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It wasn't just lack of performance numbers, there were no actual products announced. They would have had to tip their hand on a lot of info that is not helpful

It wasn't just lack of performance numbers, there were no actual products announced. They would have had to tip their hand on a lot of info that is not helpful to customers or their ability to keep selling Intel stuff. One big question though will be how this devkit benchmarks against the current maxed Intel mac mini. I'm curious if GPU performance beats the current BlackMagic eGPU. (rx 580)

hn_check 6y ago
It's an integrated GPU so it isn't going to compete against serious dedicated GPUs, and no one should expect that. I imagine much like existing Apple devices (and Windows laptops) with dedicated GPUs it will switch as necessary. But at least the integrated GPU will be better.
Cu3PO42 6y ago
Not divulging their hand may be a thing. But they could at least have said something (rehashed) about the A12Z: "it performs better than the CPUs currently shipping in the Mac mini by X% in Y benchmark". I'm not intrisically excited for a new Apple product, but if they could have told me, we can deliver 50% extra battery life in your new MacBook at comparable performance, that would build up some hype and maybe mindshare. > not helpful to [...] their ability to keep selling Intel stuff. I hope that that's it. If we're going through the pains of a platform transition, I'd like to get something out of it.
- ebg13 6y ago
  > Not divulging their hand may be a thing. But they could at least have Let's say that the new numbers are mindblowingly good. So then what? Nobody buys anything from them until next year because they're all waiting? Yikes. This way fewer people will be mortified of the idea of buying something right now instead of waiting.
  - smacktoward 6y ago
    AKA the Osborne effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect
- vosper 6y ago
  > But they could at least have said something (rehashed) about the A12Z: "it performs better than the CPUs currently shipping in the Mac mini by X% in Y benchmark". It's a kit to allow developers to prepare for transitioning their applications to ARM, for future retail MacOS/ARM devices. It's not a new Mac Mini, and it doesn't make sense to compare the retail machines to this dev kit (which is probably running a yet-to-be-fully-optimised OS)
- nicoburns 6y ago
  I'm guessing they're not planning on releasing any A12Z products. They kept going on about how "scalable" their platform. I'm betting they launch with a significantly more powerful processor (they could easily double core counts and up clock frequencies for a laptop-class processor) on a next-gen process (i.e. 5nm). They probably don't even know what the performance will be like yet.
sudosysgen 6y ago
I can assure you that performance will not come anywhere close to an RX580, much less to a more modern Radeon 5700.
- bredren 6y ago
  Where do you think it will fall? Do you think these will be compatible with eGPUs?
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    I think the 5700 series is eGPU compatible on macOS. These fail because Apple is orders of magnitude away from Nvidia and AMD in performance, plus this is a chip with a very limited TDP. I think they will fall a bit slower than current AMD APUs.
    - rimliu 6y ago
      “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in.”
CoolGuySteve 6y ago
I think the lack of hardware and lack of benchmarks are related. Apple doesn't know yet what the thermal throttle will be on an A12Z MacBook until they start testing the cooling system.
cbmuser 6y ago
> there were no actual products announced. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they also didn't announce any actual hardware when they introduced Intel Macs. Interestingly, for the PowerPC->Intel transition, they also had an Developer Transition Kit: https://www.macstories.net/stories/this-is-not-a-product-the-apple-developer-transition-kit/ https://www.macstories.net/stories/this-is-not-a-product-the...
- so33 6y ago
  I believe the first Intel product announced was the [EDIT: iMac - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_(Intel-based)#1st_generation:_Polycarbonate_iMac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_(Intel-based)#1st_generat...] MacBook Pro at Macworld in January of 2006, long after it was announced at WWDC in 2005. I think concerns about how Apple will handle the transition can generally be addressed by the relatively smooth transition from PPC to Intel. Apple has literally done this before.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Apple transitions CPU architectures every 10-15 years. 6502 -> 68k in 1984 via hard-cutover [edit: see cestith's reply, there's more to this story than I knew] 68k -> PPC in 1994 via emulation PPC -> x86 in 2006 via Rosetta JIT translation x86 -> ARM in 2020 via Rosetta 2 static recompilation You could even argue the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X was a transition of similar magnitude (although solely on PowerPC processors), with Classic Environment running a full Mac OS 9 instance [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Class...
    - cestith 6y ago
      They also had the IIgs which was the 65c816 in 16-bit mode. The Lisa was in 1983 before the Mac, and it was a 68k.
      - monocasa 6y ago
dfox 6y ago
There is no reason why rx580 would not be supported on ARM or why there would be any meaningful performance delta. AMD does not have any kind of “secret-sauce” driver for that, it is simply LLVM targeted to that architecture that converts HLSL/GLSL/SPIR-V into the architecture specific code.

hn_check 6y ago

It's an integrated GPU so it isn't going to compete against serious dedicated GPUs, and no one should expect that. I imagine much like existing Apple devices (and Windows laptops) with dedicated GPUs it will switch as necessary. But at least the integrated GPU will be better.

