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Macintel: The End Is Nigh

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Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#21

Post by mcintyre1994 »

wyager wrote: post #5
sudhirj wrote: post #3

For someone who's not very knowledgeable about architecture shifts, what software changes would be require to make this happen? I'd assume that the Mac OSX itself might be able to make the shift easily, given that Swift and ObjC code seems to run on both iOS/ARM devices and MacOS/x386 machines. What else will have to change? Or is this purely a hardware choice?

The fact that iOS shares a lot of the same code as OS X will make this a much easier transition. Apple can take a lot of the low-level stuff from iOS, where they've had years to figure out how to get Darwin working smoothly on ARM. Beyond that, all apps on the OS X app store will have to be recompiled and resubmitted. None of the binaries installed on current OS X machines will still work, unless Apple includes an x8…

Do you have any idea if they could pull off X86 emulation on a theoretical but plausible ARM chip? It seems like a really hard thing to emulate an i7 or am I missing something?

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#22

Post by overgard »

I'm probably in the vast minority, but I tend to use apple hardware to run windows... so I'm hoping this doesn't come to pass. I use OSX occasionally, but the thing that got me to switch to apple in the first place was bootcamp.

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#23

Post by RexRollman »

martingordon wrote: post #18

I think it's funny that the main reason people cite the need to switch from Intel to ARM is power consumption. A big reason to stay on Intel is that a lot of people have real needs to run Windows software (whether in Bootcamp or a VM). Switchers feel a lot better jumping to the Mac if they could fall back to Windows if they wanted to. Regarding battery life: The latest MacBooks get 9-12 hours of battery life. I haven…

I recently switched back to Mac for the first time since 2006 and one of the factors in my decision is that I can run other x86 compatable OSes. I haven't felt the need to but it is nice to have the option.

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#24

Post by SyneRyder »

If Apple were to switch from Intel, I'd probably have to (reluctantly) go back to a Windows laptop. I love my MacBook, but most of my money is still earned working with clients who use Windows environments. There's still some software that never made the jump to Mac either, for which I still have to use Parallels Desktop. The best bit of having a Mac is that I can run OS X, Windows & Linux all on the same box.

Of course, if Apple is also making their own x86 compatible chips, that's a different story. I don't need an Intel chip specifically, I just need something that runs Windows / x86 perfectly....

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#25

Post by baq »

apple has been known in the last decade for picking the best hardware for the job. i don't see how ARM chips can compete with intel chips in terms of performace or performance per watt - unless you want a 4W macbook. (hint: you probably don't.) ARM competes very well in performance per dollar - but AMD does, too, and I don't see macs with AMD CPUs in them.

i can see a laptop-sized ARM-based product from apple, but it won't replace any of the macs, it'll be something completely new - let's call it a macpad.

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#26

Post by ggreer »

What would happen to the cost, battery life, and size of an A10-powered MacBook Air?

It would be worse in almost every aspect.

The cost wouldn't change much, and Apple wouldn't profit much more from the switch. The cited CPU cost is the suggested retail price. Apple's volume lets them negotiate huge discounts.

Battery life would go up a bit, but battery life is already pretty good on Apple laptops. My 2013 11" Air gets 8 hours easily, but can go as long as 12 or as short as 2 depending on screen brightness and CPU usage. Unless you're keeping the CPU busy, the screen is the biggest consumer of power. Cutting CPU power consumption in half would only increase battery life by 20-ish%.

The PowerPC to Intel transition worked for several reasons. Most importantly, Intel CPUs were much faster than PowerPC. In everyday usage, the fastest ARM chips are 10x slower than a quad-core Haswell. Moving to x86 also increased the features of Macs, allowing them to dual-boot Windows and efficiently virtualize other x86-based OSes. Switching to ARM would backtrack on both fronts. An ARM-based Apple laptop would have no boot camp, no Windows virtualization, and no efficient emulation of legacy applications.

CPUs are only a small part of why tablets have longer battery life than laptops. Tablets have no keyboard, trackpad, or hinge, so they can basically be a giant battery with a screen attached. The iPad has a bigger battery than the 11" MacBook Air, despite the Air weighing 50% more and taking up 30% more volume. (Edit: This has recently changed. The 11" Air has a 38 watt-hour battery. The iPad 3 and 4 had a 42 watt-hour battery, but the iPad Air has a 32 watt-hour battery. Still, it's even smaller than the earlier iPads, massing less than half the 11" Air.)

In short, it doesn't seem worthwhile to do all this work and sacrifice so much performance for some incremental increases in battery life and profit.

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#27

Post by mcintyre1994 »

martingordon wrote: post #18

I think it's funny that the main reason people cite the need to switch from Intel to ARM is power consumption. A big reason to stay on Intel is that a lot of people have real needs to run Windows software (whether in Bootcamp or a VM). Switchers feel a lot better jumping to the Mac if they could fall back to Windows if they wanted to. Regarding battery life: The latest MacBooks get 9-12 hours of battery life. I haven…

I can't help thinking losing Windows now would be really significant for them. More specifically losing Office - if Windows on ARM keeps flaking can they rely on a first class Office build for the foreseeable future on ARM? Their office stuff is probably awesome but it's not office and it seems that could hurt a lot.

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#28

Post by School-Cotton »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #15
wyager wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that iOS shares a lot of the same code as OS X will make this a much easier transition. Apple can take a lot of the low-level stuff from iOS, where they've had years to figure out how to get Darwin working smoothly on ARM. Beyond that, all apps on the OS X app store will have to be recompiled and resubmitted. None of the binaries installed on current OS X machines will still work, unless Apple includes an x8…

The transition will be easy for applications that rely on Apple's APIs only, the fun will be for programs that use proprietary third party components all of which will need to be rebuilt, as well as all binary plugins to applications. I can imagine this might be a huge job for some of the more heavyweight production programs for Mac , as well as AAA games. It would basically spell doom for Parallels and other virtual…

Another negative in the same vein is that it would prevent fast emulation of Windows and many Linux/BSD distributions in something like VMWare.

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#29

Post by fiatmoney »

"The aging x86 architecture is beset by layers of architectural silt accreted from a succession of additions to the instruction set... Because of this excess baggage, an x86 chip needs more transistors than its ARM-based equivalent"

I wish people would stop saying this. On the inside, x86 CPUs are basically RISC. There is a translation layer from the publicly facing instruction layer to the internal representation. The transistor and power budget for this translation layer is absolutely trivial.

Intel has an enormous amount of expertise in the actual manufacturing and design layers, as evidenced by the rate of improvement in their Atom CPUs (striking range of ARM, actually), integrated GPUs, and quasi-GPU compute cards. They are not in danger of "losing" in the long term in a performance or performance / watt race. The risk is they get disrupted due to all CPUs turning into a commodity in roughly the same way that RAM is a commodity.

Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh

#30

Post by RexRollman »

jareds wrote: post #9

If this happens I hope entry level Mac’s get below $500. I bought a MacBook Air for use as a Windows machine with the plan to learn iOS development at some point. It was worth the cost since I can use it as my day to day machine running Windows. I wouldn’t be able to justify spending $1000 on a Mac Laptop that could not run Windows. I could justify $400 for an entry level Mac Mini running ARM but not a lot more then…

Based on Apple's pricing history, I don't think ARM based Macs would be cheaper, at least not by much.
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