Caporegime
We have zero info on how the desktop class CPUs.
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Apple to replace Intel and move to ARM - *** Confirmed as "Apple Silicon" ***
- Thread starter UberTiger
- Start date
We have zero info on how the desktop class CPUs.
Don
If you're that dependent on Windows apps, surely you'd just buy a PC instead of constantly rebooting between the two?
What is the ratio of Mac Pro to Macbook or Mac Mini sales? Whilst most Mac Pro users may upgrade their processors and the like - I imagine there are far more owners of other models that don't.
It's not been announced what that was for, but the suggestion is that it is a laptop part, rather than for a new Mac pro.
And Mac Pro owners make up a fraction of a % of Mac sales let alone the wider PC market. Almost all of Apples sales come from people who see a computer as a commodity, they don’t care what it runs.
Of those Mac Pro owners very few ever bother upgrading them because there isn’t really an upgrade path. You don’t buy a 10core Mac Pro and suddenly realise you need a 28core, it just doesn’t happen with non enthusiasts. You may choose to buy your ram from a 3rd party but once it’s deployed it’s rarely touched again. Professionals just don’t buy 128gb with the intention of getting another in a year. They just buy 256gb because they need 256gb.
You can never upgrade more than 1 generation without a motherboard swap and when you can get the next generation the performance gains are just not worth the cost in 2020.
Most enthusiasts grossly overestimate the enthusiast market. Very few people will bother opening the side panel once the machine has been deployed until its EoL’d.
Of those Mac Pro owners very few ever bother upgrading them because there isn’t really an upgrade path. You don’t buy a 10core Mac Pro and suddenly realise you need a 28core, it just doesn’t happen with non enthusiasts. You may choose to buy your ram from a 3rd party but once it’s deployed it’s rarely touched again. Professionals just don’t buy 128gb with the intention of getting another in a year. They just buy 256gb because they need 256gb.
You can never upgrade more than 1 generation without a motherboard swap and when you can get the next generation the performance gains are just not worth the cost in 2020.
Most enthusiasts grossly overestimate the enthusiast market. Very few people will bother opening the side panel once the machine has been deployed until its EoL’d.
They moved away from Imagination, resisted going to Mali or Adreno. And made their own GPUs.
Why on earth do you think they can’t do the same with CPUs? You just hire all the good engineers, they’re very aggressive. They pay a lot of money.
Frankly I don’t see how this can be a bad thing. No matter what happens it’ll force Intel and AMD to be better. Apple holds a significant chunk of the market share. If they want Apple to use their chips in Apple products again. They’re gonna have to innovate, and innovate HARD. This is all good news for the consumer.
You’re angry about “blind fanboys” yet you’re fawning over the divinely inspired miracle that is x86 while it’s pretty clear you don’t even understand how modern CPUs work.
Irony is dead.
Oh the good old “RISC is bad” argument, while ignoring the fact that every modern processor is internally a RISC processor with microcode for mapping x86 ISA onto the internal ISA, including every x86 processor from Intel and AMD. This is also the case for ARM processors, btw.
ISA has never been less relevant than it is right now. Microsoft and Linux are moving towards supporting both x86 and ARM as well. No matter how much you worship at the altar of the divine x86, it has a competitor now. Deal with it.
Commissario
I bought my first Mac in 2008 which was at the end of the transition period from PowerPC to Intel and although I knew the change was happening, it didn't affect me in the slightest. All the software I wanted to use worked perfectly whether it was PowerPC or Intel coded due to Rosetta. It was perfectly smooth and I didn't have a single issue with it. Universal binaries were the norm and by the time support was dropped for PowerPC completely, everything was running natively on Intel.
It was handled perfectly then, I don't see any reason for it to be different this time. Apple aren't stupid, this has clearly been in the planning stages for a number of years and I'm sure they wouldn't make the change if they didn't think they can do a good job of it.
It was handled perfectly then, I don't see any reason for it to be different this time. Apple aren't stupid, this has clearly been in the planning stages for a number of years and I'm sure they wouldn't make the change if they didn't think they can do a good job of it.
Linux has been multi-architecture for years now, and almost every Linux software is available for both x86 and ARM. Compilers are now a lot better at handling multiple architectures and installation managers handle everything behind the scenes. There hasn't been a mass exodus of Linux users/developers because they now need to compile their software for two architectures. Almost every major Linux distro has an AArch64 version as well that works just as well as their x86 ones.
There is a chance that at some point during or after this decade, Intel and AMD might decide to open up x86 to a degree, allowing hardware emulation of x86 for other architectures (and adding hardware emulation of ARM in their x86 products), i.e. making ISA completely irrelevant to the end user.
Multi-architecture is the future of computers.
