5 ms·

For Apple, Apple should just go ahead and ship Macs with their ARM chips. Their 10nm A11 chip is already as fast as their current generation MacBook Pros, and

For Apple, Apple should just go ahead and ship Macs with their ARM chips. Their 10nm A11 chip is already as fast as their current generation MacBook Pros, and that's with a 2 Watt cell phone power budget. Give it a 5 Watt tablet power budget or a 15-35 Watt Laptop power budget and it would wreck anything Intel could produce. I'm not even sure what the issue is holding them back on switching their Macs to ARM cores? They're already forcing devs to ship byte code to the App store.

bitexploder 9y ago
I haven't really followed the news. This is a surprising claim, but I admit I haven't checked up on it. Are their chips actually that competitive with a maxed out Intel quad core macbooks? It took a long time to get fully swapped from x86 to ARM. In the scheme of things Intel chips seem like such a marginal cost to Apple, why bother changing?
- robin_reala 9y ago
  There was a flurry of news articles a couple of days ago reporting that the A11 was on par with the most powerful dual-core Intel chips Apple is currently using: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/13/a11-bionic-chip-geekbench-scores/ https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/13/a11-bionic-chip-geekben...
  - throwaway2048 9y ago
    geekbench is the only thing showing these outsized results, id be very suspicious of geekbench
    - hoschicz 9y ago
      What other cross-platform benchmark do you suggest? People are comparing it in Geekbench because it is the only big benchmark that is available on both platforms.
      - throwaway2048 9y ago
        snythetic benchmarks are notorious for being unrelistic and unreliable. just because there isnt an alternative dosent mean that geekbench is accurate, id be pretty skeptical of claims that arm chips with a fraction of the transistors and power budget are somehow magically just as fast as big full fat x86 chips.
        robin_reala 9y ago
        Power delivery, sure, but you’re off on transistor count. Wikipedia list a ‘Dual-core + GPU Iris Core i7 Broadwell-U’ as 1.9B transistors [1], and the A11 is 4.3B. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count
        throwaway2048 9y ago
        Should be noted the A11 is 6cores+gpu and the i7u is 2 cores + GPU. And we are talking about per core preformance.
        Dylan16807 9y ago
        Current x86 chips are spending huge amounts of their transistor and power budget on tiny increases in instructions per clock. When you have twice as many cores to play with then you can have better total performance with a lot less resource cost.
      - imtringued 9y ago
        SPEC CPU 2017 or 2006 https://www.spec.org/benchmarks.html#cpu https://www.spec.org/benchmarks.html#cpu Here is an article that uses it: https://www.anandtech.com/show/9766/the-apple-ipad-pro-review/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/9766/the-apple-ipad-pro-revie... (Scroll down to the last table)
umanwizard 9y ago
Because most of the software people run is compiled for x86-64. I don't know whether the thing about the App Store is true, but even if it is, the App Store is not the only way to download software on macOS, and in fact I suspect only a small minority of people primarily get macOS software there.
deleted 9y ago
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svantana 9y ago
Actually, looking at geekbench, the intel processors still have a slight edge per core (4500 vs 4200 in the single core case). You're right about power consumption though. But regardless, there's so much legacy software that would need to run on a virtual machine and thus be really slow. Probably not worth it - yet. But if intel keeps stalling and Apple's A line keeps excelling like they have been so far, it's only a matter of time.
- jhugg 9y ago
  JIT translation has come a long way and MS plans to do exactly this with x86 software runnning on ARM in the near future. It’s not impossible that A12s with custom silicon working in concert with software JITing could provide a decent experience. I would be a lot of work though. You don’t just have to translate the compiled user apps, you need to make things like AirPlay work, and that's an example of a feature that uses specific hardware acceleration. And some things like Thunderbolt might not work at all without Intel’s help. They don’t sell hundreds of millions of macs. It might not be worth it. Why not just wait a year? It’s not like Windows laptops have access to better chips than they do.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    > And some things like Thunderbolt might not work at all without Intel’s help. If my memory is correct, Thunderbolt is mostly an Intel invention, hence they likely own the patents, and as such I wouldn't expect it to work without their support.
  - redial 9y ago
    Doesn't AirPlay work already on current iPhones? And Intel announced they'll be dropping thunderbolt's licensing fees making it free to implement on anything starting 2018.
