves as the first Mac Studio units start shipping, so we have to wait for more tests to check these claims out.
What is more interesting is that this approach, called multi-chip module (MCM) design philosophy, allows the software to view these two dies as a single, unified processor. Memory is shared across a vast pool of processor cache and system memory in a single package. This approach is software agnostic and allows hardware to function efficiently with loads of bandwidth. Apple notes that no additional developer optimization is required for the new processor, and the already-existing stack of applications for M1 Max works out-of-the-box. Talking about numbers, the M1 Ultra chip has a potential main memory bandwidth of 800 GB/s, with up to 128 GB of unified system memory. We are yet to see how this design behaves as the first Mac Studio units start shipping, so we have to wait for more tests to check these claims out.
18 Comments on Apple M1 Ultra Chip Uses Multi-Chip Module Design to Create a Massive Software Agnostic Processor
Impressive nonetheless.
But, going by Apple’s promotional videos and mockup animations, it looks like they’re using a small, silicon bridge of some sort. Which would make this similar in implementation to Intel’s EMIB technology or Elevated Fanout Bridge (EFB) technology. Both of these are already on the market and have been used for years, so Apple is far from the first vendor to use the technology.
As this is not an intel or amd chip, and is manufactured by tsmc.... I would guess they are using LSI
The block diagram is out confirming dual m1 max so yeah... this is known
512/64 = 8 on each side, ddr5 operates in dual channel per dimm but this is soldered sooo.
In anycase the numbers work.
Mostly, 820GT/s
www.techpowerup.com/292789/apples-brand-new-mac-studio-with-the-m1-ultra-cpu-gets-first-benchmark-figures
Unfortunately, it's the only numbers we have right now.