Soldato
Hey, Castiel (hands up old forumites - iunderstoodthisreference.gif) I don't deal in absolutes and stop colorising my words with.. well.. whatever that set of overly dramatic vocatives above was supposed to achieve.
Steering discussion back on topic, here are a few very simple, in my opinion, facts and I welcome any eloquent critique of my thesis:
- x86 may be far from "divinely inspired miracle" as you put it and RISC was never "bad" - I've spent some of the best years of my twenties on RISC machines (and then some further best years on PowerPCs) and I loved every minute of my adventures with SGIs and SPARCs but look - the market have spoken - they're all dead now and we're still on x86 "PC". I know, I know, you still want to convolute it on technicality, claim that we are in fact on RISCs with x86 instruction sets - please don't - you know exactly what I mean. Intel has won the race for unified PC, workstation, server architecture with everyone. Some thought it was a matter of OS, it wasn't, it was a matter of speed and compatibility. DEC collapsed despite being able to run Windows NT, Apple saved their company and OSX because they adopted Intel's hardware.
And so the simple fact is - moving to a regular x86 PC architecture was the best thing that ever happened to Apple personal computer range. Full stop. No contest. And to us - users - too. None of us would be here discussing this madness if they didn't. Agree?
- Apple can not compete with Intel (and now temporarily AMD) in CPU R&D for personal computers (laptops all the way to servers). Yes, we are in a unique moment in time, when Intel screwed up and temporarily stalled, moved resources to other things and got hit hard by smaller players arguably jumping in some capacity ahead (including AMD) but the simple fact is - regardless of wether the final destination is hegemony of speed or power - Intel is not a company Apple can compete with CPU development or manufacture . no one ever could. Corporations with much bigger resources than Apple perished in the process of trying to keep up. Corporations that at various points in time nearly purchased Apple, still perished in the process of trying to keep up. This type of marathon, is not something that Apple can maintain. One could argue they can barely maintain Intel's tempo while using Intel chips and more often than not, we get old excrement in new wrappers as a make belief "fresh" and "latest" machines (new 2020 macbook pros with two Tb3 still using two generations old CPUs, but how about 2018 Mac Pro using 2013 Xeons, any takers?). Agree?
- Apple can not compete with AMD or Nvidia in graphics. (insert lots of words) but ultimately similar stuff to all the above. Agree?
You can't compare open source porting to commercial software development. Coding for ARM isn't just a case of recompiling stuff, it needs to be coded differently plus any video, photo, audio software for ARM will additionally need new accelerations for CPUs and GPUs. We can safely presume a lot companies won't double their costs and won't join this challenge - they won't recreate their interface drivers, software, plugins, suites etc for universal binary 2. Recompiling stuff specifically for Catalina was bad enough for many, let alone new architecture. And a lot of it won't work in Rosetta 2 or will be too slow to utilise property (it's not 90ies, you can't be really expect to do DAW work or video editing in emulator these days). The next few months will show how many roadmaps at Apple supporters will change but somehow I can't imagine even large partners - like Blackmagic - writing all of their device drivers and all of their software again and then continue to develop DaVinci Resolve in two separate forks for free etc.
To me it's quite clear Apple is not switching to ARM because they can make our machines faster or more powerful. They're switching to it because it will make your next £2500 laptop cheaper for them to manufacture. Not to you to buy. To them to make. And they hope the internet will stop comparing how much more and newer Intel gear you can get for that £2500 from Acer, Lenovo or MSI if your next MBP is an iPad Pro with keyboard. Agree?
@Armageus - I see you masked a lot of my text with *** NO *** - can you point me to the new forum guidelines of what I can and cannot say in this subsection, and please believe me - this is genuine request, I'm not being difficult, I just don't want my posts to look like I said something bad.
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Commissario
That was me. You used alternatives to the F word which is not allowed in any of our forums. Two instances is hardly ‘a lot’.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that Apple moving to intel wasn't a great move for the platform. But you are looking at what happened in the past when Apple were on a minor platform and trying use that to predict the future.
What you are doing is completely ignoring the fact that X86 is no longer the dominant CPU architecture. ARM based processors are 10 times more common than X86 based ones in 2020.
Apples 2 year old A12 processor is as fast as Intel in a consumer electronics application (e.g. a laptop) which is Apples target market. ARM are already competitive with Intel and their year on year performance gains are higher than Intels.
Apples own GPUs are as fast as what intel produces which actually make up most of the PC market. There isn’t anything stopping them using an AMD GPU or nvidia if they kiss and make up with them in a more powerful desktop application.
3rd part companies will absolutely want to get involved with this change if they want to keep selling their overpriced accessories to people who buy very expensive laptops.
We’ve already seen what an ARM based device is capable of in the form of the Surface Pro X, the hardware is fantastic but the software isn’t great. Where Microsoft’s weakness of having to support absolutely everything is Apples strength with it’s closed ecosystem.
