771–780 of 1001 posts
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Try browsing the web on a semi-decent laptop from, say, 2008. It's a frustrating experience. It is obnoxious how much CPU power modern websites require.
Join the trend! Deploy websites that mine bitcoin in the background in your viewers' web browsers.
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From what I understood the transition is of strategic nature. Less dependency on third party suppliers for vital components. The performance and/or battery gains is almost incidental.
No it's not less dependency on 3rd parties, it's more dependency on TSMC. Before they were able to play Intel vs TSMC, it's not the case anymore. Then you add the geopolitical issue of Taiwan vs China and the risks level keep increasing.
How? Did Intel suddenly allow their CPUs to be manufactured by TSMC? Or, vice versa, agree to manufacture Apple's Ax chips?
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…
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> 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"?
They're both making 7nm chips at the same TSMC fabs. Essentially, Apple will not have a "process advantage" over AMD. They may release their desktops chips on the latest 5nm TSMC process to get that "wow" product and make a good initial impression, but AMD will be right behind them with the equivalent desktop x64 chips. The current rumor is that late 2021 or early 2022 is when AMD will have a "Zen 4" on 5nm, which wi…
You mean in terms of max performance, perf per watt, or... ?
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I fully expect any reduction in costs for Apple will get sent to their shareholders, not the consumers.
Bingo. Estimates vary wildly, but I've seen figures saying that Axx CPUs cost Apple about $50 each. Even if it's more like $100, that's still an insane amount of additional profit per unit to be extracted. They don't need to deal with single-supplier hassles and they get much more control over what cores go into their SoC. This is sort-of-OK for consumers but amazing for Apple and its shareholers.
I also don't believe it's reasonable to assume that switching to arm is as simple as putting an iPad cpu into a laptop shell.
Here is an estimate that their 2018 model costs 72 just to make not to design and make.
https://www.techinsights.com/blog/apple-iphone-xs-max-teardo...
The a14 that will power a MacBook is likely going to be more expensive not less. Especially with 15B transistors on the a14 vs less than 7B on a12.
Average selling price of Intel cpu looks like around $126. This includes a lot of low end cpus which is exactly the kind of cpu apple fans like to compare.
Apple may realize greater control and better battery life with the switch but they won't save a pile of money and thoughts about increasing performance are fanciful speculation that Apple, the people with the expertise are too smart to engage in.
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…
> 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…
Hard to square this with the simple fact that my 2018 MacBook Pro 13" battery lifespan goes from 8 hours while internet surfing to 1.5 hours for iOS development with frequent recompilations.
Will adobe products still work?
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…
> 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…
-the CPU will be a lot more powerful and faster, but it isn't really faster because it's like an accelerator or something.
-if you actually use your computer get some vague "Linux desktop" or something (which is farcical and borders on parody, completely detached from actual reality). Because in the real world people actually doing stuff know that their CPU, and its work, is a significant contributor to power consumption, but if we just dismiss all of those people we can easily argue its irrelevance.
My standards for comments on HN regarding Apple events are very low, but today's posts really punch below that standard. It's armies of ignorant malcontents pissing in the wind. All meaningless, and they're spraying themselves with piss, but it always happens.
In the end this noise doesn't matter whatsoever.