10 ms·

TFA starts off with a piece of actual news and then veers off into rumors and unsubstantiated BS which is presented as facts. >Apple is in the process of migra

by Jerry2 7y ago

TFA starts off with a piece of actual news and then veers off into rumors and unsubstantiated BS which is presented as facts. >Apple is in the process of migrating its Mac line to ARM processors as it looks to reduce its reliance on Intel.

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
That particular "fact" does have some substance to it- In the past, Apple has switched as they feel that CPU horsepower is holding them back (keep in mind that they really want people to buy new every year) and they have already started moving their lineups over to ARM- their iPads have been ARM forever, and they have a pretty big knowledge base in it now. EDIT: I think you may have been referring to the 9to5mac article- I'm going to leave this comment here, but the current article is way more specific.
- bshipp 7y ago
  correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the reason they moved to Intel chips in the first place because their homegrown CPUs couldn't keep up? Has that calculus changed in the meantime?
  - Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
    PowerPC wasn’t really homegrown.
    - gumby 7y ago
      Though Apple was part of the original PowerPC consortium, and back then also had a chip team. Then again Apple was also the other partner (with Acorn) in founding ARM.
  - esmi 7y ago
    They switched because Freescale and IBM couldn’t keep up with Intel. Apple did not make CPUs at that time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_processors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Inte...
    - bshipp 7y ago
      Fair enough, I always associated PowerPC with Apple and assumed they were the driving force behind it's use. Regardless, that makes the financial calculus even more suspect as they would have even fewer units to amortize the cost over. But I don't work for Apple, and quite frankly the CPU market could certain use the injection of some more competition.
      - monocasa 7y ago
        They helped a little with the overarching design (the ISA of the vector unit was pretty much Apple designed) but they never made any chips themselves AFAIK.
      - IOT_Apprentice 7y ago
        Fewer units? They have arm processors in every iPhone, iPad and AppleTV. At least 70 million units a quarter. The Mac CPUs would need more cores/threads (perhaps octocore).
      - protomyth 7y ago
        Apple and assumed they were the driving force behind it's use Quite the opposite. Apple, according to the book The Race for a New Game Machine, was an unprofitable demanding customer. The scale of the XBox 360 and PS3 dwarfed Apple's usage and IBM made several decisions that were contrary to Apple's needs. PowerPC for the embedded market has been the primary driver of PowerPC development.
        rbanffy 7y ago
        At some point IBM offered Apple the Cell processor. I'm glad Apple opted to move to Intel then. The Cell is the hardest thing I ever tried to write code for.
        protomyth 7y ago
        IBM made decisions about the Cell PowerPC that made it unsuitable for Apple (no out of order) and offered the 970 as compensation. We all got to see how those promises played out.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    I think a lot has changed. Maybe not the ability to consistently lead Intel, but at least a larger portion of end users that would find an ARM laptop "good enough" exists now.
    - noir_lord 7y ago
      AMD is beating intel on price and performance and they have a fraction of the resources of Apple. Intel is behind on process and has been for a couple of generations right as everyone hits a process wall. For the first time since I got into computers in the late 80s Intel looks vulnerable. As to whether Apple would go ARM on a MacBook who knows, I’d guess they wouldn’t but they could straight buy AMD in cash so it’s not beyond the realm they could tool up for desktop class ARM.
