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What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

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Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#201

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

nine_k wrote: post #99
NathanielK wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The on package DRAM for the current macs isn't anything special. It's just normal LPDDR running at normal LPDDDR speeds, same thing you find in your phone. On package has many advantages, but it's not a hard requirement. The bigger is how much LPDDR5 memory they can hook up to their 512bit memory controller.

Maybe the very ability to make a 512 bit-wide memory controller stems from the very short, very tightly controlled and shielded lined between the DRAM chips and the controller? (No idea if it's so, but DRAM is such an analog HF beast that a controller needs training before it can work with a particular chip, in a particular slot on a particular system board. It's automatic but it's there, and it must have limits.)

High end graphics cards have been using 512 Bit wide memory buses for a while, so I don't think that's it.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#202

Post by kilroy123 »

esskay wrote: post #54

I think its fairly obvious they've hit some problems. I know they lost a lot of key people in their silicon development team so perhaps thats the reason. Whatever it is they're struggling to get the performance they need for a Mac Pro level machine. I'd imagine part of it is going to be that they'll want to continue using Nvidia or AMD GPU's to allow for higher performance. That can't be an easy or simple thing to ge…

It could also be an issue on the China side. The whole COVID/lockdown debacle has probably set things back a lot longer than they would have hoped.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#203

Post by kergonath »

yakubin wrote: post #115

I don’t know if it’s the fault of Apple Silicon, but on my Mac applications regularly crash. That includes ACDSee, IINA, qBittorent, Edge, KeePassXC, Sublime Text, Sublime Merge… There is at least one crash every 3 days. Nothing like it happens on my Windows, Linux or FreeBSD systems. It’s my first Mac, so I can’t compare this experience to Intel Macs, and so I don’t know if it’s just that MacOS is so unstable in gen…

> It’s my first Mac, so I can’t compare this experience to Intel Macs, and so I don’t know if it’s just that MacOS is so unstable in general, or if those are still pains of migration to a new ISA.

Your issues are not normal. For example, here on my Studio, the uptime is 9 days, with Sublime Text started from the beginning and used quite heavily during most days. It has 5 windows with 5 to 10 tabs in each with no issue whatsoever. My experience with my previous (Intel) Macs was about the same; I haven't seen visible effects of the ISA change besides not hearing any fan anymore (and a speed bump, but I tend to use my computers for a very long time, so there is always a speed boost when I get a new one).

If it is under warranty, it's probably worth having a chat with Apple support. Otherwise, I would recommend trying to diagnose hardware failures (particularly RAM; beyond 8GB it should not swap regularly-used applications).

MacOS is rightly criticised for becoming less robust in several ways, but that is mostly fancy new features. And Time Machine. For some reason they cannot seem to get it perfect, which is a shame because it is the best backup solution I have used yet. The core OS is quite reliable and really should not crash things like that.

[edit] There is a wealth of information about AS Macs here, the site is well worth a bookmark: https://eclecticlight.co/mac-troubleshooting-summary/

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#204

Post by esskay »

solarkraft wrote: post #60
esskay wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XServe would probably be pretty popular with the recent shift to ARM based servers for their lower power consumption. The problem would be their insistance for them to run full blown macOS instead of a dedicated Linux based server OS.

I think there's a chance they'd give you a thin iOS-based server OS (think watchOS or tvOS) with Hypervisor.Framework and let you choose what you run on it.

If they did that it could work. It would need to allow full control of setting up whatever OS you want, be it Windows, *nix based, etc.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#205

Post by jlokier »

trenchgun wrote: post #153
retskrad wrote: post #152

Apple literally had the Avengers of the chip industry working for them until the M1, which was a groundbreaking chip and still is for its unmatched performance per watt. Just like sports, a team can’t stay at the top forever. Now that Apple has lost many of their Avenger members in their chip division, they need to be humble and go back to the drawing board. AMD and Qualcomm are getting closer to their performance pe…

Why did they lose those key employees?

Several key M1 designers left to start a new processor design company called Nuvia, which was exciting for a while.

In some respects it didn't work out well as an independent, as it was later acquired by (absorbed into) Qualcomm, which is already a large processor design company. But if it was cash the founders wanted, they got themselves a good exit.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#206

Post by dpflan »

amelius wrote: post #186
dpflan wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add on: who are the key employees?

Apple doesn't want to speak about them. In fact the only recent Apple employee other than Jobs or Cook that I have ever heard about is Jony Ive.

Are they not visible on LinkedIn? Reminds me of Gibson novels like Count Zero with top technologists as key parts of sprawling interstellar corporations requiring mercenaries to extract a researcher to basically change jobs [1.].

- [1.] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Zero

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#207

Post by brailsafe »

xoac wrote: post #117
brailsafe wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you really look into what's available, there's a fair bit of variation in the market for different customers, but there's incredibly few 5k+ displays at 27 or ~30 inches. Like zero if you discount the LG. Everything else is kind of ok, but not always a good replacement.

This is about to change with higher spec connectors being more widely available.

I would think it has to do more with panel, no?

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#208

Post by prewett »

dhosek wrote: post #196
philistine wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2006, computing was less generous. A music producer probably needed a Mac Pro for their workflow to be efficient. Since then, Intel has massively reduced the delta between laptop and desktop chips. Coupled with the increase in computing ability of our processors while most tasks do not increase their needs (that music producer does not need more computing than in 2006) and desktops slowly faded to nothing but the…

The MBP was plenty sufficient for most music production tasks even in 2004 when I got my first one. If I were running a pro studio with a 32+ channel mixing desk, I could see needing more, but I was able to manage 16 channels of live recording and at least 64 channels of live mix on my 2004 TiBook.

Berklee College of Music [0] requires at MBP with 16 GB of memory, 512 GB or disk space, which I think has been available since at least 2007.

[0] https://www.berklee.edu/sts/macbook-pro

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#209

Post by brundolf »

yakubin wrote: post #115

I don’t know if it’s the fault of Apple Silicon, but on my Mac applications regularly crash. That includes ACDSee, IINA, qBittorent, Edge, KeePassXC, Sublime Text, Sublime Merge… There is at least one crash every 3 days. Nothing like it happens on my Windows, Linux or FreeBSD systems. It’s my first Mac, so I can’t compare this experience to Intel Macs, and so I don’t know if it’s just that MacOS is so unstable in gen…

I can't remember the last time I had something crash on one of my macs, though I don't run any of the above. But it seems like it could be a problem with your machine

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#210

Post by JohnTHaller »

brookst wrote: post #190
JohnTHaller wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similarly priced Windows PC is expandable and upgradeable while also being faster than a Mac Studio.

. . . and much louder, and much bigger, and running Windows. Macs have never been about highest possible performance at any price point. But there is a niche where people want a very fast computer that is quit and not too ugly (and who can find their apps on macOS).

Sorry, I don't think I was clear earlier. I blame post-Covid fatigue. I meant it more as a comparison to the Mac Pro (based on parent/grand parent comments). The Pro is expandable and upgradeable. And it - at least when introduced - was always basically the most desktop workstation you could buy short of sticking a server farm under your desk. The Studio is none of those things. So, while an equivalent Windows machine in the same pricing on a Studio can easily trounce a Studio, when thinking of what the next Mac Pro would theoretically deliver, there would be no equivalently priced Windows machine to trounce it. More like equal it but on Windows.
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