5 ms·

To add to JLGs points, a top of the line 2020 MacBook Air that sells for $1,450 https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-early-2020-intel-core-i7-1060ng7

To add to JLGs points, a top of the line 2020 MacBook Air that sells for $1,450 https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-early-2020-intel-core-i7-1060ng7-1-2-ghz-4-cores https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-early-2020-in... Is significantly slower than a $400 iPhone SE in single core, and only slightly faster in Multi-core. https://browser.geekbench.com/ios_devices/iphone-se-2nd-generation https://browser.geekbench.com/ios_devices/iphone-se-2nd-gene... The entry level $900 MacBook Air is 30% slower in single and multi-core than an SE: https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-early-2020-intel-core-i3-1000ng4-1-1-ghz-2-cores https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/macbook-air-early-2020-in... Now imagine next years MacBook Airs running the next generation A14 processors on a 5 nm process instead of 7 nm, with much more thermal head room than a phone, with far faster integrated GPUs than Intels, and with functionality like T2 integrated in the SOC. And using processors that are at least $100 cheaper. It’s mind boggling to think of how much faster they will be, how much longer their battery life will be, and that they likely will be even cheaper.

my123 6y ago
With the R&D costs involved, there's no way that Apple does this to save costs. It makes even less sense financially considering that unless Apple is planning to make Macs with much higher volumes than before... (which would be a bold bet)
- Zenst 6y ago
  Those R&D costs are a bit shared with their whole ecosystem, so whilst some features for a desktop based version of the CPU would not be viable on a phone today or an iPad, down the line they may will filter in. So they kinda already have the volume to cover R&D costs thanks to how well their phones and tablets have sold.
- baybal2 6y ago
  No, I don't think so. Intel squeezes Apple dry on CPU pricing. Intel squeezes everybody dry. There is no client big enough for them to loose.
  - my123 6y ago
    Expecially with the low volume for the high end Mac Pros they'll have few choices for those with the transition: 1) Either they are going to sell those chips on the wider market, which probably won't ever happen, or 2) Eat the costs and make the machine unprofitable to retain a market, which isn't too likely either, or 3) Make the machine less expensive and trying to do a high-volume play out of it, or 4) Massively raise the costs. There's no way out apart from those, which raises questions on what they'll do.
    - valuearb 6y ago
      5) 40 and 50 core versions of the A14 that cost a fraction of Intel Xeon CPUs and offer similar performance.
      - imtringued 6y ago
        That's just wishful thinking. Mac Pros don't have the sales volumes to ever recover the necessary R&D. Apple is also completely unwilling to sell their chips to competitors. Building a server grade CPU requires a completely different expertise. 99% of the work is in the interconnect, interfaces like DRAM, PCIe. Apple can do all of that except it will take half a decade and only lose the company money. Instead of having such a foolish dream it makes more sense to just find an existing ARM server vendor.
    - 1996 6y ago
      For 1. and 3., sell the chips to specialized hosting companies who want to try things. Scaleway had a ARM hosting line. There are many innovative and competitive hosting companies in Europe that take advantage of the cheap bandwidth. They won't sneeze at cheaper hardware.
    - terandle 6y ago
      Apple already did #4 - massively raise the base cost of the 2019 Mac Pro, so it could be that this is priced in already.
    - sjwright 6y ago
- valuearb 6y ago
  Apple is definitely going to go for higher volumes. Imagine how well a better faster entry MacBook Air sells at $750 instead of $900. They can do this while maintaining their margins at the same levels. And additional R&D costs are a drop in the bucket. They already have a big team to design processors, next year will be their 14th version. Every year they have a large team rev MacOS. If they spent $1B a year on R&D for the Apple Silicon transition, they will get double that back the first year on lower CPU costs on a $25B sales rate. Except their sakes are going to increase substantially. And they won’t even spend half a billion total on R&D for the entire two year transition, Rosetta already existed, the A14 was already being designed, etc, etc.
Zenst 6y ago
One big advantage Apple will have is that they control the OS and the chip, so adding custom instructions or other custom chips that integrate fully with the OS (like the T2 chip), that kind of symbiosis is something Microsoft can't achieve with x86. Also dare say we may see a revival of the hybrid chip design become more fashionable, with virtualization matured, x86 and arm on the same box may become a thing in some area's. Actually a few companies have tried that in the past and one that jumped out (was looking for Nvidia who was at one stage working on such a chip) https://www.extremetech.com/computing/185888-vias-new-isaiah-x86arm-hybrid-cpu-outperforms-intel-in-benchmarks-but-will-it-ever-come-to-market https://www.extremetech.com/computing/185888-vias-new-isaiah... >It’s mind boggling to think of how much faster they will be, how much longer their battery life will be, and that they likely will be even cheaper. I hope so as there has been for a while (seems to of hit the apex of change) been a case of lower power chips meant they could use a smaller battery and make it lighter and smaller. That with advances in screen resolutions and panels soaking up much of that gain in CPU power savings for laptops and mobiles, we have or seem to of hit that point were gains in power are now being handed back to the user and the drive/marking of last a day or two seems to be more weighted over - hey - this is as light as a feather drive.
- nordsieck 6y ago
  > One big advantage Apple will have is that they control the OS and the chip, so adding custom instructions or other custom chips that integrate fully with the OS (like the T2 chip), that kind of symbiosis is something Microsoft can't achieve with x86. I'm particularly excited by the idea of Apple adding iPhone type security to their laptops. I get all the counterarguments about owning your own device and freedom to tinker. But I, personally, would be willing to make that sacrifice. Particularly since it's pretty easy to get totally open devices, whereas getting a secure laptop is not so easy.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> Is significantly slower than a $400 iPhone SE in single core, and only slightly faster in Multi-core. Geekbench is super misleading because they do things like include benchmarks which are hardware-accelerated on the CPU in the iPhone but not the Intel ones. The weak little low power CPU in the Air is also hardly the fastest single thread Intel processor, much less multi-core, so I don't know what they're planning to do on the desktop. > Now imagine next years MacBook Airs running the next generation A14 processors on a 5 nm process instead of 7 nm But then it's competing with not only whatever Intel manages to come up with in the meantime but also AMD processors on the same 5nm process. > with far faster integrated GPUs than Intels But, again, faster than AMD's? Or what Intel will have at the time, given that they're now developing discrete GPUs and will have that in house to improve their iGPUs? > And using processors that are at least $100 cheaper. Which Apple has no incentive to give to you instead of putting in their own pocket, especially if what they offer is actually better. > how much longer their battery life will be "Much more thermal head room than a phone" and "much longer battery life" don't go together, they're a trade off against one another. The amount of hype around this is getting to a level that people are going to be very disappointed if it doesn't live up to it. I'm waiting for some independent third party benchmarks before getting so excited. And not the first ones which were given early access in exchange for favorable skewing.
- valuearb 6y ago
  If Geekbench was so misleading, why does the Intel version of Geekbench run so fast on two year old iPad chips? And “Hardware acceleration” isn’t misleading if it’s accelerating commonly done tasks. Intel is years behind on process and GPUs. Apple is not just getting faster CPU and GPU performance in lower power envelopes, it’s getting those processors at less than half the price. Apple could have switched to AMD to get better faster processors cheaper, but nowhere near half as cheap, and nowhere near as power efficient. And Apple has no reason to use this to increase margins, when they can use it to dramatically increase volume and market penetration, which will increase margins on its own. Fir example, the iPhone SE is faster than any Android phone ever made, yet Apple still priced it at $399. They wouldn’t risk cannabalizing their higher end phones unless SE margins were comparable to higher end phones. Which again shows you how cheap their Ax CPUs are. And iPhones and iPads have all day batteries a fraction of the size of laptop batteries, and without the space, mass, or fans of laptops. The A14 will be able to run in MacBooks at a higher power level while still remaining cool, providing for more cores and faster processor speeds. It will still be using significantly less power than the latest generation Intel laptop CPUs. Also because the SOC will integrate a performance GPU, T2 functionality, Neural Engine, etc all in one package.

