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Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

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Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#521

Post by brokencode »

sgerenser wrote: post #518
diffuse_l wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than that. They have an unlimited license to arm designs, and can change them as they see fit, since they were an early investors (or something along those lines). Other manufacturers can't get these terms, or if they can, it will be prohibtly expensive

The thing about Apple having a “special license” due to being a partial founder of Arm is an urban legend. They have an architectural license, just like several other companies making custom Arm CPUs do.

Yeah, why would ARM prevent other companies from paying more for the better license?

All they care about is that companies buy an ARM license, not that they use the boilerplate ARM CPU design.

Those designs are there to make it easier for companies to make ARM-based chips who would otherwise never be able to design their own.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#522

Post by JustExAWS »

fluoridation wrote: post #469
delfinom wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understood. It's not "32-bit instructions" that are the problem. It's a load of crap associated with those 32-bit processors. There's more to x86 than just the instruction set. Operating systems need to carry the baggage in x86 if they want to allow users to run on old and new processors.

Before addressing anything else, "software is complicated by having to support legacy stuff" is not a valid argument for removing that support at the hardware level. If a software developer wishes to design their software without that legacy support, that's their prerogative. >Operating systems need to carry the baggage in x86 if they want to allow users to run on old and new processors. What do you mean by this exac…

Removing 32 bit hardware support frees up die space and it frees up storage space and RAM since 32 bit and 64 bit libraries had to be on disk and in memory.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#523

Post by JustExAWS »

alt227 wrote: post #487
hollerith wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple purposely make it so after 3 new versions of the OS you cannot upgrade the OS on the hardware any further. This is false.

Apologies I meant 5-6 years, with a release every 2. Turns it its every year so I was wrong,

Apple has released every year for the last almost decade

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#524

Post by JustExAWS »

john01dav wrote: post #144
chvid wrote: post #83

I don't think there is a single thing you can point to. But overall Apple's hardware/software is highly optimized, closely knit, and each component is in general the best the industry has to offer. It is sold cheap as they make money on volume and an optimized supply chain. Framework does not have the volume, it is optimized for modularity, and the software is not as optimized for the hardware. As a general purpose c…

> It is sold cheap as they make money on volume and an optimized supply chain. What about all the money that they make from abusive practices like refusing to integrate with competitors' products thus forcing you to buy their ecosystem, phoning home to run any app, high app store fees even on Mac OS, and their massive anti repair shenanigans?

Exactly what competitors products on the Mac don’t they integrate with? And no serious app distributes through the Mac App Store.

Both the Mac and the iPhone support standard Bluetooth protocols and USB protocols.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#525

Post by commakozzi »

alt227 wrote: post #485
commakozzi wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple purposely make it so after 3 new versions of the OS you cannot upgrade the OS on the hardware any further "oh a post about Apple, let me come in and share my hatred for Apple again by outright lying!" As stated already, macOS 26 runs on the M1 and even the 2019 Macbook Pro. So i think i know where you got the "3 new versions" figure, and it's a dark and smelly place.

Apologies I was under the impression that the major OS release was every 2 years, and so I equated 6 years into 3 releases. No need to be quite so rude when you could just factually correct. However My parents 2017 Macbook pro can only upgrade to Ventura, which is a 2022 release. 5 years and that $2.5k baby was obselete. However rude you are about your defense of Apple, 5-6 years until software starts being unable to…

If you truly believed major releases were every 2 years, then i apologize, but i thought my "objectionable commentary" was fairly light on the snark. It's quite trendy to hate on Apple, so i assumed you were one of those. I don't honestly care, but what i do care about is when people lie about things to try to make a point. It's been happening more often lately it seems and i quickly respond when i think i see it.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#526

Post by 1000100_1000101 »

BirAdam wrote: post #303
zipityzi wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems mostly misinformed. 1) Apple Silicon outperforms all laptop CPUs in the same power envelope on 1T on industry-standard tests: it's not predominantly due to "optimizing their software stack". SPECint, SPECfp, Geekbench, Cinebench, etc. all show major improvements. 2) x86 also heavily relies on micro-ops to greatly improve performance. This is not a "penalty" in any sense. 3) x86 is now six-wide, eight-wide,…

1. Apple’s optimizations are one point in their favor. XNU is good, and Apple’s memory management is excellent. 2. X86 micro-ops vs ARM decode are not equivalent. X86’s variable length instructions make the whole process far more complicated than it is on something like ARM. This is a penalty due to legacy design. 3. The OP was talking about M1. AFAIK, M4 is now 10-wide, and most x86 is 6-wide (Ryzen 5 does some weir…

> 4. M1 has over 600 reorder buffer registers… it’s significantly larger than competitors.

