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Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

appleinsider.com

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Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#71

Post by bitwize »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #64
_ph_ wrote: post #32

I am torn, whenever I hear the rumors about the ARM Macs. On the one side, I am terribly excited from a technology perspective. I grew up with homecomputers in the 80ies, and in the 90ies, all Unix-workstations had several different, non-x86 architectures. So any disruption of the x86-monoculture is interesting. Also, looking at the performance of the iPhone and iPad, I think Apple has the potential to create some gr…

ARM Macs are one of the things I don't want to be an early adopter of. I am going to stay with Intel as long as possible but I am excited about making the switch to ARM once it's shown to not be a hassle.

This is Apple we're talking about -- and Apple is what other OEMs want to be when they grow up. Not only will the Apple-designed ARM CPUs perform at or above the level of a similarly-specced Intel machine, but the ISA transition will be seamless, with a nearly-invisible Intel binary compatibility layer that does on-the-fly JITing. Otherwise, they simply won't release it at all.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#72

Post by egypturnash »

wyre wrote: post #44

What does this mean for software companies whose consumer base is largely on OSX? Will Adobe, Sony, Avid, etc have to port their library of software over to Apple's new ARM architecture? Will this allow for greater freedom with ARM devices not running new OSX? It seems like Apple lately has very much internalized 'if you build it, they will come' even though it seems like it is heavily alienating their professional u…

One would hope that after making both of the previous Mac CPU migrations, Adobe has all the CPU-specific stuff in their codebases well-charted, and is already playing with beta hardw— no what am I saying, I’ve been using Adobe stuff for twenty years now and they’ve only gotten less nimble over time, I don’t expect to even see a build for the beta test program until at least a year and a half after ARM Macs are on the market.

Maybe I’ll get an Arm Air in ‘22. My 2017 Pro should still be viable until then for what I do.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#73

Post by scarface74 »

Hamuko wrote: post #56
dylan604 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's time to make another CPU change, why not switch it to one that you control completely? Motorola->PPC->Intel->Apple. It just makes sense that's where they'd ultimately want to go.

> why not switch it to one that you control completely? So you don't have to kill all of the software currently running on your customers' machines.

It worked out well the previous two times.

I bought a PPC Mac 9 months after they first made the switch. Most of my software was already native. Within the next year, all of the important software was native.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#74

Post by damnyou »

bitwize wrote: post #71
EduardoBautista wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM Macs are one of the things I don't want to be an early adopter of. I am going to stay with Intel as long as possible but I am excited about making the switch to ARM once it's shown to not be a hassle.

This is Apple we're talking about -- and Apple is what other OEMs want to be when they grow up. Not only will the Apple-designed ARM CPUs perform at or above the level of a similarly-specced Intel machine, but the ISA transition will be seamless , with a nearly-invisible Intel binary compatibility layer that does on-the-fly JITing. Otherwise, they simply won't release it at all.

Yeah, other OEMs want to grow up to have butterfly keyboards, don't they?

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#75

Post by scarface74 »

saagarjha wrote: post #65
scarface74 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple won’t do it. There are so many architectural issues with it and you don’t get the power savings of ARM. People asked the same question during both previous transitions.

Note that Apple is currently doing this.

Saying that Apple will do this because they are using a coprocessor is like saying Apple was going to run Mac software on 65C02 because the IIFx included two 65C02 processors.

But during the PPC transition, you could buy a PPC daughter card for 68040 Macs to run PPC software but you couldn’t use them simultaneously.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#77

Post by egypturnash »

Hamuko wrote: post #56
dylan604 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's time to make another CPU change, why not switch it to one that you control completely? Motorola->PPC->Intel->Apple. It just makes sense that's where they'd ultimately want to go.

> why not switch it to one that you control completely? So you don't have to kill all of the software currently running on your customers' machines.

Both previous switches were fast enough that an emulation layer could get most legacy stuff running at a decent speed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the same went for this one. We did just have the 64-bit apocalypse though.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#78

Post by objclxt »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #63
_ph_ wrote: post #32

I am torn, whenever I hear the rumors about the ARM Macs. On the one side, I am terribly excited from a technology perspective. I grew up with homecomputers in the 80ies, and in the 90ies, all Unix-workstations had several different, non-x86 architectures. So any disruption of the x86-monoculture is interesting. Also, looking at the performance of the iPhone and iPad, I think Apple has the potential to create some gr…

I'm still mad about Apple killing 32bit support; I don't have a few extra grand a year to drop on Photoshop. If they drop x86 support, too, I might finally jump ship.

Photoshop and Lightroom are bundled together for $10 a month.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#79

Post by pmontra »

strategarius wrote: post #60

I'm curious what Parallels going to do. Running Windows and Linux applications with almost native integration into OSX ecosystem worth a lot, especially with all benefits of hardware virtualization. In theory PC could be virtualized on ARM, however software virtualization only. Going to watch the process. In general, Windows and Linux support ARM as well, not sure if hardware virtualization for ARM exist though

Maybe backend developers for Intel Linux servers will fire up a VM on AWS/Azure/Google and work there.

There will be some cross platform compatibility issues. Interpreted languages hide the CPU (think Python, Ruby, Node) but their extensions in C could need some extra work that not all of them require now.

On the other side there will be the rise of the ARM servers. Apple is notoriously not interested in running server farms for their customers but I expect that the big cloud providers will start offering ARM servers.

It could be the x86 developers to have to fire up an ARM VM on the cloud to be able to work in ARM Macs heavy teams.

Re: Apple to debut multiple ARM MacBook, desktop models in 2021

#80

Post by Slartie »

mikhailt wrote: post #47
sudosysgen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's Geekbench. The differences in Geekbench for ARM devices and Geekbench for x86 are laughable. Why not compare them in a real life workload like a render on Blender or a kernel compile?

People have (Jonathan Morrison for an example) , the 4k exports from iMovie or other video/image editor has been proven to be vastly faster on iPad Pro than the fastest Macbook Pro. Intel CPUs are not customized by Apple for their own APIs, they're for general purpose use. yes, they have ISA extensions that Apple could use like QuickSync but it's not enough for Apple. Apple customize their A series with the same APIs…

> the 4k exports from iMovie or other video/image editor has been proven to be vastly faster on iPad Pro than the fastest Macbook Pro.

I'd only be impressed if both used the exact same high-quality software encoder. Most likely the iPad uses the fast but less quality dedicated hardware encoder of the A-Series SoC and the MacBook uses a high quality but slow software-only one, which is what you typically use in any non-real-time encoding scenario due to way better bitrate-to-quality ratios.

> Javascript Core (they have hardware-based JS acceleration support)

Do you have a credible source for this? AFAIK JS VMs have gotten to the same place that Java VMs (for which some people also envisioned dedicated silicon a long time ago, but it was a dud) reached: so frickin fast on standard x86 ISA that putting any special instructions for them into the ISA isn't worth it, because it's more important to stay flexible to be able to adapt future extensions of ECMAScript.

> It's why they added T2 chips to their Macs to help accelerate a lot of tasks like disk encryption, more locked down security with TouchID

That has more to do with having a secure element under Apple's control in the T2 chip and nothing with performance. Any modern x86 CPU can do accelerated AES just as fast as any ARM with hardware crypto support.

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