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On Apple Announcing the ARM Mac Transition at WWDC This Month

21–22 of 22 posts

Re: On Apple Announcing the ARM Mac Transition at WWDC This Month

#21

Post by ac29 » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 5:28 AM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #4

I really believe that the lack of x86 is going to be a big buying problem for a lot of people who need to run software on Windows. Without Boot Camp or x86 virtual machines its going to be a problem to justify the machine with a large group of people.

Depends on what you're trying to do. x86 emulation is probably more than fast enough for a lot of types of software. And since Apple is designing the CPU, presumably they could add instructions to accelerate emulation if they wanted to.

Re: On Apple Announcing the ARM Mac Transition at WWDC This Month

#22

Post by CapriciousCptl » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

hnjim wrote: post #19

cmsj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple ships close to 200 million iPhones a year all with their custom ARM CPUs, fabricated by TSMC. They ship about a tenth as many Macs. I'm pretty sure they can handle that growth, especially as one of TSMC's biggest customers.

And the move to 5nm for the A14 (sampling since 2019) will yield more chips per wafer. Either way, Apple is very forward looking on supply chain and has been planning this for a decade. Remember when they owned the majority of the nand market due to long term supplier contracts?

Interesting thought. Will the functional yield really be much higher? Because there could be more wasted chips?

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