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Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

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Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#471

Post by oneplane »

sydney6 wrote: post #429
djrogers wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Close, but Apple already produces it's own WiFi/BT chipsets (the S1/S2 etc SOCs in Apple watches for example, and the W1 chipset in AirPods and new Beats headphones), and is rumored to be working on an LTE/GSM chipset. I think Apple is intensely interested in controlling the entire stack.

Isn't wireless hardware in general more like a IP/Patenting/Licensing issue?

Not if you want to do it better than the competition. We already have a zillion radio chips that all do about the same thing. If Apple (or any other company) wanted to be 'better', building a better design to do the thing in a better way (think efficiency, power, speed etc.) would give a unique advantage that cannot easily be copied by a competitor. Same goes for the RTOS (or lack thereof) that you need to run those. For some implementations, a softMAC vs. fullMAC makes sense.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#472

Post by AskewEgret »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #13
justherefortart wrote: post #4

Great, we can go back to the macrumors nonsense about how this PPC is "just as fast" as the x86 days. With their focus on iOS vs MacOS, this doesn't surprise me. MacOS will simply die once they port their tools to iOS. Terrible choice IMO.

I don't know where all this conjecture is coming from. Have you seen benchmarks of apple A11 chips? They have some of the best CPU technology in the world now. They are competitive with low end Intel chips already while using significantly less power. Before they went to Intel, they were at the mercy of Motorola, which couldn't keep up with Intel.

The problem Apple had with Motorola was that Motorola couldn't get the chip yields they needed at high clock rates.

The problem Apple had with IBM was that IBM didn't care enough about power efficiency to make the chips viable in laptops. They also weren't that interested in fast iterations of incremental improvements.

When the G4 first game out, it was far, far ahead of x86. Apple offered it at 350, 400 and 450 MHz but shipped maybe a few hundred or a few thousand at 450 MHz and a few tens of thousands at 400 MHz. Those computers blew the Pentium out of the water. Intel eventually caught up and passed them purely on manufacturing ability.

Then the G5 came out, which was a beast of a processor. But it never came out for mobile, and IBM only upgraded the speed once or twice before Apple went for Intel.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#473

Post by derefr »

sneak wrote: post #447
davidy123 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't easily share media between the Apple ecosystem and others. You can't access some Apple services at all from Linux. There's no way to run userscripts/WebExtensions on IOS. Your device is no longer a user-focused tool to access media, your browser is closer to being a "smart tv" than a customize-able information explorer and augmenter essentially controlled by no one. You're giving up an awful lot for the sak…

- decent video calling - imessage (signal is getting warmer, but the integration is still lacking) - adobe creative suite - video editing - audio production apps - photo management and post processing (darktable is still garbage) - sleep/wake and connecting/disconnecting external displays - not-ugly fonts

It’s kind of funny to compare Linux vs. macOS if your experience of macOS primarily comes from using a Hackintosh. (No sleep/wake support for me! Unplugging my HDMI cable causes a hard-reboot! Etc.)

Which is to say: Linux is pretty good on Macs, whereas macOS is pretty broken (after weeks of intense debugging with other Hackintosh folks) on hardware that would run Linux just fine.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#474

Post by throwaway2048 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #173
cptskippy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple did a pretty decent job when they transitioned from PPC to x86_64, it has Rosetta to translate PPC to x86. Microsoft and partners released ARM based Windows Laptops this year that can run Win32 apps in emulation. What's stopping Apple from shipping Macbooks with a custom SoC that can run existing Apps in emulation until developers can recompile? I would argue that most Air and Macbook owners aren't developers a…

Creatives who want hardware optimized Adobe apps to continue to be fast will care. I wouldn't count on emulation of vectorized code to work all that well.

emulating x86 on ARM with any kind of real preformanceis additionally tricky because the x86 archetechure has very strong memory gaurentees (dosent matter if memory is aligned, dosent matter when in the instruction pipeline you access it, etc) that ARM isnt even close to matching.

Emulating that requires a massive performance hit, because you essentially have to check every single memory access to make sure its not doing something invalid on ARM.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#475

Post by saas_co_de »

sreque wrote: post #433
mark_l_watson wrote: post #229

This might just be a bargaining move on Apple’s part, but I don’t think so. I think that long term they are much better off controlling their entire hardware stack. I wouldn’t be surprised to even see them make their own display screens. As an Apple customer, I like this idea also. For 20 years, I used to be a desktop Linux fanatic and later became a fan of Android. In the last few years, I have switched to using all…

I am a software developer, and I detest working on my mac laptop. At $lastjob I had a Linux desktop and it is, I believe, the most productive environment I have ever developed in. The job before, I had a windows desktop, and I prefer that to mac. You say you want to just "get things done expediently," but in my experience apple software is flat out inferior and OSX is the worst of the 3 major operating systems I have…

> in my experience apple software is flat out inferior and OSX is the worst

It is almost absurdly bad. The only OS that still hangs, freezes, and crashes regularly. It is like Windows 98 quality wise and seems to get worse instead of better.