my123 6y ago

With the R&D costs involved, there's no way that Apple does this to save costs. It makes even less sense financially considering that unless Apple is planning to make Macs with much higher volumes than before... (which would be a bold bet)

Zenst 6y ago
Those R&D costs are a bit shared with their whole ecosystem, so whilst some features for a desktop based version of the CPU would not be viable on a phone today or an iPad, down the line they may will filter in. So they kinda already have the volume to cover R&D costs thanks to how well their phones and tablets have sold.
baybal2 6y ago
No, I don't think so. Intel squeezes Apple dry on CPU pricing. Intel squeezes everybody dry. There is no client big enough for them to loose.
- my123 6y ago
  Expecially with the low volume for the high end Mac Pros they'll have few choices for those with the transition: 1) Either they are going to sell those chips on the wider market, which probably won't ever happen, or 2) Eat the costs and make the machine unprofitable to retain a market, which isn't too likely either, or 3) Make the machine less expensive and trying to do a high-volume play out of it, or 4) Massively raise the costs. There's no way out apart from those, which raises questions on what they'll do.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    5) 40 and 50 core versions of the A14 that cost a fraction of Intel Xeon CPUs and offer similar performance.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      That's just wishful thinking. Mac Pros don't have the sales volumes to ever recover the necessary R&D. Apple is also completely unwilling to sell their chips to competitors. Building a server grade CPU requires a completely different expertise. 99% of the work is in the interconnect, interfaces like DRAM, PCIe. Apple can do all of that except it will take half a decade and only lose the company money. Instead of having such a foolish dream it makes more sense to just find an existing ARM server vendor.
  - 1996 6y ago
    For 1. and 3., sell the chips to specialized hosting companies who want to try things. Scaleway had a ARM hosting line. There are many innovative and competitive hosting companies in Europe that take advantage of the cheap bandwidth. They won't sneeze at cheaper hardware.
  - terandle 6y ago
    Apple already did #4 - massively raise the base cost of the 2019 Mac Pro, so it could be that this is priced in already.
  - sjwright 6y ago
valuearb 6y ago
Apple is definitely going to go for higher volumes. Imagine how well a better faster entry MacBook Air sells at $750 instead of $900. They can do this while maintaining their margins at the same levels. And additional R&D costs are a drop in the bucket. They already have a big team to design processors, next year will be their 14th version. Every year they have a large team rev MacOS. If they spent $1B a year on R&D for the Apple Silicon transition, they will get double that back the first year on lower CPU costs on a $25B sales rate. Except their sakes are going to increase substantially. And they won’t even spend half a billion total on R&D for the entire two year transition, Rosetta already existed, the A14 was already being designed, etc, etc.

