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Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

bloomberg.com

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Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#51

Post by BuildTheRobots »

X-Istence wrote: post #42
jimrandomh wrote: post #30

Based on this article, it doesn't sound like Bloomberg has enough information to distinguish between Apple being committed to a transition, or Apple developing chips to improve their negotiating position with Intel. It's also very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable; given the IP situation, it's unlikely Apple could make an x86_64 chip, and any move away from x86_64 is going to require significant work by thi…

The PPC -> Intel transition also happened, and yes devs had to do work to make it happen, but it doesn't mean it is unheard of or impossible.

To be fair, their PPC-on-Intel emulation that let old versions run of apps (and the entirety of OS9, IIRC) was a technical marvel on a number of levels - especially considering the hardware limitations of the early chips.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#52

Post by mcphage »

jimrandomh wrote: post #30

Based on this article, it doesn't sound like Bloomberg has enough information to distinguish between Apple being committed to a transition, or Apple developing chips to improve their negotiating position with Intel. It's also very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable; given the IP situation, it's unlikely Apple could make an x86_64 chip, and any move away from x86_64 is going to require significant work by thi…

> significant work by third parties outside Apple who haven't even heard of the possibility of this happening until today

I dunno, I feel like the writing has been on the wall for Apple to switch to their own ARM chips, for 3 or 4 years now. At first it was "yeah maybe someday", but by this point, I'm just surprised they're waiting until 2020. I was hoping the first ARM Macbooks would be this summer. (Really, last summer, if I'm being honest).

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#53

Post by bobwaycott »

jimrandomh wrote: post #30

Based on this article, it doesn't sound like Bloomberg has enough information to distinguish between Apple being committed to a transition, or Apple developing chips to improve their negotiating position with Intel. It's also very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable; given the IP situation, it's unlikely Apple could make an x86_64 chip, and any move away from x86_64 is going to require significant work by thi…

Is the IP/licensing situation particularly onerous here to prevent making their own x86_64 chip?

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#54

Post by notatoad »

jimrandomh wrote: post #30

Based on this article, it doesn't sound like Bloomberg has enough information to distinguish between Apple being committed to a transition, or Apple developing chips to improve their negotiating position with Intel. It's also very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable; given the IP situation, it's unlikely Apple could make an x86_64 chip, and any move away from x86_64 is going to require significant work by thi…

> It's also very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable

the article (thin as it is) claims a multi-step transition. Apple almost certainly has a version of Mac OS that can run on their iPad hardware - the transition path that makes the most sense to me is a 12" MacBook that runs essentially the same internal hardware as an iPad pro, and a MacOS that can run iOS apps. There would be a great consumer market for a MacBook that runs iOS apps, and it would serve as a hardware test bed for developers to get their MacOS applications ported over to ARM before transitioning the MacBook Pro lineup away from x86.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#55

Post by olympus »

Joeri wrote: post #12
justherefortart wrote: post #4

Great, we can go back to the macrumors nonsense about how this PPC is "just as fast" as the x86 days. With their focus on iOS vs MacOS, this doesn't surprise me. MacOS will simply die once they port their tools to iOS. Terrible choice IMO.

Except apple has demonstrated they can design cpu’s that outperform the (android) competition. Who is to say they can’t make ARM cpu’s that genuinely outperform intel? Intel hasn’t executed all that well lately anyway.

Being able to go toe to toe with low-power areas says little about being able to compete against full-power areas, and vice versa. Intel is a laughing stock when trying to compete in low power areas even though they dominate full power. ARM is the only choice in low power outside of a few Chinese chips and Samsung's Exynos, but yet ARM hasn't made a dent in full power applications. The two areas do not scale as easily as they sound.

Intel has been iterating their design decades longer and was in stiff competition for much of that time period. They will be hard to catch in the desktop/laptop space for anyone starting with a cell phone CPU.

ARM has not had real competition in their market, most chipmakers are licensing ARM tech, so they should be easier to catch up to, which Apple has done (with a healthy dose of borrowed ideas from ARM).

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#56

Post by simonh »

Apocryphon wrote: post #37

Would they be able to design their chips to avoid Spectre-type attacks?

Bear in mind Apple’s own mobile CPUs were also vulnerable to these attacks. The vulnerability was with commonly used architectural features found in many processor designs from different design houses, including both Apple and Intel among others.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#57

Post by bobwaycott »

troupe wrote: post #46
jweir wrote: post #24

Apple does have a good record of moving their OS and software from different architectures. 68XXX to PPC to Intel was not a horrible experience. Having gone through three transitions I don't remember a lot of pain - but maybe I am repressing it!

It is fairly common for newer versions of OS X to break software that worked on previous versions. If you try to use Photoshop 6 on a modern version of OS X it isn't going to work. I think this makes the chip transition less painful because no one really expects their old software to work anyway.

> ... no one really expects their old software to work anyway.

My experience with HN comments leads me to believe otherwise, at least among professionals. :)

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#58

Post by israrkhan »

mitchty wrote: post #8
fancyfacebook wrote: post #5

I wonder if they will be ARM only or if there is some sort of x86 solution built in too. This report has basically zero info.

Its hardly a report. It is at best a rumor. My strategy with any apple news: ignore it until its released or said from the horses mouth. Remember the iphones that had clickwheels like ipod rumors prior to the iphone? Thats what I consider this.

The clickwheel iphone "rumor", might have been true. During initial design of the original iPhone, both Scott Frostall (from Mac OS division), and Tony Fadell (from iPod division) were tasked with creation of iPhone. Both groups took their existing software (from iPod/Mac), and tuned it for a phone. Ultimately trimmed down OSX solution won over iPod's evolved firmware. I was reverse engineering iPod video/classic firmware around 2005/2006, and I do remember seeing references to "iphone".

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#60

Post by masklinn »

Skunkleton wrote: post #47
jimrandomh wrote: post #30

Based on this article, it doesn't sound like Bloomberg has enough information to distinguish between Apple being committed to a transition, or Apple developing chips to improve their negotiating position with Intel. It's also very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable; given the IP situation, it's unlikely Apple could make an x86_64 chip, and any move away from x86_64 is going to require significant work by thi…

If apple uses its own chips, I would assume that they would be aarch64 and not x86_64. Also, Microsoft has some magics for executing x86_64 binaries on aarch64 with good performance, so Apple may have a similar technology. We could end up with another situation similar to the Power->x86 transition that happened back in 2006. Or it could be nothing. This is a pretty thin article.

> If apple uses its own chips, I would assume that they would be aarch64 and not x86_64. Also, Microsoft has some magics for executing x86_64 binaries on aarch64 with good performance, so Apple may have a similar technology.

They definitely do have OSX running on ARM64, they had OSX running on x86 for years before the switch (in fact they had OSX running on x86 before it even was OSX, NeXT ran on x86, SPARC, PA-RISC and 68k, PPC is the one Apple had to add), they've already gone through two architectural migrations (68k -> PPC and PPC -> x86) and by all accounts the iOS core is very much shared with OSX, it wouldn't make sense not to port OSX along the way.

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