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

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

#831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parallels Desktop is virtualization. How do you mean?

I meant that we’ve already got Parallels Desktop. I didn’t understand whether they want to introduce something like Hyper-V/WSL on macOS.

They have their own hypervisor.framework that they expect virtualisation software to be built on top of.

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

#832
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…

AFAIK, they're going to make their own GPU. A recruiter from Apple reached out to me a few weeks ago trying to poach me from my job at a large GPU manufacturer.

They already have their own, custom GPU on their A-Series SoCs, so them hiring people working on GPUs is hardly surprising? I'd expect them to replace where they use Intel's integrated parts with their own, which might push them a bit higher end than where they have been previously, but I doubt they're chasing after the dedicated side of things?

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

#833
post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably just recompiled for arm and optimized any pain points.

Wonder how much code is shared between Mac OS and iOS, they can't be putting that much effort into Mac OS when it sells 10x less devices than iOS unless it's mostly shared.

It is mostly shared.

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

#834
I think in the next 5 years this will be in Apple's favor. The issue is more of a 10 years down the road question. Intel always seems to lag for a while and then starts leap frogging. I don't know if that cycle continues, but it might...which is a risk to Apple.

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

#835

I'm surprised we didn't get any performance numbers. Either raw power or at least power efficiency and projected battery life improvements. Seeing as this is a major reason for the transition (according to them), it feels very weird. They're shipping a 'Development Transition Kit' Mac mini with an A12Z this week, so it's not like the numbers are going to stay private for a long time. Even if there's an NDA, someone's…

I don't think they even used the term "ARM" at any point. They're calling it "Apple's silicon," and they acknowledged it's the same as what iPhone and iPad use. But I thought it was interesting how they seemed to avoid the term. It's probably just a matter of avoiding getting too "techy" and marketing.

It's because the A stands for Acorn and old rivalries die hard.

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

#836

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…

I think MacBooks can run heavy ML processes, but why not run those on separate devices with specific hardware for that? I'm thinking any kind of job you'd want to run on the GPU.

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

#837
I think gains in I/O will be more noticeable than gains in their CPUs. SSDs are being choked and held back by PCIe 3.0 interfaces at this point. I'm not sure that PCIe 4.0 is any better on latency. It would be interesting if Apple took a big leap forward with a low latency interface like OpenCAPI, or maybe some iteration of RapidIO. Something like Optane over OpenCAPI would be a huge leap in speed. Optane is wasted right now with PCIe.

The PS5 apparently has incredible disk I/O, possible due to RAD's compression technology. A super fast compression codec could make a difference too.

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

#838
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…

> 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…

There's no reason why Apple can't use Nvidia or AMD GPUs with an ARM CPU.

Some examples here https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/917482-arm-and-pcie-lan...

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

#839

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…

it's easy to resign iphone models every year. it's not as easy to increase chip performance every year. there's a lot of R&D involved, i think in the long run it'll be better but Apple will have to devote more resources into it. you can't just wish for specs. the manufacturers actually get the hard job of trying to make it.

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

#840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully expect any reduction in costs for Apple will get sent to their shareholders, not the consumers.

I'm actually not so sure about this. Apple's gross margin target is in the ballpark of 38-40% and a savings of $200-800 per MBP would have a substantial upwards impact on that gross margin number. Apple carefully sets pricing to achieve a target gross margin without impacting sales too much (higher price = higher gross margin but likely lower net revenue because they're priced out of the market). One of the two scena…

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