25 ms·

ARM Mac Impact on Intel

324 points by robin_reala 6y ago

turblety 6y ago
It will be interesting if Apple does announce a move to ARM for (at least some of) their macbook range. Not surprising though, as Intel has refused to remove the vulnerable backdoor [1] (Intel Management Engine) from all their new chips, companies like Google and Apple want more security and privacy for their platforms. While ARM is not perfect, it does allow companies like Apple more control over the secretive firmware that boots these chips. 1. https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intelme https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intelme
- fierarul 6y ago
  For a 3rd party this changes nothing: the master key is still under the control of some corporation. Both AMD and ARM have something similar to Intel's ME. Let's not pretend this is by accident.
  - turblety 6y ago
    AMD does have a similar backdoor, called the PSP [1]. Both Intel ME and PSP are second chips that run separate from your main CPU, and can turn on/control/intercept the main CPU without the owners knowledge. ARM does not have this technology. The closest thing is TrustZone [2], which is a different process zoning/ring restriction, and can be completely turned off, depending on the manufacturer. Alternatively, if you want to write your own TrustZone (for example on a RockChip CPU), you are free to write it and use it. You can not run any firmware on an Intel or AMD chip that has not been signed by Intel ir AMD. All signed Intel firmware contains the Intel ME backdoor. 1. https://libreboot.org/faq.html#amd-platform-security-processor-psp https://libreboot.org/faq.html#amd-platform-security-process... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_execution_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_execution_environment
    - _kbh_ 6y ago
      The PSP is slightly different though as it not remotely accessible. It does sit in a similar position to the ME (can interact with the computer outside of the main x86 cores) but yes not listen on a external interface. Interestingly enough the PSP actually uses the ARM TrustZone extensions to implement some of its security.
      - lorenzhs 6y ago
        AMD's DMTF DASH is absolutely remotely accessible, that is its main purpose. See, for example, https://developer.amd.com/tools-for-dmtf-dash/ https://developer.amd.com/tools-for-dmtf-dash/ (AMD's developer site is currently down, but there's an archived copy at http://archive.is/HHEwh http://archive.is/HHEwh) which states "DASH is a web services based standard for secure out-of-band and remote management of desktops and mobile systems. Client systems that support out-of-band management help IT administrators perform tasks independent of the power state of the machine or the state of the operating system. Examples of out-of-band management tasks include: 1) Securely starting up a system remotely, even if it is currently powered off; 2) Viewing asset inventory information for a system that is powered off; 3) Retrieving health information about system components even if the OS is unavailable." All of these things require remote access.
        _kbh_ 6y ago
        DMTF DASH does look to be remote out of band management of AMD computers but I cannot find a connection to the PSP itself. I suspect it may run on the PSP but nothing I have seen so far has shown that the PSP is externally accessible or implements DMTF DASH functionality.
        lorenzhs 6y ago
        AMD's implementation of DMTF DASH is called SimFire, and Intel's is called AMT. They both implement the same standard. I don't see where else it run if not on the PSP if it works even when the machine is (supposedly) switched off? And even if it were not to run on the PSP, does that matter? It's still an opaque binary that runs below your OS. There's an older subthread on this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16081422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16081422 which also laments the lack of documentation on this.
- mbreese 6y ago
  I would be very surprised if the presence of the Intel ME had an impact on any CPU move Apple makes.
  - turblety 6y ago
    I think it's highly likely they considered it. One of Apple's main marketing pieces is security/privacy. It's important as they push into the health and payment marketplaces (for things like the iWatch and contactless payments). It would make sense they want complete control over their hardware stack end to end. You can even see this in the Apple Secure Enclave on mobile, which was made possible due to their ability to customise their own ARM chips.
  - leeoniya 6y ago
    remember that time Jobs flat out said no to Flash on iOS due to security? that was when flash was the dominant tech for delivering multimedia.
    - harpratap 6y ago
      I believe he said no to flash because it was a battery hogging tech and would have rendered early smartphones basically useless as portable devices.
- quadhome 6y ago
  Apple's x86 chips run a custom gutted ME. To reduce that attack surface, Mac computers run a custom ME firmware from which the majority of components have been removed. … The primary use of the ME is audio and video copyright protection on Mac computers that have only Intel-based graphics. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/security/seced055bcf6/web https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/security/seced055bcf6/...
  - turblety 6y ago
    Interesting, thanks for sharing that. Sounds like what puri.sm are doing with their Librem ranges, with me-cleaner [1]. 1. https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner
thatwasunusual 6y ago
Slightly off-topic, but does anyone have any details on how the new ARM-powered MacBooks will perform compared to the Intel-powered MacBooks? According to this[1] article, "the new ARM machines (is expected) to outperform their Intel predecessors by 50 to 100 percent". Can anyone shed some insight into how this is possible? [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/21/21298607/first-arm-mac-macbook-pro-imac-ming-chi-kuo-wwdc-2020 https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/21/21298607/first-arm-mac-ma...
- ceo_tim_crook 6y ago
  I'm suspicious but for the pain it's going to cause it better have some real benefits
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    Out of curiosity, what pain are you expecting? Maybe I'm spoiled because my development is mostly java, python, Go, docker, etc, all of which should have no runtime problem. In terms of IDE, It looks like vscode is ported which is great. I see two projects in my workflow: intellij and iterm2. I can live with a vanilla terminal but I'll need intellij. It looks like there's some[1] discussion around support. 1. https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/commit/db531b5 https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/commit/db531...
    - ceo_tim_crook 6y ago
      out of what you've listed docker is probably the biggest issue -- there is support for multiarch containers but migration has some pain points depending on your setup, also docker will be have to made to work on the arm build of macos assuming virtualization is supported and speedy
    - harpratap 6y ago
      How do you expect docker to run fine when it doesn't even run good on x86 OSX? There are constant performance issues (https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/3499 https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/3499) because docker-on-mac is basically a VM running Linux
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
I'm looking forward to an ARM laptop, especially if it includes their latest GPU. That's excellent power usage and graphics performance. I expect good compute performance, good graphics performance, better battery life, and (hopefully) better price range. We'll see what's in store for us tomorrow.
- p1necone 6y ago
  Whose latest GPU?
  - dannyw 6y ago
    Apple's. It's as powerful as a Radeon RX 5500M, which is incredible when you consider that the A13 is passively cooled and the RX 5500M is actively cooled. It's also 40% as powerful as the RTX 2080 Ti, the best-performing consumer GPU on the market, that draws hundreds of watts and very well cooled. By some quick maths, performance/watt is an order of magnitude better on the A13 than GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA.
    - strictnein 6y ago
      > 40% as powerful as the RTX 2080 Ti Yeah... going to need to see the work on that one.
      - dannyw 6y ago
        3DMark - Ice Storm Unlimited Graphics Score 1280x720 offscreen: Apple A13 Bionic: 208697 RTX 2080 Ti: 521458 https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-A13-Bionic-GPU.434833.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-A13-Bionic-GPU.434833.0.... https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-2080-Ti-Desktop-Graphics-Card.386296.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-2080-Ti-Des... Keep in mind the A12Z drives a 2732×2048 display, at 120Hz (iPad Pro). That is a beast to drive for the GPU. A 2080 Ti can do 4K at 80fps (Rise of the Tomb Raider). For another source, AnandTech says the A12Z is a Xbox One S class GPU: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13661/the-2018-apple-ipad-pro-11-inch-review/6 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13661/the-2018-apple-ipad-pro...
ryan-allen 6y ago
What about the ARM impact on developers? Will the Pro line of laptops continue on Intel or is it the whole line? If it's the whole line, it's either going to be very good for developer tooling on ARM or it's going to be a nightmare. I've been developing on Windows 10 ARM with WSL and it's pretty great, but it's not 100% there. I've had to switch back to x64 due to some tools not having ARM builds.
- dannyw 6y ago
  Ming-Chi Kuo (who has probably the best track record on Apple rumors) reports that this will actually come to the Pro line first.
  - ryan-allen 6y ago
    That is really interesting. Most of the developers I know use Mac OS for nodejs tooled web development, and they use Visual Studio Code. VS Code hasn't got an official ARM build yet.
    - onion2k 6y ago
      VS Code hasn't got an official ARM build yet Yes it does. https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_46#_windows-arm64-insiders https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_46#_windows-arm64-i...
      - ryan-allen 6y ago
        Whoops, I missed this! Can't wait to try it on the Galaxy Book S when I get home! :) EDIT: Vscode arm build works GREAT, and it has WSL and SSH remote extensions too! This is fantastic. I can move back from my x64 machine for development again! I'm using Edge, Windows Terminal, WSL and now VS Code all with native arm on Windows 10, amazing! Now... we just need Windows 10 ARM builds that run on Raspberry Pi and how much fun is that going to be!
- ckok 6y ago
