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Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month
- layoutIfNeeded 6y agoBig if true.
- rjeli 6y ago, according to leaks
- bananamerica 6y agoThe Verge is a pretty good source, isn’t it?
- leecb 6y agoIsn't this the Verge's summary of the Bloomberg article from Mark Gurman? Why not link to the original article?
- chrisseaton 6y agoTime to urgently make sure your favourite backend is generating decent AArch64 code and you app is compatible with a weak memory model...
- ladberg 6y agoThe memory model of the ISA != the memory model of your code. C has a memory model and any correct C code is compiled to the correct ARM assembly. It's only really an issue if you are translating over x86 assembly, and then you probably have lots of other issues to worry about.
- chrisseaton 6y agoIf you’re the one implementing the language’s memory model then it’s your problem isn’t it? If you’re generating the machine code then it’s your problem isn’t it? If you’re writing lock-fee code that doesn’t use the C memory model then it’s your problem isn’t it? > then you probably have lots of other issues to worry about Yes, yes we do.
- dan-robertson 6y agoArm provides different models for consistency of changes to memory from different cores/cpus to Intel. Concurrent (typically lock-free) code may be relying on intel’s behaviour
- gpderetta 6y agoa lot of code (especially old code bases) does not actually target the c11 memory model but just happens to work on x86. A lot of code that targets the c11 memory model but primarily targetting x86, still assumes cheap (or free) release/acquire memory barriers (although admittedly arm64 should have reasonably cheap release/acquire and Apple could make them as cheap as they want).
- 0x0 6y agoDoes C really have a memory model for multithreaded applications? I tried googling but could only find references to C++11. Also, failing to adhere to a memory model is one of those tricky things where things seem to work alright on architectures with a strong SMP coherency. But then it all breaks down and you end up chasing heisenbugs all over the place when those assumptions no longer hold. It's not easy to prove a lack of race condition bugs. You usually don't get a compiler error if you forget to mark things volatile, forget memory barriers or forget proper locking.
- john_alan 6y agoCan you ELI5 this?
- chrisseaton 6y agoNot all compilers and other machine-specific programs are as tuned for AArch64 as they are AMD64. Some may not be designed with AArch64’s properties in mind.
- john_alan 6y agoOh sure. Thanks that makes sense. I guess though simple apps should be easy. It’s just heavy apps that would require more than a simple recompile right?
- sdepablos 6y agoAfter the last few years of hardware problems with Macs let's see who's the brave one to buy a v1 of any Apple new product (meanwhile there's probably people already making a queue to buy one)
- Alex3917 6y agoIf you look at the problems with the 2016 - 2019 MBP, and also the problems with the first generation intel MBPs, the biggest issue in both cases was heat. (Although there were clearly other issues as well.) The new Apple chips are going to be much more power efficient, so I think there is actually hope here. I still wouldn't buy a v1 because I think they'll have problems, but I think whatever problems they'll have will be less than previous v1s.
- pathartl 6y agoOne of the biggest problems with absolute data loss for current Apple machines is the T2 chip dying.
- mthoms 6y agoCan you expand on that?
- nsajko 6y agoT2 encrypts everything, so when it fails, you lose your stored data. EDIT: also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23076929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23076929
- Alex3917 6y agoThere seems to be a bug where the chip will effectively change the master password for your encrypted disk to something random and leave you unable to access any data. I'm not sure on the details, but I've seen that happen. You might still be able to recover the data if you have iCloud reset enabled for firevault, but that obviously comes with its own risks. Basically just never go more than 24 hours without backing up, one is none, keep multiple offsite backups, etc.
- niahmiah 6y agowhat does this mean for running docker containers on macos?
- kitotik 6y agoSounds like a “pro” use case.
- mullingitover 6y ago> The shift to ARM will eventually include the entire Mac lineup, Bloomberg reports. Much like Apple turned Final Cut Pro into iMovie Pro, this is looking like every Mac Pro will turn into an iPhone Pro. I could be mistaken, maybe they'll figure out some way of handling x86 with real hardware, but if not this is a massive gift to Microsoft.
