8 ms·

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

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]
jojobas 6y ago
I wonder how it will affect power-hungry software like Photoshop and After Effects. When Apple moved to Intel the unintended effect was that Adobe et al finally optimized their software for Intel CPUs to the benefit of non-Apple users. Maybe this move will just have all those graphics people switch to Windows.
- rob74 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure Apple wouldn't switch the Macs to ARM chips if it wouldn't allow for major performance improvements. Or, if not "absolute" performance, then performance per Watt or price/performance - but if ARM proves to be worse than Intel on "raw performance", they will probably only switch the low-end models and keep e.g. the Mac Pro on x86 for now (or switch it from Intel to AMD, after all Intel is currently struggling to keep up with them). And I'm sure Adobe et al will happily optimize their software for ARM as well...
- megablast 6y ago
  Photoshop already runs on arm.
Gravityloss 6y ago
It seems as if some kind of strategic direction change to lifestyle usage was made about five years ago. Keyboard, ports, Catalina.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Apple have always favoured the individual user over the enterprise, it's what differentiated them from Microsoft.
  - Gravityloss 6y ago
    But that's not what I was talking about. Whether you're a freelancer, a novelist or a technical writer in a megacorporation, you need a good keyboard, not an itunes subscription.
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      I'd argue it's the same, right now I have Apple Music and Xcode open. Also I'm pretty sure nobody wants a crap keyboard.
Veedrac 6y ago
Compilation should be significantly faster on an A14 based MacBook, since an unthrottled A13 is already within 10% a 9900K for GCC.
- 1_player 6y ago
  I'll believe it when I see it.
  - acidbaseextract 6y ago
    Geekbench has a clang benchmark. Randomly picking from their public results data, looking at the "Single-Core Performance, Clang" • iPhone 11 Pro Max - 1413 (11.0 Klines/sec) https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2634126 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2634126 • 9900K - 1270 (9.89 Klines/sec) https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2633843 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2633843 The A13 is really impressive.
    - qayxc 6y ago
      Why did you choose to ignore the 2.22x faster multi-core score of the 9900k? Tests like these are also very questionable if they are constrained to sub-60s microbenchmarks, which ignore power-limits and cooling. I'd rather wait for the actual product in a comparable package (e.g. laptop chassis vs. whatever unspecified environment the Geekbench test was run in) before drawing conclusions...
      - nojito 6y ago
        Because the benchmark is currently the only way to compare two devices using different chassis and give an answer to a specific workload. Yours is nothing but theoretical. The Multicore benchmark compares a 8 core with a dualcore which is a bad faith comparison.
        qayxc 6y ago
        > The Multicore benchmark compares a 8 core with a dualcore which is a bad faith comparison. How so? Are we comparing real-world performance or artificially limited what-if-scenarios? That's my critique with these benchmarks in general. I don't care what a single A13/A14 BIG-core does in a short burst load situation when the context is code compilation that takes a minute or more on a system with multiple cores. Multi-core is a bad faith comparison you say? I'd say it's an Apples-to-apples comparison if anything, since I usually don't artificially restrict my machine when trying to get work done as fast as possible. So I'd argue that it's actually your perspective that's just theoretical: oh look - this dual-core [technically hexa-core while we're on the topic of being theoretical] SoC is faster than this octa-core, provided we choose a short, bursty workload and limit ourselves to a single core. You know, as one does when compiling Chrome or a any big software... Like, contexts where compilation times actually matter as supposed to compiling this small utility takes only 0.89s on the A13X as opposed to 1.2s on the i9. I know, I know, the difference adds up quickly, like to an whole hour after just 11600 compilations. Theoretically, that is. sigh
rubber_duck 6y ago
> If buying a Mac means that I end up with a slower build every time I compile, I would buy Windows. Isn't this already the case, especially for docker, due to FS perf on OSX ?
glogla 6y ago
Even with ARM, Mac would still be the only way to get laptop with HiDPI screen and OS that supports HiDPI well, good touchpad and unix environment as a first class citizen. Linux on laptop doesn't work that well, especially if you want a nice (HiDPI) screen. Microsoft is trying with the Linux emulation, but they are creepy with their snooping and telemetry, and will autoinstall Candy Crush and other shit.
- jevgeni 6y ago
  MacOS does quite a bit of telemetry as well.
  - singhrac 6y ago
