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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

#501

Post by valuearb »

kllrnohj wrote: post #309
wiremine wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the PowerPC to Intel transition was any indication, they'll do just fine. Most consumers won't care, or will want to wait until Apple works out the kinks. To put it a different way: the initial sales of the ARM-based chips won't be as strong as you think they might be, or as wide spread. Having both Intel and ARM based systems in the market will even out the sales. History is repeating itself, it's worth reviewing…

With the powerpc to x86 transition Apple was moving towards where everyone else already was. It was one less thing developers had to worry about when supporting Mac. With this migration it's the opposite, and MacOS is still a very small slice of the desktop/laptop market.

ARM is a much bigger platform than x86 nowadays.

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

#502

Post by sudosysgen »

StillBored wrote: post #390
kllrnohj wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from any other manufacturer. Eh? This is a flimsy claim. AMD's performance/watt is extremely impressive right now. Apple is ahead of Intel for sure, but Intel isn't the only other player here. > So, I’m predicting an MBP 13 - 16 range with an extra three hours of battery life+, and 20-30% faster. Alternately a Macbook Air type with 16 hours plus strong 4k per…

AMD is tiny compared to intel, the fact that they are besting them goes to show how they have been stuck for ~5 years. The real problem though, is that apple is actually designing a core 100% focused on the target market. Unlike intel, for whatever reason, and AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops. So, I would expect the engineering tradeoffs for said laptop/desktop proces…

AMD right now has a core 100% focused on low power devices with amazing performance, very likely ahead of Apple. So no, your premise is not accurate.

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

#503

Post by asjw »

JohnBooty wrote: post #265
jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major reason for the transition is higher margins, plain and simple. For customers, both average users and developers it will be a pain with little to be gained.

No doubt profit margins are a big factor in their thinking. However, performance/watt matters too.

Genuine question: unless you run a datacenter with thousands of CPUs, does it really matter?

Apple has zero presence in data centers.

I read people here writing "double the battery life" without any source, but even if that was the case I own a laptop that does 2 hours on battery, I use it to run models on a discrete GPU so power efficiency goes out of the window anyway, it's really not achievable.

The other one can handle average workloads for 12 hours and weights a bit more then a kilo, if it was smaller or lighter it would be a much worse laptop than it is (if it's too light it has no stability and you fight constantly to keep it steady on your desk)

Who needs more?

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

#504

Post by notSupplied »

paulpan wrote: post #407
ksec wrote: post #258

Apple ported many Pro Apps to ARM , especially their Logic Pro, Photoshop and they were showcasing Maya on ARM. That is about as Pro as it gets for Mac. That reads to me Apple isn't going to have Intel for some high end Pro machine. They intended to go all in with ARM. i.e There will be a Mac Pro with High TDP ARM Chip. I wonder what are the owner of Mac Pro feeling now having just spend a $5K+ Mac Pro with Intel. Qu…

> What happens to GPU? Having their own GPU for iMac and Mac Pro as well? Dual GPU options where Apple GPU for power efficiency? This feels like additional complexity. I think GPU scaling will be much harder than CPU, so whereas Apple can surpass Intel CPUs for all but the highest segments, putting together a standalone GPU will be hard and very interesting to see. For an entry-level GPU? No issues. But what about a…

And what happens if China marches into Taiwan? This is a plausible consideration that must be one of Apple's worst nightmares.

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

#505

Post by acdha »

moooo99 wrote: post #432
StillBored wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD is tiny compared to intel, the fact that they are besting them goes to show how they have been stuck for ~5 years. The real problem though, is that apple is actually designing a core 100% focused on the target market. Unlike intel, for whatever reason, and AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops. So, I would expect the engineering tradeoffs for said laptop/desktop proces…

> AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops. Given the extremely impressive performance of the 4800H notebook cpus, I'd assume that might be a thing of the past. > AKA, things like hyperthreading are quite a win for servers, but at best are a wash for a desktop use case focused on extremely high single thread perf at the expense of throughput. This might be true for devices li…

> All of those tasks can be done with decent single-threaded performance, but lots of those tasks also benefit from multithreading

Most of those tasks benefit from multiple processors. Multithreading is less clear-cut because you're trading the win for under-optimized code against increased pressure on shared resources (which is one of the reasons why it's opened some windows for security attacks). It's not hard to find pro workloads which perform better without multithreading enabled and considering that Apple will own the entire stack up to some of the most demanding apps they're well positioned to have both solid data on the tradeoffs and architectural changes.

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

#506

Post by snazz »

plorg wrote: post #490

If the FCC documentation is any indication (and it may not be), the developer kits may not shop until December. The reports made available today show a testing setup with what appears to be the DTK device, with internal and external photos not available until December 8, which follows the somewhat typical pattern of order devices of making such pictures confidential until shortly before the ship date.

I think I heard them mention that kits would start shipping later this week.

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

#507

Post by outworlder »

sschueller wrote: post #298

They will lock down their PCs like the iPhone. Good luck booting anything other than macos or getting you Mac fixed anywhere other than Apple. No thanks, switching back to Linux. I'm done with this crap.

> They will lock down their PCs like the iPhone.

Maybe, maybe not. Where did you hear that?

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

#508

Post by dfox »

bredren wrote: post #158
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 wasn't just lack of performance numbers, there were no actual products announced. They would have had to tip their hand on a lot of info that is not helpful to customers or their ability to keep selling Intel stuff. One big question though will be how this devkit benchmarks against the current maxed Intel mac mini. I'm curious if GPU performance beats the current BlackMagic eGPU. (rx 580)

There is no reason why rx580 would not be supported on ARM or why there would be any meaningful performance delta. AMD does not have any kind of “secret-sauce” driver for that, it is simply LLVM targeted to that architecture that converts HLSL/GLSL/SPIR-V into the architecture specific code.

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

#509

Post by monocasa »

CharlesW wrote: post #478
tgv wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Logic Pro Logic isn't worth much without plugins, and I expect many smaller developers not to port to ARM, and there's nobody to fill the gap in the first years. If that is indeed the case, Apple will begin losing market share where it currently reigns. When there's no pro software, the mac will be just an iPad with a keyboard. It's quite a gamble. But I've been too pessimistic before.

> Logic isn't worth much without plugins… Rosetta 2 cross-compiles Intel binaries to ARM. Why would VST/AU plug-in binaries be an exception?

Will an ARM version of Logic support loading x86 plugins?

Last time Rosetta was on a process by process basis, so you might have to make some unfortunate choices.

Edit: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_silicon/abou...

> The system prevents you from mixing arm64 code and x86_64 code in the same process. Rosetta translation applies to an entire process, including all code modules that the process loads dynamically.

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

#510

Post by plorg »

snazz wrote: post #506
plorg wrote: post #490

If the FCC documentation is any indication (and it may not be), the developer kits may not shop until December. The reports made available today show a testing setup with what appears to be the DTK device, with internal and external photos not available until December 8, which follows the somewhat typical pattern of order devices of making such pictures confidential until shortly before the ship date.

I think I heard them mention that kits would start shipping later this week.

That sounds reasonable. I didn't watch the presentation, and to be honest, I'm not super familiar with the FCC device database.
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