Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 263 posts

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#21

Post by simcop2387 »

Kenji wrote: post #16
mmastrac wrote: post #9

I think that in the long run you'll see a hybrid ARM/x64 Mac sharing the same case in the same way we have hybrid graphics. If you look at most of the processes running on a Mac, how many of those need to be running on the power-hungrier Intel chip? You could easily offload much of the kernel, Dock, compositor, Twitter desktop, etc to a lower-power ARM. In the case where you aren't running any x64 apps, you could the…

Doesn't that complicate the mainboard design vastly? Memory & caching, clocks & time, concurrency, etc.

Definitely going to complicate things but it could easily end up worth it for a laptop if it can reduce power usage to almost that of a phone when not doing anything particularly demanding.

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#22

Post by monocasa »

bhewes wrote: post #14
mmastrac wrote: post #9

I think that in the long run you'll see a hybrid ARM/x64 Mac sharing the same case in the same way we have hybrid graphics. If you look at most of the processes running on a Mac, how many of those need to be running on the power-hungrier Intel chip? You could easily offload much of the kernel, Dock, compositor, Twitter desktop, etc to a lower-power ARM. In the case where you aren't running any x64 apps, you could the…

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 damn things are everywhere.

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#23

Post by throwawayish »

bhewes wrote: post #14
mmastrac wrote: post #9

I think that in the long run you'll see a hybrid ARM/x64 Mac sharing the same case in the same way we have hybrid graphics. If you look at most of the processes running on a Mac, how many of those need to be running on the power-hungrier Intel chip? You could easily offload much of the kernel, Dock, compositor, Twitter desktop, etc to a lower-power ARM. In the case where you aren't running any x64 apps, you could the…

The Playstation 4 does this as the south bridge is really just an ARM chip. So I think you are right.

Not really, the ARM in the SB is much more like a ILOM system; not much different from the various processors scattered around hardware these days, be it ARM or some other more niche architecture, or even special-purpose archs.

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#24

Post by dbalan »

Kenji wrote: post #16
mmastrac wrote: post #9

I think that in the long run you'll see a hybrid ARM/x64 Mac sharing the same case in the same way we have hybrid graphics. If you look at most of the processes running on a Mac, how many of those need to be running on the power-hungrier Intel chip? You could easily offload much of the kernel, Dock, compositor, Twitter desktop, etc to a lower-power ARM. In the case where you aren't running any x64 apps, you could the…

Doesn't that complicate the mainboard design vastly? Memory & caching, clocks & time, concurrency, etc.

Both CPUs are connected with a PCI bus and as far as the main SOC is concerned its a bunch of peripherals on PCI

https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7946-console_hacking_2016

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#25

Post by mastax »

bhewes wrote: post #14
mmastrac wrote: post #9

I think that in the long run you'll see a hybrid ARM/x64 Mac sharing the same case in the same way we have hybrid graphics. If you look at most of the processes running on a Mac, how many of those need to be running on the power-hungrier Intel chip? You could easily offload much of the kernel, Dock, compositor, Twitter desktop, etc to a lower-power ARM. In the case where you aren't running any x64 apps, you could the…

The Playstation 4 does this as the south bridge is really just an ARM chip. So I think you are right.

Anyone interested in this should watch the CCC talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AoHGJ1g9aM

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#26

Post by wmf »

mmastrac wrote: post #9

I think that in the long run you'll see a hybrid ARM/x64 Mac sharing the same case in the same way we have hybrid graphics. If you look at most of the processes running on a Mac, how many of those need to be running on the power-hungrier Intel chip? You could easily offload much of the kernel, Dock, compositor, Twitter desktop, etc to a lower-power ARM. In the case where you aren't running any x64 apps, you could the…

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.

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#27

Post by pilsetnieks »

mmastrac wrote: post #9

I think that in the long run you'll see a hybrid ARM/x64 Mac sharing the same case in the same way we have hybrid graphics. If you look at most of the processes running on a Mac, how many of those need to be running on the power-hungrier Intel chip? You could easily offload much of the kernel, Dock, compositor, Twitter desktop, etc to a lower-power ARM. In the case where you aren't running any x64 apps, you could the…

There already are ARM chips in the new MBPRs, for example - the touchbar and touch ID with its secure enclave runs on ARM. I could easily foresee them putting in more powerful ARM chips and offloading some tasks to them.

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#29

Post by monocasa »

detaro wrote: post #20
John23832 wrote: post #3

As long as it's still x86/AMD64 we're good. I really don't want to see PPC/Intel fragmentation again.

Licensing x86/AMD64 requires licenses from both Intel and AMD, which probably would be quite expensive, even if they can threaten to go ARM otherwise, and engineers with the low-level experience probably are way harder to find than for ARM (where quite a few companies hold various levels of licensing, and Apple likely already has quite a lot of talent inhouse)

> engineers with the low-level experience probably are way harder to find than for ARM

Eh, the instruction set doesn't matter that much for modern CPU designers (within reason). Apple's in house expertise came (in part) from their acquisition of P.A. Semi and their PowerPC engineers; Apple it seems immediately redirected them to working on ARM designs. And the Transmeta guys proved that a third party can put out an interesting x86 chip if you can get access to the licenses.

Re: Apple Said to Work on Mac Chip That Would Lessen Intel Role

#30

Post by throwaway91111 »

wmf wrote: post #26
mmastrac wrote: post #9

I think that in the long run you'll see a hybrid ARM/x64 Mac sharing the same case in the same way we have hybrid graphics. If you look at most of the processes running on a Mac, how many of those need to be running on the power-hungrier Intel chip? You could easily offload much of the kernel, Dock, compositor, Twitter desktop, etc to a lower-power ARM. In the case where you aren't running any x64 apps, you could the…

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.

Is apple divesting its mac offering? Sounds like FUD.
Post reply on HN