    Really? What should I be turning off?
    - jevgeni 6y ago
      Anything with “analytics” in Settings, if it bothers you, I guess. Catalina bricked my iMac recently, so I can’t see what I did myself.
- duncanawoods 6y ago
  I run Ubuntu on both a 4k laptop and a desktop. Zero issues out of the box.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  - HiDPI screen - Surface has this - OS that supports HiDPI well - Windows 10 has good support for this now - good touchpad - Surface touchpads are very close to Apple ones these days and I'd argue the key part of keyboards are superior as is the touch and pen support. - unix environment as a first class citizen - WSL2 (while Linux not Unix) is a first class citizen. How is Microsofts telemetry any more "snooping" than Apples telemetry? I mean they both do it...
  - foldr 6y ago
m463 6y ago
I don't know this, but I suspect any pro users who want absolute performance may be left with an uninterested apple. High-end desktops and cloud systems are getting really amazing performance, with 32 and 64-core threadrippers compiling the linux kernel befo[compile complete!]re you can finish your thought. I think this is a by-product of amd and intel serving the cloud market, and it just happens to benefit the high-end desktops. Would apple invest in a many many core pro machine just for the (whatever low number) of pro users they have?
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  Many many core pro machine called Mac Pro. It's quite powerful workstation. Another alternative is iMac Pro which is quite powerful as well.
  - m463 6y ago
    But that is Intel! Intel does do a 24-core chip for apple. (and amd does a 64-core chip, though not for apple) I'm saying - if apple does ARM, will they make a 24-core arm chip?
    - vbezhenar 6y ago
      My theory is that they will switch low power devices like Macbook Airs to ARM chips while keeping high power devices on Intel for now. They will sell millions of those low power devices, but designing a competitive workstation chip takes a lot of money and they won't sell enough Mac Pros to offset that cost. Intel makes those CPUs for servers and basically rebrands them for workstations. Apple is not in the server business. May be they'll just discontinue powerful Pro devices at some point and that's about it. May be they'll manage to create powerful CPUs using chiplet design, but I absolutely have no idea whether it's cheap or not.
mytherin 6y ago
I see no reason why compilation should be slower on ARM. Compilation typically doesn't use any Intel specific instructions (intrinsics). As long as the toolchain is recompiled for ARM (which it will be, Apple makes clang) it should be very comparable. If anything, it will be faster on ARM because the ARM chips will have more cores, and compilation is very parallelizable for larger projects.
- jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
  Apple does not make LLVM on their own, they contribute to it like many other companies.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    It is different enough that cppreference has its own Apple specific clang column.
  - mytherin 6y ago
    Clang (not LLVM) was made by Apple [1, 2]. They specifically hired the lead developer of LLVM to build it because they were not happy with GCC. At this point many other companies have also contributed, but Clang is first and foremost developed as Apple's compiler. It is a safe bet that they will optimize it for new Apple hardware. [1] http://llvm.org/devmtg/2007-05/09-Naroff-CFE.pdf http://llvm.org/devmtg/2007-05/09-Naroff-CFE.pdf [2] https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2007-July/000000.html https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2007-July/000000.ht...
    - jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
      > Clang (not LLVM) was made by Apple [1, 2]. They specifically hired the lead developer of LLVM to build it No, one cannot claim "Apple makes Clang" (which was your original claim) just because they funded the initial effort many years ago. It is not their product and they do not control it. It is like saying Blender is made by the original company who developed the initial version. The LLVM Foundation (a legal entity) is the actual owner. > because they were not happy with GCC Many companies are not happy with GCC due to the license. Which is why so many companies work on LLVM. > Clang is first and foremost developed as Apple's compiler. False. The Clang version that Apple includes with macOS is not even close to the latest Clang. > It is a safe bet that they will optimize it for new Apple hardware. False. Optimizing is mainly the job of LLVM, not Clang. Further, most optimization passes are independent of architecture. Codegen targets Intel, AMD, ARM, etc. hardware in general, not Apple’s in particular.
thesquib 6y ago
I've already been pushed away from Apple after the death of 32-bit. I tried the 2020 MacBook Pro but I ran into many problems, including software support, constant beach balls, and shorter battery life than my old laptop. I assume most of those issues are Catalina not the hardware. I'm sticking to my 2013 MacBook Pro until it breaks or I find something better.

