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

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

#231

Post by jernfrost »

jcadam wrote: post #159
MBCook wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this is more about coprocessors and other chips than the main CPU. I know the iPad Pros certainly outperform many cheaper Intel chips while using lower power. But I doubt they would want to split the line into half ARM half Intel, or move the Mac Pro to ARM.

Apple has been trying to chase power users and professionals off of their platform for years. A switch to ARM is an opportunity to rid themselves of the few remaining holdouts and focus 100% on high-end consumer electronics.

I would say that is more about the boxes they use than CPU. The difficulty of adding your own hard drives, memory, graphics cards etc to a Mac is the biggest problem I think.

What pro task, really requires high single thread performance? I imagine Apple could match intel by simply using more cores on their ARM CPUs.

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

#232

Post by kpil »

pvg wrote: post #141
danaliv wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And before that they successfully managed the transition from m68k to PPC. The processor doesn't matter.

It does matter that the new processor is a lot more powerful and faster than the old processor. This wouldn't be the case this time.

I guess that Apple would have the resources and knowledge to create an extended ARM architecture that could match x64 in the same power envelope, if they really really wanted.

The market segment isn't that large though so it seems tough to get it done within the laptop budget. Still, it could benefit the other devices and streamline the hardware development, so maybe they think it's worthwhile.

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

#233

Post by PullJosh »

macintux wrote: post #188
rdsubhas wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple developing chips to improve their negotiating position with Intel Not necessary. They only need to ship one model of Mac Mini or any small desktop lineup with Ryzen to improve their negotiating position while still being compatible with the existing x86_64 ecosystem. So no, this is not merely a negotiation jibe. There are definite long-term prospects. We're already moving to a mobile-first design and approach…

> Having those mobile/tablet apps expand automatically to desktop is the next logical conclusion. Thankfully Apple comprises vastly smarter people than me, but I've always thought this is a bad idea. The two interaction models are so dramatically different that I don't see how merging them makes sense. A finger is not a mouse.

It's hard to argue with the resounding success of Windows 8.

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

#235

Post by FireBeyond »

deagle50 wrote: post #134

About time. I'm tired of Intel's minimally viable laptop processors (and their security blunders). Apple has the margins and the volume to throw a lot of transistors at a problem, like they do in iOS devices. I want 13" Macbook with more than 2 cores, good GPU, and decent memory bandwidth. Apple can do big/little cores, large caches, wider memory buses (HBM please), inference acceleration, 120hz variable refresh with…

These things are available, Apple chooses not to use them in their quest for thinness.

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

#236

Post by api »

Stranger43 wrote: post #213

Have anyone checked with adobe and autodesk if this essentially kills the professional mac workstation as a viable product going forward? I have no doubt they can make it fast and usable enough for the naive consumer living inside the bubble of what relatively inexpensive(consumer grade) app-store apps can do and that microsoft will release something pretending to be MS office for a new ARM macbook line, but photosho…

My concern is that they are going to completely lock down and cripple MacOS and turn it into iOS, making it worthless as a professional machine. The CPU doesn't matter but the versatility and user-centric-ness of the OS does.

If they're talking about making MacOS more like iOS I think it might be time to start looking for the exit. A laptop/desktop is not just a portable dumb terminal for accessing siloed cloud services.

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

#237

Post by jlouis »

htormey wrote: post #226
Stranger43 wrote: post #213

Have anyone checked with adobe and autodesk if this essentially kills the professional mac workstation as a viable product going forward? I have no doubt they can make it fast and usable enough for the naive consumer living inside the bubble of what relatively inexpensive(consumer grade) app-store apps can do and that microsoft will release something pretending to be MS office for a new ARM macbook line, but photosho…

How do you think the announcement that OSX will be supporting external graphics cards fit into Adobe/Autodesks plans? I don’t really do much video, photo or 3d editing these days but isn’t that all GPU driven? If that’s the case then couldn’t someone like Nvidia pick up the slack for Apple with a really nice external modular offering?

It is also quite likely Apple will try to add some kind of SIMD chip to their ARM efforts. Things just got a hole lot more interesting if we can wrestle Intel from their current leader position.

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

#238

Post by wlesieutre »

mortenjorck wrote: post #221
wlesieutre wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course this is from 2015, and it’s possible they’ve been prototyping for years and think they can overcome the fear of a subpar device. But as a former Surface Pro owner who now has an iPad Pro, I don’t see that happening. The iPad is immeasurably better as a tablet when you have tablet-oriented software available. And when you don’t, obviously the Surface’s compromise of “have a crappy desktop experience too” is…

> I don’t think Apple is going to make those compromises. They might do a more converged developer blackened for Mac and iOS to make it easier to target both platforms, but they won’t shove the frontends together. This, I think, is the most accurate picture of future iOS / Mac convergence. Universal binaries that present either a desktop, tablet, or phone UI based on where they're running. Microsoft's mistake was try…

They already have one App Store where a single purchase gives you a cross platform app with a different frontend across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

Unifying the Mac frontend into that ecosystem just seems like the obvious conclusion.

I don't know that they'd strictly be the same executable, but at least as far as the user is concerned they would be the same piece of software. From a developer perspective, multiple UIs built with slightly different flavors of AppKit depending on the UI paradigm, including the Mac which is currently targeted by AppKit.

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

#239

Post by egypturnash »

Stranger43 wrote: post #213

Have anyone checked with adobe and autodesk if this essentially kills the professional mac workstation as a viable product going forward? I have no doubt they can make it fast and usable enough for the naive consumer living inside the bubble of what relatively inexpensive(consumer grade) app-store apps can do and that microsoft will release something pretending to be MS office for a new ARM macbook line, but photosho…

Apple has done this twice already. 680x0 to PowerPC, then PowerPC to Intel. Adobe's come along on both of these.

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

#240

Post by rlkf »

masklinn wrote: post #60
Skunkleton wrote: post #47

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…

> they had OSX running on x86 for years before the switch (in fact they had OSX running on x86 before it even was OSX

Although NeXTStep ran on x86, the MacOS build on x86 was John Scheinberg's personal skunkworks project until it became Marklar in 2001 (and then kept under the hood for another four years). Mind, Darwin was always written to be portable, but it wasn't a deliberate strategy to take it to Intel. This time around though, I too reckon that they have already a MacBook running on an A10X in the labs.

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