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I don’t believe Apple will transition away from x86 anytime soon but for different reasons. They would abandon the pro market if it moved to arm. Most x86 pro applications would have to be rewritten. What would be the incentive for software makers? Apple might very will be able to bring out a arm stack for consumer market but there is no indication that they can compete with x86 pro or server market.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, what do you mean? On a current MacBook Pro the memory is controlled by the CPU and the disk is attached to a PCIe root port also on the CPU. The "disk controller" as such has moved into the disk.
The only way to access the soldered-in NAND storage is through the T2 chip, which encrypts everything on-the-fly with a unique burned-in AES key. The T2 also acts as the SSD controller, controlling the raw NAND chips. You can see this in an iMac Pro teardown, as the removeable "SSDs" in it only have flash chips on them, no controller. The T2 is not involved with memory access AFAIK though. As for I/O, it does handle…
I see a lot of Surface Pro in the iPad[1]. That isn't a bad thing, it is great to have two design studios trying to out do each other. If you agree that these devices should work better on ARM chips rather than x86 chips, then the iPad has an advantage with an already ARM based ecosystem. Of course the Surface R/T tried that too, and stumbled. But I wonder if Apple saw that as a hint of where Microsoft might go. I fi…
I don't know how "Windows on NOT Intel" was antithetic to Gates way of thinking when Windows NT was running on most major RISC platforms while they were still relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Supported_platforms
I don’t believe Apple will transition away from x86 anytime soon but for different reasons. They would abandon the pro market if it moved to arm. Most x86 pro applications would have to be rewritten. What would be the incentive for software makers? Apple might very will be able to bring out a arm stack for consumer market but there is no indication that they can compete with x86 pro or server market.
Rewritten or recompiled?
I don't buy the permanent fork argument for one reason. AMD had the cancelled ARM version of Zen. There aren't any public plans to bring it back as far as I'm aware. But if Apple transitions past x86, it's going to provide critical mass for desktop ARM and the Zen chip will be back. AMD would be sitting on the highest performance single socket ARM chip, and Apple would just use that.
I can't see Apple using any ARM chip other than their own. If they commit to converting OS X to ARM then they'll either produce it in-house or, less likely, buy AMD (or maybe just buy AMD's Zen tech only). One of the main reasons for Apple to move to ARM is to control more of their technology stack. It's the direction they've been moving in for a while now and this would be part of that strategy.
Apple would definitely prefer to only use its own chips, but if they're unable to, using ARM Zen from AMD makes a million times more sense than x86 Intel.
I think you may be underestimating Apple's willingness to let the Mac Pro be an ugly duckling. This is a platform that they left stagnant for years after all.
ARM on the Macbook Pro would put a lot of software shops (I'm guessing tech and design firms are the main purchasers of Macs) using Docker in an awkward spot with their containers not running on dev machines.
I don’t believe Apple will transition away from x86 anytime soon but for different reasons. They would abandon the pro market if it moved to arm. Most x86 pro applications would have to be rewritten. What would be the incentive for software makers? Apple might very will be able to bring out a arm stack for consumer market but there is no indication that they can compete with x86 pro or server market.
- Qualcomm settlement bridges the 5G modem gap
- Intel modem acquihire rekindles dream of radio autonomy
- Did Intel modem deal delay "x86-Arm" mobile Mac transition?
- Can 16" Macbook + 2015 keyboard buy time for new designs?No wonder Be Inc went belly up. Apple had switched before from architecture.