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]

jojobas 6y ago

I wonder how it will affect power-hungry software like Photoshop and After Effects. When Apple moved to Intel the unintended effect was that Adobe et al finally optimized their software for Intel CPUs to the benefit of non-Apple users. Maybe this move will just have all those graphics people switch to Windows.

rob74 6y ago
I'm pretty sure Apple wouldn't switch the Macs to ARM chips if it wouldn't allow for major performance improvements. Or, if not "absolute" performance, then performance per Watt or price/performance - but if ARM proves to be worse than Intel on "raw performance", they will probably only switch the low-end models and keep e.g. the Mac Pro on x86 for now (or switch it from Intel to AMD, after all Intel is currently struggling to keep up with them). And I'm sure Adobe et al will happily optimize their software for ARM as well...
megablast 6y ago
Photoshop already runs on arm.

Gravityloss 6y ago

It seems as if some kind of strategic direction change to lifestyle usage was made about five years ago. Keyboard, ports, Catalina.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Apple have always favoured the individual user over the enterprise, it's what differentiated them from Microsoft.
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  But that's not what I was talking about. Whether you're a freelancer, a novelist or a technical writer in a megacorporation, you need a good keyboard, not an itunes subscription.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    I'd argue it's the same, right now I have Apple Music and Xcode open. Also I'm pretty sure nobody wants a crap keyboard.

Veedrac 6y ago

Compilation should be significantly faster on an A14 based MacBook, since an unthrottled A13 is already within 10% a 9900K for GCC.

1_player 6y ago
I'll believe it when I see it.
- acidbaseextract 6y ago
  Geekbench has a clang benchmark. Randomly picking from their public results data, looking at the "Single-Core Performance, Clang" • iPhone 11 Pro Max - 1413 (11.0 Klines/sec) https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2634126 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2634126 • 9900K - 1270 (9.89 Klines/sec) https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2633843 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/2633843 The A13 is really impressive.
  - qayxc 6y ago
    Why did you choose to ignore the 2.22x faster multi-core score of the 9900k? Tests like these are also very questionable if they are constrained to sub-60s microbenchmarks, which ignore power-limits and cooling. I'd rather wait for the actual product in a comparable package (e.g. laptop chassis vs. whatever unspecified environment the Geekbench test was run in) before drawing conclusions...
    - nojito 6y ago
      Because the benchmark is currently the only way to compare two devices using different chassis and give an answer to a specific workload. Yours is nothing but theoretical. The Multicore benchmark compares a 8 core with a dualcore which is a bad faith comparison.
      - qayxc 6y ago
        > The Multicore benchmark compares a 8 core with a dualcore which is a bad faith comparison. How so? Are we comparing real-world performance or artificially limited what-if-scenarios? That's my critique with these benchmarks in general. I don't care what a single A13/A14 BIG-core does in a short burst load situation when the context is code compilation that takes a minute or more on a system with multiple cores. Multi-core is a bad faith comparison you say? I'd say it's an Apples-to-apples comparison if anything, since I usually don't artificially restrict my machine when trying to get work done as fast as possible. So I'd argue that it's actually your perspective that's just theoretical: oh look - this dual-core [technically hexa-core while we're on the topic of being theoretical] SoC is faster than this octa-core, provided we choose a short, bursty workload and limit ourselves to a single core. You know, as one does when compiling Chrome or a any big software... Like, contexts where compilation times actually matter as supposed to compiling this small utility takes only 0.89s on the A13X as opposed to 1.2s on the i9. I know, I know, the difference adds up quickly, like to an whole hour after just 11600 compilations. Theoretically, that is. sigh

rubber_duck 6y ago

> If buying a Mac means that I end up with a slower build every time I compile, I would buy Windows. Isn't this already the case, especially for docker, due to FS perf on OSX ?

glogla 6y ago

Even with ARM, Mac would still be the only way to get laptop with HiDPI screen and OS that supports HiDPI well, good touchpad and unix environment as a first class citizen. Linux on laptop doesn't work that well, especially if you want a nice (HiDPI) screen. Microsoft is trying with the Linux emulation, but they are creepy with their snooping and telemetry, and will autoinstall Candy Crush and other shit.

