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

theverge.com

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

#711

Post by npunt »

santoshalper wrote: post #697
andy_ppp wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think total battery life will go up a fair bit and compile times will be much faster, 20-30%, while giving everyone full power when not on the mains. The amount my MacBook throttles when on battery is startling and stopping that while still giving huge battery life, say 6h at 80% CPU will be a huge win. Apple wouldn’t bother unless they knew the benefits they can bring over the next 10 years will be huge.…

Multi-core performance is not a strong suit of Apple's ARM architecture, I suspect you're going to see a mild to moderate performance hit for things like compilation.

Thats mostly because of thermals, which are drastically different on Mac.

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

#713

Post by npunt »

an_opabinia wrote: post #589
ianhowson wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, I’m predicting an MBP 13 - 16 range with an extra three hours of battery life+, and 20-30% faster. I'm predicting the opposite: you won't actually see any difference. Once you look closely at power profiles on modern machines you'll see that most energy is going into display and GPU. CPUs mostly run idle. Even if you had a theoretical CPU using zero energy, most people are not going to get 30% battery life gain…

> Apple is going to save $200-$800 cost per Mac shipped Whom is Apple going to sell binned A14s to? Where does everyone think margin comes from in the chip business?

Chiplets and better interposers make yield/binning less of a need than before

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

#714

Post by jedieaston »

originalvichy wrote: post #291
valuearb wrote: post #32

Docker and Linux virtualization. Fat binaries to make it easy to update Mac apps. iPhone and iPad apps. Rosetta to run Intel apps that aren’t updated. Apple is gonna knock this out if the park.

I wonder what this will do to Electron. If the iOS apps are really 1:1 on macOS, then the need to maintain an electron app will probably diminish. As long as they both support the same OS APIs I can see devs that can learn a new language (Swift) ditch Electron.

Apple had a list at the State of the Union of open source technology projects they had built pull requests for to add ARM support. Electron was up there, as was Python 3, OpenJDK and Go, notably.

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

#715

Post by hinkley »

gwd wrote: post #356
hinkley wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's gonna be a weird moment soon where developing docker images for Armbian hardware (Pi and friends) is going to be more straightforward on a Mac than developing docker images for Intel servers.

And that may be the moment that ARM servers start picking up steam.

I wonder what sort of involvement ARM server vendors could be offering during this period. I don't expect Apple 'needs' anything from them, but there might be some Docker work they could be jumping on.

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

#716

Post by jychang »

an_opabinia wrote: post #589
ianhowson wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, I’m predicting an MBP 13 - 16 range with an extra three hours of battery life+, and 20-30% faster. I'm predicting the opposite: you won't actually see any difference. Once you look closely at power profiles on modern machines you'll see that most energy is going into display and GPU. CPUs mostly run idle. Even if you had a theoretical CPU using zero energy, most people are not going to get 30% battery life gain…

> Apple is going to save $200-$800 cost per Mac shipped Whom is Apple going to sell binned A14s to? Where does everyone think margin comes from in the chip business?

The non Pro iPhones, non Pro iPads, Apple TVs, HomePods, maybe the Mac Minis if external GPUs are pushed as an alternative to integrated GPUs.

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

#717

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Reason077 wrote: post #598
an_opabinia wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is going to save $200-$800 cost per Mac shipped Whom is Apple going to sell binned A14s to? Where does everyone think margin comes from in the chip business?

Apple will simply use different bins in different products. The A12X is arguably a "binned" A12Z, after all. Higher bins for pro lines, lower bins for consumer lines.

Apple doesn't have the lineup for that. The CPU in the Mac Pro isn't the same silicon as the CPU in the Mini. It has more cores, bigger caches, more memory channels. It's not just the same chip binned differently.

In theory they could offer the Mini with eighteen different CPU options, but that's not really their style.

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

#718

Post by arexxbifs »

djhworld wrote: post #421

Assuming they build the new Macs around the SoC - does this effectively kill any hope of dual boot support for Linux/Windows etc. It's not just the ARM processor in there, those SoCs have a bunch of Apple proprietary stuff (inc. GPU) that I very much doubt will have open source drivers. I know the 2016-2020 macs are pretty much terrible for Linux anyway due to hardware issues (audio, keyboard, wifi....) so it's no su…

Meanwhile, Intel can't seem to fix the issue with i915 causing GPU hangs. I guess Linux desktop users, while not exactly a massive market share, will move to AMD.

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

#719

Post by rubber_duck »

paulpan wrote: post #670
liamness wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other unspoken risk is that while Apple may be vertically integrating its SOC, it still relies on a fab like TSMC. Intel's recent problem is rooted in their inability to move off legacy 14nm fabrication process. TSMC may have done great in 7nm and now to 5nm transition, but what happens if/when they stumble? Would Apple also want to acquire them or build its own fabs to mitigate this risk? Surely this is an adv…

Valid point as a GF-tied AMD would not be in the same position as today. That said, what are the other options if not TSMC? Besides Intel, Samsung is only other cutting-edge option. Intel's 7nm would be technically on par with TSMC's 5nm (marketing names aside). https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/7_nm_lithography_process There is a chance, however unlikely, that TSMC's 3nm push will run into issues and be delayed. Would cr…

Even if TSMC slipped a year it would still be on par with Intel 5nm so Apple would still be better off

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

#720

Post by [deleted] »

pier25 wrote: post #676
old-gregg wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. > Current A12z chips are highly performant; Apple is > roughly one chip cycle ahead on perfomance/watt from > any other manufacturer. We haven't been able to compare them. Micro-benchmarks do not count because mobile versions of Apple chips haven't been designed for desktop requirements. People love comparing CPU cores with micro-benchmarks, but the hardest thing for a modern desktop/server chip is to feed…

> Look, AMD is not stupid, and they're on the same node Apple will be using Could you elaborate? What do you mean with the "same node"?

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