Zenst 6y ago

One big advantage Apple will have is that they control the OS and the chip, so adding custom instructions or other custom chips that integrate fully with the OS (like the T2 chip), that kind of symbiosis is something Microsoft can't achieve with x86. Also dare say we may see a revival of the hybrid chip design become more fashionable, with virtualization matured, x86 and arm on the same box may become a thing in some area's. Actually a few companies have tried that in the past and one that jumped out (was looking for Nvidia who was at one stage working on such a chip) https://www.extremetech.com/computing/185888-vias-new-isaiah-x86arm-hybrid-cpu-outperforms-intel-in-benchmarks-but-will-it-ever-come-to-market https://www.extremetech.com/computing/185888-vias-new-isaiah... >It’s mind boggling to think of how much faster they will be, how much longer their battery life will be, and that they likely will be even cheaper. I hope so as there has been for a while (seems to of hit the apex of change) been a case of lower power chips meant they could use a smaller battery and make it lighter and smaller. That with advances in screen resolutions and panels soaking up much of that gain in CPU power savings for laptops and mobiles, we have or seem to of hit that point were gains in power are now being handed back to the user and the drive/marking of last a day or two seems to be more weighted over - hey - this is as light as a feather drive.

nordsieck 6y ago
> One big advantage Apple will have is that they control the OS and the chip, so adding custom instructions or other custom chips that integrate fully with the OS (like the T2 chip), that kind of symbiosis is something Microsoft can't achieve with x86. I'm particularly excited by the idea of Apple adding iPhone type security to their laptops. I get all the counterarguments about owning your own device and freedom to tinker. But I, personally, would be willing to make that sacrifice. Particularly since it's pretty easy to get totally open devices, whereas getting a secure laptop is not so easy.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> Is significantly slower than a $400 iPhone SE in single core, and only slightly faster in Multi-core. Geekbench is super misleading because they do things like include benchmarks which are hardware-accelerated on the CPU in the iPhone but not the Intel ones. The weak little low power CPU in the Air is also hardly the fastest single thread Intel processor, much less multi-core, so I don't know what they're planning to do on the desktop. > Now imagine next years MacBook Airs running the next generation A14 processors on a 5 nm process instead of 7 nm But then it's competing with not only whatever Intel manages to come up with in the meantime but also AMD processors on the same 5nm process. > with far faster integrated GPUs than Intels But, again, faster than AMD's? Or what Intel will have at the time, given that they're now developing discrete GPUs and will have that in house to improve their iGPUs? > And using processors that are at least $100 cheaper. Which Apple has no incentive to give to you instead of putting in their own pocket, especially if what they offer is actually better. > how much longer their battery life will be "Much more thermal head room than a phone" and "much longer battery life" don't go together, they're a trade off against one another. The amount of hype around this is getting to a level that people are going to be very disappointed if it doesn't live up to it. I'm waiting for some independent third party benchmarks before getting so excited. And not the first ones which were given early access in exchange for favorable skewing.

valuearb 6y ago
If Geekbench was so misleading, why does the Intel version of Geekbench run so fast on two year old iPad chips? And “Hardware acceleration” isn’t misleading if it’s accelerating commonly done tasks. Intel is years behind on process and GPUs. Apple is not just getting faster CPU and GPU performance in lower power envelopes, it’s getting those processors at less than half the price. Apple could have switched to AMD to get better faster processors cheaper, but nowhere near half as cheap, and nowhere near as power efficient. And Apple has no reason to use this to increase margins, when they can use it to dramatically increase volume and market penetration, which will increase margins on its own. Fir example, the iPhone SE is faster than any Android phone ever made, yet Apple still priced it at $399. They wouldn’t risk cannabalizing their higher end phones unless SE margins were comparable to higher end phones. Which again shows you how cheap their Ax CPUs are. And iPhones and iPads have all day batteries a fraction of the size of laptop batteries, and without the space, mass, or fans of laptops. The A14 will be able to run in MacBooks at a higher power level while still remaining cool, providing for more cores and faster processor speeds. It will still be using significantly less power than the latest generation Intel laptop CPUs. Also because the SOC will integrate a performance GPU, T2 functionality, Neural Engine, etc all in one package.