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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

#661

Post by quickthrower2 »

95014_refugee wrote: post #444
jason0597 wrote: post #388

I'm personally much more worried about the power Apple will gain from switching their hardware to ARM. This gives them such immense power, allowing them to create an even stronger walled garden environment. For all we know they could force the system to only run Mac OS? Is this goodbye to choosing your own operating system now? Are the only people Apple cares about web and app developers? Are kernel engineers forgott…

Nothing here prevents you from doing this in a VM. The problem with being able to tinker at will with a consumer system is that you have no way of choosing who is tinkering with your system. If as a vendor you take the security and privacy of your customers' information seriously, you cannot deliver an "open" and "tinkerable" system. The two are fundamentally at odds. This has been sufficiently obvious for long enoug…

Or a “hacker” as in the “hacker news” usage of the word.

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

#662

Post by joakleaf »

untog wrote: post #602
Yhippa wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "buts" are dead-on. Everything felt so distant and unauthentic. They should require their execs and presenters to not read from somewhere else and do it live.

I don't understand why anyone would care about this. What difference could it possibly make? Are fewer people going to buy ARM Macbooks because the execs sounded a little wooden?

When I saw the PowerPC to Intel move, it felt like a company with ambition and vision who knew what they were doing with technology.

It was a confident CEO that used his own words to passionately live-demo the products his company was developing and selling. He almost apologetically told us that Apple had to make the change to deliver the notebooks he had promised two years before -- But couldn't with PowerPC. It made sense. And then, he showed us that all along Apple had the foresight to plan for this many years ahead.

It was inspiring, and I was really excited about it. As a user and computer scientist, it made me curious about OSX. As a developer I wanted to support their platform, and went on to work on iOS apps a couple of years later. Apple felt like the future.

This time, I feel unenthusiastic, and wondering where to go next... Despite the fact, that I objectively think this has the potential to be far more significant.

Delivery with confidence and passion for the product always matter. A lot.

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

#663

Post by pier25 »

ianhowson wrote: post #561
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…

> So, I’m predicting an MBP 13 - 16 range with an extra three hours of battery life+, and 20-30% faster. I'm predicting the opposite: you won't actually see any difference. Once you look closely at power profiles on modern machines you'll see that most energy is going into display and GPU. CPUs mostly run idle. Even if you had a theoretical CPU using zero energy, most people are not going to get 30% battery life gain…

Also heat is greatly reduced with ARM, no?

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

#664

Post by chongli »

notSupplied wrote: post #504
paulpan wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is why the US just struck a deal to have TSMC build a fab in Arizona. It's absolutely critical to have a backup plan.

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

#665

Post by user5994461 »

43920 wrote: post #628
ianhowson wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, I’m predicting an MBP 13 - 16 range with an extra three hours of battery life+, and 20-30% faster. I'm predicting the opposite: you won't actually see any difference. Once you look closely at power profiles on modern machines you'll see that most energy is going into display and GPU. CPUs mostly run idle. Even if you had a theoretical CPU using zero energy, most people are not going to get 30% battery life gain…

> Once you look closely at power profiles on modern machines you'll see that most energy is going into display and GPU. CPUs mostly run idle. Even if you had a theoretical CPU using zero energy, most people are not going to get 30% battery life gains This doesn't really seem to match my experience; at least on a 2015 MBP, the CPU is always consuming at least 0.5-1W, even with nothing running. If I open a webpage (or…

A typical laptop display can consume around 10W all the time so the 1W from the idle CPU is negligible in comparison.

If anything, you should install an adblocker. A single website filled with ads (and they're all filled with tons of ads) can spin the CPU to tens of watts forever, significantly draining the battery.

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

#666

Post by phonon »

kllrnohj wrote: post #590
MR4D wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Eh? This is a flimsy claim. Anandtech would like to disagree with your word choice. https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro...

Did you read your own link? > In virtually all of the SPECint2006 tests, Apple has gone and increased the peak power draw of the A13 SoC; and so in many cases we’re almost 1W above the A12. Here at peak performance it seems the power increase was greater than the performance increase, and that’s why in almost all workloads the A13 ends up as less efficient than the A12. > The total power use is quite alarming here, a…

You're comparing peak single with all-core TDP/cores. Ryzen 2 cores peak at about 10 Watts per core...they probably have at least 30% frequency increase headroom...plus whatever bump they get when they move to 5 nm. I expect at least a 50% per core performance increase when they refresh their laptop/desktop lines, and probably twice the cores. And they'll also be saving a few hundred dollars per laptop...

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

#668

Post by [deleted] »

klelatti wrote: post #594
jl6 wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an analogy to help explain the skepticism: ants have amazing efficiency - they can lift multiples of their own body weight. So why can't an ant lift my car? Well, because it's too small. So let's just take the same ant design and scale it up? Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. A creature capable of lifting my car wouldn't be much like an ant. There is no guarantee that a phone-scale CPU can just become…

> What I expect we'll see are ARM chips that are power and performance competitive with x86 chips only for specific curated use cases. Sorry but there is no justification for this. With the same thermal constraints there is every expectation that an Apple / Arm CPU would be more performant and efficient than a comparable x86. Why? Because aarch64 doesn't have the historical legacy that x86 has and Apple has already s…

[deleted]

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

#669

Post by hit8run »

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…

Apple also uses EmberJS but ember is not allowed to advertise it on their site.

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

#670

Post by paulpan »

liamness wrote: post #571
paulpan wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The other unspoken risk is that while Apple may be vertically integrating its SOC, it still relies on a fab like TSMC. Intel's recent problem is rooted in their inability to move off legacy 14nm fabrication process. TSMC may have done great in 7nm and now to 5nm transition, but what happens if/when they stumble? Would Apple also want to acquire them or build its own fabs to mitigate this risk? Surely this is an adv…

Valid point as a GF-tied AMD would not be in the same position as today.

That said, what are the other options if not TSMC? Besides Intel, Samsung is only other cutting-edge option. Intel's 7nm would be technically on par with TSMC's 5nm (marketing names aside). https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process

There is a chance, however unlikely, that TSMC's 3nm push will run into issues and be delayed. Would create an interesting scenario where Apple would pay Intel to fab their SOCs.

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