Macintel: The End Is Nigh
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Macintel: The End Is Nigh
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Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#2The real weakness of Intel in power consumption relative to ARM hasn't been so much in the chips as the chip sets, software and the balance-of-system.
To create a low power system, ALL components need to be low power, and it is easier to start from a system built to be low power and scale up capabilities rather than go the other way around.
For instance, I have a Windows-based laptop which is a great machine, but if I have a web browser open, any web browser, the fan spins, it gets hot, and battery life is less than 1.5 hours.
Is it the fault of Windows, the browser vendors, the web platform, adware, crapware, who knows what? It doesn't matter, but controlling power consumption on a legacy platform is a game of whac-a-mole that doesn't end.
Because Windows users expect to plug in devices that draw power from USB, a Windows tablet has to have a huge power transistor to regulate voltage, a power supply system scaled up so it can supply enough power through the USB port to charge an Android tablet, at this point you might add the fan and then you are doomed.
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#3For 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?
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#4The transition from powerpc to x86 was surprisingly relatively painless. There was some pain but most apps ran fine in the translation layer and eventually the native apps moved over.
It'll probably be even easier the next time since apple has done it once already and knows how to provide the proper dev tools.
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#5For 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 x86 emulator like they did for the transition from PowerPC.
This will also open up the possibility of running iOS apps natively on OS X, but I doubt Apple will pursue that at all (for UX reasons).
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#6The transition from powerpc to x86 was surprisingly relatively painless. There was some pain but most apps ran fine in the translation layer and eventually the native apps moved over. It'll probably be even easier the next time since apple has done it once already and knows how to provide the proper dev tools.
They've done it twice, not once. They moved from 68k to PPC in the early 90s, again with full emulation. In that case it was even more extreme, as much of the OS ran emulated in early PPC releases (yet it was still quicker than running on actual 68k hardware!).
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#7The transition from powerpc to x86 was surprisingly relatively painless. There was some pain but most apps ran fine in the translation layer and eventually the native apps moved over. It'll probably be even easier the next time since apple has done it once already and knows how to provide the proper dev tools.
They've done it twice, not once. They moved from 68k to PPC in the early 90s, again with full emulation. In that case it was even more extreme, as much of the OS ran emulated in early PPC releases (yet it was still quicker than running on actual 68k hardware!).
I think it's technically irrelevant, how many people from the 68k/ppc era are still there, and the os/tooling/techniques back then have probably nothing to do with what's in place nowadays.
Pyschologically it still matters though, as you said, they did it twice and the first was surely a harder task.
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#8The transition from powerpc to x86 was surprisingly relatively painless. There was some pain but most apps ran fine in the translation layer and eventually the native apps moved over. It'll probably be even easier the next time since apple has done it once already and knows how to provide the proper dev tools.
They've done it twice, not once. They moved from 68k to PPC in the early 90s, again with full emulation. In that case it was even more extreme, as much of the OS ran emulated in early PPC releases (yet it was still quicker than running on actual 68k hardware!).
You've highlighted the big difference this time. Switching from Intel to ARM would be a step down in performance, or at least not a step up. There's no headroom for a legacy emulation layer.
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#9If 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 that.
Re: Macintel: The End Is Nigh
#10Apple does look like it's making chips to handle heavy workloads, not just to compete with the latest Krait or whatever. But I'm not sure ARM Macs are the direction they'll take that.
It'd make some business sense for them to instead position iOS so it can take over more and more traditional Mac duties. The IBM push could be an example of that. Investing in iOS gives Apple the tight control and the 30% cut they're used to from that space, and it avoids the Windows-RT-ish heartbreak of "why is this ARM OS like my Intel OS but without all my apps?" (If there were Mac-on-ARM, I'd expect it to be Mac App Store only.)
Anyway, the A7 is already a beast (http://www.anandtech.com/show/7910/apples-cyclone-microarchi... does various measurements, http://cryptomaths.com/2014/04/29/benchmarking-symmetric-cry... is an interesting case study), and there are still future process nodes and microarchitecture changes that will let them make better chips. I don't know if an ARM MacBook Air is specifically where this goes, but they're certainly making ARM capable of more serious stuff.