111–120 of 263 posts
I'd always be open to Apple putting a supercharged ARM chip in a prosumer laptop. We could always run a variant of linux on the laptop if OS X were too buggy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However, there is one thing I've never seen mentioned - a combined Mac/iOS binary. Because they're already doing something better. All iOS apps compile to Bitcode, an intermediary representation that can then compile an optimized binary for the target device architecture.[1] So if there ever were a desire to run iOS apps on Mac, they'd just compile from Bitcode. Having said that, there's explicitly zero desire to d…
Bitcode allows you to optimize between chip versions with different opcodes, but not different architectures, word sizes, or endianness. Source: the recent Accidental Tech Podcast that interviewed Chris Lattner.
Can you just imagine how long the battery would last on an arm based macbook? Days?!
It is actually quite difficult to beat Intel on power efficiency once you start talking about laptop class CPUs. The combination of Intel's advanced fabrication tech and their highly efficient core family of microarchitectures gives them a significant advantage outside of the ultra-low-power space.
It has been interesting to watch the ARM ecosystem unfold. Sort of like seeing a levy breach where just a trickle of water starts flowing over it and then more and more and more. Apple has the resources and the motivation to build a "desktop" 64 bit ARM processor. The history here is also interesting. After debuting the Macintosh in 1984, and getting into fights with Motorola over what should be in the next generatio…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds incredibly kludgey and at odds with Apple's de-investment in macOS. (As in "reduced investment", not "divestment".) Adding massive complexity to eke out another hour or two of battery life seems like a poor choice when there are so many things to be fixed in the OS.
> Apple's de-investment in macOS Citation needed. "We love the Mac and are as committed to it, in both desktops and notebooks, as we ever have been." http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/fea...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Playstation 4 does this as the south bridge is really just an ARM chip. So I think you are right.
And the PS3 before it. And the WiiU, and the Wii. And every AMD chip since about 2013 (AMD Platform Security Processor, their equivalent of Intel's ME). Honestly, pretty much every complex electronic device (and quite a few not so!) out there has a bunch of ARMs inside of it doing system management. This is borderline a non-story IMO. Hell, an ARM7TDMI was a pretty common core to use on SD cards a few years back. The…
Which is crazy, because that was the main CPU in the GameBoy Advance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why so? A Mac is a very high ASP item - why not, for example allow iOS apps to run in macOS (using the ARM processor). Ultimately, the 2016 MBPs are a great example of why Apple needs to divest from Intel. The poor timing for Kaby Lake mobile processors and lack of low-power RAM were both Apple's reasons stated when the topic of "the MBP isn't keeping up with the competition" arises. And who's to say that macOS.next…
why not, for example allow iOS apps to run in macOS That's not what the article is talking about and it's a bad idea for UX reasons (no touchscreen). And who's to say that macOS.next will be anything similar to the current macOS? Don't even go there; a vocal minority of Mac users including me do not want anything like that. And getting back to the article, if the OS is radically different then presumably it doesn't n…
I think the problem is while ARM is good at lower power the moment you need sustained performance the power requirements shoot up and throttling begins. The flagship ARM A72 and A73 are not adequate for true desktop class performance, somewhat catching up to Intel's low end core u laptop chips. It's increasingly looking like to get x86 level performance ARM would lose its low power advantages. The AMD Zen on the othe…
Oddly, ARM is eating the PC architecture from the inside. What's on your raid card? An arm. What's in your usb devices? An arm. What's in your SSD? An arm. A PC is beginning to look like a network of arms with an intel driving. How long will the intel core last?
On the other hand, Apple does seem to have the capability to design competitive desktop class CPUs, so who knows.
It's finally happening! The increase in competition in both the foundry and architectural spaces is exactly what we need to push us past this stagnation of Moore's Law. Intel needs to sacrifice Microsoft and make x86 a legacy architecture. There are huge parts of their processor designs that no one at the company modifies (or even understands) from one generation to the next, but which they cannot remove for backward…
> It's time to start fresh with a new architecture if they want to maintain their reputation of having the most powerful technology. They tried that, though. It was called Itanium and it went nowhere. Now, Itanium had all kinds of other problems and I wouldn't call its failure incontrovertible evidence against "Intel should make a new architecture", but I can understand why the company isn't eager to try that again.…
And the i860, and i960, and i432...
It's finally happening! The increase in competition in both the foundry and architectural spaces is exactly what we need to push us past this stagnation of Moore's Law. Intel needs to sacrifice Microsoft and make x86 a legacy architecture. There are huge parts of their processor designs that no one at the company modifies (or even understands) from one generation to the next, but which they cannot remove for backward…
Why does intel need to do this? x86 decode is a tiny, tiny part of the overhead of modern x86 CPUs. Architecture for the most part at this point doesn't matter unless you are talking about truly novel approaches like the Mill. Arm certainly is not a significant improvement.