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

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

#201

Post by SkyMarshal »

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.

Actually, eking out another hour or two of battery life at great difficulty sounds exactly like the kind of thing Apple, but few others, would do, if you think about it.

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

#202

Post by Tanegashima »

astrodust wrote: post #17
alrs wrote: post #13

There's always a hedge afoot. Apple had OS 7 running on Intel as early as 1992. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project

NeXT had an Intel version as a hedge as well. Seems those two projects were destined to merge together.

More than that, NeXTSTEP 3.3 and later did really release to the public for Intel x86

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

#203

Post by Tanegashima »

wmf wrote: post #82
lend000 wrote: post #66

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…

Intel needs to sacrifice Microsoft and make x86 a legacy architecture. The last time Intel did this it was called Itanium and it was horrible. Historically, almost all attempts to replace an enormously successful product line with something incompatible have failed.

6502 - 68000

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

#204

Post by sxcurry »

jsheard wrote: post #115
xenadu02 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Actions speak louder than words, and it's been 3 years and 1 month since the Mac Pro saw any action.

But the comment was about MacOS not the Mac Pro

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

#205

Post by ScottBurson »

scholia wrote: post #170
__jal wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one reason is that touch screens for desktop OSes suck. Holding your arm out screen operations for any length of time is awful, and wiping the prints off your screen on your pant leg doesn't work very well on a laptop. That's not to say Apple doesn't release terrible things at times (hockey puck mouse[1]?), but I have trouble imagining Apple releasing one of those. (Laplet? tabletop?) [1] I actually think that…

> Well, one reason is that touch screens for desktop OSes suck They work perfectly well on desktops like the Surface Studio, where you can bring the screen down to a drawing board angle. They also work well with a "desktop OS" on convertible laptops and 2-in-1s with multiple use modes including "tent" and "tablet". They're actually not too bad on real desktops with vertical screens, especially if you're standing up.…

Except that a touch screen can't (reasonably) be optically coated to reduce reflected glare, because skin oils from fingerprints disable the effect, showing up as bright spots.

Those of us who are still bummed that we can't get a matte screen on a Mac laptop anymore will be triply upset if we can't even have an optical coating.

For the use cases of tablets/convertibles, it presumably doesn't matter so much, but for the more intensive creative work that laptops are better for, it does.

Okay -- Apple could have one touchscreen laptop model and leave the rest as they are, or make a touchscreen optional on the whole line. But I would never want to buy a touchscreen laptop.

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

#206

Post by ScottBurson »

xenadu02 wrote: post #103
wmf wrote: post #26

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...

I've read that there is no longer a separate macOS development team; it's been folded in to the iOS team. I think that's a very bad idea.

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

#207

Post by Tloewald »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #108

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…

ARM was bespoke round 1 -- Apple was an early investor and used ARM chips in the Newton family (also some laser printers I believe). PowerPC was round 2. Apple acquihired a Boutique chip design firm (PA Semi) that specialized in low power PowerPC designs to design its ARM cores, so the current round is almost a hybrid of the earlier two.

The 65816 (used in the IIgs) was also pretty much bespoke.

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

#208

Post by ChuckMcM »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #164
ChuckMcM wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe PA Semi ever had a transferable license to Power. They had their own architecture which was very power efficient and they were a CPU design house with ARM experience (they did StrongARM at DEC). What it looks like from the outside looking in, is that Apple bought out a full architecture license (with derivative ownership) from ARM and bought PA Semi to be the core team to start building CPUs that they…

That's how I saw it. I did recently discover PA's PPC looking into various implementations of the architecture that might be salvageable. It was quite impressive. Still better specs on 65nm than the Rocket RISC-V that's on 45nm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PWRficient EDIT: Funnier is it was used in a desktop for Amiga's (AmigaOne X1000) before acquired by Apple. Had to hurt what little ego the Amiga people had left…

Linked in there was the EE Times article (http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1168406) which refreshed my understanding of the licensing issue. It reads like the Power license they had would have to be re-negotiated with IBM as a transfer if they were to keep selling and making their parts.

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

#209

Post by an_account »

wang_li wrote: post #134
craigcabrey wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound like they've never done that before (Universal binaries).

But those weren't both loaded into memory at the same time. Thinking about this I've convinced myself that what will happen is the ARM core will periodically check for various statuses (i.e. connect to your imap/pop server and see if there is new mail) and turn on an indicator or perhaps wake the intel cores. Which is to say that the powernap/low power functionality will be restricted to either things apple delivers…

Yes, "power nap" is an existing feature that only does specific OS/apple specific operations (syncing, notifications, mail, calendar, indexing).

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

#210

Post by throwawayish »

wmf wrote: post #94
runjake wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why the Atom was discontinued, IIRC: the mainline chips power efficiency had been reduced enough to make the Atom much less viable.

Atom hasn't been discontinued; low-end "Celeron" and "Pentium" chips are actually Atoms.

Both Pentium and Celeron are used for standard mainstream dual-core chips and for Atom chips (eg. J4205, Celeron G3900, Pentium G4400)... so in a way they are Intel's trash-can brand.
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