10 ms·

I don't care about any Apple products, but I really do hope that M1 will force all other manufacturers ship good ARM laptops. Or force Intel and AMD to pull a r

I don't care about any Apple products, but I really do hope that M1 will force all other manufacturers ship good ARM laptops. Or force Intel and AMD to pull a rabit out of their hat to match the performance/watt of ARM chips. I want long battery life, no fans and a lot of memory. Running Linux. If M1 is the catalyst to make it happen, then so be it.

vbezhenar 6y ago
I agree. Competition is awesome for consumers. I don't care much about macs either (although I'm really interested about Mac Pro Mini rumours), but I know that Intel and AMD will invest lots of money into research right now as not to become obsolete.
aequitas 6y ago
Don't get your hopes up. My prediction is, that yes, there will be a slew of new ARM laptop's. And even though the technically run ARM chips, it will only be a marketing selling point for new. They might even cram Snapdragon's or other mobile device CPU's in there, just to be able to put a ARM sticker on a plastic frame with an folding LCD panel and keyboard. They will sell it as beter than Intel, because that is what people who can afford an Apple will tell them is so great about their new laptop. In the long run, due to this, the Windows ecosystem might adapt to embrace ARM as a whole and then we will start to see competetive ARM PC's. But it will take a while.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Ultimately, it's all about Windows. I know it's hard for many of us who basically hardly see anything other than Mac or Linux laptops to really grok, but something like 90% of the laptops out there run Windows (if you exclude Chromebooks which AFAIK are mostly used in education).
  - aequitas 6y ago
    Indeed, this is why Apple is able to take this leap and the PC platform hasn't so far. They don't have to wait for as many partners to get along for the ride.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      And partners also means customers. A ton of those Windows systems (and I should have said systems--rather than laptops--as I don't know how things split out on laptops specifically) are going to non-technical users in big companies who absolutely do not want any changes that alter a menu or move an icon or introduce some incompatibility they have to deal with. They absolutely do not care whether there's some significant price/performance/watt boost if it otherwise introduces even mildly disruptive change.
      - danaris 6y ago
        Frankly, I think that the willingness on the part of some, like Microsoft, to cater to that degree of hidebound thinking is actively harmful to us as a society, especially in terms of technology. The more we enable people who are unwilling to even try to learn that this particular option has moved from the Edit menu to the Format menu, or has removed the default toolbar icon (but you can add one), or has simply moved an inch to the left, the more we send the message that it's normal and expected that people shouldn't have to ever adapt and change and learn new things.
        chongli 6y ago
        On the other hand, we have a lot software in the industry that changes regularly without any perceivable improvement. Google is known for relentlessly pruning whole products that people were happily using but they're also pretty aggressive about removing features from existing products. One big example of that is the removal of community captioning for YouTube videos. Call me hidebound but I am not happy at all with this, even though I don't use it very much. Captions are critical for making videos accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing communities. The removal of this feature is an ugly snub to a vulnerable group. Now they will be wholly reliant on the video creators to do the captioning themselves or otherwise be stuck with the lousy automatic captioning.
- fulafel 6y ago
  Nitpick: The M1 is also essentially a mobile chip, very close to the iPad version.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    What makes it mobile, the device it's in? If I have one in my desktop or Mac Mini, it's no longer mobile. The power draw? Everyone benefits from it using less power regardless of use. Form factor? Why does size physical size dictate small == mobile?
    - fulafel 6y ago
      I was responding to a post that talked about putting Snapdragon or similar ARM chips in laptops in a deprecating tone, and was making this point exactly.
pmarreck 6y ago
> Or force Intel and AMD to pull a rabit out of their hat to match the performance/watt of ARM chips I believe I read an article the other day that explained why the M1 was so fast and efficient and basically the design it came up with is impossible to do on Intel, for many reasons including the fact that Intel instructions are variable-length (which means they need to be completely parsed every time to find the end of the instruction) while M1 instructions are fixed-length (which means you don't need to parse it) due to the RISC design (finally a winner). Methinks we are witnessing the death of the traditional Intel chip API as the bad design decisions made along the way come to a head. Should make things interesting as now both Apple and Linux have a head start on ARM support.
- postalrat 6y ago
  Microsoft has a version of windows running on arm in the surface pro. Wouldn't that give them the headstart on apple?
  - kzrdude 6y ago
    Apple had versions of iOS running ARM on phones and pads since how many years? They used their head start already to launch themselves into their ARM computers.
    - macintux 6y ago
      And it's not particularly relevant, but the Newton was an ARM device, so Apple's head start is even longer than that.
      - mattkevan 6y ago
        ARM was a joint project between Apple, Acorn and VLSI, so you could say that they had a head-start on pretty much everyone except Acorn, who invented it in the first place.
  - pmarreck 6y ago
    What’s the Windows app compatibility look like on those, though?
sangnoir 6y ago
> Or force Intel and AMD to pull a rabit out of their hat to match the performance/watt of ARM chips. AMD has been great (and improving) on performance/watt. It appears that the M1 has the upper hand, but then again Apple bought all the 5nm capacity for the year. I'm really curious how well 5nm Zen chips would compete non performance/watt - I suspect Zen 4 (5nm) will compete very favorably.
doggydogs94 6y ago
Linus said no to Linux on M1.
- detaro 6y ago
  The parent comment doesn't say it has to be M1, just that M1 could be the push to make it happen elsewhere. (also, even if it were about on M1, Linus said he thinks its unlikely, other qualified people disagree)
heavyset_go 6y ago
More ARM SoCs means more machines that will never see Linux or *BSD support. A lot more work[1] needs to go into supporting each individual SoCs than x86 machines require. [1] https://elinux.org/images/a/ad/Arm-soc-checklist.pdf https://elinux.org/images/a/ad/Arm-soc-checklist.pdf

