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Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

extremetech.com

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Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#41

Post by tedd4u »

jareklupinski wrote: post #28
smiley1437 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there examples of Arm designs OTHER than the M1 which are suitable for consumers? Yes, the M1 is a remarkable product and it will certainly make inroads against x86 on the desktop but it is from a single company. Will Apple M1 (2, 3 etc) replace all x86 devices in a decade? That’s hard to swallow. Now, if we see another Arm product released that ALSO kicks x86 butt, from another player, then maybe I’d believe a c…

if you are not using an apple phone, your smartphone likely uses an ARM-licensed chip, and chromebooks/windows RT devices ran ARM cores the only thing holding back wider adoption is legacy x86 software

Also Raspberry Pi’s are ARM.

ARM Macs run x86 software great (my experience) and ARM Windows machines run x86 software adequately (I have read). Don’t know how well QEmu works on Linux - haven’t tried it but know it’s available.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#42

Post by lstamour »

thesandlord wrote: post #10
phendrenad2 wrote: post #2

I think Apple will keep selling x86 Macs forever. For heavy-duty workstation workloads, M1 just doesn't cut it.

They already said they would be 100% off x86 in two years: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-announces-mac-t... We are still only 6 months into that transition.

The page you're citing contradicts that statement -- they will not be 100% off x86, but instead will offer 100% of their products with the option of buying an Apple ARM chip:

> This transition will also establish a common architecture across all Apple products, making it far easier for developers to write and optimize their apps for the entire ecosystem.

> Apple plans to ship the first Mac with Apple silicon by the end of the year and complete the transition in about two years. Apple will continue to support and release new versions of macOS for Intel-based Macs for years to come, and has exciting new Intel-based Macs in development.

I would expect Intel-based Mac Pros to continue for as long as there's a market for them. Probably at least 2-4 years after the "transition" finishes. (The last spec bump in 1-2 years, and sales end 3-4 years from now...)

It's also worth pointing out that Apple supports its products roughly 7 years from when they're sold, which means Apple will likely continue supporting Intel-based MacOS for at least another decade, possibly as much as 13-15 years. That said, I wouldn't buy an Intel Mac after 2024 and expect the same experience even if Apple supports it until 2031 or later: In just a few years, I'd expect Apple would have created even more MacOS features uniquely suited to the ARM chips they're now making.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#43

Post by wmf »

tyingq wrote: post #30

I remain interested in seeing how much of Apple's lead is the process size, and how much is engineering prowess. That is, would a more generic new ARM Neoverse on 5nm perform at roughly the same clip? I suppose AWS's Graviton 3 would be the first place to see that, or something close to it.

I'm not sure why you're comparing a server core to a mobile/desktop one. There are two X1-based SoCs on "5 nm" (Samsung not TSMC) and they're not very close to A14, let alone M1. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16463/snapdragon-888-vs-exyno...

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#44

Post by dvhh »

danaris wrote: post #3
phendrenad2 wrote: post #2

I think Apple will keep selling x86 Macs forever. For heavy-duty workstation workloads, M1 just doesn't cut it.

...And you think there'll never be an M2? Or M1X, or whatever branding Apple decides to put on their 32/64/128/???-core version that supports terabytes of RAM?

16GB should be enough for everyone

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#45

Post by fumar »

monkmartinez wrote: post #15

You get an M1 with the new iPad Pro as well! I hadn't thought of the situation as the article presents. When shown in that light, it made me pause to reflect. The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? I will admit that I switched to Thinkpad and Win10 about two years ago when I had to return my butterfly for the 5th time. I am not looking back eithe…

Why doesn't the M1 make sense in a variety of products? I don't follow the logic. It is a processor that can scale to meet the demands of mobile computers including laptops, tablets, and designer desktops (iMac). In each use case it fulfills the its computational role regardless of I/O or even operating system.

Based on your own description, you are self-selecting as an enthusiast that prefers gaming-like PCs. Isn't that exactly the sweet spot that Apple doesn't support?

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#46

Post by titzer »

tyingq wrote: post #30

I remain interested in seeing how much of Apple's lead is the process size, and how much is engineering prowess. That is, would a more generic new ARM Neoverse on 5nm perform at roughly the same clip? I suppose AWS's Graviton 3 would be the first place to see that, or something close to it.

The CPU microarchitecture is truly a quantum leap ahead of x86 processors. The fixed-width nature of arm instructions means there's way more front-end bandwidth for decode, which can then feed a much larger out-of-order engine. Having memory so close is also a huge win. TBH, I don't know what wizardry they have managed to get power consumption so low, but wow. 15W TDP and trouncing desktop processors pulling 12x that power!

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#47

Post by [deleted] »

selcuka wrote: post #35
smiley1437 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there examples of Arm designs OTHER than the M1 which are suitable for consumers? Yes, the M1 is a remarkable product and it will certainly make inroads against x86 on the desktop but it is from a single company. Will Apple M1 (2, 3 etc) replace all x86 devices in a decade? That’s hard to swallow. Now, if we see another Arm product released that ALSO kicks x86 butt, from another player, then maybe I’d believe a c…

Qualcomm is also entering the laptop segment with its 8cx platform [1]. While not a serious contender to M1 yet, it is comparable to an Intel i5 [2]. Samsung is also planning to release an Exynos laptop [3]. [1] https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon-8cx-gen-2-5g-co... [2] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/snapdragon-8cx-vs-co... [3] https://www.engadget.com/samsung-exynos-amd-2200-windows-10-...

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#48

Post by Gaelan »

ankurdhama wrote: post #32
outside1234 wrote: post #13

x86 is dead - first in consumer, then in cloud. It is hard to see to me how this ends any other way. The creative class (us) will quickly have largely all ARM computers within 4 years. Its not hard to see from there how software will be even more optimized for ARM variants than x86 and that the scale of both mobile and consumer computing will push x86 out of the datacenter slowly as old software that relies on x86 is…

Only if I can buy a desktop/laptop with a powerful ARM processor and plug-in a bootable usb and install operating system (arm version) of my choice with all drivers etc working fine.

I expect this will be the case with Linux on the M1 in a year or two, given the pace of marcan's work. Windows depends on Microsoft's willingness, of course.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#50

Post by dehrmann »

kmeisthax wrote: post #31
monkmartinez wrote: post #15

You get an M1 with the new iPad Pro as well! I hadn't thought of the situation as the article presents. When shown in that light, it made me pause to reflect. The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? I will admit that I switched to Thinkpad and Win10 about two years ago when I had to return my butterfly for the 5th time. I am not looking back eithe…

Apple differentiates the majority of their products by generation rather than binning. If you buy a low-end iPad, you get an A12; the iPad Air steps you up to an A14; and the iPad Pro gets you an M1. This is less evident on the Macintosh side of the business right now because they're just trying to get M1 silicon into as many product lines as their fab capacity will allow. They don't actually have an M2 (or even M1X)…

> Apple differentiates the majority of their products by generation rather than binning.

This simplifies things for consumers, but how do you make chips without binning? Are they all just that reliable? Do they all have extra cores? Maybe Intel bins more because they can squeeze out a significantly better price for more core and cache, but Apple's margins are already so high they don't care?

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