      - bshipp 7y ago
        Indeed, AMD is finally in a good position after years wandering the desert. That said, this current strong performance is the result of years of R&D, something that would have to be built from the ground up if Apple was to try and replicate it. I can't help but think there must be some secret benefit to make them pursue such a risky endeavour for something so tangential to their comparative advantage. Apple doesn't sell custom components, they sell consumer experiences. They must be planning on going a completely different direction with iOS to warrant custom processor technology.
        sprafa 7y ago
        I suppose hiring people like this (and this is he one we hear about they could have hired 20-30 people without anyone noticing) is a way to shortcut such R&D
        IOT_Apprentice 7y ago
        Umm, you do realize that Apple has a large design team and outsources Fab to TSMC? Their iPhone/iPAD/AppleTV hardware platforms already run on their own ARM chip design. They SHIP over 70 MILLION units a quarter. They have the R&D teams already churning out new designs each year. How is this risky?
- monocasa 7y ago
  The difference here is that the previous ISA changes have been accompanied with massive benefits. The 68k to ppc transition came with ppc being able to emulate 68k code faster than any 68k you could buy (in an interpreter, no JIT!!!), and the native ppc code was just ungodly fast comparitively. Ppc to x86 was less dramatic on raw perf, but was accompanied by a huge gain wrt perf per watt, and you could still emulate ppc on Intel about as well as you could run on a native ppc (with a JIT this time). But now, Moore's law is in the process of hitting a brick wall. Those big wins for free just aren't there. And if there's a x86 to arm JIT, it's either going to be single core, or the arm cores are going to have to have a stronger x86 like memory model, thus negating a huge part of their architectural win. IMO, Apple's going to make their own x86 chips because the base x86_64 patents are going to expire real soon now, and they have enough patents from the crazy amount of fabless acquisitions to potentially cross license the rest. Processors are commodities now, and that's really going to shake things up in crazy ways.
  - mutt2016 7y ago
    Also Intel isn't the only maker anymore. Anybody can have a chip made by that other company TSMC and whatnot.
  - NikkiA 7y ago
    > The 68k to ppc transition came with ppc being able to emulate 68k code faster than any 68k you could buy (in an interpreter, no JIT!!!) This simply isn't true, it wasn't until the G3-300 was released that the 68k emulator could run 68k code at 40MHz comparable speeds, and that was after 10 years of ppc601s and 603s running 68k system binaries at slower than quadra speeds on 180 and 200MHz processors.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    The 68k to ppc transition came with ppc being able to emulate 68k code faster than any 68k you could buy (in an interpreter, no JIT!!!), and the native ppc code was just ungodly fast comparitively. Neither part of that statement is true. I had an LCII with a 68030-40Mhz card before upgrading to a 6100/60. The 6100/60 (601-60Mhz processor with a half speed bus) was much slower running 68K software than my LCII. It was about the same speed once I bought SpeedDoubler. Also, between the slower bus, the slow shared graphics memory and System 7 on the PPC being emulated, it felt much slower than a decent 486-DX2/66 or a Pentium-60.
FrojoS 7y ago
>The company initiated a plan several years ago to replace Intel chips in its Mac computers with processors based on the ARM architecture as early as 2020. Really sounds like they have some detailed knowledge, but yeah, no source is mentioned.
Despegar 7y ago
They linked to their previous reporting that they're working on it. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-is-said-to-plan-move-from-intel-to-own-mac-chips-from-2020 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-is-...
