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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

#671

Post by MR4D »

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…

Yes. I saw that there were already other responses to your comment, but I'd like to add my own, quoted from the conclusion of the article:

"But the biggest surprises and largest performance increases were to be found in the A13's GPU. Where the new chip really shines and exceeds Apple’s own marketing claims is in the sustained performance and efficiency of the new GPU. Particularly the iPhone 11 Pro models were able to showcase much improved long-term performance results, all while keeping thermals in check. The short version of it is that Apple has been able to knock it out of the park, delivering performance increases that we hadn’t expected in what's essentially a mid-generation refresh on the chip manufacturing side of matters."

One of the key phrases is "...Apple has been able to knock it out of the park..."

The rest of the article is pretty clear - Apple gets it, and beats their competitors pretty soundly.

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

#672

Post by reaperducer »

sct202 wrote: post #548
notSupplied wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Their whole supply chain is going to grind to a halt in that scenario even if TSMC's fabs were somewhere else. China would at minimum get sanctioned and there'd be component and raw material shortages for a while.

The United Nations would issue a strongly-worded letter. Markets would fluctuate for a week. Then everyone outside of Taiwan will pretend that nothing happened.

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

#673

Post by phonon »

Reason077 wrote: post #648
etqwzutewzu wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also predicting there will be no difference in battery life. If you check technical specifications on past MBP battery specification and battery life you can notice one thing: Watt/hour battery is always decreasing and battery life is always remaining constant (e.g., 10 hours of web scrolling). Gain in power consumption allows to reduce component space which allows further slimmer designs.

> "Watt/hour battery is always decreasing" This isn't always true. The 16" MacBook Pro, for example, has a 100 Wh battery, which is the largest that Apple has ever shipped in a laptop. This is the largest battery size permitted in cabin baggage on flights.

2015 15" Macbook Pro also had that (99.5 Wh).

https://support.apple.com/kb/sp719?locale=en_US

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

#675

Post by paulpan »

SXX wrote: post #489
voqv wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard from random sources that their GPUs are actually (relatively?) very powerful. Better sources/experience appreciated. "Apple claims the GPU in the iPad Pro is equivalent to an Xbox One S, although how they came to thise conclusion is difficult to say since we know so little about the underpinnings of the GPU." [1] [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/13661/the-2018-apple-ipad-pro...

Game console GPUs are middle-end at best. They compensate by huge amount of hardware-specific optimizations since game developer can only target few models of hardware during 5 years lifecycle and devkits for hardware become available for game engine developers almost 2 years in advance. Apple sales for Mac are much smaller numbers compared to consoles, they change generations more quickly and amount of optimization…

Agreed, plus benchmarks and measures like TFLOPS are always highly subjective.

I'd be curious if Apple's non-mobile SOC roadmap emphasizes on CPU development while still allowing for eGPU setups or even some built-in integration (e.g. Mac Pro with Apple CPU and AMD GPU) initially. Maybe in 5-10 years they'll shift to focusing on the GPU front and bring out their own dedicated GPU.

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

#676

Post by pier25 »

old-gregg wrote: post #588
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…

I'll bite. > Current A12z chips are highly performant; Apple is > roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from > any other manufacturer. We haven't been able to compare them. Micro-benchmarks do not count because mobile versions of Apple chips haven't been designed for desktop requirements. People love comparing CPU cores with micro-benchmarks, but the hardest thing for a modern desktop/server chip is to feed…

> Look, AMD is not stupid, and they're on the same node Apple will be using

Could you elaborate? What do you mean with the "same node"?

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

#677

Post by FloatArtifact »

Everybody seems to debating the hardware but to me the question is software. With this mean Apple's desktop software would become incompatible with the new architecture? Also would this mean less control for for the end user on the laptop / desktop form factor? I'm picturing only app store from iOS on those form factors...yuck

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

#678

Post by stjohnswarts »

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…

I'm not sure I agree with you on most of this, but I think more competition in the cpu biz is always a good thing.

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

#679

Post by AshamedCaptain »

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…

The comparison is a bit unfair. x86 is like a decade older than ARM. Not that much in retrospect. aarch64 is as "free of historical legacy" as x86_64 is (that is: not at all free). There is lot of cruft and even multiple ISAs in aarch64 (e.g. T32/Thumb).

And the CISC vs RISC arguments are questionable, seeing that Apple has done the migration in both directions by now.

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

#680

Post by majewsky »

user5994461 wrote: post #665
43920 wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Anecdotal evidence: On my work notebook (Lenovo X1 Carbon, Windows 10), the fan starts spinning when Slack is on a channel with animated emoji reactions.
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