We should not see the individual cores as separate components like on a normal PC, i.e. CPU and GPU. I suppose that the performance mentioned by Jules is achieved in cooperation with the ML cores.
In Metal there are the Metal Performance Shaders, which are suitable for the following things: Image Filters, Neural Networks, Matrices and Vectors AND Ray Tracing. And if I am not totally wrong, this should be completely independent from the GPU cores.
I was looking at the new Mac mini and the price with 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD (with taxes and all):
1325ā¬
or
$1565 (in US itās about $1170(with tax))
The price is ā¦ hmm.
Edit: Just to upgrade the memory to 16GB is almost $100 more in Sweden compared to US. Same story with the SSD.
Yeah. No. Thatās a Samsung move.
But yāall have Universal Health Care because of these taxes, right?
I was typing this in my previous post:
Base Mac mini is $986 in Sweden and in USA itās $745.
If the VAT was the same in as in Sweden (that pays for all the healthcare and other social stuff) it would be $875. Thatās 110$ Apple tax just for the base Mac mini.
No, but people buy a $3000 16" 8-core Mac Book Pro and expect to have a fairly workable platform for CG, and they do. I run Houdini sims and Blender with no issues on that machine.
Now, according to initial benchmark scores the new ARM Mac Book Air appears to outperform the 16" MBP, so maybe we all need to rewire our expectations for what is actually possible.
Look at it this way ā the least powered iPad is far faster and more powerful than the most powerful PC from 20 years ago. The form factor and cost are not indicators of computational power and efficiency in that type of comparison. When I look at the new ARM Macs, it feels a bit like these are CPUās from the future which traveled back in time to us. Believe me, Iām as skeptical as any, but I am willing to wait and see some real-world results which might indicate that Apple is onto game-changing technology here.
I am curious to learn what Blender will do.
ARM SoC macos is the future. Will they offer it?
And if what about a CUDA replacement - Metal?
Believe me, Iām as skeptical as any, but I am willing to wait and see some real-world results which might indicate that Apple is onto game-changing technology here.
Thatās what Iām alluding to. Seems people have focussed on the fact these machines are only packing 16gb of RAM, and using that as a basis to have a dig at Apple rather than the fact they can deliver performance from devices that arenāt typically used for 3D.
Whatās pretty obvious is theyāve introduced these chips into products that are almost blessed with components that donāt really need them, as a way of live testing, allowing app devās to keep pace with the change etc. Knowing Apple, they have already developed iMacs with new chips, and huge RAM allocations etc, with software like C4D and RS ready to make a real impact. Knowing the keyboard warriors and brand haters out there it still wonāt be enough 
If you look at it objectively, you gotta hand it to them for developing a new system.
Apple has provided patches for ARM, so I expect it should mostly work. (https://developer.blender.org/D8236)
There are no official development plans for this as far as I can see. And more importantly, Apple doesnāt seem to be interested to develop it or fund the development. (The OptiX backend would most likely not exist if it wasnāt provided by NVidia and the OpenCL backend is pretty much being kept alive thanks to AMD)
i know but a cpu with arm instruction set is an arm cpu to me. 
the samsung pro ssds last longer. they have used mlc instead of tlc cells so far. what ssds does apple use? yes, you are right, for most users it shouldnāt be that big of a deal but it still, soldered on ssds are a no-no for me. also for other reasonsā¦ data recovery, upgradeability,ā¦ there could be setups (huge repeatedly calculated blender physics caches 
) or malware that destroys your ssd,ā¦
Donāt you also get like three years of warranty? That kind of stuff will be priced into things in the EU, as well as currency fluctuations and whatever extra cost to do business over here.
Anyway, never buy 1st gen with Apple. There, said it. 
2 years. I think.
A small benchmark from twitter:
If only my Mac mini were here todayā¦ Canāt wait anymore.
Looking besides all the fluffy marketing talk the film processing speed claim is very interesting.
Go to 12:30 he makes a similar observation.
Early builds:
16 GB on a Mac is not equal to a PC. I use the Mac since 10 years and I canāt say I ever noticed low RAM. Windows virtual memory usage fells like OS 9, where apps crashed when memory is low. But, this does not happen on macOS. The file system is based on unix, you will have very fast file copy, no fragmentation of you harddrive and no huge slow down on virtual memory.
Otoy stated it clear, you can have 100 GB of textures with GPU rendering. A technology they could activate on Windows. All thats to the ARM memory management.
Ok, Iām not saying that a 13ā laptop or the MacMini is the next highend CG workstation. But, that wasnāt ever the idea of that release.
The software companies that decided (maybe saw what was coming? ) and rewrote their programs for Metal are now starting to see some crazy gains. I really really really hope the Blender Foundation drops the idea of the āvulcan wrapperā and just bites-the-bullet and codes a true Metal version.
Quote from the Blackmagic Design website covering the just released today DaVinci Resolve 17.1 ARM version. 5X the performance?!?!?
*** āDaVinci Resolve 17.1 Beta 1 offers universal app support for M1 powered Macs to provide better performance on small laptops. Plus the unified memory architecture on M1 enables DaVinci Resolve 17.1 to leverage the power of CPU and GPU processing more effectively, avoiding the need for PCI Express transfers. Significantly, the combination of M1, Metal processing and DaVinci Resolve 17.1 offers up to 5 times better performance when compared to previous generation computers. DaVinci Resolve 17.1 is also compatible with macOS Big Sur, and is initially only available for Mac.ā
I agree āVulkan wrapperā does not make much sense. I am surprised that someone takes it seriously at all. Iām afraid the Blender Institute is unable to create a native Blender Metal version without much help from Apple.