  Also note that Apple AArch64 (ie arm64) has a slightly different calling convention than Linux aarch64, which is going to influence pretty much any compiler/jit/runtime here.
quadhome 6y ago
Intel’s real money is in high-end CPUs sold to prosperous Cloud operators, not in supplying lower-end chips to cost-cutting laptop makers. I keep searching for "Graviton" in these thinkpieces. I keep getting "no results found." Mac ARM laptops mean cloud ARM VMs. And Amazon's Graviton2 VMs are best in class for price-performance. As Anandtech said: If you’re an EC2 customer today, and unless you’re tied to x86 for whatever reason, you’d be stupid not to switch over to Graviton2 instances once they become available, as the cost savings will be significant. https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-graviton2-arm-against-intel-and-amd/10 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-grav...
- fluffything 6y ago
  > Mac ARM laptops mean cloud ARM VMs. If you develop for Mac, chances are you want your CI to use the same target hardware, which means cloud ARM hardware to run Mac VMs.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Except you’re not going to be selling access to a Mac VM running on Graviton anytime soon.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Chances indeed, but given how a lot of software is written in crossplatform languages (Java, JS, Ruby, etc) or the underlying CPU hardware is abstracted away (most compiled languages), I like to think it doesn't really matter except in edge cases and / or libraries. Wishful thinking though, probably.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      I can abstract away the OS (mostly), but I can’t abstract away the ISA without paying a pretty hefty performance cost.
- underdeserver 6y ago
  Exactly. Yes, some people need memory and multi-core speeds, but for most, it's the cost per "good enough" instance, and that's CapEx and power, both of which could be much lower with ARM.
quyleanh 6y ago
As AMD user, I do hope Apple consider making Mac with AMD chip. The p/p of AMD chip is far beyond Intel chip now.
- fluffything 6y ago
  Everything hints that this will not happen.
- jmnicolas 6y ago
  Why would they give control to AMD or Intel instead of going their own way ? It's not an emotional decision. AMD is fast now but if history repeats we'll wait another 15 years before anything good happens. And frankly why would you care what brand is your processor as long as it's fast enough ?
  - davewritescode 6y ago
    Ive mad a lot of money over the last few years buying AMD stock but I might be exiting this week ahead of WWDC. I think getting developers on ARM might just be what eats X86 on the server.
me551ah 6y ago
I wonder how this would impact developers who primarily use a MacBook for development. A lot of the compile toolchain is optimized for Intel based x86 CPUs. If buying a Mac means that I end up with a slower build every time I compile, I would buy Windows.
- cdmckay 6y ago
  Can you give some examples of tools optimized for x86 that would run worse on ARM?
  - harpratap 6y ago
    Any virtualization stuff using VT-x or AMD-V? Not really sure if there's an ARM equivalent for that.
    - ithkuil 6y ago
      https://developer.arm.com/docs/100942/0100/aarch64-virtualization https://developer.arm.com/docs/100942/0100/aarch64-virtualiz...
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    I was once told that Reaktor, an immensely used software synthesizer, works by JIT'ing x86 code. Pretty sure that any widely used media creation software will at least have some SSE/AVX routines (or use Intel MKL) which will have to be rewritten.
    - imhoguy 6y ago
      ARM SVE/SVE2? For some software it may be matter of core libs or compiler. https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/server-and-hpc/compile/arm-instruction-emulator/resources/tutorials/sve/sve-vs-sve2/single-page https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/server-and-hpc/...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
waltpad 6y ago
What's the provided GPU solution for ARM based machines? Do Apple SoCs contain a GPU?
- fsloth 6y ago
  IPad pro:s have quite good GPU and since apple owns the entire graphic stack there should not be anything to hold them back...
- tngranados 6y ago
  It does in the iPad so I we can probably expect that.
- tibbydudeza 6y ago
  It used to be custom silicon bit added from PowerVR but they switched to their own custom GPU architecture around the iPhone 8.
jake_morrison 6y ago
I am a programmer. All the software that I run is cross platform, so I expect a smooth transition. Elixir, my main programming language, will use all the cores in the machine, e.g. parallel compilation. Even if an ARM-based mac has worse per-core performance than Intel, I am ahead. Apple can easily give me more cores to smooth the transition. Whatever the profit margin was for Intel on the CPU, they can give it to me instead. And they can optimize the total system for better performance, battery life and security.
- qaq 6y ago
  "they can give it to me instead" yes that is exactly what Apple will do
  - d3ckard 6y ago
    Apple is no stranger to aggressive pricing when it suits them.
    - LoSboccacc 6y ago
      got any post-Jobs examples?
      - GeekyBear 6y ago
        The iPhone SE and entry level iPad. According to the usually accurate Ming Chi Kuo, the entry level iPad will be moving to using a top of the line chip as well, which is a needed change. >Kuo first says that Apple will launch a new 10.8-inch iPad during the second half of 2020, followed by a new iPad mini that’s between 8.5-inches and 9-inches during the first half of 2021. According to the analyst, the selling points of these iPads will be “the affordable price tag and the adoption of fast chips,” much like the new iPhone SE. https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/14/ipad-mini-apple-glasses-kuo/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/14/ipad-mini-apple-glasses-kuo/
        LoSboccacc 6y ago
KMag 6y ago
Intel has a couple of issues. 1. Back in the 1990s, the big UNIX workstation vendors were sitting where Intel is now at the high end, being eaten from the bottom by derivatives of what was essentially a little embedded processor for dumb terminals and scientific calculators. Taken in isolation, Apple's chips aren't an example of low-margin high-volume product eating its way up the food chain, but the whole ARM ecosystem is. 2. For a lot of the datacenter roles being played by Intel Xeons, flops/Watt or iops/watt isn't the important metric. For many important workloads, the processor is mostly there to orchestrate DMA from the SSD/HDD controller to main memory and DMA from main memory to the network controller. The purchaser of the systems is looking to maximize the number of bytes per second divided by the amortized cost of the system plus the cost of the electricity. My understanding is that even now, some of the ARM designs are better than the Atoms in term of TDP, even forgetting the cost advantages.
- PinguTS 6y ago
  And we should not forget, that ARM is already there. It is used by almost all the IO controllers, including the SSD/HDD controller.
- TuringNYC 6y ago
  Curious -- with that being the case, why havent non-Intel system taken more market share on these use cases?
  - KMag 6y ago
    Momentum. I think one component of momentum is just the time it takes to develop mature tooling for the ecosystem and port existing software over. I invested in ARM (ARMH) back in 2006, partly because I realized that whether Apple or Android won more marketshare, nearly everyone was going to have an ARM-based smartphone in a few years. Part of it was also realizing the above and hoping ARM would take a good share of the server market. SoftBank took ARM private before we saw much inroads in the server market, but it was still one of the best investments I've made. Of course, maybe I'm just lucky and my analysis was way off.
bsaul 6y ago
Something i don't get about microsoft not porting its suite to ARM when releasing the surface Pro : What's so hard about it ? Your code is supposed to use something like a C stdlib, which has been ported to ARM obviously. So what makes it so much harder than to recompile everything? Once the OS is ported, the system libraries are available, and the programming language has a compiler for the target architecture, i don't understand what's blocking.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  You truly underestimate how many things still use raw assembly here and there. Intel provides a library called libhoudini for this very problem. also what would you have end users do ? Somehow recompile arcane sourceless binaries to ARM ?
  - bsaul 6y ago
    Yes, that's the only explanation that makes sense, but still, that surprised me a lot to know MS Office relies that much on assembly that recompiling to a different target arch isn't an option.
  - kyberias 6y ago
    The Office source code has been ported to ARM multiple times. We're running that code in the iOS and Android ports of Office.
- kyberias 6y ago
  It could be due to the fact that the Surface devices and the Office are developed by two different divisions in Microsoft. The group developing Office may not have a huge incentive to create ARM version just because another division decides to go with ARM processor on a new device. Also think about anti-trust! If Microsoft could develop ARM version of Office in secrecy for the Surface launch, it would not give sufficient possibilities for Office competitors to do the same.
- aembleton 6y ago
  Drivers on devices that get plugged in maybe.
neximo64 6y ago
This is a typical corporate type view of it. I.e that its least profitable so doesnt matter. It misses, developers use Macs to build stuff => It's easy to make arm compatible applications => The server (most profitable) domino falls. I can imagine moving straight to ARM processors if its easy enough to work on and AWS/Google has a deployment option. The dominos can cascade really fast, particularly in where the new demand for chips comes in, vs the existing one that will just run as it is now.
- yangminded 6y ago
  AWS will offer ARM based EC2 instances. If Intel doesn't come up with a drastic turnaround, they are going to be Nokia'd. https://aws.amazon.com/de/ec2/instance-types/a1/ https://aws.amazon.com/de/ec2/instance-types/a1/
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Indeed, as developer I use Macs to build iOS and macOS stuff.
  - sheeshkebab 6y ago
    Most developers using Macs don’t touch iOS and macOS dev with 10 foot pole.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Those "developers" shouldn't complain that Apple doesn't care about them, as they should have given their money to a Linux/BSD OEM. Apparently only UNIX has developers, the rest of us are something else.
siia 6y ago