- mattbillenstein 6y agoIt means you better think about buying a thinkpad.
- znpy 6y agowhy can't I upvote you twice?
- mattbillenstein 6y agoMost of my snark gets downvoted, so the one upvote is sufficient - thx!
- znpy 6y agoindeed, my comment was downvoted four times. WORTH IT.
- john_alan 6y agoDocker runs on Arm chips.
- ccmcarey 6y agoInteresting. I imagine they'll have to provide some sort of x86/amd64 compat layer as otherwise this kills every application available for macos right now. I hope they don't also continue to lock down macos (though I imagine they intend to) by restricting applications to only being available from the app store. That would set a terrible precedent for personal computing.
- zapzupnz 6y ago> I imagine they'll have to provide some sort of x86/amd64 compat layer Just like they did with the mk86->ppc transition, just like they did with the ppc->x86 transition. > I hope they don't also continue to lock down macos Let's not confuse moving Macs to ARM processors with turning Macs into iOS devices. Apple has always treated the OS families differently and will continue to do so because they know more than anybody that they meet different needs.
- darrmit 6y ago> will continue to do so because they know more than anybody that they meet different needs Will they, though? Because Catalina seems like a giant step in the wrong direction if you’re thinking they’re acknowledging the developer - or even power user - need. Seems to me they’ve doubled down on the iOS approach to macOS.
- antipaul 6y agoIn Catalina, I see the move towards these macOS & iOS compatible apps ("Catalyst") as making it easier to develop apps for both. It's a service for developers, if you will (I am not an app developer!) I don't necessarily see it as trying to create a single OS for both desktop and mobile.
- darrmit 6y agoTo be clear: I’m not saying they’re trying to create a single OS. I’m saying the “Apple knows best” concepts they’re applying to macOS that are seemingly inspired by iOS are very hostile to a large part of their user base.
- michaelmarion 6y agoThanks for playing, Intel.
- z9e 6y agoI envision there being a lot of ARM support issues across apps that I rely on. We finally got over the keyboard drama, I don't have confidence this will go well either.
- jdxcode 6y agoYou say it like it's a bad thing. I can't wait to have more competition as far as instruction sets go. Of course things will break but it'll give us a reason to make our apps and toolchains ARM-compatible beyond Raspberry Pis and small devices.
- diab0lic 6y agoIs there a way to say "a lot of ARM support issues across apps that I rely on" as though it isn't a bad thing? Hahah. I do agree some instruction set competition would be a good thing, especially if this can further improve battery life on portable devices.
- andy_ppp 6y agoDepends on how fast they are and who knows, there might be custom hardware to help the emulation. I’m pretty sure while there will be issues 4-8h of battery life and your laptop working at full speed when not on the mains will be great wins and eventually worth the change.
- cptskippy 6y agoWell they've already figured out multi-targeting in XCode and gave done this once before so I would imagine for a lot of developers it will just be a recompile. I saw a really cheap MacBook Air deal the other day and was tempted until I saw they're i3 based. Assuming App support, I could see them replace that with an ARM based CPU without anyone noticing.
- meatmanek 6y agoThey've done this 2 to 5 times before, depending on whether you count the 32-bit to 64-bit conversions and iOS. 68k->PPC, PPC->PPC64, PPC->x86, x86->x86-66, arm->arm64
- xacky 6y agoNow will be a good time to stock up on Intel macs. At least we will still have hackintoshes.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pathartl 6y agoIt's fine that Apple is moving to ARM. It's not okay that this is going to be a proprietary, locked down CPU. T2 has shown that Apple customers no longer own their hardware.
- underdeserver 6y agoApple customers haven't owned their hardware in quite a while.
- _bxg1 6y ago> proprietary, locked down CPU Is it somehow more proprietary and locked-down than the Intel ones?
- gpderetta 6y agoI think the worry is a locked bootloader.
- pathartl 6y agoThat and Apple being able to introduce security via obscurity means we'll probably never see a non-Apple OS on the platform.
