Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#481

Post by miohtama » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:11 PM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #379

vessenes wrote: post #305

Commenters here seem dubious. I’ll take the contra-position. This feels to me like it’s going to be great; a big win for consumers and developers. Current A12z chips are highly performant; Apple is roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from any other manufacturer. I presume their consumer hardware will launch with an A13Z, or maybe an A14 type chip. Apple has consistently shipped new chip designs on time; I…

Agreed on all points. I saw speculation elsewhere that this change, along with AWS's addition of Graviton-based (their own ARM processors) instances at much more competitive price points relative to x86, are bound to spearhead the change to "ARM by default." If your devs are already using ARM, and ARM's notably cheaper in the cloud, that's a compelling case. If you're already using Kubernetes / Docker heavily, you're…

Does Docker work on ARM or does hypervisor have any Intel specific features?

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#482

Post by josemanuel » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:11 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #258

Apple ported many Pro Apps to ARM , especially their Logic Pro, Photoshop and they were showcasing Maya on ARM. That is about as Pro as it gets for Mac. That reads to me Apple isn't going to have Intel for some high end Pro machine. They intended to go all in with ARM. i.e There will be a Mac Pro with High TDP ARM Chip. I wonder what are the owner of Mac Pro feeling now having just spend a $5K+ Mac Pro with Intel. Qu…

Maybe they’ll eventually use some Arm server chip on high end.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#483

Post by donarb » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

jason0597 wrote: post #388

I'm personally much more worried about the power Apple will gain from switching their hardware to ARM. This gives them such immense power, allowing them to create an even stronger walled garden environment. For all we know they could force the system to only run Mac OS? Is this goodbye to choosing your own operating system now? Are the only people Apple cares about web and app developers? Are kernel engineers forgott…

Not sure what the problem is. Apple is merely transitioning to a new CPU architecture. If you're a low level developer, you'll be working in ARM assembler rather than x86 assembler.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#484

Post by amelius » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

tuatoru wrote: post #428

amelius wrote: post #415

As they are a relatively new player, I wonder: how many patents of Intel/AMD/Nvidia will they infringe on?

Apple could just buy them all.

You can't always buy patents. If other players don't want Apple in the CPU market, they could just block Apple. Patents offer a monopoly on a technology after all. A different scenario would be if Apple built a war chest of CPU-related patents, which they could use for trading.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#485

Post by ebg13 » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:13 PM UTC

moooo99 wrote: post #432

StillBored wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD is tiny compared to intel, the fact that they are besting them goes to show how they have been stuck for ~5 years. The real problem though, is that apple is actually designing a core 100% focused on the target market. Unlike intel, for whatever reason, and AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops. So, I would expect the engineering tradeoffs for said laptop/desktop proces…

> AMD which didn't have the funds to run a dedicated design team for laptop/desktops. Given the extremely impressive performance of the 4800H notebook cpus, I'd assume that might be a thing of the past. > AKA, things like hyperthreading are quite a win for servers, but at best are a wash for a desktop use case focused on extremely high single thread perf at the expense of throughput. This might be true for devices li…

> Given the extremely impressive performance of the 4800H notebook cpus, I'd assume that might be a thing of the past.

The TDP on those is, what, 3-4x the A12Z?

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#486

Post by Ericson2314 » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

zelly wrote: post #426

sschueller wrote: post #298

They will lock down their PCs like the iPhone. Good luck booting anything other than macos or getting you Mac fixed anywhere other than Apple. No thanks, switching back to Linux. I'm done with this crap.

Thank you Apple for bringing the Year of the Linux Desktop

I do hope this indirectly helps Pine64 somehow too.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#487

Post by fabianhjr » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

ascendantlogic wrote: post #450

kllrnohj wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from any other manufacturer. Eh? This is a flimsy claim. AMD's performance/watt is extremely impressive right now. Apple is ahead of Intel for sure, but Intel isn't the only other player here. > So, I’m predicting an MBP 13 - 16 range with an extra three hours of battery life+, and 20-30% faster. Alternately a Macbook Air type with 16 hours plus strong 4k per…

AMD is small though. I have no data to back up my gut but anecdotally I feel like they don't have the manufacturing capacity to keep up with Apple's demands right now.

AMD is the provider of APUs/CPUs and Graphics of both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

AMD represents about 2/9 in Windows and 3/10 in Linux of processors using Steam month-by-month and raising; In this same survey Windows represents 95% and MacOS 4% of computers.https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/

I think they can manage the production to provide for all Apple CPU needs.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#488

Post by rayiner » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

When I was a young engineer, I thought management didn't matter. Man, has the Apple/AMD/Intel saga over the last 10 years proven me wrong. 10 years ago Intel had a decisive lead in talent/architecture/process. Now it hasn't been able to ship a whole new architecture or process since 2015 and is behind both Apple and AMD. Wow.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#489

Post by SXX » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

voqv wrote: post #445

paulpan wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What happens to GPU? Having their own GPU for iMac and Mac Pro as well? Dual GPU options where Apple GPU for power efficiency? This feels like additional complexity. I think GPU scaling will be much harder than CPU, so whereas Apple can surpass Intel CPUs for all but the highest segments, putting together a standalone GPU will be hard and very interesting to see. For an entry-level GPU? No issues. But what about a…

I heard from random sources that their GPUs are actually (relatively?) very powerful. Better sources/experience appreciated. "Apple claims the GPU in the iPad Pro is equivalent to an Xbox One S, although how they came to thise conclusion is difficult to say since we know so little about the underpinnings of the GPU." [1] [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/13661/the-2018-apple-ipad-pro...

Game console GPUs are middle-end at best. They compensate by huge amount of hardware-specific optimizations since game developer can only target few models of hardware during 5 years lifecycle and devkits for hardware become available for game engine developers almost 2 years in advance.

Apple sales for Mac are much smaller numbers compared to consoles, they change generations more quickly and amount of optimization in GPU-intensive apps is nowhere close to consoles.

So they might be able to compete with Intel iGPU, but that's nowhere close to AMD or Nvidia offerings.

Re: Apple announces it will switch to its own processors for future Macs

#490

Post by plorg » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

If the FCC documentation is any indication (and it may not be), the developer kits may not shop until December. The reports made available today show a testing setup with what appears to be the DTK device, with internal and external photos not available until December 8, which follows the somewhat typical pattern of order devices of making such pictures confidential until shortly before the ship date.