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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

#161

Post by makomk »

selcuka wrote: post #55
tedd4u wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple's Rosetta 2 that allows x86 code to run on M1 is a different beast than QEmu though. It translates x86 machine code to ARM code. That's why it is much faster than VM solutions.

QEmu also translates x86 machine code to ARM code, or vice-versa, or many other combinations. It's more optimised for portability and ease of adding translation support for new architectures than performance though but it's a really nifty bit of engineering.

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

#162

Post by baq »

apatheticonion wrote: post #154

Can't wait for an iPhone Pro with an M1 processor that I can plug into a thunderbolt/usbc dock, run monitors, a keyboard, ethernet, and have it running MacOS when in desktop mode. EDIT: A little context; when I am in the office, I use vscode over ssh to connect to my desktop PC at home. My desktop takes care of my language server, syntax highlighting, compilation and vscode forwards my ports and spins up terminals. A…

thermals would be quite bad for performance here, but the vision is quite appealing.

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

#163

Post by imtringued »

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…

>Tell me how I am wrong.

It's already difficult enough to get Windows games to run on Linux, getting them to run on ARM with good performance isn't going to happen, especially when every ARM vendor insists on using an integrated GPU.

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

#164

Post by saagarjha »

dehrmann wrote: post #50
kmeisthax wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Apple has always binned; they just don’t publicly announce it all the time. For example, iPod Touch has been historically underclocked compared to the equivalent chip in iPhone or iPad.

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

#165

Post by ctdonath »

Corrado wrote: post #78
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…

> The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? I think that's the point. Until now, buying a computer has always been focused on the CPU and RAM stats. If you wanted faster/bigger you had to spend more. With Apple's new strategy you almost don't even care about CPU/RAM stats. They are focusing on providing value in other ways; larger screen, lighter weight, different colors, more ports, etc. I think this is t…

Apple’s goal is to eliminate technical specifications from marketing: tech specs are an excuse - make it good enough that few care what those specs are.

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

#166

Post by imtringued »

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-...

Qualcomm tried so many times, it is actually a strong argument against ARM dominance, if Apple is the only one who can make it work but there are two companies that can make x86 work then the answer is pretty obvious which architecture is better.

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

#167

Post by saagarjha »

londons_explore wrote: post #100
crooked-v wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? They've only replaced the lower tier of Macbooks and iMacs with the current M1 board, which suggests to me that they're working on a variant with more CPU and GPU cores that will go into the higher tiers of those machines.

I don't think they have the fab capacity to be able to do that. Since M1 products are selling very well, they likely have reallocated fab capacity they had planned for the successor to the M1 back to making the M1. A higher performance M1 would have a bigger die size. It would have a lower yield and get fewer dies per wafer. The same capacity would sell fewer products. Apple probably earns more profits by simply sell…

There’s already signs of multiple “next generation” chips in the works.

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

#168

Post by Heliosmaster »

baq wrote: post #162
apatheticonion wrote: post #154

Can't wait for an iPhone Pro with an M1 processor that I can plug into a thunderbolt/usbc dock, run monitors, a keyboard, ethernet, and have it running MacOS when in desktop mode. EDIT: A little context; when I am in the office, I use vscode over ssh to connect to my desktop PC at home. My desktop takes care of my language server, syntax highlighting, compilation and vscode forwards my ports and spins up terminals. A…

thermals would be quite bad for performance here, but the vision is quite appealing.

Isn't basically the same vision Canonical had for Ubuntu Touch/Phone?

You carry your (main) computer with you in your pocket. If you're on the go, you use its screen. If at home, you plug it in better screens/inputs peripherals.

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

#169

Post by thefz »

sto_hristo wrote: post #153

Make it as fabulous as much as you want, $1700 for an 8 core, 8 gigs of ram machine is just one plain fabulous joke. This in the time when 16 gigs ram is the baseline if you plan to do anything more than facebook and instagram.

Don't forget the entry-level 256GB SSD. With 1TB drives around 90€ at retail.

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

#170

Post by Someone »

speedplane wrote: post #69

The M1 processor is a direct result of the death of Moore's law. It's an amazing processor, but a sad sign of things to come. The performance gains from Moore's law have typically come from shrinking die size. That has ended, you can't juice more performance from general purpose CPUs. If general purpose processors no longer advance quickly enough, the only way to get performance gains is to build custom chips for com…

Let’s not debate whether we really are at the end of Moore’s law (not a foregone conclusion, given that the M1 is the first CPU at 5nm)

Why do you find it sad that we now have a holistically designed system, rather than the glueing together of ever more powerful parts that desktop PCs have gotten away with for a few decades?

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