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Oh boy, more universal binaries. What are the odds that Apple will just internalize x86 production, as opposed to doing a A11-style ARM derivative?
> What are the odds that Apple will just internalize x86 production... Zero, since it's wildly improbable that Intel would grant them a license to use the x86 architecture.
Moreover, the x64 was created by AMD, not Intel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Don't you worry you will have to cross-compile to run your programs on the amd64 server? Or how you are going to debug locally bugs that may arise from a different architecture? Or that homebrew could be in an inconsistent state for some years until all software catches up with the new architecture?
While a x86-ARM translator of some sort is certainly possible, keep in mind that Xcode added support for BitCode back in 2015, which means that binaries are uploaded to the App Store in LLVM IR and compiled to the target architecture by Apple. While this will not cover 100% of Mac OS applications out there, it will certainly minimize the effort of porting stuff to ARM MacBooks.
I wouldn't assume that Bitcode is a huge help with this. Per Chris Lattner in the linked transcript, "It's useful for very specific, low-level kinds of enhancements, but it isn't a panacea that makes everything magically portable."
Oh boy, more universal binaries. What are the odds that Apple will just internalize x86 production, as opposed to doing a A11-style ARM derivative?
> What are the odds that Apple will just internalize x86 production... Zero, since it's wildly improbable that Intel would grant them a license to use the x86 architecture.