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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

#241

Post by caleblloyd »

zimpenfish wrote: post #240
caleblloyd wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows RT and ChromeOS have both supported ARM for a while. In the case of Windows, adoption is low because not all applications work on ARM. Apple would hit the same problem initially and would have to wait for application developers to distribute ARM versions.

> would have to wait for application developers to distribute ARM versions. Or they can switch to their bitcode bundles for Mac apps like the iOS apps and transcode for Intel / ARM on delivery. Plus they have previous form in this area with the "run PPC apps on Intel" via Rhapsody (IIRC.) It'll be a stumbling block, nothing more.

I'm mainly talking about unmanaged apps, not apps distributed through the Mac App store. I don't think that x86 emulation is an option, that would be terribly slow.

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

#242

Post by ClassyJacket »

wmf wrote: post #160
ClassyJacket wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost posted that link too, but according to this comment, that product was cancelled and never released because Intel refused: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/539kvq/will_amd_cpusmo... There's still a mention of an expansion card on their site: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboard-Accessory/ThunderboltEX-... But it's only compatible with ASUS motherboards that already have Thunderbolt. So I'm not sure what t…

Plenty of ARMs have PCIe, maybe even the A9.

Any examples?

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

#243

Post by zimpenfish »

caleblloyd wrote: post #241
zimpenfish wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would have to wait for application developers to distribute ARM versions. Or they can switch to their bitcode bundles for Mac apps like the iOS apps and transcode for Intel / ARM on delivery. Plus they have previous form in this area with the "run PPC apps on Intel" via Rhapsody (IIRC.) It'll be a stumbling block, nothing more.

I'm mainly talking about unmanaged apps, not apps distributed through the Mac App store. I don't think that x86 emulation is an option, that would be terribly slow.

If they still have the Rhapsody tech, it's not strict emulation, it's more like transliteration / JIT; much like Transmeta were working on, IIRC.

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

#244

Post by caleblloyd »

zimpenfish wrote: post #243
caleblloyd wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mainly talking about unmanaged apps, not apps distributed through the Mac App store. I don't think that x86 emulation is an option, that would be terribly slow.

If they still have the Rhapsody tech, it's not strict emulation, it's more like transliteration / JIT; much like Transmeta were working on, IIRC.

Ah, Binary Translation at the silicon level. That would be very interesting. Apparently NVIDIA's Project Denver was supposed to do this for x86 but they were unable to get the proper licenses, so they shifted it to do it for ARM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver

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

#245

Post by jschwartzi »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #152
_s wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a interesting point - I wonder if it's possible to license the Thunderbolt tech in some way, and have it hooked up to the ARM Chip; something like what Asus does to give AMD thunderbolt: http://www.eteknix.com/asus-give-am3-boards-thunderbolt-supp... Saying that - and I hope someone corrects me here if I'm wrong, I was under the impression that Apple & Intel jointly created Thunderbolt (or perhaps it…

I almost posted that link too, but according to this comment, that product was cancelled and never released because Intel refused: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/539kvq/will_amd_cpusmo... There's still a mention of an expansion card on their site: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboard-Accessory/ThunderboltEX-... But it's only compatible with ASUS motherboards that already have Thunderbolt. So I'm not sure what t…

The Freescale(now NXP) i.mx6 has four lanes of PCIe. All that's required is a peripheral on the main memory bus.

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

#246

Post by kevin_b_er »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #124
ben_jones wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really interesting how the historical strengths of companies can persist even after decades of evolution. If the people are coming and going, how is this institutionalized success being cultivated and maintained?

To be honest I don't know the answer to that. That said, Apple has always had corporate value of being maximally responsible for their own destiny. It's hallmark card wisdom to know the things you can change and accept the things you can't change, but in Apple's case their history has been filled with finding things we can't change and replacing them with something we can. So where one company might say "Well we have…

So is the lesson taking contracts from Apple is not a good idea?

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

#247

Post by mmastrac »

mattkevan wrote: post #233
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…

I see this being the first step as a multi-year transition away from Intel, rather than some sort of merger of iOS and macOS or a sudden architecture switch like PowerPC to Intel. For now, the ARM will be a low-power co-processor handling a few tasks via specially compiled extensions. However, as Apple continues to iterate on the AX processors, and they, along with developers, figure out how to move more stuff onto A…

I mostly agree with this, but I still haven't figured out what the end-game for this might be. I believe that they'd just emulate low-power-requirement x86 and x64 code rather than keeping a low-end x64 chip in the laptop.

If a significant number of MBP customers are running VMWare or Parallels, however, this might seriously hurt the timeline for moving to 100% ARM. In that case they'd either have higher-end Macs with the x64 chips (potentially complicating the product line) or work on adding x64 emulation acceleration to their Ax chip line.

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

#248

Post by msbarnett »

DannyBee wrote: post #93
msbarnett wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC AMD's cross-licensing deals with Intel over certain key patents are null and void if AMD is bought, which puts a real damper on the main reason anyone would consider purchasing the company.

You do realize that amd owns a lot of the x64 patents, not intel, right?

Yes, I do realize that. Which ought to have been clear from the use of the term 'cross-licensing', frankly.

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

#249

Post by protomyth »

cwisecarver wrote: post #146
protomyth wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that would be a really, really dangerous agreement for Intel given the market cap of AMD and how it would gut Intel's CPU lineup. I would assume their would be one damn quick agreement after the fact.

Apple would have them by the plums at least for a little while.

IBM would also be interesting given POWER.

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

#250

Post by londons_explore »

I consider this a mostly tactical move to get better prices out of Intel.

Sure, the plan as presented might work, but the migration will take years, be messy, and lead to lots of unhappy customers due to poor emulation performance, dropping legacy app support, bugs in a new architecture etc.

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