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Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

extremetech.com

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Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#81

Post by akmarinov »

dehrmann wrote: post #54
outside1234 wrote: post #13

x86 is dead - first in consumer, then in cloud. It is hard to see to me how this ends any other way. The creative class (us) will quickly have largely all ARM computers within 4 years. Its not hard to see from there how software will be even more optimized for ARM variants than x86 and that the scale of both mobile and consumer computing will push x86 out of the datacenter slowly as old software that relies on x86 is…

Intel and AMD aren't standing still in this.

Apple also isn’t just standing around, enjoying the M1

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#82

Post by TMWNN »

speedplane wrote: post #76
nightowl_games wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On his recent Lex Fridman podcast appearance, Jim Keller speaks to exactly this mindset. He says that they've been heralding the death of Moore's law since he started and that the "one trick ponies" just keep coming. He says he doesn't doubt that they will continue.

> they've been heralding the death of Moore's law since he started and that the "one trick ponies" just keep coming. He says he doesn't doubt that they will continue. The situation is clearly far worse than what you suggest. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, apparent computer performance was doubling roughly every two years. Your shiny new desktop was obsolete in 24 months. Today, we're lucky to get a 15% gain in tw…

>Today, we're lucky to get a 15% gain in two years.

The 2012 MacBook Pro 15-inch I'm typing this on is about 700 on Geekbench single-core, while the 2019 16-inch is about 950. 35% "improvement" in seven years!

M1 13-inch is 1700 on single-core, which is why I hope to upgrade once the 16-inch Apple Silicon version comes out.

>The "one-trick ponies" help narrow the "apparent performance" gap, but by definition, are implemented out of desperation.

I don't think that's right. x86 hit an apparent performance barrier in the early 2000s, with the best available CPUs being Intel Pentium 4 and AMD Thunderbird, both horribly inefficient for the performance gains they eked out; those were very much one-trick ponies created from desperation. It took a skunkworks project by Intel Israel, which miraculously turned Pentium III into Core microarchitecture, to get out of the morass. Another meaningful leap occurred when going from Core Duo to Core i, but the PC industry has been stuck with Core i for almost a decade.

We've finally smashed past this with Apple Silicon, but it is certainly not a one-trick pony; Apple could sell it to the world tomorrow and have a line of customers going out the door, just like it could have sold the A-series mobile processors to rivals. AMD Ryzen isn't quite the breakthrough Apple Silicon is, but it is good enough for those who need x86.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#83

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

> "Part of the reason Apple can get away with doing this is that — and let’s be honest — it’s been selling badly underpowered systems at certain price points."

Well, they've been doing this for a long time, and were able to pull it off only because we got hooked up with their ecosystem and preferred more than the alternatives. What worries me though is the trend to make these machines totally unupgradeable: not only this is bad for the environment but will also decrease the long-term value of these expensive objects.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#84

Post by andrewjl »

dane wrote: post #75
buildbuildbuild wrote: post #65

Disrupt the hosting market, Apple. We're ready for your EC2. Achieving a quantum power/performance leap without swinging for server market share is an massive wasted opportunity. But Apple is Apple. I'll keep dreaming. Oh look, an AWS invoice.

Completely agree. I can't see them reviving the Xserve brand with their own silicon, but I could see them introducing cloud hosting services. Ideally with differentiation in something like environmental credentials (reduced, renewable power, etc.) to try and gain market share whilst maintaining margin.

They already have, though the marketing is subtle. [1][2]

[1] https://www.apple.com/icloud/

[2] https://developer.apple.com/icloud/cloudkit/

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#85

Post by robocat »

Perhaps one reason for using a single model of chip for everything is because the design costs for a 5nm SoC are estimated to be ~$500 million.

For comparison, revenue for Apple Mac computers in 2020 was ~$30 Billion. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263428/apples-revenue-fr...

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#86

Post by DoomHotel »

inasio wrote: post #33

Assuming the M1 performance extrapolates to desktop power/cooling it's going to be a monster chip. If that is the case I think apple will not stop at having the fastest watch/phone/tablet/laptop/PC. Why not go after the datacenter and leave money (a ton of money) on the table?

One of the big reasons the M1 is so fast is its RAM is on-die. Latency and throughput to memory are dramatically better and you don't have to drive those long traces, saving power as well. Servers need to scale to memory sizes in the terabyte range. Apple will need a new design that uses conventional memory before they can go after the big workstation market, let alone server.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#87

Post by izacus »

monkmartinez wrote: post #15

You get an M1 with the new iPad Pro as well! I hadn't thought of the situation as the article presents. When shown in that light, it made me pause to reflect. The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? I will admit that I switched to Thinkpad and Win10 about two years ago when I had to return my butterfly for the 5th time. I am not looking back eithe…

How's that any different than having a single Intel generation scale all the way from low powered laptop SoCs to 12 core i9s though?

After all, the M1s across devices aren't the same either - iMacs have different configuration from iPads, those have different amount of cores and clocks from Airs and MBPs as well.

It seems like the difference is only in Apple vs. Intel marketing blurb.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#88

Post by klohto »

andrewjl wrote: post #84
dane wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. I can't see them reviving the Xserve brand with their own silicon, but I could see them introducing cloud hosting services. Ideally with differentiation in something like environmental credentials (reduced, renewable power, etc.) to try and gain market share whilst maintaining margin.

They already have, though the marketing is subtle. [1][2] [1] https://www.apple.com/icloud/ [2] https://developer.apple.com/icloud/cloudkit/

We are talking AWS competitors, not Google Drive alternative.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#89

Post by ulzeraj »

jareklupinski wrote: post #28
smiley1437 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there examples of Arm designs OTHER than the M1 which are suitable for consumers? Yes, the M1 is a remarkable product and it will certainly make inroads against x86 on the desktop but it is from a single company. Will Apple M1 (2, 3 etc) replace all x86 devices in a decade? That’s hard to swallow. Now, if we see another Arm product released that ALSO kicks x86 butt, from another player, then maybe I’d believe a c…

if you are not using an apple phone, your smartphone likely uses an ARM-licensed chip, and chromebooks/windows RT devices ran ARM cores the only thing holding back wider adoption is legacy x86 software

Gaming is still x86 territory and that includes 2 of the 3 main competing gaming consoles isn't? Hard to think of a PS5 as legacy stuff.

Re: Apple’s M1 Positioning Mocks the Entire x86 Business Model

#90

Post by ipsum2 »

izacus wrote: post #87
monkmartinez wrote: post #15

You get an M1 with the new iPad Pro as well! I hadn't thought of the situation as the article presents. When shown in that light, it made me pause to reflect. The M1 doesn't make sense when its in every darn product. The only differentiator is screen size, RAM, and OS? I will admit that I switched to Thinkpad and Win10 about two years ago when I had to return my butterfly for the 5th time. I am not looking back eithe…

How's that any different than having a single Intel generation scale all the way from low powered laptop SoCs to 12 core i9s though? After all, the M1s across devices aren't the same either - iMacs have different configuration from iPads, those have different amount of cores and clocks from Airs and MBPs as well. It seems like the difference is only in Apple vs. Intel marketing blurb.

Power consumption, number of cores, clock speed, etc.
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