Cu3PO42 6y ago

Not divulging their hand may be a thing. But they could at least have said something (rehashed) about the A12Z: "it performs better than the CPUs currently shipping in the Mac mini by X% in Y benchmark". I'm not intrisically excited for a new Apple product, but if they could have told me, we can deliver 50% extra battery life in your new MacBook at comparable performance, that would build up some hype and maybe mindshare. > not helpful to [...] their ability to keep selling Intel stuff. I hope that that's it. If we're going through the pains of a platform transition, I'd like to get something out of it.

ebg13 6y ago
> Not divulging their hand may be a thing. But they could at least have Let's say that the new numbers are mindblowingly good. So then what? Nobody buys anything from them until next year because they're all waiting? Yikes. This way fewer people will be mortified of the idea of buying something right now instead of waiting.
- smacktoward 6y ago
  AKA the Osborne effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect
vosper 6y ago
> But they could at least have said something (rehashed) about the A12Z: "it performs better than the CPUs currently shipping in the Mac mini by X% in Y benchmark". It's a kit to allow developers to prepare for transitioning their applications to ARM, for future retail MacOS/ARM devices. It's not a new Mac Mini, and it doesn't make sense to compare the retail machines to this dev kit (which is probably running a yet-to-be-fully-optimised OS)
nicoburns 6y ago
I'm guessing they're not planning on releasing any A12Z products. They kept going on about how "scalable" their platform. I'm betting they launch with a significantly more powerful processor (they could easily double core counts and up clock frequencies for a laptop-class processor) on a next-gen process (i.e. 5nm). They probably don't even know what the performance will be like yet.

sudosysgen 6y ago

I can assure you that performance will not come anywhere close to an RX580, much less to a more modern Radeon 5700.

bredren 6y ago
Where do you think it will fall? Do you think these will be compatible with eGPUs?
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  I think the 5700 series is eGPU compatible on macOS. These fail because Apple is orders of magnitude away from Nvidia and AMD in performance, plus this is a chip with a very limited TDP. I think they will fall a bit slower than current AMD APUs.
  - rimliu 6y ago
    “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in.”

CoolGuySteve 6y ago

I think the lack of hardware and lack of benchmarks are related. Apple doesn't know yet what the thermal throttle will be on an A12Z MacBook until they start testing the cooling system.

cbmuser 6y ago

> there were no actual products announced. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they also didn't announce any actual hardware when they introduced Intel Macs. Interestingly, for the PowerPC->Intel transition, they also had an Developer Transition Kit: https://www.macstories.net/stories/this-is-not-a-product-the-apple-developer-transition-kit/ https://www.macstories.net/stories/this-is-not-a-product-the...

so33 6y ago
I believe the first Intel product announced was the [EDIT: iMac - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_(Intel-based)#1st_generation:_Polycarbonate_iMac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_(Intel-based)#1st_generat...] MacBook Pro at Macworld in January of 2006, long after it was announced at WWDC in 2005. I think concerns about how Apple will handle the transition can generally be addressed by the relatively smooth transition from PPC to Intel. Apple has literally done this before.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Apple transitions CPU architectures every 10-15 years. 6502 -> 68k in 1984 via hard-cutover [edit: see cestith's reply, there's more to this story than I knew] 68k -> PPC in 1994 via emulation PPC -> x86 in 2006 via Rosetta JIT translation x86 -> ARM in 2020 via Rosetta 2 static recompilation You could even argue the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X was a transition of similar magnitude (although solely on PowerPC processors), with Classic Environment running a full Mac OS 9 instance [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_macOS_components#Class...
  - cestith 6y ago
    They also had the IIgs which was the 65c816 in 16-bit mode. The Lisa was in 1983 before the Mac, and it was a 68k.
    - monocasa 6y ago

dfox 6y ago

There is no reason why rx580 would not be supported on ARM or why there would be any meaningful performance delta. AMD does not have any kind of “secret-sauce” driver for that, it is simply LLVM targeted to that architecture that converts HLSL/GLSL/SPIR-V into the architecture specific code.