Here's my (uninformed) guess about how this could go. There's already have a fairly powerful ARM chip in all Apple computers - the T2 chip. Assuming it's a similar spec to the iPad Pro's A12 then Apple could start by moving the OS to the T2 chip, which should improve the battery life of all recent macs. They'll come up with a fancy marketing term for apps that have been compiled for ARM and advertise them as having improved performance and battery life, thereby putting pressure on developers to update. The X86's will initially be removed from all non-pro devices and replaced with more powerful ARM chips, and once there's enough momentum and support they'll also be removed from the pro devices in a year or two.
klelatti 6y ago
Using ARM processors combined with their own custom silicon will give Apple the potential to add features that can't readily be replicated by Intel-based laptops (as we already see in the phone market). Does the same logic then hold in the datacentre? With the ability to add their own IP mean that AWS, Google etc can start to add new features (e.g. specialised accelerators) that would not be possible with Intel CPUs?
- detaro 6y ago
  To a degree. But afaik Intel already will do custom extensions to Xeons for them and for many, especially larger-scale, accelerators it makes sense to not have them on the main CPU, so they have their own cooling and power delivery etc (although I don't know how open Intel is about giving them low-level access to system resources, e.g. the QPI bus, whereas a fully custom design could add the interfaces needed freely)
- Traster 6y ago
  I think the big difference between what Apple does and what happens in the data centre, is that Apple builds custom silicon along with a full technology stack on top of it. They aren't throwing some ML specific stuff on their chip and then just hoping someone uses it - they've got specific applications (voice recognition, face recognition etc) that they're targeting. It's much more difficult in the data centre where you have customers who are going to be writing their own code. You have to build something very generic, you have to build an API, you have to create a software eco-system of libraries and examples and a community of users, and even then lots of people will be worried about lock-in. It's absolutely possible, and Google are already doing custom silicon with the TPUs, but it's a very different challenge.
  - klelatti 6y ago
    Fair point but there are examples where customers could be using AWS / Google API's that could hide the new hardware (voice recognition would be a good example). I guess too that for Apple there is a huge advantage to having the custom silicon on the same SoC as the CPU whereas there is much less penalty for having it on a separate chip (as per TPUs) in the datacentre.
jillesvangurp 6y ago
Everybody is focusing on the CPU architecture and the impact on CPU manufacturers. IMHO the risk for Apple is actually alienating people in the software ecosystem. It's also where the opportunities are. If, like rumored, they are switching their pro line to ARM that will impact two groups of big spending customers (i.e. people actually spending many thousands of $ on hardware regularly): 1) Developers buying maxed out pro laptops for running IDEs, Docker, etc. I'm one of those. 2) Creatives using Adobe and other third party tool providers for 3D graphics, movies, photography, etc. This stuff is critical to their workflow and any hint of compatibility or performance issues will cause people in this segment to start considering other platforms or delaying purchasing decisions. I know people that bought the Mac Pro just before it was renewed because they needed it and there wasn't really anything else to buy for them that met their requirements even though it was 3 years out of date by then. These segments are the ones where switching CPU architecture will hurt the most until such time that the tool ecosystem catches up. E.g. Adobe would have a lot of tools that probably will need quite a bit of work to run smoothly on ARM. It will be interesting to see how long that takes. The last few times Apple switched CPU architecture, it took Adobe a bit of time to switch and it provided an opportunity to MS, which was able to run Adobe's latest and greatest throughout the transition. And emulation is probably not going to be good enough here. I'm a backend developer and the sole reason I'm still on a Mac is convenience. At this point it's neither the fastest nor the cheapest option. And, I can trivially get everything I use running on Linux or Windows (with the linux subsystem). Most of the stuff I use is OSS, cross platform (IDEs, command line tooling) & dockerized (databases, web servers, search engines, middleware, etc.). All of that is x86 currently. Theoretically, ARM variants of the stuff I use could be created but in practice, this stuff does not yet exist or is kind of poorly supported/an afterthought at best. Maybe, emulation of this stuff will be good enough. But still, I'm deploying on x86 and will be likely to want to test on that for the foreseeable future and not run different containers locally than in production. So, my workflow slowing down because of emulation is kind of a big deal for me. So, (not so) hypothetically if I were to buy a new laptop right now, I'd be looking for something that supports my workflow going forward and that increasingly looks like either using Windows with the Linux subsystem or Linux (Ubuntu is pretty nice these days). Intel macs are still fine of course but not if there's this Apple will drop support in a hurry thing looming over it. I buy laptops with a 4-5 year useful life and Apple losing interest in anything Intel worries me when I'm going to be spending 3-4K on hardware. The opportunities are also obvious: gaming & VR have so far not happened in the Apple ecosystem and I suspect a big part of the reason is Apple wanting to have their own hardware when they launch this stuff without dependencies on the likes of Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc. Also data centers eventually switching to ARM is something that is technically already a bit overdue. At this point most linux software should just compile and run on ARM. Mostly it's just market inertia. Data center supply lines just tend to be dominated by AMD & Intel and developers just happen to run x86 hardware. So, long term this is definitely a smart move for Apple and I suspect they want to get this over with sooner rather than later. However, they do have their highend users to protect. A mac pro without Intel architecture would be a hard sell in the current market. Unless of course they really nail high performance X86 emulation. I could see them dedicating a few extra cores to that.
albeva 6y ago
won't it be funny if after all this hype past few weeks .... Apple won't say a word about ARM or transition ...
soapdog 6y ago
What no one appears to be talking about is that the move to ARM might lead to computers that are less power-hungry thus freeing enough power for Apple to ship some of their nice LTE tech in macbooks without compromising battery life too much. I bet many people would welcome that. I use a Surface Pro X with LTE, having an always-connected, always-on machine is really nice.
- agloeregrets 6y ago
  To do that though, you’re acting like they would have to have a source that isn’t Qualcomm for LTE modems! Where would they get those from? Intel used to have a cellular business but then they sold it..oh wait...to who? Apple?! Lol I’m kidding but exactly, I agree, plus they can make them in-house.
skissane 6y ago
I wonder, is it going to be possible to run Windows 10 ARM on ARM Macs?
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
  This is a big question for me, I hope Apple doesn't throw away the advantage that Boot Camp is (and that Microsoft are willing to co-operate). There would be some hurdles to it like needing Windows/Direct3D drivers for Apple's GPU.
jokoon 6y ago
Since RISC has a much smaller set of instruction compared to CISC, doesn't this mean any RISC software is about at least twice the size? Isn't there any study about average executable size when comparing CISC vs RISC? If you look at smartphones, you always notice how much memory apps require. It's not a secret. It's odd that nobody seems to mention this. Anyways, Wirth's law is relevant again. Nobody wants to hear it, but I really believe a new era of lightweight software will soon begin. I put a lot of hope in WASM, and I hope it will work well on smartphones. I'm using tinder on a 3 year old android, and everyday it's slower and slower. It's almost like software companies and hardware vendors have the opposite interests. Software wants to be faster, but hardware vendors wants to increase their margin, so they want software to be slower or be more feature-rich.
- cesarb 6y ago
  > Isn't there any study about average executable size when comparing CISC vs RISC? The RISC-V people have done a few while developing their RVC (compressed instructions) extension; see for instance slide 16 of https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/riscv-compressed-workshop-june2015.pdf https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/riscv-compresse... which shows, on 64-bit, x86-64 (CISC) being slightly bigger than ARMv8 (RISC), and on 32-bit, x86 (CISC) being much bigger than ARM Thumb2 (RISC). The main reason is that the encoding of x86 instructions is not very efficient, with rare instructions having shorter encodings than common instructions; an infamous example being the "ASCII adjust" single-byte instructions which nobody uses.
  - jokoon 6y ago
    Interesting, thanks! Are compressed instructions always enabled by default?
ngcc_hk 6y ago
The article mentioned about the WinARM twice failure. I wonder as Apple is actually a Windows OEM, have they tried that and learnt from that experience and learn from that as well. Further, would the AppleArm run BootCamp? What happen to thunderbolt, given it is ok now from Intel to use it (but in ARM)? Is Office compatibility still important to Apple and if so have Microsoft Apple product teams are already testing ARM version of Office on both WinArm and AppleArm? (Given that some small subset did run on iPad Pro, or even iPhone). But unlike Windows, Apple has successful twice and given it can ignore our call for CUDA compatibility and worry about future Premiere/Adobe ... They would move. And we will move as well. Just not sure where we move to. Sorry lots of questions. And the impact to Intel ... it is a side show and side issue. Games on.
geogra4 6y ago
So this is what jlg is up to these days. Loved his work on BeOS.
sradman 6y ago
Apple has a tactical advantage over Microsoft and even server-side ARM like Graviton: it’s LLVM toolchain integrated into Xcode for both Objective-C and Swift. Apple has a precedent for a seamless CPU architecture transition: the iPhone 64-bit transition. It is much harder to cross-compile seamlessly with traditional Gnu C or Visual Studio toolchains. The App Store requirements make it easier to control this transition on iOS than macOS. I wonder how many Brew apps will make the transition seamlessly?