- r00fus 7y ago
  Does that count to cite oneself? Doesn't pass my veracity check.
  - pfundstein 7y ago
    Of course not, but sadly this is what Bloomberg has devolved into.
etaioinshrdlu 7y ago
I don't think I could use a Mac for software development anymore if they switched away from Intel. So much of my work is dependent on running linux executables in Docker for later deployment on a server running Intel. That is certainly extremely common. I also need a Windows VM quite frequently for the odd program that only runs in Windows, or if I need to run Visual Studio one day. Windows is also very important for me to keep around so I can test software products in the same environment as other windows users, and there are definitely a handful of windows users out there. Sure there may be alternative options in both areas but I'm not interested in solutions that work 80% of the time. I can't let my development environment get in the way of my work.
- webaholic 7y ago
  May be by the time Mac has an ARM processor, your deployment server might also be an ARM server. :)
- bin0 7y ago
  You know one of the great things about VMs? They're cross-platform. I'm guessing once the same amount of optimization is put into arm has has been put into x86, the performance ought to be comparable. I'm also about 99% sure docker can be run on arm (RPIs support it, right?). With that said, I sincerely doubt Apple will kill x86 wholesale overnight. I'm guessing there will be a transitional period of quite some time. Also, windows has been doing a ton of work around getting onto arm. I managed to test on my rpi 3, and it was pretty good. it would probably be very doable.
  - ihattendorf 7y ago
    Cross platform sure, but cross architecture will kill performance.
    - rbanffy 7y ago
      Not necessarily. JIT ISA emulation that generates native code for the host ISA has been done for ages now.
melling 7y ago
I believe Mark Gurman does a good job with his rumors.
ksec 7y ago
No one has even try to give any convincing argument for ARM on Mac. And yet everyone seems to believe it as Fact. 1. There are articles that suggest Apple could move the Macbook, MacBook Air to their own ARM SoC, and leave the higher end MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, iMac on x86-64 for Professional Apps. In the case How is the Macbook different to iPad Pro with Keyboard? It is one thing to have a transition between two ISA, it is another thing to have the platform permanently on two ISA. 2. Is Apple going to spend hundreds of millions a year just to invest into Mac Desktop / high performance CPU, for use in iMac and Mac Pro CPU that runs from 100W to 220W. The Desktop Mac represent 20% of all Mac unit, that is roughly 4M. Majority of those are iMac, not iMac Pro or Mac Pro with high TDP. 3. If Apple want to lower its reliance on Intel ( After it has all of its modem and wireless patents sort out with Intel ), why not just use AMD to leverages the price or switch to AMD. AMD gets the PR win for Apple using it, win win for both companies. 4. The rumours would have some ground before WWDC, but Apple just announced a monster Mac Pro. Catering for real Hollywood professionals and Rack Mount Mac Pro for Servers.
- megaremote 7y ago
  > No one has even try to give any convincing argument for ARM on Mac. And yet everyone seems to believe it as Fact. Yes, everyone believes it is coming, just like they believed the iPhone was coming, the iPad was coming, the Apple watch was coming.
  - dwaite 7y ago
    So will this be released before or after the Apple Television?
    - timthorn 7y ago
      After: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_TV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_TV
  - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    The Apple Car too! Wait...
w0mbat 7y ago
The article also describes the 14 years since Intel Mac was announced as “nearly two decades”.
ltc5505 7y ago
TFA = This F---ing Article?
- dejawu 7y ago
  The Featured Article
  - ltc5505 7y ago
    That makes sense. Thank you!