striking 9y ago
If you want to run any software besides what's on the iOS App Store, you need a 64-bit x86 CPU. Apple hasn't released a macOS toolchain for ARM yet, and they need to do that a couple years before releasing such a computer. Otherwise their computer will launch with zero third-party applications (besides the open source ones available on brew). I did check the Geekbench scores, because I was curious about your speed claims... https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?utf8=&q=7360u https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?utf8=&q=7360u and https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks/ https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks/ seem way too close to equal for me to believe. Maybe that's the way it is, but I'm assuming I'm misunderstanding the tests. The A11 couldn't possibly be that fast, could it?
- djsumdog 9y ago
  I remember the Rosetta era when they switched from PPC to Intel and had their VM layer inbetween. You could go to your process list and see what was using x86 vs PPC via Rosetta and later even x86 64-bit. Eventually Rosetta was removed from the default install and I think it's gone entirely now, so you can't run really old PPC apps without an older version of MacOS and an older Mac.
  - striking 9y ago
    Yeah, if Apple tried to emulate Intel's ISA they'd very likely get sued. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davealtavilla/2017/06/09/intel-puts-microsoft-and-qualcomm-on-notice-regarding-windows-10-x86-emulation-on-snapdragon-devices/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/davealtavilla/2017/06/09/intel-...
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      Except isn't X86_64 ISA technically property of AMD, not Intel? I know some of the later stuff (SIMD / AVX / SSE / etc) is Intel, but technically I think they could leave that off and still be successful assuming that would be all that's needed to not be infringing (which I don't know if that's the case or not).
dottrap 9y ago
Because being able to dual boot Windows or even Linux is a serious consideration for important segments of the market. Companies that buy computers for their employees are going to be more hesitant to blanket approve Macs for their employees if they can't easily be repurposed to support their Windows (or Linux) need. Getting all software developers on board to do another architecture transition is also a massive undertaking. Apple has lots of experience in this area. Steve Jobs was asked how long the PowerPC to Intel transition would take and he said 7 years. That's because current Macs still need to be supported and some key vendors like Microsoft and Adobe were extremely slow at transitioning their products. LLVM bitcode is not architecture agnostic. You still need different builds for ARM vs Intel.
leggomylibro 9y ago
Well, not all of them! x86/64 compatibility is going to be necessary for awhile, and emulation isn't quite there yet. Especially with one of ARM's main advantages being power efficiency. But seriously, I agree that Apple made a HUGE mistake in completely missing the ARMtop 'Chromebook' market. Google really slammed that niche open - they've gone so far as to trademark 'Apptop' - and even Microsoft is beating them to the punch. I mean, the 'Apple Apptop'...well, coulda shoulda woulda. 'Google Apptop' sounds good, too; both would be equally incomprehensible names to someone two generations ago.
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  This sounds identical to the noise over Netbooks a decade ago. Same reasons apply now as then. Also “Apptop” is an awful name that screams “I’m a subpar product”, yikes.
  - leggomylibro 9y ago
    Not really...Netbooks promised a fully-fledged laptop/desktop replacement, which is not the goal of these highly mobile and very light ARM machines. They aim for battery life, ease-of-use, and flexibility more than all-purpose work. But I still do use it for EDA software, designing models to 3D print, etc etc. But you often need to compile binaries specifically for ARM to do so, which requires steps that most users won't want to bother with. Chromebooks are products that are cheap, sturdy, functional, and target both entry-level users who don't need a computer to do much as well as powerusers who want extensibility and relatively strong ownership of the device.
- Recurecur 9y ago
  "x86/64 compatibility is going to be necessary for awhile" Not necessarily, if Apple can get the developer community onboard with releasing fat Intel/ARM binaries with updates for any already-owned software. Xcode obviously supports both instruction sets, and fat binaries date back to the good old NeXT days. :-)
IntelMiner 9y ago
>Their 10nm A11 chip is already as fast as their current generation MacBook Pros, and that's with a 2 Watt cell phone power budget. Give it a 5 Watt tablet power budget or a 15-35 Watt Laptop power budget and it would wreck anything Intel could produce Haha, what? I'm gonna need some serious citations on your findings there

