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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

#951

Post by mantap »

SahAssar wrote: post #762
mantap wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They explicitly said that it can perform both static and dynamic translation for JITs. I wouldn't be surprised if there is substantial hardware support too.

> They explicitly said that it can perform both static and dynamic translation for JITs Can a JIT be static? Isn't that not possible by definition?

I meant that it supports dynamic translation in order to support JITs such as turbofan.

But to answer your question, yes a JIT can be static. JIT just means that the compilation happens at runtime, and "static" in this context means that the compilation is happening at the very start of runtime. You could imagine a JIT that compiles all bytecode to native code immediately on launch. The reason this technique is not used often is that it tends to lead to long startup times. But if the result is cached somewhere then it might be acceptable.

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

#952

Post by neop1x »

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 are going to get the Apple ecosystem even more closed and make desktop consumer platform like iPhone. Steve Jobs' dream coming true. I have never seen Linux running great on a ARM consumer device (like android tablets, smartphones) except ChromeOS devices. The big issues being unavailable graphics and other drivers and lack of ACPI (devicetree has to be provided separately). Some attempts were able to get Linux on framebuffer with some X patches but system upgrades required special care and having just framebuffer is slow and useless. And that is what will be achievable at most. ARM means freedom for manufacturers, not for consumers/end users! I suspect Apple will also put there multiple proprietary accelerators and specialized chips to make things faster by offloading some work which won't be accessible from Linux, of course.

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

#953

Post by chrizel »

DCKing wrote: post #918
apexalpha wrote: post #914

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Acknowledging what kind of x86 stuff machines are used for by showing VMs right away I do believe they showed a Linux ARM VM. And not a x86 VM. x86 VM's are probably going to take a massive QEMU performance tax. The positive news it the boost for the Linux ARM space, which will see a massive boost. Games on Mac? Games on Mac with Windows Bootcamp? Yeah... Maybe buy a console or a second PC...

Your comment made me rewatch that section of the Keynote [1], and I believe you're right. Docker and Parallels were shown in a 'virtualization' subsection, and not the Rosetta subsection. So that must have been ARM64 Debian we saw there indeed. Did I say that their presentation was too fast :) ? That's going to be interesting in the end. Being able to build/smoke test x86 containers on macOS will be important, at lea…

In the “Platforms State of the Union” video, which gets a little bit more technical, 30 minutes in, they are explicitly mentioning the ARM version of Debian Linux and show it off. So yes, we are talking about virtualization of an ARM system here.

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

#954

Post by imtringued »

nicoburns wrote: post #753
kllrnohj wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This claim doesn't really hold up. The problem here is the vast majority of non-Apple laptops & desktops that are in use. THOSE will still all be x86 for the foreseeable future as ARM CPUs not made by Apple all have terrible per-core performance. Graviton2 compensates by just throwing 64 cores at the problem, but that's not going to do anything for your Electron-based text editor that struggles to use 2 CPU cores in…

> Graviton2 compensates by just throwing 64 cores at the problem, but that's not going to do anything for your Electron-based text editor that struggles to use 2 CPU cores in the first place. Or for a typical webpage, which struggles to use more than a single CPU core. More cores will help your typical developer who's running 8+ apps at once, along with several browser tabs that are all running in separate processes.

Webapps are kinda like mobile phone apps. Only one tab is open and therefore only one process is actually running latency sensitive code. It's very unusual when a web app is using significant resources in the background since no rendering is taking place. Of course there are exceptions to the rule. One or two powerful cores are often all that's necessary.

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

#955

Post by rimliu »

francoisp wrote: post #859

I think this is exactly the wrong direction. First no more geforce for you. Then the ram is not upgradeable anymore. Oh here goes all ports except a usb3 and you need to carry a full case of dongles. Then the escape key.(It must have escaped the non sense!!!) Then the SSD is soldered. Then this fancy useless color bar and T2. Now you can't run linux with VB or parallels or dual boot to Windoze. They are trying their…

If you want a Windows machine, get a Windows machine.

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

#956

Post by defnotashton2 »

eugeniub wrote: post #793
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. I have heard this claim for 10 years now. Still hasn't come true.

It is increasingly hard to install apps outside the store, and the lack of granularity and control for things like sip imo doesn't bode well.

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

#957

Post by imtringued »

hn_check wrote: post #852
leonidasv wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple chips are fast mostly because they have a lot of cache to spare. Take for example the A12Z. It has 8MB of L2 (not L3, it's L2!) cache. An Intel Core i7-1068NG7 present in the latest Macbook Pros (that performs akin to the A12Z according to Geekbench) has only 2MB of L2 cache. No other ARM CPU has this level of L2 cache. Apple chips are not "magical", Apple just can afford packing up lots and lots of cache becau…

Why do you quote magical as if someone said that. Further, your point is that Apple chips are faster because of easily replicated reasons. Intel is charging hundreds of dollars for their chip -- you should charge them some consulting fees and tell them how easy this is to boost their performance! This isn't even considering that your whole analysis is flawed to begin with and you're comparing apples and oranges.

I think you misunderstood the comment. Intel CPUs are already performing well and it is Apple that is using the same strategy to reach Intel level performance (or even go slightly above it). What you missed is the fact that other SoC vendors like Qualcomm don't follow this strategy and therefore end up with cheaper but also lower performance SoCs. Since Intel doesn't manufacture ARM chips, you are now forced to go with Apple if you want good performance from an ARM chip.

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

#958

Post by imtringued »

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…

Wasn't Linus' email implying that if you were to run something like docker natively on ARM then the images you build would be ARM specific. You are not going to spend time and effort on running the build on a x86 machine to then deploy on another x86 machine. You will just deploy your docker images straight to an ARM server.

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

#959

Post by saagarjha »

manmal wrote: post #911
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.

My new 16“ MBP is good for 2-2.5h max when used for working on big projects in Xcode. I expect to almost double that with the new CPUs. The people who have exactly this problem are also those who buy the most expensive hardware from Apple.

> My new 16“ MBP is good for 2-2.5h max when used for working on big projects in Xcode.

That's…pretty bad. Do you have anything else open?

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

#960

Post by imtringued »

dfox wrote: post #477
justinfrankel wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not highly conversant with ARM linux, but in my mind I imagine it’s still largely a second class citizen IMO ARM linux is great, the real thing lacking is good hardware to run it.

You mean all the Android handsets? The history of Linux on ARM is colorful, full of corporate missteps and giant brands (namely HTC and to lesser extent Samsung) that were created from that.

None of them come close to the performance Apple achieves on their chips.
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