by Jerry2 7y ago

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago

That particular "fact" does have some substance to it- In the past, Apple has switched as they feel that CPU horsepower is holding them back (keep in mind that they really want people to buy new every year) and they have already started moving their lineups over to ARM- their iPads have been ARM forever, and they have a pretty big knowledge base in it now. EDIT: I think you may have been referring to the 9to5mac article- I'm going to leave this comment here, but the current article is way more specific.

bshipp 7y ago
correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the reason they moved to Intel chips in the first place because their homegrown CPUs couldn't keep up? Has that calculus changed in the meantime?
- Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
  PowerPC wasn’t really homegrown.
  - gumby 7y ago
    Though Apple was part of the original PowerPC consortium, and back then also had a chip team. Then again Apple was also the other partner (with Acorn) in founding ARM.
- esmi 7y ago
  They switched because Freescale and IBM couldn’t keep up with Intel. Apple did not make CPUs at that time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_processors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Inte...
  - bshipp 7y ago
    Fair enough, I always associated PowerPC with Apple and assumed they were the driving force behind it's use. Regardless, that makes the financial calculus even more suspect as they would have even fewer units to amortize the cost over. But I don't work for Apple, and quite frankly the CPU market could certain use the injection of some more competition.
    - monocasa 7y ago
      They helped a little with the overarching design (the ISA of the vector unit was pretty much Apple designed) but they never made any chips themselves AFAIK.
    - IOT_Apprentice 7y ago
      Fewer units? They have arm processors in every iPhone, iPad and AppleTV. At least 70 million units a quarter. The Mac CPUs would need more cores/threads (perhaps octocore).
    - protomyth 7y ago
      Apple and assumed they were the driving force behind it's use Quite the opposite. Apple, according to the book The Race for a New Game Machine, was an unprofitable demanding customer. The scale of the XBox 360 and PS3 dwarfed Apple's usage and IBM made several decisions that were contrary to Apple's needs. PowerPC for the embedded market has been the primary driver of PowerPC development.
      - rbanffy 7y ago
        At some point IBM offered Apple the Cell processor. I'm glad Apple opted to move to Intel then. The Cell is the hardest thing I ever tried to write code for.
        protomyth 7y ago
        IBM made decisions about the Cell PowerPC that made it unsuitable for Apple (no out of order) and offered the 970 as compensation. We all got to see how those promises played out.
- tyingq 7y ago
  I think a lot has changed. Maybe not the ability to consistently lead Intel, but at least a larger portion of end users that would find an ARM laptop "good enough" exists now.
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    AMD is beating intel on price and performance and they have a fraction of the resources of Apple. Intel is behind on process and has been for a couple of generations right as everyone hits a process wall. For the first time since I got into computers in the late 80s Intel looks vulnerable. As to whether Apple would go ARM on a MacBook who knows, I’d guess they wouldn’t but they could straight buy AMD in cash so it’s not beyond the realm they could tool up for desktop class ARM.
    - bshipp 7y ago
      Indeed, AMD is finally in a good position after years wandering the desert. That said, this current strong performance is the result of years of R&D, something that would have to be built from the ground up if Apple was to try and replicate it. I can't help but think there must be some secret benefit to make them pursue such a risky endeavour for something so tangential to their comparative advantage. Apple doesn't sell custom components, they sell consumer experiences. They must be planning on going a completely different direction with iOS to warrant custom processor technology.
      - sprafa 7y ago
        I suppose hiring people like this (and this is he one we hear about they could have hired 20-30 people without anyone noticing) is a way to shortcut such R&D
      - IOT_Apprentice 7y ago
        Umm, you do realize that Apple has a large design team and outsources Fab to TSMC? Their iPhone/iPAD/AppleTV hardware platforms already run on their own ARM chip design. They SHIP over 70 MILLION units a quarter. They have the R&D teams already churning out new designs each year. How is this risky?
monocasa 7y ago
The difference here is that the previous ISA changes have been accompanied with massive benefits. The 68k to ppc transition came with ppc being able to emulate 68k code faster than any 68k you could buy (in an interpreter, no JIT!!!), and the native ppc code was just ungodly fast comparitively. Ppc to x86 was less dramatic on raw perf, but was accompanied by a huge gain wrt perf per watt, and you could still emulate ppc on Intel about as well as you could run on a native ppc (with a JIT this time). But now, Moore's law is in the process of hitting a brick wall. Those big wins for free just aren't there. And if there's a x86 to arm JIT, it's either going to be single core, or the arm cores are going to have to have a stronger x86 like memory model, thus negating a huge part of their architectural win. IMO, Apple's going to make their own x86 chips because the base x86_64 patents are going to expire real soon now, and they have enough patents from the crazy amount of fabless acquisitions to potentially cross license the rest. Processors are commodities now, and that's really going to shake things up in crazy ways.
- mutt2016 7y ago
  Also Intel isn't the only maker anymore. Anybody can have a chip made by that other company TSMC and whatnot.
- NikkiA 7y ago
  > The 68k to ppc transition came with ppc being able to emulate 68k code faster than any 68k you could buy (in an interpreter, no JIT!!!) This simply isn't true, it wasn't until the G3-300 was released that the 68k emulator could run 68k code at 40MHz comparable speeds, and that was after 10 years of ppc601s and 603s running 68k system binaries at slower than quadra speeds on 180 and 200MHz processors.
- scarface74 7y ago
  The 68k to ppc transition came with ppc being able to emulate 68k code faster than any 68k you could buy (in an interpreter, no JIT!!!), and the native ppc code was just ungodly fast comparitively. Neither part of that statement is true. I had an LCII with a 68030-40Mhz card before upgrading to a 6100/60. The 6100/60 (601-60Mhz processor with a half speed bus) was much slower running 68K software than my LCII. It was about the same speed once I bought SpeedDoubler. Also, between the slower bus, the slow shared graphics memory and System 7 on the PPC being emulated, it felt much slower than a decent 486-DX2/66 or a Pentium-60.