And? Are you saying neither Intel nor AMD engineers were able to determine that this was a bottleneck worth chasing? The point was, anybody could add more cache, rename, reorder or whatever buffers they wanted to... it's not Apple secret-sauce.

If all the competition knew they were leaving all this performance/efficiency on the table despite there being a relatively simple fix, that's on them. They got overtaken by a competitor with a better offering.

If all the competition didn't realize they were leaving all this performance/efficiency on the table despite there being a relatively simple fix, that's also on them. They got overtaken by a competitor with better offering AND more effective engineers.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#527

Post by ljosifov »

giantrobot wrote: post #316
skeezyboy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and Apple poured a tonne of that money into R&D and taking the top engineers from Intel, AMD, and ARM, building one of the best silicon teams. how much silicon did Apple actually create? I thought they outsourced all the components?

Apple bought PA Semi a long time ago. They have a significant silicon development group. Their architecture license (they were an early investor in ARM) for ARM means they get to basically do whatever they want using the ARM ISA. The SoCs in pretty much all their devices are designed in-house.

Were they ARM investors at the time they needed CPU for Newton? Was that before or after e.g. iPaq PDA-s? And latter - was it that it looked that Apple maybe in danger of going under, and then they sold their ARM stake and got a cash injection that way?

I remember iPaq PDA fondly. Wrote a demo to select a song from a playlist with few thousand author-album-song with voice query. The WiFi add-on was a big plastic "sleeve", that the iPaq slid into, not the other way around. Could run the ASR engine for about whole 10 mins before it drained the battery flat, haha. :-)

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#528

Post by fluoridation »

JustExAWS wrote: post #522
fluoridation wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before addressing anything else, "software is complicated by having to support legacy stuff" is not a valid argument for removing that support at the hardware level. If a software developer wishes to design their software without that legacy support, that's their prerogative. >Operating systems need to carry the baggage in x86 if they want to allow users to run on old and new processors. What do you mean by this exac…

Removing 32 bit hardware support frees up die space and it frees up storage space and RAM since 32 bit and 64 bit libraries had to be on disk and in memory.

They don't use memory if they're not used, but you do save storage. Neither one has any effect on power efficiency, though. None of these savings require the hardware to lose useful features. Microsoft could at any time decide to drop WOW64.

Saving die space also has no effect on power efficiency, beyond reducing the total transistor count. I'd be very surprised the x86-specific decoding logic makes up a significant area of your typical die. Maybe you'd make the processor 3% more efficient? Something like that?

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#529

Post by shermantanktop »

spixy wrote: post #501
shermantanktop wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel chose and stuck with backcompat as a strategy. They could, tomorrow, split their designs into legacy hardware and modern hardware. They didn’t, but Apple has done breaking generational change many times. Apple also has a particular advantage in owning the os and having the ability to force independent developers to upgrade their software, which make incompatible updates (including perf optimizations) possible.

Intel also wanted to break backcompat and start fresh with Itanium but it failed.

So they abandoned it. Meanwhile Apple has powered through that problem how many times?

The price of Apple’s approach is that 3p developers have to dance to Apple’s tune. And that’s a tough road, as evidenced by the small set of really successful companies which have bet the farm on Apple.

Re: Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?

#530

Post by lostmsu »

olyjohn wrote: post #483
throwawaylaptop wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Linux Mint Mate on a 10 year old laptop. Everything works fine, but watching YouTube makes my wireless USB dongle mouse stutter a LOT. Basically if CPU usage goes up, mouse goes to hell. Are you telling me that for some reason it's not using any hardware acceleration available while watching YouTube? How do I fix it?

It's probably the 2.4GHz WiFi transmitter interfering with the 2.4GHz mouse transmitter. You probably notice it during YouTube because it's constantly downloading. Try a wired mouse.

Or just switch to 5GHz or 6GHz range.
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