7 ms·

I hope to see AMD in this list soon. Apple is not using the best desktop and laptop processors nowadays.

by therealmarv 7y ago

scarface74 7y ago
The best laptop processor would be an Apple designed ARM chip.
- arvinsim 7y ago
  You are basing that on what metrics? It's all just speculation for now. AMD 4000 mobile processors, on the other hand, already exist.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    We know the performance/power trade offs of Apple’s ARM chips in iPad Pros.
    - duskwuff 7y ago
      And the odds are good that even that could be scaled up further for a laptop-class part. The iPad Pro is a passively cooled device which is expected to always run on battery power, after all; a laptop would have larger batteries and more thermal margin. Not that it'd even have to be scaled up by much. The A13 (iPhone 11) already performs comparably to many Intel mobile parts; an -X variant (future iPad Pro) would surely improve upon that.
      - zrm 7y ago
        The scaling is really the question. ARM processors generally have better performance per watt because they're designed to prioritize power efficiency over absolute performance. The Intel parts Apple's ARM processors compare to on performance are the lowest power ones, which isn't exactly the sweet spot for Intel's microarchitecture. If you gave the ARM designers the (higher) laptop power budget, almost certainly they'd increase performance at the expense of performance per watt. In other words they'd take more of the trade offs that Intel and AMD do. But to justify switching architectures it can't just be the same, it would have to be enough better to be worth the transition.
        amalter 7y ago
        This has been exactly proven out by Amazon - https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/announcing-new-amazon-ec2-m6g-c6g-and-r6g-instances-powered-by-next-generation-arm-based-aws-graviton2-processors/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/announcin... If Amazon can make a server class ARM chip that is competitive or better with their custom designed Xeons, I take it as a truism Apple could do the same for mobile.
        wu_187 7y ago
        The problem is the use-case. The software Mac laptops run would perform horribly on ARM. A Macbook Pro is not going to have an ARM processor.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Why do you think the software Macs run are so much different than the software that iPad Pros run? They run some of the same frameworks. Since when you run iOS apps in the simulator for Macs you actually running x86 builds of iOS apps linked against an x86 build of the iOS frameworks, it’s not hard to compare performance
        mindajar 7y ago
        It already does, in the T2. It seems to me like future T* chips will run more and more of the system, leaving the x86 to become something like the MBP’s discrete GPU option. And then, like discrete GPUs, eventually an x86 CPU is only available in top-end models.
        zrm 7y ago
        There are a lot of reasons to expect that to work better for servers than laptops. Most server workloads scale with core count, so winning in performance per watt is winning in general because you can scale performance by adding cores. A server with twice as many cores that are each half as fast is just as good, but that doesn't work for a laptop. A server processor also doesn't have to win at every workload. If it can win at any workload, people can use it for only those, which makes it useful. That also doesn't really work for a laptop. People run Linux on servers. It's portable. The architectural transition cost there is close to zero. On top of that, Amazon is fudging the benchmarks in claiming it's faster. They're comparing performance "per-vCPU" which on Intel are hyperthreads rather than full cores. That's fine when Amazon is charging less for the ARM "vCPU" than the Intel hyperthread "vCPU", but you can't use that trick when running single-threaded workloads on a laptop.
  - vr46 7y ago
    Would these really be an upgrade? I thought we were hitting thermal and power limits these days? (Genuinely asking btw, have just bought a tricked-out MBP 16)
    - scarface74 7y ago
      It depends on what you’re optimizing for. Having a laptop that has the battery life of an iPad would definitely be an upgrade.
- mdasen 7y ago