- woadwarrior01 6y ago
  Also Bitcode[1] which was introduced 5 years ago for iOS, watchOS and tvOS. I have a feeling they'll be making app binaries built with `-fembed-bitcode` optional on the Mac App Store and eventually mandatory. [1]: https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/devbbdc5ce4f https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/devbbdc5ce4f
  - scarface74 6y ago
    The idea that bitcode will allow porting from x86 to ARM was dispelled by non other than Chris Lattner himself during an interview on ATP. https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript#bitcode https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript#bitcod... John Siracusa: The same thing I would assume for architecture changes, especially if there was an endian difference, because endianness is visible from the C world, so you can’t target different endianness? Chris Lattner: Yep. It’s not something that magically solves all portability problems, but it is very useful for specific problems that Apple’s faced in the past.
    - wolfgke 6y ago
      What has endianness to do with porting from x86 to ARM? Typical ARM implementations/ABIs use little endian mode.
      - scarface74 6y ago
        The context of the answer was: John asked: And the more prosaic version: it doesn’t mean it’s CPU-agnostic, all it means is that Apple has slightly more freedom to change instructions on the CPUs that they do target? [10:30] What advantages are there of compiling something to Bitcode and then uploading it somewhere versus sending someone a binary?
thesquib 6y ago
Would you buy a MacBook Pro that you cannot install Linux or Windows on?
- tokamak-teapot 6y ago
  Yes. I used Windows via BootCamp back in 2008. It was painful, with the fans running full speed all the time and the trackpad not responding in the way it should. After a few more tries, I gave up. I occasionally used Windows since then through a VM in order to access something specifically, but these days there's nothing left on Windows that I need to use. Office on MacOS is good enough for the light use I put it to. VS Code / JetBrains tools have replaced Visual Studio. There's no reason for me to use Linux as a desktop vs MacOS. I build Docker containers that run Linux, but that works fine from / in MacOS.
  - RMPR 6y ago
    >from / in MacOS. Via a Linux VM
- protomyth 6y ago
  Sadly no. We are pretty much done at that point because we often need Windows specific programs to fulfill grant requirements. I might buy one for myself, but I get the feeling some Higher Ed is done. Government contractors don't really do Macs or cross platform.
- rimliu 6y ago
  Of course. Why would I want to make my MB worse by installing Linux or Windows over the Unix (macOS) which is optimized for hardware it runs on?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Of course, for that I have thinkpads.
- udbhavs 6y ago
  They might support Linux, WSL2 works on ARM with the Surface Pro X
MangoCoffee 6y ago
Can TSMC handle it? Apple probably won't use Samsung because Samsung compete with Apple on smartphone and there is a bad blood between them. AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, NXP...etc. all use TSMC.
- nojito 6y ago
  The Mac line is extremely low volume. The issue with A series has always been yield because they are so massive.
  - matwood 6y ago
    Apple sells 16-20+ million macs per year. Not Windows computer level, but I wouldn't call that extremely low volume.
    - nojito 6y ago
      Compared to their phone and tablet line of course it is. Volume is always relative.
- dpacmittal 6y ago
  Pretty sure Apple sources lots of other parts from Samsung
aphroz 6y ago
Are these numbers wrong? https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share In the comments I read some really big numbers regarding the Mac dominance, can this be caused by a bias (country + income)? In this data OSx seems to be under 9%. Please don't downvote me for questioning Mac dominance.
arexxbifs 6y ago
On a side note, I wonder what this will actually mean for Macs. If the move to ARM is part of a strategy for unifying iOS and macOS, we can expect productivity to drop as macOS veers more towards the touch-and-fullscreen UI of iOS. As far as I understand it, the OS is the main selling point of Macs and a substantial change in the user experience will probably alienate their core user base.
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  I think that they'll unify internals between macOS and iOS, but interface will be different. Something similar to iOS on iPhone and iPadOS: OS is mostly the same, but UI is different.
  - arexxbifs 6y ago
    It'll be interesting to see if they succeed. It seems developers aren't to keen on differentiating their UI:s, but perhaps Apple's draconian app store rules can counteract that.
- Synaesthesia 6y ago
  I think Mac OS will remain Mac OS. Apple even said it would.
- jmull 6y ago
  There’s really no connection. If Apple wants to unify iOS and MacOS a common chip architecture doesn’t really help them do that. Anyway, I don’t think it’s going to happen. I understand the worry, but it just doesn’t make sense. They might allow and support macOS running on iPads, though.
- ubermonkey 6y ago
  What it means for Macs, according to most analysts, is better performance at lower power levels. Apple knows why the Mac is popular with technical people. They're not going to f*ck that up. I know this bugaboo of "they're going to turn the Mac into an iPad" comes up every so often, but I really see zero evidence of that.
FridgeSeal 6y ago
If they do make the jump to arm, who else is excited to play games like "adventures in cross-compiling" and "which of my core dependencies suddenly doesn't work anymore?" AMD chips are better than ever, throw a curve-ball and adopt them, please don't pick the weird mutant-mobile processor to seriously put in desktops Apple
- PinguTS 6y ago
  It is not the first time for Apple to make the switch. 68k -> PowerPC -> Intel -> ARM While the cross-compiling pipeline already exists with Xcode where you code your iOS (ARM) stuff on macOS (Intel).
  - FridgeSeal 6y ago
    I know they’ve made the switch before, they’re definitely capable of pulling it off in a reasonably straightforward manner.
- klelatti 6y ago
  Don't think Apple will be putting mobile processors into desktops - expect they will be processors designed for desktops with comparable or better performance than the Intel processors they replace. Not sure what is weird about 64 bit ARM architecture - it certainly doesn't have the legacy (dating back to 8086 in 1978) that x86 carries with it.
  - joefourier 6y ago
    Hell, you can find x86 instructions and concepts dating to the 8080 from 1974, and probably to the 8008 from 1972 (although I'm not familiar enough with it to confirm). It's funny how no-one has been able to dethrone x86 despite decades of effort from industry rivals and even Intel itself with iAPX and then Itanium.
  - FridgeSeal 6y ago
    Weren’t ARM processors and their memory, power-performance, threading, etc designed around primarily mobile workloads though? I’d be happy to be wrong here, that’s just my understanding. What would be the benefits for developers especially of ARM? (Will the likes of Numpy run more efficiently? Rust compile faster?) I know the the iPhones and iPad’s have surprisingly powerful chips in them, but (as an example), the new AMD chips are amazing, and they at least won’t break my dependencies wholesale.
a_imho 6y ago
In my news bubble Intel seems to be on a very bad roll. What are some good ways to gamble on INTC going down significantly in 12 months time?
ChrisRR 6y ago
I feel like I've missed something. Why are there all these rumours of Apple moving away from Intel anyway? Do they have some sort of issue with Intel? Otherwise I can't see the benefit in lower power CPUs for macs. If they really cared so much about reducing power usage and heat, then they wouldn't have shoehorned an i9 into their laptops
- ubermonkey 6y ago
  Because Apple, first and foremost, wants to be able to control its own destiny. Being tied to Intel has slowed them down on upgrading their higher-end laptops for years. OTOH, they're having GREAT success with their ARM chips in mobile. So, you know, you do the math.
- snazz 6y ago
  Because their iPhone chips are so obscenely powerful, MBPs are famous for running super hot, and they can make much better margins this way. Consolidating onto a single CPU and GPU platform is nice for developers as well. We’ll have to wait until 10PDT today and see the points that are brought up in the keynote.
dangus 6y ago
> PS: For today, we’ll leave the impact of ARM-based servers and their greater thermal efficiency alone. They shouldn’t have left this topic alone! In the US 1/4 of developers surveyed on StackOverflow use macOS. If they all switch to ARM and AWS will sell them Gravitron instances for a 40% discount, in what world are Intel data centers going to be necessary in the long term future? Intel should be absolutely terrified.
funkaster 6y ago
It’s true that Apple has done two moves to different chips with success, but both times it was to a more capable and probably powerful processor. When moving to PPC they allowed to run 68k apps/code without too much penalty. When moving to x86, there was Rosetta[0], that made the entire existing library /almost/ work seamlessly. moving to ARM... this might not necessarily be true. Sure, you have Catalina but iOS apps on macOS says nothing about all existing apps for macOS. I have no idea of the amount of already existing apps and what would be the amount of work needed to move them to ARM. Very likely Apple did the math and it will be easier/there will be incentives for devs to move to that platform. They do have experience though. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)
- empthought 6y ago
  The G5 and Core Duo were not that far apart, performance-wise. Certainly nothing like 68k vs PPC. Rosetta worked because most software isn’t CPU-bound; software that is got native versions very quickly.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- GeekyBear 6y ago
  You can go back and look at PBS's Computer Chronicles from the mid 90's to see how much of a performance win the 68K to PowerPC transition was. They mention in the introduction that a pre-press shop went from hours to run their bread and butter workflow to about 20 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic0dkf1iFOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic0dkf1iFOY The Intel transition wasn't really a win on performance, but it was a total win for laptops from a power draw and waste heat perspective.
- funkaster 6y ago
  Well, there you go. They just announced Rosetta 2 :)