- _bxg1 6y agoIt's already quite difficult and unideal to install a non-Apple OS on a Mac, aside from Windows via Bootcamp. Not being able to install a custom OS is a long way from "not owning your hardware". Apple OSes are part of the sum package; if you don't want that, you aren't the kind of person who's buying Apple hardware in the first place.
- pathartl 6y ago3-4 years ago it wasn't difficult at all to replace macOS with pretty much any EFI-enabled OS. Moving to a proprietary ARM CPU/GPU will probably result in not being able to write applications unless it's using Apple's toolchain. If you have no say over what software you can run on your computer, you no longer own that computer. We really haven't seen such a large technological separation like this. At least back in the old days you could still run what you want. macOS moving to the iOS route where you have to jailbreak your device to get any sort of usability out of it is not a space I want to participate in, and yet it seems that's how the entire Apple line is moving. They're almost the complete opposite compared to Microsoft these days.
- dan-robertson 6y agoThis seems to be the source for the verge article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/apple-plans-to-announce-move-to-its-own-mac-chips-at-wwdc https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/apple-pla...
- sciurus 6y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23465364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23465364
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoI think this is a good news. The vast amount of people use their laptop for little more than running a web browser, and AArch64 chips will make those laptops cheaper to produce (intel charges Apple upwards of $400+ for high end chips[1]) Then there's everyone doing local development in interpreted languages, most of which have stable support for AArch64. Java, python, ruby, go on AArch64? No problem. The biggest hit things will be mac-specific programs and software built specifically to work with BSD syscalls. We'll see about that stuff. 1. https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/24/how-much-does-intel-charge-apple.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/04/24/how-much-d...
- sigjuice 6y agoWhat is special about BSD syscalls on AArch64? Are you saying they will be different or absent?
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoPresumably there would be some incompatibility.
- sigjuice 6y agoWhat would be an example of such an incompatibility?
- the_duke 6y agoThis is just a rehash of Bloomberg reporting. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/apple-plans-to-announce-move-to-its-own-mac-chips-at-wwdc https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-09/apple-pla... older: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-aims-to-sell-macs-with-its-own-chips-starting-in-2021 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-aim... --- Personally, I gave up on the Apple ecosystem years ago and moved to Linux. But I feel ambivalent about this. On one hand, the iPhone/Pad chips have impressive performance and power consumption, at least for the mobile use case. Some competition in this space can't hurt, and it will be interesting how well they fare against Intel and AMD in a different environment. On the other hand: this seems like a golden opportunity for Apple continue the path of merging iOS and Mac OS, turning the desktop platform into an equally walled and locked down garden. This will also be a rocky road for very performance sensitive applications which Macs are used for a lot. Like video editing, Photoshop etc.
- pilsetnieks 6y agoFunny how every regurgitation of the same article becomes more certain: "may" - "aims" - "plans" - "will". "According to people familiar with the matter."
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ponker 6y agoA lot of reporting on every different type of topic is sourced like this, but from the quality outlets, the facts tend to be right more often than they're wrong, blunders notwithstanding.
- skissane 6y agoA lot of the time it is because the information comes from insiders who actually do know what is going on, but they'll get in trouble if they are identified, since they were not authorised to talk to the media. (Or, more rarely, they actually are authorised to talk, but on a no-attribution basis only.)
- underdeserver 6y agoWith this and AMD's Threadripper benchmarks, Intel really needs to step up their game.
- tenebrisalietum 6y agoWhat's been going on with the embedded ME/PSP in x86-compatible hardware for the last 10 years is ugly. If this is real--I'm hoping this evolves into a real alternative to that architecture though it's possible it could start doing the same thing.
- rzzzt 6y agoDo you see any major differences between a T2-backed system and an ME/PSP one? How about TrustZone?
