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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

#131

Post by solarkraft »

skissane wrote: post #93
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…

> On the other hand: this seems like a golden opportunity for Apple continue the path of merging iOS and Mac OS, turning the desktop platform into an equally walled garden. They can't turn macOS into a totally walled garden, without making it impossible to use as a development platform. If I can't compile and run my own software, or software I downloaded from others in source form, I can't use it as a development pla…

> And Apple needs a development platform, for people to develop iOS/macOS apps on, and for its own OS developers to use in developing iOS/macOS.

Have they shown developers much respect in the past? You can't even compile for the mac on other OSes, from what I hear.

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

#132

Post by fooey »

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…

It seems absurdly implausible to me that Apple can produce an ARM chip that can compete with Intel and AMD performance wise.

Maybe they can get close enough on power consumption or instructions per dollar to be worthwhile, but I can't imagine any way an ARM Mac is going to be competitive for a workstation or gaming machine.

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

#133

Post by dathinab »

nsajko wrote: post #101

I wonder have they considered switching back to PowerPC (power9/power10) now that it is open (for whatever that means, I am not sure)? I am sure they would appreciate the control that could give them. Does somebody have an idea how much approximately would it cost Apple to switch the Apple A14 from ARM to POWER? Usually it is said that the instruction decoder is a small part of a CPU core, and the architectures are n…

They have already heavily invested into customized ARM chips. They do all they need. So no reason to look back at POWER.

Sure for high end mac the ARM chips probably wouldn't be the best fit for now. But staying with x86 for them is just way easier. POWER might only be interesting if they do a server OS. Which they made pretty clear they are not interested in in the near future. (The rack mounted mac is still a rack mounted workstation. Rack mounting high end workstations isn't that uncommon in certain audio/video processing related job areas. For a server it is missing some pretty basic thinks like: Redundant power supply, management interface, trivial easy to swap RAM/Disks without removing it from the rack, and probably more. ).

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

#134

Post by MarkSweep »

jdxcode wrote: post #120
meatmanek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've done this 2 to 5 times before, depending on whether you count the 32-bit to 64-bit conversions and iOS. 68k->PPC, PPC->PPC64, PPC->x86, x86->x86-66, arm->arm64

what is x86-66?

X86-64 is the 64-bit version of x86, also known as AMD 64 and Intel 64. The first computers that apple shipped with Intel processors only supported x86 (32-bit). The most recent version of macOS removed support for x86, only allowing 64-bit apps to run.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64

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

#135

Post by solarkraft »

leejoramo wrote: post #121
cptskippy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes Apple has mastered multi-targeting. Apple has completed MANY major transitions 68k -> PPC -> Mac OS X -> Intel -> a near perfect 64bit transition. Then there is the NeXT side that ran on 68k, x86, PA-RISC, and SPARC Of course OS X was the foundation to iOS I think the forced death of 32bit apps last year entirely in preparation for moving to ARM.

> I think the forced death of 32bit apps last year entirely in preparation for moving to ARM

You probably mean this is so they're not in multiple transitions at once. Something to note here is that Microsoft's x86 emulation only works for 32 bit apps (a processor limitation?), but with Apple having more control over their chips (and no knowledge about the exact issue) I could imagine them having it solved.

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

#136

Post by ed25519FUUU »

sigjuice wrote: post #88
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #39

I think this is a good news. The vast amount of people use their laptop for little more than running a web browser, and AArch64 chips will make those laptops cheaper to produce (intel charges Apple upwards of $400+ for high end chips[1]) Then there's everyone doing local development in interpreted languages, most of which have stable support for AArch64. Java, python, ruby, go on AArch64? No problem. The biggest hit…

What is special about BSD syscalls on AArch64? Are you saying they will be different or absent?

Presumably there would be some incompatibility.

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

#137

Post by dathinab »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #124
rzzzt wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you see any major differences between a T2-backed system and an ME/PSP one? How about TrustZone?

I really have to do some research on this. I haven't because I have not really been planning on purchasing a MAC. Here's some questions I would want to have answers to. - Does the T2 have a private uncontrolled connection to system RAM? I know it has some connection to the onboard SSD, other IO and serves as an enclave for platform keys. - Does the T2 have a private bus/connection to any onboard Ethernet adapter or W…

But don't ARM chips have TrustZone which is quite similar to ME/PSP wrt. the danger it can have. And isn't T2 additional to the TrustZone on their ARM chips? Or did it replace the TrustZone?

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

#138

Post by martinald »

fooey wrote: post #132
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…

It seems absurdly implausible to me that Apple can produce an ARM chip that can compete with Intel and AMD performance wise. Maybe they can get close enough on power consumption or instructions per dollar to be worthwhile, but I can't imagine any way an ARM Mac is going to be competitive for a workstation or gaming machine.

The new iPhone SE outperforms all of the Mac laptops in single core performance, which is crazy. Even if you have a fast MacBook Pro you will get hit by thermal throttling all the time. So even if this ARM chip can't compete on multicore performance in bursts it may be able to beat it on sustained performance, which may actually make it quicker.

It's not going to compete with the Mac Pro for a little while, but who knows.

I think this is the result of two trends, firstly ARM getting so much better faster (especially Apple SoCs). Secondly, how dire Intel has been at improving performance. They really haven't got very far over the last decade.

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

#139

Post by martinald »

m463 wrote: post #105
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…

I remember when they went from ppc to x86, and you could not only run your mac software, you could dual-boot windows on the same hardware. (a reasonable desktop AND good games) The future was very bright when that happened. Now, it seems apple is gazing ever more inwards.

Windows is also on ARM, so I don't think they have to get rid of dual boot. Windows on ARM also supports emulation of x86 apps (though strangle not x86-64).

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

#140

Post by martinald »

jl6 wrote: post #80
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…

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

Windows already does x86 to arm (not 64bit yet) in Windows on ARM and it works fine. Can play games and stuff ok on it, so definitely "acceptable". Not sure if great, but it's definitely usable.
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