324 points by robin_reala 6y ago

It will be interesting if Apple does announce a move to ARM for (at least some of) their macbook range. Not surprising though, as Intel has refused to remove the vulnerable backdoor [1] (Intel Management Engine) from all their new chips, companies like Google and Apple want more security and privacy for their platforms. While ARM is not perfect, it does allow companies like Apple more control over the secretive firmware that boots these chips. 1. https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intelme https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intelme

fierarul 6y ago
For a 3rd party this changes nothing: the master key is still under the control of some corporation. Both AMD and ARM have something similar to Intel's ME. Let's not pretend this is by accident.
- turblety 6y ago
  AMD does have a similar backdoor, called the PSP [1]. Both Intel ME and PSP are second chips that run separate from your main CPU, and can turn on/control/intercept the main CPU without the owners knowledge. ARM does not have this technology. The closest thing is TrustZone [2], which is a different process zoning/ring restriction, and can be completely turned off, depending on the manufacturer. Alternatively, if you want to write your own TrustZone (for example on a RockChip CPU), you are free to write it and use it. You can not run any firmware on an Intel or AMD chip that has not been signed by Intel ir AMD. All signed Intel firmware contains the Intel ME backdoor. 1. https://libreboot.org/faq.html#amd-platform-security-processor-psp https://libreboot.org/faq.html#amd-platform-security-process... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_execution_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_execution_environment
  - _kbh_ 6y ago
    The PSP is slightly different though as it not remotely accessible. It does sit in a similar position to the ME (can interact with the computer outside of the main x86 cores) but yes not listen on a external interface. Interestingly enough the PSP actually uses the ARM TrustZone extensions to implement some of its security.
    - lorenzhs 6y ago
      AMD's DMTF DASH is absolutely remotely accessible, that is its main purpose. See, for example, https://developer.amd.com/tools-for-dmtf-dash/ https://developer.amd.com/tools-for-dmtf-dash/ (AMD's developer site is currently down, but there's an archived copy at http://archive.is/HHEwh http://archive.is/HHEwh) which states "DASH is a web services based standard for secure out-of-band and remote management of desktops and mobile systems. Client systems that support out-of-band management help IT administrators perform tasks independent of the power state of the machine or the state of the operating system. Examples of out-of-band management tasks include: 1) Securely starting up a system remotely, even if it is currently powered off; 2) Viewing asset inventory information for a system that is powered off; 3) Retrieving health information about system components even if the OS is unavailable." All of these things require remote access.
      - _kbh_ 6y ago
        DMTF DASH does look to be remote out of band management of AMD computers but I cannot find a connection to the PSP itself. I suspect it may run on the PSP but nothing I have seen so far has shown that the PSP is externally accessible or implements DMTF DASH functionality.
        lorenzhs 6y ago
        AMD's implementation of DMTF DASH is called SimFire, and Intel's is called AMT. They both implement the same standard. I don't see where else it run if not on the PSP if it works even when the machine is (supposedly) switched off? And even if it were not to run on the PSP, does that matter? It's still an opaque binary that runs below your OS. There's an older subthread on this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16081422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16081422 which also laments the lack of documentation on this.
mbreese 6y ago
I would be very surprised if the presence of the Intel ME had an impact on any CPU move Apple makes.
- turblety 6y ago
  I think it's highly likely they considered it. One of Apple's main marketing pieces is security/privacy. It's important as they push into the health and payment marketplaces (for things like the iWatch and contactless payments). It would make sense they want complete control over their hardware stack end to end. You can even see this in the Apple Secure Enclave on mobile, which was made possible due to their ability to customise their own ARM chips.
- leeoniya 6y ago
  remember that time Jobs flat out said no to Flash on iOS due to security? that was when flash was the dominant tech for delivering multimedia.
  - harpratap 6y ago
    I believe he said no to flash because it was a battery hogging tech and would have rendered early smartphones basically useless as portable devices.
quadhome 6y ago
Apple's x86 chips run a custom gutted ME. To reduce that attack surface, Mac computers run a custom ME firmware from which the majority of components have been removed. … The primary use of the ME is audio and video copyright protection on Mac computers that have only Intel-based graphics. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/security/seced055bcf6/web https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/security/seced055bcf6/...
- turblety 6y ago
  Interesting, thanks for sharing that. Sounds like what puri.sm are doing with their Librem ranges, with me-cleaner [1]. 1. https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner

thatwasunusual 6y ago

Slightly off-topic, but does anyone have any details on how the new ARM-powered MacBooks will perform compared to the Intel-powered MacBooks? According to this[1] article, "the new ARM machines (is expected) to outperform their Intel predecessors by 50 to 100 percent". Can anyone shed some insight into how this is possible? [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/21/21298607/first-arm-mac-macbook-pro-imac-ming-chi-kuo-wwdc-2020 https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/21/21298607/first-arm-mac-ma...

ceo_tim_crook 6y ago
I'm suspicious but for the pain it's going to cause it better have some real benefits
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Out of curiosity, what pain are you expecting? Maybe I'm spoiled because my development is mostly java, python, Go, docker, etc, all of which should have no runtime problem. In terms of IDE, It looks like vscode is ported which is great. I see two projects in my workflow: intellij and iterm2. I can live with a vanilla terminal but I'll need intellij. It looks like there's some[1] discussion around support. 1. https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/commit/db531b5 https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/commit/db531...
  - ceo_tim_crook 6y ago
    out of what you've listed docker is probably the biggest issue -- there is support for multiarch containers but migration has some pain points depending on your setup, also docker will be have to made to work on the arm build of macos assuming virtualization is supported and speedy
  - harpratap 6y ago
    How do you expect docker to run fine when it doesn't even run good on x86 OSX? There are constant performance issues (https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/3499 https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/3499) because docker-on-mac is basically a VM running Linux

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

I'm looking forward to an ARM laptop, especially if it includes their latest GPU. That's excellent power usage and graphics performance. I expect good compute performance, good graphics performance, better battery life, and (hopefully) better price range. We'll see what's in store for us tomorrow.

p1necone 6y ago
Whose latest GPU?
- dannyw 6y ago
  Apple's. It's as powerful as a Radeon RX 5500M, which is incredible when you consider that the A13 is passively cooled and the RX 5500M is actively cooled. It's also 40% as powerful as the RTX 2080 Ti, the best-performing consumer GPU on the market, that draws hundreds of watts and very well cooled. By some quick maths, performance/watt is an order of magnitude better on the A13 than GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA.
  - strictnein 6y ago
    > 40% as powerful as the RTX 2080 Ti Yeah... going to need to see the work on that one.
    - dannyw 6y ago
      3DMark - Ice Storm Unlimited Graphics Score 1280x720 offscreen: Apple A13 Bionic: 208697 RTX 2080 Ti: 521458 https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-A13-Bionic-GPU.434833.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-A13-Bionic-GPU.434833.0.... https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-2080-Ti-Desktop-Graphics-Card.386296.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-2080-Ti-Des... Keep in mind the A12Z drives a 2732×2048 display, at 120Hz (iPad Pro). That is a beast to drive for the GPU. A 2080 Ti can do 4K at 80fps (Rise of the Tomb Raider). For another source, AnandTech says the A12Z is a Xbox One S class GPU: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13661/the-2018-apple-ipad-pro-11-inch-review/6 https://www.anandtech.com/show/13661/the-2018-apple-ipad-pro...

ryan-allen 6y ago

What about the ARM impact on developers? Will the Pro line of laptops continue on Intel or is it the whole line? If it's the whole line, it's either going to be very good for developer tooling on ARM or it's going to be a nightmare. I've been developing on Windows 10 ARM with WSL and it's pretty great, but it's not 100% there. I've had to switch back to x64 due to some tools not having ARM builds.

dannyw 6y ago
Ming-Chi Kuo (who has probably the best track record on Apple rumors) reports that this will actually come to the Pro line first.
- ryan-allen 6y ago
  That is really interesting. Most of the developers I know use Mac OS for nodejs tooled web development, and they use Visual Studio Code. VS Code hasn't got an official ARM build yet.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    VS Code hasn't got an official ARM build yet Yes it does. https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_46#_windows-arm64-insiders https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_46#_windows-arm64-i...
    - ryan-allen 6y ago
      Whoops, I missed this! Can't wait to try it on the Galaxy Book S when I get home! :) EDIT: Vscode arm build works GREAT, and it has WSL and SSH remote extensions too! This is fantastic. I can move back from my x64 machine for development again! I'm using Edge, Windows Terminal, WSL and now VS Code all with native arm on Windows 10, amazing! Now... we just need Windows 10 ARM builds that run on Raspberry Pi and how much fun is that going to be!
ckok 6y ago
Also note that Apple AArch64 (ie arm64) has a slightly different calling convention than Linux aarch64, which is going to influence pretty much any compiler/jit/runtime here.