bitexploder 9y ago

I haven't really followed the news. This is a surprising claim, but I admit I haven't checked up on it. Are their chips actually that competitive with a maxed out Intel quad core macbooks? It took a long time to get fully swapped from x86 to ARM. In the scheme of things Intel chips seem like such a marginal cost to Apple, why bother changing?

robin_reala 9y ago
There was a flurry of news articles a couple of days ago reporting that the A11 was on par with the most powerful dual-core Intel chips Apple is currently using: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/13/a11-bionic-chip-geekbench-scores/ https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/13/a11-bionic-chip-geekben...
- throwaway2048 9y ago
  geekbench is the only thing showing these outsized results, id be very suspicious of geekbench
  - hoschicz 9y ago
    What other cross-platform benchmark do you suggest? People are comparing it in Geekbench because it is the only big benchmark that is available on both platforms.
    - throwaway2048 9y ago
      snythetic benchmarks are notorious for being unrelistic and unreliable. just because there isnt an alternative dosent mean that geekbench is accurate, id be pretty skeptical of claims that arm chips with a fraction of the transistors and power budget are somehow magically just as fast as big full fat x86 chips.
      - robin_reala 9y ago
        Power delivery, sure, but you’re off on transistor count. Wikipedia list a ‘Dual-core + GPU Iris Core i7 Broadwell-U’ as 1.9B transistors [1], and the A11 is 4.3B. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count
        throwaway2048 9y ago
        Should be noted the A11 is 6cores+gpu and the i7u is 2 cores + GPU. And we are talking about per core preformance.
      - Dylan16807 9y ago
        Current x86 chips are spending huge amounts of their transistor and power budget on tiny increases in instructions per clock. When you have twice as many cores to play with then you can have better total performance with a lot less resource cost.
    - imtringued 9y ago
      SPEC CPU 2017 or 2006 https://www.spec.org/benchmarks.html#cpu https://www.spec.org/benchmarks.html#cpu Here is an article that uses it: https://www.anandtech.com/show/9766/the-apple-ipad-pro-review/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/9766/the-apple-ipad-pro-revie... (Scroll down to the last table)

umanwizard 9y ago

Because most of the software people run is compiled for x86-64. I don't know whether the thing about the App Store is true, but even if it is, the App Store is not the only way to download software on macOS, and in fact I suspect only a small minority of people primarily get macOS software there.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

svantana 9y ago

Actually, looking at geekbench, the intel processors still have a slight edge per core (4500 vs 4200 in the single core case). You're right about power consumption though. But regardless, there's so much legacy software that would need to run on a virtual machine and thus be really slow. Probably not worth it - yet. But if intel keeps stalling and Apple's A line keeps excelling like they have been so far, it's only a matter of time.

jhugg 9y ago
JIT translation has come a long way and MS plans to do exactly this with x86 software runnning on ARM in the near future. It’s not impossible that A12s with custom silicon working in concert with software JITing could provide a decent experience. I would be a lot of work though. You don’t just have to translate the compiled user apps, you need to make things like AirPlay work, and that's an example of a feature that uses specific hardware acceleration. And some things like Thunderbolt might not work at all without Intel’s help. They don’t sell hundreds of millions of macs. It might not be worth it. Why not just wait a year? It’s not like Windows laptops have access to better chips than they do.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  > And some things like Thunderbolt might not work at all without Intel’s help. If my memory is correct, Thunderbolt is mostly an Intel invention, hence they likely own the patents, and as such I wouldn't expect it to work without their support.
- redial 9y ago
  Doesn't AirPlay work already on current iPhones? And Intel announced they'll be dropping thunderbolt's licensing fees making it free to implement on anything starting 2018.