FrojoS 7y ago

>The company initiated a plan several years ago to replace Intel chips in its Mac computers with processors based on the ARM architecture as early as 2020. Really sounds like they have some detailed knowledge, but yeah, no source is mentioned.

Despegar 7y ago

They linked to their previous reporting that they're working on it. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-is-said-to-plan-move-from-intel-to-own-mac-chips-from-2020 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-02/apple-is-...

r00fus 7y ago
Does that count to cite oneself? Doesn't pass my veracity check.
- pfundstein 7y ago
  Of course not, but sadly this is what Bloomberg has devolved into.

etaioinshrdlu 7y ago

I don't think I could use a Mac for software development anymore if they switched away from Intel. So much of my work is dependent on running linux executables in Docker for later deployment on a server running Intel. That is certainly extremely common. I also need a Windows VM quite frequently for the odd program that only runs in Windows, or if I need to run Visual Studio one day. Windows is also very important for me to keep around so I can test software products in the same environment as other windows users, and there are definitely a handful of windows users out there. Sure there may be alternative options in both areas but I'm not interested in solutions that work 80% of the time. I can't let my development environment get in the way of my work.

webaholic 7y ago
May be by the time Mac has an ARM processor, your deployment server might also be an ARM server. :)
bin0 7y ago
You know one of the great things about VMs? They're cross-platform. I'm guessing once the same amount of optimization is put into arm has has been put into x86, the performance ought to be comparable. I'm also about 99% sure docker can be run on arm (RPIs support it, right?). With that said, I sincerely doubt Apple will kill x86 wholesale overnight. I'm guessing there will be a transitional period of quite some time. Also, windows has been doing a ton of work around getting onto arm. I managed to test on my rpi 3, and it was pretty good. it would probably be very doable.
- ihattendorf 7y ago
  Cross platform sure, but cross architecture will kill performance.
  - rbanffy 7y ago
    Not necessarily. JIT ISA emulation that generates native code for the host ISA has been done for ages now.

melling 7y ago

I believe Mark Gurman does a good job with his rumors.

ksec 7y ago

No one has even try to give any convincing argument for ARM on Mac. And yet everyone seems to believe it as Fact. 1. There are articles that suggest Apple could move the Macbook, MacBook Air to their own ARM SoC, and leave the higher end MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, iMac on x86-64 for Professional Apps. In the case How is the Macbook different to iPad Pro with Keyboard? It is one thing to have a transition between two ISA, it is another thing to have the platform permanently on two ISA. 2. Is Apple going to spend hundreds of millions a year just to invest into Mac Desktop / high performance CPU, for use in iMac and Mac Pro CPU that runs from 100W to 220W. The Desktop Mac represent 20% of all Mac unit, that is roughly 4M. Majority of those are iMac, not iMac Pro or Mac Pro with high TDP. 3. If Apple want to lower its reliance on Intel ( After it has all of its modem and wireless patents sort out with Intel ), why not just use AMD to leverages the price or switch to AMD. AMD gets the PR win for Apple using it, win win for both companies. 4. The rumours would have some ground before WWDC, but Apple just announced a monster Mac Pro. Catering for real Hollywood professionals and Rack Mount Mac Pro for Servers.

megaremote 7y ago
> No one has even try to give any convincing argument for ARM on Mac. And yet everyone seems to believe it as Fact. Yes, everyone believes it is coming, just like they believed the iPhone was coming, the iPad was coming, the Apple watch was coming.
- dwaite 7y ago
  So will this be released before or after the Apple Television?
  - timthorn 7y ago
    After: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_TV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_TV
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  The Apple Car too! Wait...

w0mbat 7y ago

The article also describes the 14 years since Intel Mac was announced as “nearly two decades”.

ltc5505 7y ago

TFA = This F---ing Article?

dejawu 7y ago
The Featured Article
- ltc5505 7y ago
  That makes sense. Thank you!