quadhome 6y ago

Intel’s real money is in high-end CPUs sold to prosperous Cloud operators, not in supplying lower-end chips to cost-cutting laptop makers. I keep searching for "Graviton" in these thinkpieces. I keep getting "no results found." Mac ARM laptops mean cloud ARM VMs. And Amazon's Graviton2 VMs are best in class for price-performance. As Anandtech said: If you’re an EC2 customer today, and unless you’re tied to x86 for whatever reason, you’d be stupid not to switch over to Graviton2 instances once they become available, as the cost savings will be significant. https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-graviton2-arm-against-intel-and-amd/10 https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-grav...

fluffything 6y ago
> Mac ARM laptops mean cloud ARM VMs. If you develop for Mac, chances are you want your CI to use the same target hardware, which means cloud ARM hardware to run Mac VMs.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Except you’re not going to be selling access to a Mac VM running on Graviton anytime soon.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Chances indeed, but given how a lot of software is written in crossplatform languages (Java, JS, Ruby, etc) or the underlying CPU hardware is abstracted away (most compiled languages), I like to think it doesn't really matter except in edge cases and / or libraries. Wishful thinking though, probably.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    I can abstract away the OS (mostly), but I can’t abstract away the ISA without paying a pretty hefty performance cost.
underdeserver 6y ago
Exactly. Yes, some people need memory and multi-core speeds, but for most, it's the cost per "good enough" instance, and that's CapEx and power, both of which could be much lower with ARM.

quyleanh 6y ago

As AMD user, I do hope Apple consider making Mac with AMD chip. The p/p of AMD chip is far beyond Intel chip now.

fluffything 6y ago
Everything hints that this will not happen.
jmnicolas 6y ago
Why would they give control to AMD or Intel instead of going their own way ? It's not an emotional decision. AMD is fast now but if history repeats we'll wait another 15 years before anything good happens. And frankly why would you care what brand is your processor as long as it's fast enough ?
- davewritescode 6y ago
  Ive mad a lot of money over the last few years buying AMD stock but I might be exiting this week ahead of WWDC. I think getting developers on ARM might just be what eats X86 on the server.

me551ah 6y ago

I wonder how this would impact developers who primarily use a MacBook for development. A lot of the compile toolchain is optimized for Intel based x86 CPUs. If buying a Mac means that I end up with a slower build every time I compile, I would buy Windows.

cdmckay 6y ago
Can you give some examples of tools optimized for x86 that would run worse on ARM?
- harpratap 6y ago
  Any virtualization stuff using VT-x or AMD-V? Not really sure if there's an ARM equivalent for that.
  - ithkuil 6y ago
    https://developer.arm.com/docs/100942/0100/aarch64-virtualization https://developer.arm.com/docs/100942/0100/aarch64-virtualiz...
- jcelerier 6y ago
  I was once told that Reaktor, an immensely used software synthesizer, works by JIT'ing x86 code. Pretty sure that any widely used media creation software will at least have some SSE/AVX routines (or use Intel MKL) which will have to be rewritten.
  - imhoguy 6y ago
    ARM SVE/SVE2? For some software it may be matter of core libs or compiler. https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/server-and-hpc/compile/arm-instruction-emulator/resources/tutorials/sve/sve-vs-sve2/single-page https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/server-and-hpc/...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

waltpad 6y ago

What's the provided GPU solution for ARM based machines? Do Apple SoCs contain a GPU?

fsloth 6y ago
IPad pro:s have quite good GPU and since apple owns the entire graphic stack there should not be anything to hold them back...
tngranados 6y ago
It does in the iPad so I we can probably expect that.
tibbydudeza 6y ago
It used to be custom silicon bit added from PowerVR but they switched to their own custom GPU architecture around the iPhone 8.

jake_morrison 6y ago

I am a programmer. All the software that I run is cross platform, so I expect a smooth transition. Elixir, my main programming language, will use all the cores in the machine, e.g. parallel compilation. Even if an ARM-based mac has worse per-core performance than Intel, I am ahead. Apple can easily give me more cores to smooth the transition. Whatever the profit margin was for Intel on the CPU, they can give it to me instead. And they can optimize the total system for better performance, battery life and security.

qaq 6y ago
"they can give it to me instead" yes that is exactly what Apple will do
- d3ckard 6y ago
  Apple is no stranger to aggressive pricing when it suits them.
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    got any post-Jobs examples?
    - GeekyBear 6y ago
      The iPhone SE and entry level iPad. According to the usually accurate Ming Chi Kuo, the entry level iPad will be moving to using a top of the line chip as well, which is a needed change. >Kuo first says that Apple will launch a new 10.8-inch iPad during the second half of 2020, followed by a new iPad mini that’s between 8.5-inches and 9-inches during the first half of 2021. According to the analyst, the selling points of these iPads will be “the affordable price tag and the adoption of fast chips,” much like the new iPhone SE. https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/14/ipad-mini-apple-glasses-kuo/ https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/14/ipad-mini-apple-glasses-kuo/
      - LoSboccacc 6y ago

KMag 6y ago

Intel has a couple of issues. 1. Back in the 1990s, the big UNIX workstation vendors were sitting where Intel is now at the high end, being eaten from the bottom by derivatives of what was essentially a little embedded processor for dumb terminals and scientific calculators. Taken in isolation, Apple's chips aren't an example of low-margin high-volume product eating its way up the food chain, but the whole ARM ecosystem is. 2. For a lot of the datacenter roles being played by Intel Xeons, flops/Watt or iops/watt isn't the important metric. For many important workloads, the processor is mostly there to orchestrate DMA from the SSD/HDD controller to main memory and DMA from main memory to the network controller. The purchaser of the systems is looking to maximize the number of bytes per second divided by the amortized cost of the system plus the cost of the electricity. My understanding is that even now, some of the ARM designs are better than the Atoms in term of TDP, even forgetting the cost advantages.

PinguTS 6y ago
And we should not forget, that ARM is already there. It is used by almost all the IO controllers, including the SSD/HDD controller.
TuringNYC 6y ago
Curious -- with that being the case, why havent non-Intel system taken more market share on these use cases?
- KMag 6y ago
  Momentum. I think one component of momentum is just the time it takes to develop mature tooling for the ecosystem and port existing software over. I invested in ARM (ARMH) back in 2006, partly because I realized that whether Apple or Android won more marketshare, nearly everyone was going to have an ARM-based smartphone in a few years. Part of it was also realizing the above and hoping ARM would take a good share of the server market. SoftBank took ARM private before we saw much inroads in the server market, but it was still one of the best investments I've made. Of course, maybe I'm just lucky and my analysis was way off.

bsaul 6y ago

Something i don't get about microsoft not porting its suite to ARM when releasing the surface Pro : What's so hard about it ? Your code is supposed to use something like a C stdlib, which has been ported to ARM obviously. So what makes it so much harder than to recompile everything? Once the OS is ported, the system libraries are available, and the programming language has a compiler for the target architecture, i don't understand what's blocking.

mav3rick 6y ago
You truly underestimate how many things still use raw assembly here and there. Intel provides a library called libhoudini for this very problem. also what would you have end users do ? Somehow recompile arcane sourceless binaries to ARM ?
- bsaul 6y ago
  Yes, that's the only explanation that makes sense, but still, that surprised me a lot to know MS Office relies that much on assembly that recompiling to a different target arch isn't an option.
- kyberias 6y ago
  The Office source code has been ported to ARM multiple times. We're running that code in the iOS and Android ports of Office.
kyberias 6y ago
It could be due to the fact that the Surface devices and the Office are developed by two different divisions in Microsoft. The group developing Office may not have a huge incentive to create ARM version just because another division decides to go with ARM processor on a new device. Also think about anti-trust! If Microsoft could develop ARM version of Office in secrecy for the Surface launch, it would not give sufficient possibilities for Office competitors to do the same.
aembleton 6y ago
Drivers on devices that get plugged in maybe.

neximo64 6y ago

This is a typical corporate type view of it. I.e that its least profitable so doesnt matter. It misses, developers use Macs to build stuff => It's easy to make arm compatible applications => The server (most profitable) domino falls. I can imagine moving straight to ARM processors if its easy enough to work on and AWS/Google has a deployment option. The dominos can cascade really fast, particularly in where the new demand for chips comes in, vs the existing one that will just run as it is now.

yangminded 6y ago
AWS will offer ARM based EC2 instances. If Intel doesn't come up with a drastic turnaround, they are going to be Nokia'd. https://aws.amazon.com/de/ec2/instance-types/a1/ https://aws.amazon.com/de/ec2/instance-types/a1/
pjmlp 6y ago
Indeed, as developer I use Macs to build iOS and macOS stuff.
- sheeshkebab 6y ago
  Most developers using Macs don’t touch iOS and macOS dev with 10 foot pole.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Those "developers" shouldn't complain that Apple doesn't care about them, as they should have given their money to a Linux/BSD OEM. Apparently only UNIX has developers, the rest of us are something else.

