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That's not really true. x86 emulation is a solved problem at this point, and Apple has shown willingness to use emulation to bridge an ISA transition in the pas
by pcwalton 10y ago
That's not really true. x86 emulation is a solved problem at this point, and Apple has shown willingness to use emulation to bridge an ISA transition in the past.
I think the real reason is some combination of (a) ARM isn't competitive (or only recently became competitive) at the high power/high performance point that Intel CPUs excel at; (b) the Mac line generates so much less revenue and operates at so much smaller of a scale than iOS devices that it isn't worth developing CPUs in-house for them, not to mention the fixed costs associated with undergoing a transition.
- tptacek 10y agoYou think it's straightforward for Apple to emulate x86 on their own chips with enough performance to rival Intel's own chips? That's a bold claim!
- pcwalton 10y agoNo, I'm claiming that they could use emulation well enough to survive a rapid transition to native ARM apps.
- WallWextra 10y agoYou need a faster processor to hide the emulation overhead. Good luck beating Intel by a big enough margin.
- pcwalton 10y agoI'm only claiming that they could survive a transition to native ARM apps, not that emulation would be a long term solution.
- WallWextra 10y agoI guess Apple could 'survive' releasing a new generation of laptops which run slower than the previous ones to facilitate a user-invisible component sourcing decision, but it seems like a bad move.
- pcwalton 10y agoIt'd be temporary and only for third-party apps, not Apple-supplied ones. But yes, I do agree that it's not worth it for them--this is part of what I mean by high fixed costs of switching.