  Possibly, but it would mean transitioning to a new instruction set. AMD processors wouldn't require a transition. I used Macs through the PowerPC to Intel transition and it wasn't a great time. Apple had to do it because PowerPC processors were so incredibly far behind. Right now, Apple isn't behind since all their competitors are also using x86 processors. Maybe they could be ahead, but there isn't the same desperate need. Maybe Apple should move to their own ARM chips. However, the AMD Ryzen 4000 series processors give them an easy upgrade without requiring a lot of work. Switching to ARM is a big commitment. Third party developers will need to recompile their programs. Apple will need a translation layer for older programs that aren't updated - and users will understand that they'll have older programs they've purchased stop working in a few years. It happened with the PowerPC to Intel transition, the MacOS 9 to MacOS X transition, and recently with the 32-bit to 64-bit transition with Catalina cutting off 32-bit support. AMD's Ryzen 4000 parts are based on the 7nm TSMC process and they're able to stuff 8 cores into a 15 watt part. For comparison, the MacBook Pro 13" ships with 28 watt processors. Is the Ryzen 4000 the best? I can't say. Is it a lot easier and less of a commitment? Definitely.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I used Macs through the 680x0 (LCII with a 68030/40 accelerator and lots of peripherals) to PPC (6100/60 with the “DOS Compatibility Card”) transition, left the Mac for awhile and came back with the G4 Mini and less than a year later with the Core Duo Mini. The first time, the 6100/60 ran emulated code (especially with Speed Doubler) fast enough that there wasn’t a performance penalty. The second transition I had all native code. But in general the strategy was the same. Wait until the software you need is compatible. During the first transition, my most used software was already shipping as a “fat binary”. I just unplugged my SCSI hard drive from one computer to the other. The second time, all of the software I cared about was native. It’s even easier now since the two most popular pieces of commercial software from Adobe and Microsoft are both subscription based. As soon as they port it, you won’t pay extra for it. Much of the other software that nerds use is open source and can be compiled easily for ARM (or Electron based). No one is thinking that Apple will go full ARM. Most are thinking that the high end will be x86.
why_only_15 7y ago
mac on arm is in the works apparently and is probably significantly more power efficient than AMD
- sjwright 7y ago
  The T2 chip is probably what these rumors refer to. I imagine there's also ongoing engineering research to incrementally beef up the role of the T2 chip as a system controller and possibly also perform more system and background tasks in its ARM core. That said, I've no doubt Apple is looking closely at an ARM future for Mac. I'm hoping that Apple does this, but as price & efficiency play, not to phase out x86. There's no reason Mac couldn't be indefinitely dual platform. We know macOS already has strong multi-binary support, so there's no technical impediment to that. It could start with them releasing a MacBook Air with ARM as an option, ostensibly targeted towards developers and early adopters. It would need to have longer battery life and superior CPU + GPU performance at the same price point. From there they could progressively introduce ARM across their consumer range, guided by the performance numbers. And as software support broadens, they could begin progressively discontinuing x86 at the bottom of the product range. Part of me wants to say that Apple shouldn't ever discontinue x86 support entirely, but if they're ever able to make chips that soundly trash anything from Intel and AMD, I doubt anyone would be too sad if they did.
  - davnicwil 7y ago
    > It could start with them releasing a MacBook Air with ARM as an option I don't see this ever happening, it'll be all or nothing. Apple just doesn't differentiate its products on technical differences, it categorises them purely on what you can use them to do, as a branding/marketing strategy. Despite developers and other people interested in the tech being a significant market for them, it's definitely not significant enough for them to change this. Having a macbook that can't do things other macbooks can, with the tradeoff of different performance characteristics.. I just can't imagine it's something Apple would ever do.
    - sjwright 7y ago
michelb 7y ago
Some new AMD Ryzen processor identifiers seem to be present in the latest MacOS beta..Really curious..