siia 6y ago

Here's my (uninformed) guess about how this could go. There's already have a fairly powerful ARM chip in all Apple computers - the T2 chip. Assuming it's a similar spec to the iPad Pro's A12 then Apple could start by moving the OS to the T2 chip, which should improve the battery life of all recent macs. They'll come up with a fancy marketing term for apps that have been compiled for ARM and advertise them as having improved performance and battery life, thereby putting pressure on developers to update. The X86's will initially be removed from all non-pro devices and replaced with more powerful ARM chips, and once there's enough momentum and support they'll also be removed from the pro devices in a year or two.

klelatti 6y ago

Using ARM processors combined with their own custom silicon will give Apple the potential to add features that can't readily be replicated by Intel-based laptops (as we already see in the phone market). Does the same logic then hold in the datacentre? With the ability to add their own IP mean that AWS, Google etc can start to add new features (e.g. specialised accelerators) that would not be possible with Intel CPUs?

detaro 6y ago
To a degree. But afaik Intel already will do custom extensions to Xeons for them and for many, especially larger-scale, accelerators it makes sense to not have them on the main CPU, so they have their own cooling and power delivery etc (although I don't know how open Intel is about giving them low-level access to system resources, e.g. the QPI bus, whereas a fully custom design could add the interfaces needed freely)
Traster 6y ago
I think the big difference between what Apple does and what happens in the data centre, is that Apple builds custom silicon along with a full technology stack on top of it. They aren't throwing some ML specific stuff on their chip and then just hoping someone uses it - they've got specific applications (voice recognition, face recognition etc) that they're targeting. It's much more difficult in the data centre where you have customers who are going to be writing their own code. You have to build something very generic, you have to build an API, you have to create a software eco-system of libraries and examples and a community of users, and even then lots of people will be worried about lock-in. It's absolutely possible, and Google are already doing custom silicon with the TPUs, but it's a very different challenge.
- klelatti 6y ago
  Fair point but there are examples where customers could be using AWS / Google API's that could hide the new hardware (voice recognition would be a good example). I guess too that for Apple there is a huge advantage to having the custom silicon on the same SoC as the CPU whereas there is much less penalty for having it on a separate chip (as per TPUs) in the datacentre.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

Everybody is focusing on the CPU architecture and the impact on CPU manufacturers. IMHO the risk for Apple is actually alienating people in the software ecosystem. It's also where the opportunities are. If, like rumored, they are switching their pro line to ARM that will impact two groups of big spending customers (i.e. people actually spending many thousands of $ on hardware regularly): 1) Developers buying maxed out pro laptops for running IDEs, Docker, etc. I'm one of those. 2) Creatives using Adobe and other third party tool providers for 3D graphics, movies, photography, etc. This stuff is critical to their workflow and any hint of compatibility or performance issues will cause people in this segment to start considering other platforms or delaying purchasing decisions. I know people that bought the Mac Pro just before it was renewed because they needed it and there wasn't really anything else to buy for them that met their requirements even though it was 3 years out of date by then. These segments are the ones where switching CPU architecture will hurt the most until such time that the tool ecosystem catches up. E.g. Adobe would have a lot of tools that probably will need quite a bit of work to run smoothly on ARM. It will be interesting to see how long that takes. The last few times Apple switched CPU architecture, it took Adobe a bit of time to switch and it provided an opportunity to MS, which was able to run Adobe's latest and greatest throughout the transition. And emulation is probably not going to be good enough here. I'm a backend developer and the sole reason I'm still on a Mac is convenience. At this point it's neither the fastest nor the cheapest option. And, I can trivially get everything I use running on Linux or Windows (with the linux subsystem). Most of the stuff I use is OSS, cross platform (IDEs, command line tooling) & dockerized (databases, web servers, search engines, middleware, etc.). All of that is x86 currently. Theoretically, ARM variants of the stuff I use could be created but in practice, this stuff does not yet exist or is kind of poorly supported/an afterthought at best. Maybe, emulation of this stuff will be good enough. But still, I'm deploying on x86 and will be likely to want to test on that for the foreseeable future and not run different containers locally than in production. So, my workflow slowing down because of emulation is kind of a big deal for me. So, (not so) hypothetically if I were to buy a new laptop right now, I'd be looking for something that supports my workflow going forward and that increasingly looks like either using Windows with the Linux subsystem or Linux (Ubuntu is pretty nice these days). Intel macs are still fine of course but not if there's this Apple will drop support in a hurry thing looming over it. I buy laptops with a 4-5 year useful life and Apple losing interest in anything Intel worries me when I'm going to be spending 3-4K on hardware. The opportunities are also obvious: gaming & VR have so far not happened in the Apple ecosystem and I suspect a big part of the reason is Apple wanting to have their own hardware when they launch this stuff without dependencies on the likes of Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc. Also data centers eventually switching to ARM is something that is technically already a bit overdue. At this point most linux software should just compile and run on ARM. Mostly it's just market inertia. Data center supply lines just tend to be dominated by AMD & Intel and developers just happen to run x86 hardware. So, long term this is definitely a smart move for Apple and I suspect they want to get this over with sooner rather than later. However, they do have their highend users to protect. A mac pro without Intel architecture would be a hard sell in the current market. Unless of course they really nail high performance X86 emulation. I could see them dedicating a few extra cores to that.

albeva 6y ago

won't it be funny if after all this hype past few weeks .... Apple won't say a word about ARM or transition ...

soapdog 6y ago

What no one appears to be talking about is that the move to ARM might lead to computers that are less power-hungry thus freeing enough power for Apple to ship some of their nice LTE tech in macbooks without compromising battery life too much. I bet many people would welcome that. I use a Surface Pro X with LTE, having an always-connected, always-on machine is really nice.

agloeregrets 6y ago
To do that though, you’re acting like they would have to have a source that isn’t Qualcomm for LTE modems! Where would they get those from? Intel used to have a cellular business but then they sold it..oh wait...to who? Apple?! Lol I’m kidding but exactly, I agree, plus they can make them in-house.

skissane 6y ago

I wonder, is it going to be possible to run Windows 10 ARM on ARM Macs?

TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
This is a big question for me, I hope Apple doesn't throw away the advantage that Boot Camp is (and that Microsoft are willing to co-operate). There would be some hurdles to it like needing Windows/Direct3D drivers for Apple's GPU.

jokoon 6y ago

Since RISC has a much smaller set of instruction compared to CISC, doesn't this mean any RISC software is about at least twice the size? Isn't there any study about average executable size when comparing CISC vs RISC? If you look at smartphones, you always notice how much memory apps require. It's not a secret. It's odd that nobody seems to mention this. Anyways, Wirth's law is relevant again. Nobody wants to hear it, but I really believe a new era of lightweight software will soon begin. I put a lot of hope in WASM, and I hope it will work well on smartphones. I'm using tinder on a 3 year old android, and everyday it's slower and slower. It's almost like software companies and hardware vendors have the opposite interests. Software wants to be faster, but hardware vendors wants to increase their margin, so they want software to be slower or be more feature-rich.

cesarb 6y ago
> Isn't there any study about average executable size when comparing CISC vs RISC? The RISC-V people have done a few while developing their RVC (compressed instructions) extension; see for instance slide 16 of https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/riscv-compressed-workshop-june2015.pdf https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/riscv-compresse... which shows, on 64-bit, x86-64 (CISC) being slightly bigger than ARMv8 (RISC), and on 32-bit, x86 (CISC) being much bigger than ARM Thumb2 (RISC). The main reason is that the encoding of x86 instructions is not very efficient, with rare instructions having shorter encodings than common instructions; an infamous example being the "ASCII adjust" single-byte instructions which nobody uses.
- jokoon 6y ago
  Interesting, thanks! Are compressed instructions always enabled by default?

ngcc_hk 6y ago

The article mentioned about the WinARM twice failure. I wonder as Apple is actually a Windows OEM, have they tried that and learnt from that experience and learn from that as well. Further, would the AppleArm run BootCamp? What happen to thunderbolt, given it is ok now from Intel to use it (but in ARM)? Is Office compatibility still important to Apple and if so have Microsoft Apple product teams are already testing ARM version of Office on both WinArm and AppleArm? (Given that some small subset did run on iPad Pro, or even iPhone). But unlike Windows, Apple has successful twice and given it can ignore our call for CUDA compatibility and worry about future Premiere/Adobe ... They would move. And we will move as well. Just not sure where we move to. Sorry lots of questions. And the impact to Intel ... it is a side show and side issue. Games on.

geogra4 6y ago

So this is what jlg is up to these days. Loved his work on BeOS.

sradman 6y ago

Apple has a tactical advantage over Microsoft and even server-side ARM like Graviton: it’s LLVM toolchain integrated into Xcode for both Objective-C and Swift. Apple has a precedent for a seamless CPU architecture transition: the iPhone 64-bit transition. It is much harder to cross-compile seamlessly with traditional Gnu C or Visual Studio toolchains. The App Store requirements make it easier to control this transition on iOS than macOS. I wonder how many Brew apps will make the transition seamlessly?