If anything Apple is uniquely placed to make this transition work. They can use their ecosystem to take full advantage of the ability to make custom chip designs with well integrated software that works.
That sort of approach just doesn’t work on an open platform because you have to cater for the lowest common denominator which is normally a huge group of people running ancient hardware that pay you a bunch of money to keep it running.
While money doesn't solve every problem, by today's market cap, Apple is almost seven times larger than Intel. Apple could do pretty much anything they wanted to if they thought it would benefit their business. Compared to Apple, Intel are tiddlers.
Yes, back in 2006 it was absolutely the right call to move from PowerPC to x86. Not sure how that is relevant.
They don't compete with Intel on CPU manufacturing, that's what TSMC does. And at the moment, they're doing a better job than Intel. I'm entertaining this nonsense for longer than I should, but the idea that nobody could ever compete with Intel is just bonkers, really it is what I said: Intel fanboyism at its most basic form.
No company has bigger resources than Apple (they're literally the most cash-rich company!), and no company has ever built such a hugely successful chip development team like Apple's in such a short time. Their R&D budget is astronomical, they have 10x more cash at their hands than Intel, and 4x their revenues. To say Apple doesn't have the resources to compete with Intel, when they've already done it and are on par, is just pure childish, or again, fanboyism.
Apple is now more or less on par with Intel and AMD (ahead in terms of IPC, behind in terms of frequency). They're not there with GPUs yet, they're 4-5 years behind. It might not be Apple's plans right now, but there's nothing stopping Apple from using AMD/Nvidia GPUs with ARM processors. These GPUs are not x86 and are certainly not Intel. You can already use a 2080 Ti on ARM machines. No problem. It's not an architectural limitation. So not sure where you're going with this.
You're making a lot of assumptions here.
Vertical integration is part of it. Sure. Have you stopped to think about why Apple is doing this right now? Why didn't they do it 5 years ago? Apple has been releasing products with their own chips for 10 years. Why not even 10 years ago?
It's because their chips are now competitive. That's the reason and even you know it, as much as you pretend like you don't. Intel has massively dropped the ball with their x86 products in the last 10 years. Intel cores got 2x better while ARM cores have become more than 50x better. Apple is betting on the fact that the x86 isn't going to be improving as fast as ARM, and Intel won't be releasing improved products as well as their own chips team can. And they will save money on the products, part of which will be passed down to the customer.
Had Intel not dropped the ball in the last 10 years, had their CPU cores got better 20x instead of 2x, do you think Apple would be migrating to their own 10x slower cores? You know the answer.
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Soldato
Well that's something
Although does anyone know the exact 'deal' with Thunderbolt and Intel - does it just require certification or do you require Intel controllers etc?
Considering Apple have stated the transition period to be two years, so that's at least two majors, it's not quite what i said.
And similarly, there's no onus for Apple to do what they did 14/15 years ago.
Ultimately, we won't know until they state the road map and/or it happens. But in my opinion, they'll want to try and push through the transition and move users across as quickly as possible, more so if Apple Silicon ends up performing better than expected.
I'm sure there are a plethora of reasons why Apple are now fab'ing their own mobile/desktop silicon, with packaging, cost and (more) control being higher up that list than competitiveness - unless you have a source that states otherwise?
I don't think it's the only reason but i certainly believe increased margins is playing a big factor in the change. And whilst i'd love to see Apple push these savings to us punters, i really can't see it happen as they'll want to maintain the 'premium' image.
Although i don't think this is all doom and gloom as you seem to be suggesting @v0n. For sure there are plenty of reasons to be concerned and i have my concerns around whether or not we'll see the needed performance for workstations any time soon as well as around emulation. But, having competing technologies is only a good thing and there is the possibility that it'll be like the good ol' days of PowerPC.
So answer this, why not do it 5 years ago if competitiveness didn't matter all that much and it's all about cost and control. These chips were just as cheap for Apple to produce back then as they are now and offered the same level of control, and Intel chips were just as expensive back then as they are now.
Since Apple announced the A4 chip back in 2010 people were claiming Apple will move their macs to their own chips because of costs and control, and like you do now, they said performance didn't matter all that much to Apple. Like I said, vertical integration is surely part of it. But it only happened when their performance became competitive with Intel.
Soldato
Got ya sir. Has to be fully starred as per Maccy's "sticky" rather than broadcast shorthand/alternatives.
HACO said:
Really? By what benchmark? Genuine non-gaslighting question.
Market capital maybe, but Apple's entire money rich presence amounts to only about 6-7% of the entire PC market and around 3% of Intel chip shipments. Whereas Intel and AMD chips are in what percentage of all computers, workstations and servers currently on the market? Hmmm....