I hope to see AMD in this list soon. Apple is not using the best desktop and laptop processors nowadays.

scarface74 7y ago

The best laptop processor would be an Apple designed ARM chip.

arvinsim 7y ago
You are basing that on what metrics? It's all just speculation for now. AMD 4000 mobile processors, on the other hand, already exist.
- scarface74 7y ago
  We know the performance/power trade offs of Apple’s ARM chips in iPad Pros.
  - duskwuff 7y ago
    And the odds are good that even that could be scaled up further for a laptop-class part. The iPad Pro is a passively cooled device which is expected to always run on battery power, after all; a laptop would have larger batteries and more thermal margin. Not that it'd even have to be scaled up by much. The A13 (iPhone 11) already performs comparably to many Intel mobile parts; an -X variant (future iPad Pro) would surely improve upon that.
    - zrm 7y ago
      The scaling is really the question. ARM processors generally have better performance per watt because they're designed to prioritize power efficiency over absolute performance. The Intel parts Apple's ARM processors compare to on performance are the lowest power ones, which isn't exactly the sweet spot for Intel's microarchitecture. If you gave the ARM designers the (higher) laptop power budget, almost certainly they'd increase performance at the expense of performance per watt. In other words they'd take more of the trade offs that Intel and AMD do. But to justify switching architectures it can't just be the same, it would have to be enough better to be worth the transition.
      - amalter 7y ago
        This has been exactly proven out by Amazon - https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/announcing-new-amazon-ec2-m6g-c6g-and-r6g-instances-powered-by-next-generation-arm-based-aws-graviton2-processors/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/12/announcin... If Amazon can make a server class ARM chip that is competitive or better with their custom designed Xeons, I take it as a truism Apple could do the same for mobile.
        wu_187 7y ago
        The problem is the use-case. The software Mac laptops run would perform horribly on ARM. A Macbook Pro is not going to have an ARM processor.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Why do you think the software Macs run are so much different than the software that iPad Pros run? They run some of the same frameworks. Since when you run iOS apps in the simulator for Macs you actually running x86 builds of iOS apps linked against an x86 build of the iOS frameworks, it’s not hard to compare performance
        mindajar 7y ago
        It already does, in the T2. It seems to me like future T* chips will run more and more of the system, leaving the x86 to become something like the MBP’s discrete GPU option. And then, like discrete GPUs, eventually an x86 CPU is only available in top-end models.
        zrm 7y ago
        There are a lot of reasons to expect that to work better for servers than laptops. Most server workloads scale with core count, so winning in performance per watt is winning in general because you can scale performance by adding cores. A server with twice as many cores that are each half as fast is just as good, but that doesn't work for a laptop. A server processor also doesn't have to win at every workload. If it can win at any workload, people can use it for only those, which makes it useful. That also doesn't really work for a laptop. People run Linux on servers. It's portable. The architectural transition cost there is close to zero. On top of that, Amazon is fudging the benchmarks in claiming it's faster. They're comparing performance "per-vCPU" which on Intel are hyperthreads rather than full cores. That's fine when Amazon is charging less for the ARM "vCPU" than the Intel hyperthread "vCPU", but you can't use that trick when running single-threaded workloads on a laptop.
- vr46 7y ago
  Would these really be an upgrade? I thought we were hitting thermal and power limits these days? (Genuinely asking btw, have just bought a tricked-out MBP 16)
  - scarface74 7y ago
    It depends on what you’re optimizing for. Having a laptop that has the battery life of an iPad would definitely be an upgrade.
mdasen 7y ago
Possibly, but it would mean transitioning to a new instruction set. AMD processors wouldn't require a transition. I used Macs through the PowerPC to Intel transition and it wasn't a great time. Apple had to do it because PowerPC processors were so incredibly far behind. Right now, Apple isn't behind since all their competitors are also using x86 processors. Maybe they could be ahead, but there isn't the same desperate need. Maybe Apple should move to their own ARM chips. However, the AMD Ryzen 4000 series processors give them an easy upgrade without requiring a lot of work. Switching to ARM is a big commitment. Third party developers will need to recompile their programs. Apple will need a translation layer for older programs that aren't updated - and users will understand that they'll have older programs they've purchased stop working in a few years. It happened with the PowerPC to Intel transition, the MacOS 9 to MacOS X transition, and recently with the 32-bit to 64-bit transition with Catalina cutting off 32-bit support. AMD's Ryzen 4000 parts are based on the 7nm TSMC process and they're able to stuff 8 cores into a 15 watt part. For comparison, the MacBook Pro 13" ships with 28 watt processors. Is the Ryzen 4000 the best? I can't say. Is it a lot easier and less of a commitment? Definitely.
- scarface74 7y ago
  I used Macs through the 680x0 (LCII with a 68030/40 accelerator and lots of peripherals) to PPC (6100/60 with the “DOS Compatibility Card”) transition, left the Mac for awhile and came back with the G4 Mini and less than a year later with the Core Duo Mini. The first time, the 6100/60 ran emulated code (especially with Speed Doubler) fast enough that there wasn’t a performance penalty. The second transition I had all native code. But in general the strategy was the same. Wait until the software you need is compatible. During the first transition, my most used software was already shipping as a “fat binary”. I just unplugged my SCSI hard drive from one computer to the other. The second time, all of the software I cared about was native. It’s even easier now since the two most popular pieces of commercial software from Adobe and Microsoft are both subscription based. As soon as they port it, you won’t pay extra for it. Much of the other software that nerds use is open source and can be compiled easily for ARM (or Electron based). No one is thinking that Apple will go full ARM. Most are thinking that the high end will be x86.

why_only_15 7y ago

mac on arm is in the works apparently and is probably significantly more power efficient than AMD

sjwright 7y ago
The T2 chip is probably what these rumors refer to. I imagine there's also ongoing engineering research to incrementally beef up the role of the T2 chip as a system controller and possibly also perform more system and background tasks in its ARM core. That said, I've no doubt Apple is looking closely at an ARM future for Mac. I'm hoping that Apple does this, but as price & efficiency play, not to phase out x86. There's no reason Mac couldn't be indefinitely dual platform. We know macOS already has strong multi-binary support, so there's no technical impediment to that. It could start with them releasing a MacBook Air with ARM as an option, ostensibly targeted towards developers and early adopters. It would need to have longer battery life and superior CPU + GPU performance at the same price point. From there they could progressively introduce ARM across their consumer range, guided by the performance numbers. And as software support broadens, they could begin progressively discontinuing x86 at the bottom of the product range. Part of me wants to say that Apple shouldn't ever discontinue x86 support entirely, but if they're ever able to make chips that soundly trash anything from Intel and AMD, I doubt anyone would be too sad if they did.
- davnicwil 7y ago
  > It could start with them releasing a MacBook Air with ARM as an option I don't see this ever happening, it'll be all or nothing. Apple just doesn't differentiate its products on technical differences, it categorises them purely on what you can use them to do, as a branding/marketing strategy. Despite developers and other people interested in the tech being a significant market for them, it's definitely not significant enough for them to change this. Having a macbook that can't do things other macbooks can, with the tradeoff of different performance characteristics.. I just can't imagine it's something Apple would ever do.
  - sjwright 7y ago

michelb 7y ago

Some new AMD Ryzen processor identifiers seem to be present in the latest MacOS beta..Really curious..