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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

#371

Post by spideymans »

hanche wrote: post #349
ogre_codes wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that Apple ever really talks the fact that their chips are based on ARM during this kind of event.

It's funny how that works. This story may be only tangentially related, but here goes: A few years back, I was visiting the local ARM offices in Trondheim, Norway. I happened to mention something about the iPhones using their processors, and my host immediately said, “I am not allowed to comment on that”. But everybody knows it, I said. In response, he said yes, but he still can't talk about it. Possibly, he broke th…

Everyone and their dog has known that Apple uses Gorilla glass on their devices since the original iPhone. I believe it was only until recently (this year) that Apple executives acknowledged the relationship in any capacity (one of their SVP visited the Gorilla Glass factory with press)

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

#372

Post by peterkelly »

jccalhoun wrote: post #19

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

On the contrary, I'm tempted to buy the latest Intel Macbook Pro so I can stick with Intel for a few more years. Whether or not I'll end up doing so depends a lot on how good the new ARM-based laptops are in terms of performance (esp. wrt virtualizing x86/x64 VMs). But the current lineup, however imperfect, is mature and a known quantity, in contrast to the unknowns surrounding the first generation of machines with the new architecture.

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

#373

Post by arcticbull »

so33 wrote: post #329
cbmuser wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there were no actual products announced. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they also didn't announce any actual hardware when they introduced Intel Macs. Interestingly, for the PowerPC->Intel transition, they also had an Developer Transition Kit: https://www.macstories.net/stories/this-is-not-a-product-the...

I believe the first Intel product announced was the [EDIT: iMac - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_(Intel-based)#1st_generat... ] MacBook Pro at Macworld in January of 2006, long after it was announced at WWDC in 2005. I think concerns about how Apple will handle the transition can generally be addressed by the relatively smooth transition from PPC to Intel. Apple has literally done this before.

Apple transitions CPU architectures every 10-15 years.

6502 -> 68k in 1984 via hard-cutover [edit: see cestith's reply, there's more to this story than I knew]

68k -> PPC in 1994 via emulation

PPC -> x86 in 2006 via Rosetta JIT translation

x86 -> ARM in 2020 via Rosetta 2 static recompilation

You could even argue the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X was a transition of similar magnitude (although solely on PowerPC processors), with Classic Environment running a full Mac OS 9 instance [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Class...

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

#375

Post by ianmassey »

blinkingled wrote: post #364
ianmassey wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apple ARM would like to be where Intel ISA as a de-facto platform is today - but not sure what in my comment implied I meant Apple want to be financially where Intel is today. Also that would not preclude them from being financially where they want to be - more Macs sold at Apple premium - even if they are to run Windows and Linux - still means more Apple hardware sales and more money.

but the two things are inextricably tied - intel's open platform resulted in their financial performance to a hugely meaningful degree, and the same with apple's strategy vs. their performance. obviously it's not apples to apples in any number of ways, but apple's strategic decision to operate as a closed platform empowers many of the things they see as key to their performance. i understand what you meant, but i don't think apple views that as a goal they should pursue.

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

#376

Post by ryukafalz »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #334
mrkstu wrote: post #85

Rosetta 2 - the interesting bit was that it was going to pre-translate binaries instead of at runtime. The implications for actual VM emulation is that Rosetta won't work for run time environments like OS emulation. They touched on it briefly with the emulation technologies bit, but it looks like it will be separate from, and likely much less performant than Rosetta.

> Rosetta won't work for run time environments like OS emulation They literally showed a demo of Parallels with Ubuntu for Intel running inside it.

Did they show the architecture at any point? I didn't see the architecture shown in the VM at all, but could have missed it.

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

#377

Post by cestith »

joakleaf wrote: post #296
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…

It was pretty much the same with PowerPC to Intel... Steve Jobs demoed OSX first. Then surprised everybody by saying, OSX had lived a double life in a secret building for many years (with photo), and that he had been running on an Intel Pentium 4 during the demo all morning. Nothing about performance. There was also a developer system back then; an Intel Pentium 4 in a PowerMac case. In a lot of ways, this is far mor…

That wasn't their first processor change, either. Not even was it first in the Mac line.

The Apple I and II were MOS 6502 machines except for the Apple IIgs which was a 65c816. Then the early Macs were 680x0 machines. Then PowerPC. Then Intel.

They looked at Intel chips for the iPhone and settled on Arm before launch. I wouldn't be surprised if some very brittle, early development version of iOS was running on an Intel mobile platform at some point.

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

#378

Post by greatpatton »

itchynosedev wrote: post #167
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…

From what I understood the transition is of strategic nature. Less dependency on third party suppliers for vital components. The performance and/or battery gains is almost incidental.

No it's not less dependency on 3rd parties, it's more dependency on TSMC. Before they were able to play Intel vs TSMC, it's not the case anymore. Then you add the geopolitical issue of Taiwan vs China and the risks level keep increasing.

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

#379

Post by moduspol »

vessenes wrote: post #305

Commenters here seem dubious. I’ll take the contra-position. This feels to me like it’s going to be great; a big win for consumers and developers. Current A12z chips are highly performant; Apple is roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from any other manufacturer. I presume their consumer hardware will launch with an A13Z, or maybe an A14 type chip. Apple has consistently shipped new chip designs on time; I…

Agreed on all points.

I saw speculation elsewhere that this change, along with AWS's addition of Graviton-based (their own ARM processors) instances at much more competitive price points relative to x86, are bound to spearhead the change to "ARM by default."

If your devs are already using ARM, and ARM's notably cheaper in the cloud, that's a compelling case. If you're already using Kubernetes / Docker heavily, you're probably already 80% of the way there. Linuxes that aren't supporting ARM as a "first class citizen" will soon, and undoubtedly that will be a speed bump at worst.

I'm interested to see the specs relative to the x86 Macs, but the only open question to me was whether or not we'd see the x86 emulation layer. Well, we did, and it may not be perfect but it certainly looks like they put a lot of effort into it. If it works as well as it looks, I think this transition is borderline inevitable. I think I've bought my last x86 hardware.

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

#380

Post by totalZero »

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…

Those numbers would be meaningless without knowing what the actual geometry of the internals will be, because cooling is a major limiting factor for laptop processor performance.
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