jevgeni 6y ago
MacOS does quite a bit of telemetry as well.
- singhrac 6y ago
  Really? What should I be turning off?
  - jevgeni 6y ago
    Anything with “analytics” in Settings, if it bothers you, I guess. Catalina bricked my iMac recently, so I can’t see what I did myself.
duncanawoods 6y ago
I run Ubuntu on both a 4k laptop and a desktop. Zero issues out of the box.
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
- HiDPI screen - Surface has this - OS that supports HiDPI well - Windows 10 has good support for this now - good touchpad - Surface touchpads are very close to Apple ones these days and I'd argue the key part of keyboards are superior as is the touch and pen support. - unix environment as a first class citizen - WSL2 (while Linux not Unix) is a first class citizen. How is Microsofts telemetry any more "snooping" than Apples telemetry? I mean they both do it...
- foldr 6y ago

m463 6y ago

I don't know this, but I suspect any pro users who want absolute performance may be left with an uninterested apple. High-end desktops and cloud systems are getting really amazing performance, with 32 and 64-core threadrippers compiling the linux kernel befo[compile complete!]re you can finish your thought. I think this is a by-product of amd and intel serving the cloud market, and it just happens to benefit the high-end desktops. Would apple invest in a many many core pro machine just for the (whatever low number) of pro users they have?

vbezhenar 6y ago
Many many core pro machine called Mac Pro. It's quite powerful workstation. Another alternative is iMac Pro which is quite powerful as well.
- m463 6y ago
  But that is Intel! Intel does do a 24-core chip for apple. (and amd does a 64-core chip, though not for apple) I'm saying - if apple does ARM, will they make a 24-core arm chip?
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    My theory is that they will switch low power devices like Macbook Airs to ARM chips while keeping high power devices on Intel for now. They will sell millions of those low power devices, but designing a competitive workstation chip takes a lot of money and they won't sell enough Mac Pros to offset that cost. Intel makes those CPUs for servers and basically rebrands them for workstations. Apple is not in the server business. May be they'll just discontinue powerful Pro devices at some point and that's about it. May be they'll manage to create powerful CPUs using chiplet design, but I absolutely have no idea whether it's cheap or not.

mytherin 6y ago

I see no reason why compilation should be slower on ARM. Compilation typically doesn't use any Intel specific instructions (intrinsics). As long as the toolchain is recompiled for ARM (which it will be, Apple makes clang) it should be very comparable. If anything, it will be faster on ARM because the ARM chips will have more cores, and compilation is very parallelizable for larger projects.

jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
Apple does not make LLVM on their own, they contribute to it like many other companies.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  It is different enough that cppreference has its own Apple specific clang column.
- mytherin 6y ago
  Clang (not LLVM) was made by Apple [1, 2]. They specifically hired the lead developer of LLVM to build it because they were not happy with GCC. At this point many other companies have also contributed, but Clang is first and foremost developed as Apple's compiler. It is a safe bet that they will optimize it for new Apple hardware. [1] http://llvm.org/devmtg/2007-05/09-Naroff-CFE.pdf http://llvm.org/devmtg/2007-05/09-Naroff-CFE.pdf [2] https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2007-July/000000.html https://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2007-July/000000.ht...
  - jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
    > Clang (not LLVM) was made by Apple [1, 2]. They specifically hired the lead developer of LLVM to build it No, one cannot claim "Apple makes Clang" (which was your original claim) just because they funded the initial effort many years ago. It is not their product and they do not control it. It is like saying Blender is made by the original company who developed the initial version. The LLVM Foundation (a legal entity) is the actual owner. > because they were not happy with GCC Many companies are not happy with GCC due to the license. Which is why so many companies work on LLVM. > Clang is first and foremost developed as Apple's compiler. False. The Clang version that Apple includes with macOS is not even close to the latest Clang. > It is a safe bet that they will optimize it for new Apple hardware. False. Optimizing is mainly the job of LLVM, not Clang. Further, most optimization passes are independent of architecture. Codegen targets Intel, AMD, ARM, etc. hardware in general, not Apple’s in particular.

thesquib 6y ago

I've already been pushed away from Apple after the death of 32-bit. I tried the 2020 MacBook Pro but I ran into many problems, including software support, constant beach balls, and shorter battery life than my old laptop. I assume most of those issues are Catalina not the hardware. I'm sticking to my 2013 MacBook Pro until it breaks or I find something better.