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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

#81

Post by israrkhan »

Apple has been preparing itself for independence from underlying CPU arachitecture for a while. In WWDC 2015[1], they announced bitcode. All App submissions to AppStore are compiled to to bitcode. This allows Apple to re-optimize/re-compile your app binary in the future for newer hardware without the need to submit new version of your app to the store.

This allows Apple to switch to intel chip on iPhone, or switch to an ARM chip on MacOS.

[1] https://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/06/17/apples-biggest-devel...

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

#82

Post by space_fountain »

cptskippy wrote: post #64
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…

Apple did a pretty decent job when they transitioned from PPC to x86_64, it has Rosetta to translate PPC to x86. Microsoft and partners released ARM based Windows Laptops this year that can run Win32 apps in emulation. What's stopping Apple from shipping Macbooks with a custom SoC that can run existing Apps in emulation until developers can recompile? I would argue that most Air and Macbook owners aren't developers a…

I thought the emulation only covered x86 not x86_64 because patents still cover 64 bit x86. Would that be more or less of an issue for Apple

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

#83

Post by rfrey »

joezydeco wrote: post #74
uptown wrote: post #69

Tim Cook has repeatedly stated that the iPad is "the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing" and Apple only sells around 4M Macs per quarter, while iOS devices dwarf this stat. If their plan is to continue moving users from desktop/laptop devices to their iOS ecosystem, and the software can be transformed to cross between both classes of devices, then it only makes sense to unify the pr…

I still expect that they'll offer devices in traditional form factors What are iOS developers supposed to develop on?

Buy two iPads and use one as a keyboard.

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

#84

Post by rdsubhas »

lambda_lover wrote: post #45

> "A decision to go with ARM technology in computers might lend it credibility where it has failed to gain a foothold so far." > "Apple is working on a new software platform, internally dubbed Marzipan, for release as early as this year that would allow users to run iPhone and iPad apps on Macs" Two things here: 1) I'm OK with breaking the Intel near-monopoly on x86. I'm not OK with moving to a walled garden where Ap…

> 1) .... why? ...

You're already scratching the surface: vertical integration, backdoors and high prices, power and battery life optimization, lesser effort for an app developer to publish to all platforms, develop-once-run-everywhere, ...

Looks like you're looking for one "The Reason" - but there doesn't need to be one. If a layperson like you or me is able to provide 5-10 reasons, then its likely there could be 100-1000 reasons internally, and all of them add up.

> 2) iOS apps on OS X. Why? Does anybody want this?

Of course yes. As an app developer and as a consumer - convergence and bringing my apps and data across all platforms is no longer an "optional" thing anymore, its mandatory even for a ToDo list app, or email, or IM and everything else. Web apps suck at power efficiency - see the situation with Slack/Electron/Chrome/others on desktop, especially when it comes to stuff like hardware bound work (video/audio, digital image and movie processing, hidpi wor and much more).

If you don't need all this, and all you need is just a chromebook with a browser, its fine, it has and will keep working. It also ties in to why you're confused "why this is required" in so many ways. You may not be the target audience here.

> 3) Given the hellscape of bugs currently present in iOS/macOS, does anybody have faith that Apple is going to be able to navigate a rewrite of macOS on this scale?

This one answers itself. If a fragmented platform doesn't work and has lots of bugs - then it makes all the more sense to invest all resources in one platform/arch to have better focus and lesser bugs to tackle. Everyone doing rewrites know that there will be short-term pains, but that has to be balanced with the larger picture - otherwise we'll just keep hating new releases but there will be no solutions other than "let's do only bug fixes for next 1-2 years" aka platform stagnation, and users still won't be happy :)

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

#86

Post by taborj »

notatoad wrote: post #54
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…

I think you hit the nail on the head here

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

#87

Post by monocasa »

A transition to aarch64 would provide a unique challenge to Apple.

The other transitions (68k->PPC, and PPC->x86) brought with them nearly an order of magnitude increased raw performance, which let them paper over some of the emulation overhead in Rosetta or their 68k emulator.

They won't have the same intrinsic benefit working for them this time; it's hard to beat Intel at raw performance, especially single threaded.

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

#88

Post by taborj »

ido wrote: post #62
X-Istence wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

as did 68k -> PPC a decade earlier.

Safe to say Apple has quite a bit of experience in the architecture migration department.

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

#89

Post by checkyoursudo »

joezydeco wrote: post #74
uptown wrote: post #69

Tim Cook has repeatedly stated that the iPad is "the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing" and Apple only sells around 4M Macs per quarter, while iOS devices dwarf this stat. If their plan is to continue moving users from desktop/laptop devices to their iOS ecosystem, and the software can be transformed to cross between both classes of devices, then it only makes sense to unify the pr…

I still expect that they'll offer devices in traditional form factors What are iOS developers supposed to develop on?

You don't want to compile directly on your iPhone?

Maybe someday they'll make a cross-platform Xcode.

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