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Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

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Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#101

Post by 010a »

msbarnett wrote: post #41
bitmapbrother wrote: post #28

Apple should just buy AMD. It would only cost them about 15 Billion or so and they would get an x86 license. If they really want to control their own destiny this would be the way to go.

IIRC AMD's cross-licensing deals with Intel over certain key patents are null and void if AMD is bought, which puts a real damper on the main reason anyone would consider purchasing the company.

That's true, but Intel has as much to lose as AMD if that cross-licensing deal is terminated. So I'd imagine that Intel would want to re-negotiate it with the new party, which is obviously a possibility.

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#102

Post by rvense »

protomyth wrote: post #88
astrodust wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It started out as a hedge against their own hardware being an impediment to sales, then ended up being their entire business. I guess it was a good hedge to have!

Considering they had NeXTSTEP release versions running on x86, PA-RISC, SPARC, and its original home 68000, they did pretty well. I do wonder why the MIPS chips were ignored.

Maybe SGI didn't want to play ball...

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#103

Post by xenadu02 »

wmf wrote: post #26
mmastrac wrote: post #9

I think that in the long run you'll see a hybrid ARM/x64 Mac sharing the same case in the same way we have hybrid graphics. If you look at most of the processes running on a Mac, how many of those need to be running on the power-hungrier Intel chip? You could easily offload much of the kernel, Dock, compositor, Twitter desktop, etc to a lower-power ARM. In the case where you aren't running any x64 apps, you could the…

This sounds incredibly kludgey and at odds with Apple's de-investment in macOS. (As in "reduced investment", not "divestment".) Adding massive complexity to eke out another hour or two of battery life seems like a poor choice when there are so many things to be fixed in the OS.

> Apple's de-investment in macOS

Citation needed.

"We love the Mac and are as committed to it, in both desktops and notebooks, as we ever have been."

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/fea...

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#104

Post by H4CK3RM4N »

gumby wrote: post #2

There is only one piece of "news" (possibly speculation) in this article: that they may offload some processing to the ARM coprocessor as a transitional step. Interesting idea! But the idea that they have the Mac OS running on their own ARM chips -- Apple shareholders should be annoyed if the company weren't doing this. OS X was running for a long time on Intel before anyone decided to make Intel based Macs.

The impression I got was that they were offloading background checks while the computer was sleeping to the ARM chip. Hopefully bringing iOS's low power performance to the desktop.

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#106

Post by H4CK3RM4N »

wang_li wrote: post #52

This sounds weird. Are they going to have two versions of every executable? One arm and one intel? Or would this low power/power nap mode only support a tiny subset of functionality that apple chooses to include in their OS release?

From the article it looks like the arm chip will have tasks offloaded onto is, like a GPU has graphics tasks offloaded onto it from the CPU.

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#107

Post by equalarrow »

dgfgfdagasdfgfa wrote: post #46
joezydeco wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... or iOS will be graduating up to be the new OS across both mobile and desktop platforms? Earlier today via HN.... http://www.macworld.com/article/3163248/ios/the-future-of-io...

People have been saying this since the inception of iOS; given the trajectory of Cocoa vs UIKit, I don't see much sign of this.

Cocoa over the last few years has made a lot of cleanup/progress on its api's. Making a Mac app in Swift 3 is almost as painless as making an iOS app nowadays. I feel like there has been a big difference in just the last few years. Swift is a big part of this, but also, I'm sure Federighi's group is the real reason.

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#108

Post by ChuckMcM »

It has been interesting to watch the ARM ecosystem unfold. Sort of like seeing a levy breach where just a trickle of water starts flowing over it and then more and more and more.

Apple has the resources and the motivation to build a "desktop" 64 bit ARM processor. The history here is also interesting. After debuting the Macintosh in 1984, and getting into fights with Motorola over what should be in the next generation chips, they did the unthinkable and adopted an entirely new instruction set architecture, PowerPC.

That relationship ended on a fairly rocky note and Apple did not have the IP rights to continue PowerPC development or the infrastructure access. They switched to Intel's architecture with great fan fare and started using ARM in their mobile offering. Now ARM has reached the point where it is adopting "high end" features faster than Intel can invent new ones. And Apple has both proven to itself that it can design and fab a completely bespoke CPU design without any input from the original owner.

So here we are looking down the barrel of "bespoke chip architecture round II."

It gives Apple some unique advantages that neither Microsoft nor Google can match.

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#109

Post by protomyth »

rvense wrote: post #102
protomyth wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering they had NeXTSTEP release versions running on x86, PA-RISC, SPARC, and its original home 68000, they did pretty well. I do wonder why the MIPS chips were ignored.

Maybe SGI didn't want to play ball...

Probably, but it just seems rather odd since MIPS had an open system spec and Windows NT had been ported to it.

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#110

Post by redial »

MR4D wrote: post #70

This has been rumored for some time. I believe it's true, but then again, Apple kills off most projects before they see the light of day. Whether this ever makes it to consumers is the important question. That being said, I've seen a number of comments about running iOS apps on Macs, or "convertible" Macs/iPads, and so on. I think those are off base given the supposed purity that Apple always talks about. However, th…

iOS apps already run on intel via the simulator. There's no need to have a dual binary.
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