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Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

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Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#351

Post by StillBored »

jccalhoun wrote: post #19

Tim Cook just said they have new intel macs in the pipeline. Those will go over like a lead balloon.

Apple could continue to ship arm/x86 machines in parallel for years if the fat binaries+emulation work well. If say the desktop mac pro maintains an edge somehow, or Intel comes back from their current slump in 5 years this could go on indefinitely.

(that probably totally depends on whether Intel actually designs a desktop chip for the first time in nearly two decades, rather than continuing with their current sell server chips as poorly designed desktops path)

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#352

Post by wtallis »

m12k wrote: post #254
Cu3PO42 wrote: post #102

I'm surprised we didn't get any performance numbers. Either raw power or at least power efficiency and projected battery life improvements. Seeing as this is a major reason for the transition (according to them), it feels very weird. They're shipping a 'Development Transition Kit' Mac mini with an A12Z this week, so it's not like the numbers are going to stay private for a long time. Even if there's an NDA, someone's…

There's no indication that the A12Z will be the chip that ships to consumers at the end of the year. So honestly it'd be a bit out of character to boast about the specific performance numbers of a pre-release dev kit chip - especially when that chip has already had Geekbench run on it for a while: https://browser.geekbench.com/ios_devices/ipad-pro-12-9-inch...

Last time around, the dev kits had Pentium 4 processors but the Intel Macs that launched used Core and Core 2 processors— a totally different microarchitecture with drastically different performance and power characteristics. It's a pretty safe bet that the first ARM Macs will be using SoCs that are at least a generational improvement over the A12Z. The higher-power Macs that will probably be released toward the end of the transition will likely use chips that are more drastically different from what's in an iPad Pro.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#353

Post by floatboth »

Xixi wrote: post #232
Cu3PO42 wrote: post #102

I'm surprised we didn't get any performance numbers. Either raw power or at least power efficiency and projected battery life improvements. Seeing as this is a major reason for the transition (according to them), it feels very weird. They're shipping a 'Development Transition Kit' Mac mini with an A12Z this week, so it's not like the numbers are going to stay private for a long time. Even if there's an NDA, someone's…

The A12Z is already shipping in the latest iPad Pro, so it's not like its performance is some unknown quantity: benchmarks are aplenty... Although I guess this dev kit could run at a different frequency, and have more/less memory bandwidth. Performance should still roughly be that of the iPad Pro. The A12Z is itself only a small update on the A12X from 2018, so it's basically two years behind whatever will ship in ac…

The devkit has 16GB of RAM; no way it's not at least dual-channel memory.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#354

Post by ianmassey »

blinkingled wrote: post #319

Apple has a chance here to go all in and make Apple ARM platform what Intel is today and standard ARM wasn't. If they came out and said here's an open Mac platform with the ability to run macOS, Windows or Linux , open hardware specs, open source drivers and the ability to install whatever you want wherever you want it, I think most people will back it even though initially it'll be painful from a performance and tra…

intel's market cap is ~250B. Apple's is ~1.55T. I don't think they want to be what intel is today.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#355

Post by fluffything »

aldanor wrote: post #40

So, if I install numpy via conda on a Mac now, it's backed by Intel MKL and is thus amazingly fast. What will it be replaced with? Has anyone at Apple thought about use cases like this?..

There are many implementations of this for ARM.

In fact, the fastest (#1 Top500 as of June 2020 https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/2020/06/) super computer in the world, and one of the most efficient (#9 Green500 as of June 2020 https://www.top500.org/lists/green500/2020/06/), uses ARM CPUs and has an implementation of these for them.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#356

Post by gwd »

hinkley wrote: post #326
valuearb wrote: post #32

Docker and Linux virtualization. Fat binaries to make it easy to update Mac apps. iPhone and iPad apps. Rosetta to run Intel apps that aren’t updated. Apple is gonna knock this out if the park.

There's gonna be a weird moment soon where developing docker images for Armbian hardware (Pi and friends) is going to be more straightforward on a Mac than developing docker images for Intel servers.

And that may be the moment that ARM servers start picking up steam.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#357

Post by tinus_hn »

throw0101a wrote: post #175
kemiller2002 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is really sad is that I don't think the majority of Apple consumers really understand what this means for the Intel macs in the long run. I fear a number of people will buy them not realizing they have a very limited lifespan.

> […] not realizing they have a very limited lifespan. It may depend on one's definition of "limited": the Rosetta was first released with Mac OS 10.4 in 2005, [1][2] and was last available in Mac OS 10.6, which first released in 2010, [3] but whose last update was in 2011. Six years of transitional support is not unreasonable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac…

Rosetta is for the other case where you want to run old software on a new machine. This is about running new software on an old machine.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#358

Post by saagarjha »

fomine3 wrote: post #314
moduspol wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they even used the term "ARM" at any point. They're calling it "Apple's silicon," and they acknowledged it's the same as what iPhone and iPad use. But I thought it was interesting how they seemed to avoid the term. It's probably just a matter of avoiding getting too "techy" and marketing.

But this is WWDC...

You might see it in the State of the Union, that's more aimed at developers.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#359

Post by pwthornton »

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #102

I'm surprised we didn't get any performance numbers. Either raw power or at least power efficiency and projected battery life improvements. Seeing as this is a major reason for the transition (according to them), it feels very weird. They're shipping a 'Development Transition Kit' Mac mini with an A12Z this week, so it's not like the numbers are going to stay private for a long time. Even if there's an NDA, someone's…

Apple will almost assuredly have a dedicated event later this year where they will announce new hardware.

Apple has development kits running in modified Apple TV's. This is a chip that has essentially been out for a few years in iPad Pros. Why would Apple announce numbers based on this? It also assumes Apple will ship future laptops without fans or ports, which is how the development kit is coming out.

Apple will most likely have an A14X out later this year in at least one laptop. That's going to be significantly newer and more advanced than the A12Z in development kits.

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