woadwarrior01 6y ago
Also Bitcode[1] which was introduced 5 years ago for iOS, watchOS and tvOS. I have a feeling they'll be making app binaries built with `-fembed-bitcode` optional on the Mac App Store and eventually mandatory. [1]: https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/devbbdc5ce4f https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/current/#/devbbdc5ce4f
- scarface74 6y ago
  The idea that bitcode will allow porting from x86 to ARM was dispelled by non other than Chris Lattner himself during an interview on ATP. https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript#bitcode https://atp.fm/205-chris-lattner-interview-transcript#bitcod... John Siracusa: The same thing I would assume for architecture changes, especially if there was an endian difference, because endianness is visible from the C world, so you can’t target different endianness? Chris Lattner: Yep. It’s not something that magically solves all portability problems, but it is very useful for specific problems that Apple’s faced in the past.
  - wolfgke 6y ago
    What has endianness to do with porting from x86 to ARM? Typical ARM implementations/ABIs use little endian mode.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      The context of the answer was: John asked: And the more prosaic version: it doesn’t mean it’s CPU-agnostic, all it means is that Apple has slightly more freedom to change instructions on the CPUs that they do target? [10:30] What advantages are there of compiling something to Bitcode and then uploading it somewhere versus sending someone a binary?

thesquib 6y ago

Would you buy a MacBook Pro that you cannot install Linux or Windows on?

tokamak-teapot 6y ago
Yes. I used Windows via BootCamp back in 2008. It was painful, with the fans running full speed all the time and the trackpad not responding in the way it should. After a few more tries, I gave up. I occasionally used Windows since then through a VM in order to access something specifically, but these days there's nothing left on Windows that I need to use. Office on MacOS is good enough for the light use I put it to. VS Code / JetBrains tools have replaced Visual Studio. There's no reason for me to use Linux as a desktop vs MacOS. I build Docker containers that run Linux, but that works fine from / in MacOS.
- RMPR 6y ago
  >from / in MacOS. Via a Linux VM
protomyth 6y ago
Sadly no. We are pretty much done at that point because we often need Windows specific programs to fulfill grant requirements. I might buy one for myself, but I get the feeling some Higher Ed is done. Government contractors don't really do Macs or cross platform.
rimliu 6y ago
Of course. Why would I want to make my MB worse by installing Linux or Windows over the Unix (macOS) which is optimized for hardware it runs on?
pjmlp 6y ago
Of course, for that I have thinkpads.
udbhavs 6y ago
They might support Linux, WSL2 works on ARM with the Surface Pro X

MangoCoffee 6y ago

Can TSMC handle it? Apple probably won't use Samsung because Samsung compete with Apple on smartphone and there is a bad blood between them. AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, NXP...etc. all use TSMC.

nojito 6y ago
The Mac line is extremely low volume. The issue with A series has always been yield because they are so massive.
- matwood 6y ago
  Apple sells 16-20+ million macs per year. Not Windows computer level, but I wouldn't call that extremely low volume.
  - nojito 6y ago
    Compared to their phone and tablet line of course it is. Volume is always relative.
dpacmittal 6y ago
Pretty sure Apple sources lots of other parts from Samsung

aphroz 6y ago

Are these numbers wrong? https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share In the comments I read some really big numbers regarding the Mac dominance, can this be caused by a bias (country + income)? In this data OSx seems to be under 9%. Please don't downvote me for questioning Mac dominance.

arexxbifs 6y ago

On a side note, I wonder what this will actually mean for Macs. If the move to ARM is part of a strategy for unifying iOS and macOS, we can expect productivity to drop as macOS veers more towards the touch-and-fullscreen UI of iOS. As far as I understand it, the OS is the main selling point of Macs and a substantial change in the user experience will probably alienate their core user base.

vbezhenar 6y ago
I think that they'll unify internals between macOS and iOS, but interface will be different. Something similar to iOS on iPhone and iPadOS: OS is mostly the same, but UI is different.
- arexxbifs 6y ago
  It'll be interesting to see if they succeed. It seems developers aren't to keen on differentiating their UI:s, but perhaps Apple's draconian app store rules can counteract that.
Synaesthesia 6y ago
I think Mac OS will remain Mac OS. Apple even said it would.
jmull 6y ago
There’s really no connection. If Apple wants to unify iOS and MacOS a common chip architecture doesn’t really help them do that. Anyway, I don’t think it’s going to happen. I understand the worry, but it just doesn’t make sense. They might allow and support macOS running on iPads, though.
ubermonkey 6y ago
What it means for Macs, according to most analysts, is better performance at lower power levels. Apple knows why the Mac is popular with technical people. They're not going to f*ck that up. I know this bugaboo of "they're going to turn the Mac into an iPad" comes up every so often, but I really see zero evidence of that.

FridgeSeal 6y ago

If they do make the jump to arm, who else is excited to play games like "adventures in cross-compiling" and "which of my core dependencies suddenly doesn't work anymore?" AMD chips are better than ever, throw a curve-ball and adopt them, please don't pick the weird mutant-mobile processor to seriously put in desktops Apple

PinguTS 6y ago
It is not the first time for Apple to make the switch. 68k -> PowerPC -> Intel -> ARM While the cross-compiling pipeline already exists with Xcode where you code your iOS (ARM) stuff on macOS (Intel).
- FridgeSeal 6y ago
  I know they’ve made the switch before, they’re definitely capable of pulling it off in a reasonably straightforward manner.
klelatti 6y ago
Don't think Apple will be putting mobile processors into desktops - expect they will be processors designed for desktops with comparable or better performance than the Intel processors they replace. Not sure what is weird about 64 bit ARM architecture - it certainly doesn't have the legacy (dating back to 8086 in 1978) that x86 carries with it.
- joefourier 6y ago
  Hell, you can find x86 instructions and concepts dating to the 8080 from 1974, and probably to the 8008 from 1972 (although I'm not familiar enough with it to confirm). It's funny how no-one has been able to dethrone x86 despite decades of effort from industry rivals and even Intel itself with iAPX and then Itanium.
- FridgeSeal 6y ago
  Weren’t ARM processors and their memory, power-performance, threading, etc designed around primarily mobile workloads though? I’d be happy to be wrong here, that’s just my understanding. What would be the benefits for developers especially of ARM? (Will the likes of Numpy run more efficiently? Rust compile faster?) I know the the iPhones and iPad’s have surprisingly powerful chips in them, but (as an example), the new AMD chips are amazing, and they at least won’t break my dependencies wholesale.

a_imho 6y ago

In my news bubble Intel seems to be on a very bad roll. What are some good ways to gamble on INTC going down significantly in 12 months time?

ChrisRR 6y ago

I feel like I've missed something. Why are there all these rumours of Apple moving away from Intel anyway? Do they have some sort of issue with Intel? Otherwise I can't see the benefit in lower power CPUs for macs. If they really cared so much about reducing power usage and heat, then they wouldn't have shoehorned an i9 into their laptops

ubermonkey 6y ago
Because Apple, first and foremost, wants to be able to control its own destiny. Being tied to Intel has slowed them down on upgrading their higher-end laptops for years. OTOH, they're having GREAT success with their ARM chips in mobile. So, you know, you do the math.
snazz 6y ago
Because their iPhone chips are so obscenely powerful, MBPs are famous for running super hot, and they can make much better margins this way. Consolidating onto a single CPU and GPU platform is nice for developers as well. We’ll have to wait until 10PDT today and see the points that are brought up in the keynote.

dangus 6y ago

> PS: For today, we’ll leave the impact of ARM-based servers and their greater thermal efficiency alone. They shouldn’t have left this topic alone! In the US 1/4 of developers surveyed on StackOverflow use macOS. If they all switch to ARM and AWS will sell them Gravitron instances for a 40% discount, in what world are Intel data centers going to be necessary in the long term future? Intel should be absolutely terrified.

funkaster 6y ago

It’s true that Apple has done two moves to different chips with success, but both times it was to a more capable and probably powerful processor. When moving to PPC they allowed to run 68k apps/code without too much penalty. When moving to x86, there was Rosetta[0], that made the entire existing library /almost/ work seamlessly. moving to ARM... this might not necessarily be true. Sure, you have Catalina but iOS apps on macOS says nothing about all existing apps for macOS. I have no idea of the amount of already existing apps and what would be the amount of work needed to move them to ARM. Very likely Apple did the math and it will be easier/there will be incentives for devs to move to that platform. They do have experience though. [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(software)

empthought 6y ago
The G5 and Core Duo were not that far apart, performance-wise. Certainly nothing like 68k vs PPC. Rosetta worked because most software isn’t CPU-bound; software that is got native versions very quickly.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
GeekyBear 6y ago
You can go back and look at PBS's Computer Chronicles from the mid 90's to see how much of a performance win the 68K to PowerPC transition was. They mention in the introduction that a pre-press shop went from hours to run their bread and butter workflow to about 20 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic0dkf1iFOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic0dkf1iFOY The Intel transition wasn't really a win on performance, but it was a total win for laptops from a power draw and waste heat perspective.
funkaster 6y ago
Well, there you go. They just announced Rosetta 2 :)