- tenebrisalietum 6y agoI really have to do some research on this. I haven't because I have not really been planning on purchasing a MAC. Here's some questions I would want to have answers to. - Does the T2 have a private uncontrolled connection to system RAM? I know it has some connection to the onboard SSD, other IO and serves as an enclave for platform keys. - Does the T2 have a private bus/connection to any onboard Ethernet adapter or Wifi like ME does? - Does the T2 serve as the foundation of remote management features (that are present in all CPUs even if not vPro enabled) like ME does? This is important because it means that it's supposed to be accessed remotely by design. - Does the T2 serve as the foundation of anti-theft features like ME does? This facility also has remote-access-by-design components. - Does the T2 serve as the foundation of Protected Video or Audio path type features? - What can the T2 make the CPU do? Can the T2 freeze the CPU, redirect the CPU to other code, then restore CPU state (I'm fairly sure the ME can do this) - Intel CPU's have a built-in display adapter and you can't really disable or sidestep it. Hence, there is no separation between what is on the screen and the CPU, and by proxy the ME. To what extent can the T2 modify video RAM without the CPU knowing?
- dathinab 6y agoBut don't ARM chips have TrustZone which is quite similar to ME/PSP wrt. the danger it can have. And isn't T2 additional to the TrustZone on their ARM chips? Or did it replace the TrustZone?
- NKosmatos 6y agoI would love to see new MacBook pros with the latest AMD Ryzen, speedy and power efficient, processors. I can understand the move to ARM, since iPhones and iPads are already there and it make sense to unite the ecosystem. Fun fact: Kalamata is the second largest city in southern Greece. I tried finding why they named the Apple project like this, but couldn’t find anything relevant. Any ideas?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gorgoiler 6y agoOlives are to apples, as arm cores are to intel cores. (Kalamata is a kind of olive, a small tougher and pithier version of its blander behemoth brethren.)
- toyg 6y agoI was thinking more like Kalamatas are black instead of green.
- whtrbt 6y agoRe: Kalamata, perhaps after the olive? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamata_olive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamata_olive
- Koshkin 6y ago> MacBook pros with the latest AMD Ryzen Looks like that ship has sailed unfortunately. ARM has won, and it won't be long before it conquers the minds of other laptop (and desktop) manufacturers.
- hn_check 6y agoTo anyone remotely paying attention, Apple has clearly been working on this for years, and most certainly has their entire system image cross-compiling as just a rote step now. And for all the "I hope!", obviously they'll have a transpiler for x86-64 to AArch64, and a full virtualization environment. The only reason Apple hedged is concern that Intel might have been sandbagging and would pull something out of the hat. If Apple moved to their own chip and then a revolution in Intel chips came out, that would be bad for Apple. It is increasingly unlikely that is going to happen. I fully expect Apple will introduce a chip much faster and much more efficient than Intel, and it will come out with ridiculous battery life and efficiency...and HN will be shitting their beds about how terrible it is that some menu flickers or some other stupid bullshit. And yes, I know this will automatically by dead, because 80% of the inhabitants here are slobbering imbeciles.
- designdesign 6y agoTheir iPhone chips blow everything out of the water so this is exciting. Also adds more fuel to the merging of iOS/macOS.
- hartator 6y agoPeople seem to say it will be hard to transform apps to new architecture. Is that really true? My understanding is when you develop for Mac, you already have to compile to bytecode which means it's already compatible with other architectures.
- timw4mail 6y agoNo way. Even if the Swift language works that way, virtually all Mac software relies on being compiled in some fashion. The only software platform that might be the case is Android.
- Shivetya 6y agoSo is this an underlying reason for Catalina jettisoning so much older software? Is there a successor to Rosetta, one that will only support 64bit software? Going to be interesting which models actually debut this month and their availability. Currently I am not in favor of moving to ARM but I leave the door open for Apple to surprise and tempt me
- aidos 6y agoLast time they did this they managed to pull it off really well. From memory there was the ability to package apps for both architectures so they would run on either machine. And to bridge the gap there was Rosetta which allowed PowerPC binaries to run on intel Mac’s by translating in real-time with a small performance penalty. How close are arm chips to PowerPC? They’re both risc architectures, right?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- timw4mail 6y agoEh, really well is a matter of opinion. Compared to the earlier transition from 68k to PowerPC, the PowerPC to x86 transition was much more jarring. The 68k emulation was present up until the death of Mac OS 9, so there is some software that could run on the original Mac all the way to the Classic environment in OS X. Rosetta was sufficient for most applications during the transition, but there will always be software that doesn't get re-written. Rosetta was introduced in 10.4, and dropped in 10.7. Only 3 versions.