The whole UX is also insane. Every feature is hidden behind some obscure keyboard shortcut that you have to google or you just get used to working with this useless toy os.

The terminal is garbage. Everything is slooooow as fk (typing, mouse, etc).

It is shocking that the internet industry has standardized on working on this garbage when they run Linux on their servers and would be far better off developing on the software they actually use.

It just demonstrates the cult mindset and horrible lack of real technical proficiency in the industry.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#476

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

derefr wrote: post #466
electricslpnsld wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but the LLVM toolchain provided by Apple is a bit clunky and missing features relative to what you get from a typical Linux distro.

Something I don’t quite understand, coming from a scripting-language bqckground: why are you using your OS’s provided compiler toolchain (for anything other than building OS packages for distribution?) Is there no version manager for clang the way there is for e.g. Rust?

You can install GCC from Homebrew if desired. Personally I don't bother because, well, Apple's clang works just fine!

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#477

Post by oneplane »

lev99 wrote: post #450
Lramseyer wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Second, while Apple's mobile processors are currently the best in ARM world, for "pro" desktop computers Apple needs desktop-grade processor. Making something comparable to i7 isn't such an easy and cheap job. Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and Cavium have created very powerful ARM chips for non-mobile application. Apple definitely has the chip architects, the money, and the experience to do such a thing.

I have serious doubts that the marketplace can support 3 desktop/laptop workstation CPU manufacturers. (Amd, Intel, and now Apple)

I don't think it matters to Apple since they will be using their own chips. Intel will simply sell less, and AMD will not change at all.

By the way, don't forget Broadcom, Marvell, Cavium, IBM etc. as they are doing big bucks with CPU's and SoC's as well.

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#478

Post by nie »

macintux wrote: post #188
rdsubhas wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple developing chips to improve their negotiating position with Intel Not necessary. They only need to ship one model of Mac Mini or any small desktop lineup with Ryzen to improve their negotiating position while still being compatible with the existing x86_64 ecosystem. So no, this is not merely a negotiation jibe. There are definite long-term prospects. We're already moving to a mobile-first design and approach…

> Having those mobile/tablet apps expand automatically to desktop is the next logical conclusion. Thankfully Apple comprises vastly smarter people than me, but I've always thought this is a bad idea. The two interaction models are so dramatically different that I don't see how merging them makes sense. A finger is not a mouse.

I'm also surprised that no one (of significant voice) has voiced enough to pressure Apple to think about their developer user population. Everywhere I go I see devs using mac. I'm sure the reason behind this is 2 folds: supported hardware, x64 + Unix platform. So if they make the transition, say, in 2020, the dev world must be prepared by the end of 2019, I mean, from every toolchain to dev Apps. And this would seem quite a big endeavour, not that devs world moves slowly but the amount of work...

Is my anecdotal too far off?

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#479

Post by [deleted] »

mythz wrote: post #456
mehrdadn wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also yet to find an IDE as nice as Visual Studio...

Many of JetBrains IDE's are better and they're cross-platform. I've switched to Rider after getting sick of constant white screen of deaths, crashes, locking and perf issues in VS.NET. Rider is on par with VS.NET/R# for C# and superior for pretty much everything else except for visual GUI designers - although I haven't used one seriously in over a decade.

[deleted]

Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel

#480

Post by jakobegger »

If Apple really moves to custom chips in Macs, it's going to be about one thing only: independence. Apple wants to control the entire stack; and relying on a single vendor is too big of a risk.

It's not a question of price; it's about getting the chips they need.

Intel has missed a lot of targets in recent years, and (according to rumors) more than one recent Mac model has been delayed because Intel did not have the next chip generation ready in time.

Current Macbook Pros max out at 16GB RAM because the Intel chips don't support LPDDR4 RAM.

On iOS, Apple can control everything. They can plan ahead, and know that in 3 years they'll have the chips they need.

On the Mac side, they can only hope that Intel doesn't delay their roadmap longer than usual.

(The story about Marcipan (a shared iOS / macOS UI framework) seems unrelated to the chip issue. Sounds like they included it in this article only to make it look a bit more substantial. There is already a lot of shared code between macOS and iOS, and the CPU architecture isn't holding anything back in that regard.)

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