Key word - "at the moment". Like Cyrix was once faster, PowerPC was once faster, UltraSparcs were once faster, MIPS R12k was faster etc, the silicon valley's hell over the last quarter of a century has been paved with carcasses of industry giants that based their entire market share on the fact that their proprietary chips were once faster than 386s, 486s, Pentiums, Itaniums or other Corewhathaveyous. For a moment. And then a moment later consumers, and by that I also mean us lot, on this very forum - reached out with wad full of cash to any brand that could bring them the latest fast x86 chip.
HACO said:
One could argue (and I say that lovingly, from a position of someone who almost exclusively use Apple workstations for the past 15 years plus some linux servers and a single Windows PC) that for all the cash they're worth Apples market share from the perspective of any hardware manufacturer probably isn't any higher than that of Acers or Asus' - as in - not enough to have exclusive early access or preferential rates (unless they buy the company outright)?
HACO said:
Apple quite hastily "broke up" with Nvidia (who politely kept writing drivers for macos, so professional mackintoshians could utilise modern graphics cards in their endeavours, complete with CUDA, ray tracing and accelerations) and upon request from upper management stopped signing their display drivers since Mojave 10.14.4.
AMD is possible but the DTK devkit mac mini with A12Z that Apple is offering to developers is using Apple graphics.
HACO said:
I do. We all do. That's what we do on forums, otherwise it would be all news reposts, not discussion.
HACO said:
Because they now got so rich that they've lost their mind? Or because the only way to squeeze more profit out of their relatively tiny market for shareholders this weird year is to repackage cheap as (excuse the pun) chips they already piled up in mobile division and sell them in expensive desktops and laptops? To merge iOS and MacOS long term? It's Apple - the guys that took away all the usable ports, inputs and card readers in "Pro" laptops for musicians, photographers and videographers and left them with two USB-C dongle interfaces for dongles that don't power devices. Oh I know - it's to use iPhones as a CPU for laptops? You get it - anything illogical you can think of - is actually possible.
HACO said:
Oh this stuff makes you look ugly. Does anyone else read it in an upper crust received and pouting tone of Boris de Pfeffel Johnson or just me? "Amma.. amma... as Plebius The Younger once said... entertaining this nonsense for longer that one should".
Discussion. Forum. Difference of opinion is a given. Cheer up.
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It's a pretty well known fact... Apple even claimed the iPad pro is faster than most laptops sold back in 2018. Here's a link time Tom's Guide when it came out in 2018:
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/new-ipad-pro-benchmarks,news-28453.html
Here is some 2020 links:
https://wccftech.com/2020-ipad-pro-...-but-only-slightly-faster-than-2018-ipad-pro/
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/12/ipad-pro-vs-macbook-air-vs-macbook-pro/
https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...-versus-macbook-air-2020-performance-features
Now consider the form factor, the air has (some) active cooling than an iPad Pro (which has none).
Here is how the 10th Gen MacBook Pro stacks up:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2875276 (MBP)
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2875204 (iPad)
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2875211 (Air Quad)
So the MPB just edges the iPad but its a very narrow margin. Again, remember the form factor should give the MPB significant more cooling and operates in a much higher power and thermal envelope compared to the tablet which is completely passive in an extremely thin chassis. Sure the MPB will more than edge the iPad in certain tasks and likewise the iPad beats the MBP in others but got general all purpose use, they are very close indeed.
Now lets imagine if you put an next gen Apple ARM design under active cooling, beef up the power delivery, give it a huge 50+wh battery and let it loose on a 'proper OS'....welcome to late 2020.
Lets hope the software holds up as that is my one and only concern.
Soldato
That's very interesting. On one hand in Geekbench 4 an 8 core A12Z gets beaten by any random macmini with an i3 (which, you know, would still be impressive comparison in real life) but on the other hand Geekbench 5 elevate it over Macs with 4 core i7s and throw between Mac Pros with 8 and 12 core Xeons. Two handfuls instead of pinch of salt at this point obviously, but never the less - interesting.
Caporegime
Some very interesting stuff in this video. Apple has the potential to bring some serious power with their new chips.
This screenshot is telling. Obviously it’s based on previous performance and extrapolating a bit, but damn. The score at that TDP. This isn’t even the Mac chip but an iPad chip. Imagine with a higher TDP and active cooling.
Some very interesting stuff in this video. Apple has the potential to bring some serious power with their new chips.
This screenshot is telling. Obviously it’s based on previous performance and extrapolating a bit, but damn. The score at that TDP. This isn’t even the Mac chip but an iPad chip. Imagine with a higher TDP and active cooling.
Lots of assumptions in that video. Rumours are that A14 is going to be a big leap forward compared to A13.