Apple moving to ARM for Mac in 2021: Analyst
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Apple moving to ARM for Mac in 2021: Analyst
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Re: Apple moving to ARM for Mac in 2021: Analyst
#2It's interesting that the actual quote from the investor call is that it's a processor designed in house, and doesn't call out ARM.
IMO, an x86_64 chip makes way more sense. The patents are about to expire. Removing nearly all of the legacy mode only cruft (which is not as much as you might think, but tends to be in the critical data path) and making a chip that runs at least x86_64 user mode code would align with how they removed 32 bit support in Catalina.
Re: Apple moving to ARM for Mac in 2021: Analyst
#3This is an analyst's opinion, and is not supported by Apple on-record. "We expect" != "Apple confirms". Relevant quote from the article:
> We expect that Apple's new products in 12-18 months will adopt processors made by 5nm process, including the new 2H20 5G iPhone, new 2H20 iPad equipped with mini LED, and new 1H21 Mac equipped with the own-design processor. We think that iPhone 5G support, iPad 's adoption of innovative mid-size panel technology, and Mac's first adoption of the own-design processor are all Apple's critical product and technology strategies. Given that the processor is the core component of new products, we believe that Apple had increased 5nm-related investments after the epidemic outbreak. Further, Apple occupying more resources of related suppliers will hinder competitors' developments.
Re: Apple moving to ARM for Mac in 2021: Analyst
#4This is huge for Raspberry Pi’s. Once ARM is more standardized, more docker Conro arts and binaries will be available in arm as well.
Re: Apple moving to ARM for Mac in 2021: Analyst
#5It's interesting that the actual quote from the investor call is that it's a processor designed in house, and doesn't call out ARM. IMO, an x86_64 chip makes way more sense. The patents are about to expire. Removing nearly all of the legacy mode only cruft (which is not as much as you might think, but tends to be in the critical data path) and making a chip that runs at least x86_64 user mode code would align with ho…
The thought excites me of running embedded x86_64.
Re: Apple moving to ARM for Mac in 2021: Analyst
#6It's interesting that the actual quote from the investor call is that it's a processor designed in house, and doesn't call out ARM. IMO, an x86_64 chip makes way more sense. The patents are about to expire. Removing nearly all of the legacy mode only cruft (which is not as much as you might think, but tends to be in the critical data path) and making a chip that runs at least x86_64 user mode code would align with ho…
> legacy mode only cruft (which is not as much as you might think, but tends to be in the critical data path)
I'm curious about what you're thinking about here. In fact almost all the code paths for user mode code are running out of the uOp cache in modern devices and completely decoupled from the legacy stuff. And even in the kernel, doing locking and mode switching on the normal paths doesn't hit any major fallbacks. There's a ton of microcode and other legacy handling for odd stuff for sure, but really not on performance loads.
Re: Apple moving to ARM for Mac in 2021: Analyst
#7It's interesting that the actual quote from the investor call is that it's a processor designed in house, and doesn't call out ARM. IMO, an x86_64 chip makes way more sense. The patents are about to expire. Removing nearly all of the legacy mode only cruft (which is not as much as you might think, but tends to be in the critical data path) and making a chip that runs at least x86_64 user mode code would align with ho…
They’re also pretty close buddies with AMD right now, who they share a fab (TSMC) with. Could we be seeing something akin to an Apple-flavored Ryzen?
Re: Apple moving to ARM for Mac in 2021: Analyst
#8This is huge for Raspberry Pi’s. Once ARM is more standardized, more docker Conro arts and binaries will be available in arm as well.
What isn't standardized about ARM that Apple moving their PC segment to ARM would fix? Every single cell phone on earth uses ARM pretty much already. It's unlikely that if Apple did move their desktop stuff to ARM that they wouldn't use some derivative (i.e. non-standard, effectively custom) ARM instruction set. They already do that with their phone processors.
Re: Apple moving to ARM for Mac in 2021: Analyst
#9It's interesting that the actual quote from the investor call is that it's a processor designed in house, and doesn't call out ARM. IMO, an x86_64 chip makes way more sense. The patents are about to expire. Removing nearly all of the legacy mode only cruft (which is not as much as you might think, but tends to be in the critical data path) and making a chip that runs at least x86_64 user mode code would align with ho…
> legacy mode only cruft (which is not as much as you might think, but tends to be in the critical data path) I'm curious about what you're thinking about here. In fact almost all the code paths for user mode code are running out of the uOp cache in modern devices and completely decoupled from the legacy stuff. And even in the kernel, doing locking and mode switching on the normal paths doesn't hit any major fallback…
One example: the segmentation hardware needs to evaluated in the TLB lookup path between L1 and L2. Even special casing base=0 length=4G or not (and do the slow path in the not case) and just adding an extra mux there is still a minor burden in the designs I've heard about.
Also, the instruction decode cases for 16bit mode is still in the main instruction decoder and not ucode AFAIK. They're almost the same encoding, and there's not enough ucode pace for it all, but removing those cases from the muxes there would help power consumption. Yes, you run out of the uOp cache a lot of the time, but not as much as you might think, and AFAIK the instruction decoder is still cranking away in the background because you want it to be immediately available as soon as an instruction is not in the uOP cache. That means the power efficiencies can be gained there.
Re: Apple moving to ARM for Mac in 2021: Analyst
#10This is huge for Raspberry Pi’s. Once ARM is more standardized, more docker Conro arts and binaries will be available in arm as well.
What isn't standardized about ARM that Apple moving their PC segment to ARM would fix? Every single cell phone on earth uses ARM pretty much already. It's unlikely that if Apple did move their desktop stuff to ARM that they wouldn't use some derivative (i.e. non-standard, effectively custom) ARM instruction set. They already do that with their phone processors.
out of curiosity what are the non-standard instructions?