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Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

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Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#71

Post by [deleted] »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #55
the_duke wrote: post #40

This is just a rehash of Bloomberg reporting. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/apple-pla... older: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-aim... --- Personally, I gave up on the Apple ecosystem years ago and moved to Linux. But I feel ambivalent about this. On one hand, the iPhone/Pad chips have impressive performance and power consumption, at least for the mobile use case. Some co…

Funny how every regurgitation of the same article becomes more certain: "may" - "aims" - "plans" - "will". "According to people familiar with the matter."

[deleted]

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#72

Post by Shivetya »

So is this an underlying reason for Catalina jettisoning so much older software? Is there a successor to Rosetta, one that will only support 64bit software?

Going to be interesting which models actually debut this month and their availability. Currently I am not in favor of moving to ARM but I leave the door open for Apple to surprise and tempt me

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#73

Post by aidos »

Last time they did this they managed to pull it off really well. From memory there was the ability to package apps for both architectures so they would run on either machine. And to bridge the gap there was Rosetta which allowed PowerPC binaries to run on intel Mac’s by translating in real-time with a small performance penalty.

How close are arm chips to PowerPC? They’re both risc architectures, right?

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#74

Post by loktarogar »

mikepurvis wrote: post #53
zapzupnz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I imagine they'll have to provide some sort of x86/amd64 compat layer Just like they did with the mk86->ppc transition, just like they did with the ppc->x86 transition. > I hope they don't also continue to lock down macos Let's not confuse moving Macs to ARM processors with turning Macs into iOS devices. Apple has always treated the OS families differently and will continue to do so because they know more than anyb…

I wouldn't be so sure. Apple was happy to leave behind "pro" customers who needed floppy drives (1998), optical drives and ethernet (2013), and USB ports (2017). Sure, the industry ended up following them on a lot of this, but that should be as much a cause for concern as the rest of it. An awful lot of the pro audio / video work that happens on high end Apple hardware could absolutely happen on a machine where the o…

> Apple was happy to leave behind "pro" customers who needed floppy drives (1998), optical drives and ethernet (2013), and USB ports (2017).

sure, but all that functionality remained externally - just not as part of the laptop. locking down the laptop is fundamentally different.

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#75

Post by cptskippy »

z9e wrote: post #13

I envision there being a lot of ARM support issues across apps that I rely on. We finally got over the keyboard drama, I don't have confidence this will go well either.

Well they've already figured out multi-targeting in XCode and gave done this once before so I would imagine for a lot of developers it will just be a recompile.

I saw a really cheap MacBook Air deal the other day and was tempted until I saw they're i3 based. Assuming App support, I could see them replace that with an ARM based CPU without anyone noticing.

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#76

Post by Koshkin »

designdesign wrote: post #59

Their iPhone chips blow everything out of the water so this is exciting. Also adds more fuel to the merging of iOS/macOS.

I am having a hard time deciding which name for the result of this merge would be better: iOS XP or macOS CE.

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#77

Post by gpderetta »

ladberg wrote: post #22
chrisseaton wrote: post #5

Time to urgently make sure your favourite backend is generating decent AArch64 code and you app is compatible with a weak memory model...

The memory model of the ISA != the memory model of your code. C has a memory model and any correct C code is compiled to the correct ARM assembly. It's only really an issue if you are translating over x86 assembly, and then you probably have lots of other issues to worry about.

a lot of code (especially old code bases) does not actually target the c11 memory model but just happens to work on x86. A lot of code that targets the c11 memory model but primarily targetting x86, still assumes cheap (or free) release/acquire memory barriers (although admittedly arm64 should have reasonably cheap release/acquire and Apple could make them as cheap as they want).

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#78

Post by gpderetta »

_bxg1 wrote: post #38
pathartl wrote: post #24

It's fine that Apple is moving to ARM. It's not okay that this is going to be a proprietary, locked down CPU. T2 has shown that Apple customers no longer own their hardware.

> proprietary, locked down CPU Is it somehow more proprietary and locked-down than the Intel ones?

I think the worry is a locked bootloader.

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#79

Post by snazz »

Koshkin wrote: post #76
designdesign wrote: post #59

Their iPhone chips blow everything out of the water so this is exciting. Also adds more fuel to the merging of iOS/macOS.

I am having a hard time deciding which name for the result of this merge would be better: iOS XP or macOS CE.

I think it would still be normal macOS, just on ARM chips. I find it hard to believe that they would get rid of macOS too given that the iPad Pro exists.

Re: Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month

#80

Post by jl6 »

zapzupnz wrote: post #16
ccmcarey wrote: post #10

Interesting. I imagine they'll have to provide some sort of x86/amd64 compat layer as otherwise this kills every application available for macos right now. I hope they don't also continue to lock down macos (though I imagine they intend to) by restricting applications to only being available from the app store. That would set a terrible precedent for personal computing.

> I imagine they'll have to provide some sort of x86/amd64 compat layer Just like they did with the mk86->ppc transition, just like they did with the ppc->x86 transition. > I hope they don't also continue to lock down macos Let's not confuse moving Macs to ARM processors with turning Macs into iOS devices. Apple has always treated the OS families differently and will continue to do so because they know more than anyb…

How would we expect a amd64->ARM compatibility layer to work? Emulation? Do we have any reason to think that would achieve acceptable performance?
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