striking 9y ago

If you want to run any software besides what's on the iOS App Store, you need a 64-bit x86 CPU. Apple hasn't released a macOS toolchain for ARM yet, and they need to do that a couple years before releasing such a computer. Otherwise their computer will launch with zero third-party applications (besides the open source ones available on brew). I did check the Geekbench scores, because I was curious about your speed claims... https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?utf8=&q=7360u https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/search?utf8=&q=7360u and https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks/ https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks/ seem way too close to equal for me to believe. Maybe that's the way it is, but I'm assuming I'm misunderstanding the tests. The A11 couldn't possibly be that fast, could it?

djsumdog 9y ago
I remember the Rosetta era when they switched from PPC to Intel and had their VM layer inbetween. You could go to your process list and see what was using x86 vs PPC via Rosetta and later even x86 64-bit. Eventually Rosetta was removed from the default install and I think it's gone entirely now, so you can't run really old PPC apps without an older version of MacOS and an older Mac.
- striking 9y ago
  Yeah, if Apple tried to emulate Intel's ISA they'd very likely get sued. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davealtavilla/2017/06/09/intel-puts-microsoft-and-qualcomm-on-notice-regarding-windows-10-x86-emulation-on-snapdragon-devices/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/davealtavilla/2017/06/09/intel-...
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    Except isn't X86_64 ISA technically property of AMD, not Intel? I know some of the later stuff (SIMD / AVX / SSE / etc) is Intel, but technically I think they could leave that off and still be successful assuming that would be all that's needed to not be infringing (which I don't know if that's the case or not).

dottrap 9y ago

Because being able to dual boot Windows or even Linux is a serious consideration for important segments of the market. Companies that buy computers for their employees are going to be more hesitant to blanket approve Macs for their employees if they can't easily be repurposed to support their Windows (or Linux) need. Getting all software developers on board to do another architecture transition is also a massive undertaking. Apple has lots of experience in this area. Steve Jobs was asked how long the PowerPC to Intel transition would take and he said 7 years. That's because current Macs still need to be supported and some key vendors like Microsoft and Adobe were extremely slow at transitioning their products. LLVM bitcode is not architecture agnostic. You still need different builds for ARM vs Intel.

leggomylibro 9y ago

Well, not all of them! x86/64 compatibility is going to be necessary for awhile, and emulation isn't quite there yet. Especially with one of ARM's main advantages being power efficiency. But seriously, I agree that Apple made a HUGE mistake in completely missing the ARMtop 'Chromebook' market. Google really slammed that niche open - they've gone so far as to trademark 'Apptop' - and even Microsoft is beating them to the punch. I mean, the 'Apple Apptop'...well, coulda shoulda woulda. 'Google Apptop' sounds good, too; both would be equally incomprehensible names to someone two generations ago.

abritinthebay 9y ago
This sounds identical to the noise over Netbooks a decade ago. Same reasons apply now as then. Also “Apptop” is an awful name that screams “I’m a subpar product”, yikes.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  Not really...Netbooks promised a fully-fledged laptop/desktop replacement, which is not the goal of these highly mobile and very light ARM machines. They aim for battery life, ease-of-use, and flexibility more than all-purpose work. But I still do use it for EDA software, designing models to 3D print, etc etc. But you often need to compile binaries specifically for ARM to do so, which requires steps that most users won't want to bother with. Chromebooks are products that are cheap, sturdy, functional, and target both entry-level users who don't need a computer to do much as well as powerusers who want extensibility and relatively strong ownership of the device.
Recurecur 9y ago
"x86/64 compatibility is going to be necessary for awhile" Not necessarily, if Apple can get the developer community onboard with releasing fat Intel/ARM binaries with updates for any already-owned software. Xcode obviously supports both instruction sets, and fat binaries date back to the good old NeXT days. :-)

IntelMiner 9y ago

>Their 10nm A11 chip is already as fast as their current generation MacBook Pros, and that's with a 2 Watt cell phone power budget. Give it a 5 Watt tablet power budget or a 15-35 Watt Laptop power budget and it would wreck anything Intel could produce Haha, what? I'm gonna need some serious citations on your findings there