- king_magic 6y agoWelp, I'm out, Apple. No interest in an ARM-only world. Like my x64 apps too much.
- rb808 6y agoIs this going to be like the surface Pro X? Ie a copy with arm that is kinda interesting buy no one buys because its not very good - but v3 probably will be. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/5/20948092/microsoft-surface-pro-x-review-arm-windows-10-apps-features-specs-price https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/5/20948092/microsoft-surfac...
- dan-robertson 6y agoI feel like this would probably be a good thing for a lot of Apple customers. Especially is they started this with their cheaper models. Switching to arm might improve power efficiency (though surely most power goes to the screen?) but it could have a bigger impact on cpu temperature and reducing thermal throttling. Bloomberg suggests that other laptop makers might also switch to arm. I think this is a place where apple could have a key advantage because their arm chips seem to always be significantly better than the competition (at least for mobile). Most people will do computing consisting of: - browsing the web/using complicated web apps - watching video - word processors or similar programs I think these days we should be less concerned about some traditionally compute-heavy tasks because they have been being encouraged to switch to gpu compute for performance gains for a while now. Most things that care about performance will have been ported to gpu already if possible. I feel like programs like word processors are probably more memory than cpu constrained and a small potential drop in cpu performance would not matter so much to programs that were designed to run on much slower hardware. Web browsers (well chrome and safari) have already been seriously optimised for running on atm chips.
- tengbretson 6y agoIf only LLVM bytecode were actually portable instead of "looks like it should be portable but definitely isn't."
- int_19h 6y agoWhat's going to happen to Boot Camp? Are they planning to support Windows on ARM, or?..
- firloop 6y agoI have a hunch they'll use the opportunity to kill Boot Camp, which has been unloved for years. However I hope to be wrong here — supporting ARM based operating systems would be a super cool thing for Apple to do.
- nsajko 6y agoI wonder have they considered switching back to PowerPC (power9/power10) now that it is open (for whatever that means, I am not sure)? I am sure they would appreciate the control that could give them. Does somebody have an idea how much approximately would it cost Apple to switch the Apple A14 from ARM to POWER? Usually it is said that the instruction decoder is a small part of a CPU core, and the architectures are not hugely different (compared to AMD64/Intel, at least).
- dathinab 6y agoThey have already heavily invested into customized ARM chips. They do all they need. So no reason to look back at POWER. Sure for high end mac the ARM chips probably wouldn't be the best fit for now. But staying with x86 for them is just way easier. POWER might only be interesting if they do a server OS. Which they made pretty clear they are not interested in in the near future. (The rack mounted mac is still a rack mounted workstation. Rack mounting high end workstations isn't that uncommon in certain audio/video processing related job areas. For a server it is missing some pretty basic thinks like: Redundant power supply, management interface, trivial easy to swap RAM/Disks without removing it from the rack, and probably more. ).
- eatbitseveryday 6y agoI asked this on another thread when it came up, but didn't get any replies.. What does this mean for Intel as a business?
- 0xDEEPFAC 6y agoIt seems like these new Macs might as well be phone with a keyboard in the way they treat their software and "pro" consumers. Wake me up when they use less glue to hold their computers together...
- mthoms 6y agoI wonder what this will mean for Bootcamp. Stupid question time: Does MS make an ARM version of Windows 10?
- ryeights 6y agoAlready exists, no? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/
- jshaqaw 6y agoUgh I’ve been holding out on my 2012 retina MacBook Pro and was just about to upgrade to the 16 inch MacBook Pro. Now I guess I need to limp along another year to see what comes next rather than pay 3500 big ones to end up orphaned.