vbezhenar 6y ago

I agree. Competition is awesome for consumers. I don't care much about macs either (although I'm really interested about Mac Pro Mini rumours), but I know that Intel and AMD will invest lots of money into research right now as not to become obsolete.

aequitas 6y ago

Don't get your hopes up. My prediction is, that yes, there will be a slew of new ARM laptop's. And even though the technically run ARM chips, it will only be a marketing selling point for new. They might even cram Snapdragon's or other mobile device CPU's in there, just to be able to put a ARM sticker on a plastic frame with an folding LCD panel and keyboard. They will sell it as beter than Intel, because that is what people who can afford an Apple will tell them is so great about their new laptop. In the long run, due to this, the Windows ecosystem might adapt to embrace ARM as a whole and then we will start to see competetive ARM PC's. But it will take a while.

ghaff 6y ago
Ultimately, it's all about Windows. I know it's hard for many of us who basically hardly see anything other than Mac or Linux laptops to really grok, but something like 90% of the laptops out there run Windows (if you exclude Chromebooks which AFAIK are mostly used in education).
- aequitas 6y ago
  Indeed, this is why Apple is able to take this leap and the PC platform hasn't so far. They don't have to wait for as many partners to get along for the ride.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    And partners also means customers. A ton of those Windows systems (and I should have said systems--rather than laptops--as I don't know how things split out on laptops specifically) are going to non-technical users in big companies who absolutely do not want any changes that alter a menu or move an icon or introduce some incompatibility they have to deal with. They absolutely do not care whether there's some significant price/performance/watt boost if it otherwise introduces even mildly disruptive change.
    - danaris 6y ago
      Frankly, I think that the willingness on the part of some, like Microsoft, to cater to that degree of hidebound thinking is actively harmful to us as a society, especially in terms of technology. The more we enable people who are unwilling to even try to learn that this particular option has moved from the Edit menu to the Format menu, or has removed the default toolbar icon (but you can add one), or has simply moved an inch to the left, the more we send the message that it's normal and expected that people shouldn't have to ever adapt and change and learn new things.
      - chongli 6y ago
        On the other hand, we have a lot software in the industry that changes regularly without any perceivable improvement. Google is known for relentlessly pruning whole products that people were happily using but they're also pretty aggressive about removing features from existing products. One big example of that is the removal of community captioning for YouTube videos. Call me hidebound but I am not happy at all with this, even though I don't use it very much. Captions are critical for making videos accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing communities. The removal of this feature is an ugly snub to a vulnerable group. Now they will be wholly reliant on the video creators to do the captioning themselves or otherwise be stuck with the lousy automatic captioning.
fulafel 6y ago
Nitpick: The M1 is also essentially a mobile chip, very close to the iPad version.
- dylan604 6y ago
  What makes it mobile, the device it's in? If I have one in my desktop or Mac Mini, it's no longer mobile. The power draw? Everyone benefits from it using less power regardless of use. Form factor? Why does size physical size dictate small == mobile?
  - fulafel 6y ago
    I was responding to a post that talked about putting Snapdragon or similar ARM chips in laptops in a deprecating tone, and was making this point exactly.

pmarreck 6y ago

> Or force Intel and AMD to pull a rabit out of their hat to match the performance/watt of ARM chips I believe I read an article the other day that explained why the M1 was so fast and efficient and basically the design it came up with is impossible to do on Intel, for many reasons including the fact that Intel instructions are variable-length (which means they need to be completely parsed every time to find the end of the instruction) while M1 instructions are fixed-length (which means you don't need to parse it) due to the RISC design (finally a winner). Methinks we are witnessing the death of the traditional Intel chip API as the bad design decisions made along the way come to a head. Should make things interesting as now both Apple and Linux have a head start on ARM support.

postalrat 6y ago
Microsoft has a version of windows running on arm in the surface pro. Wouldn't that give them the headstart on apple?
- kzrdude 6y ago
  Apple had versions of iOS running ARM on phones and pads since how many years? They used their head start already to launch themselves into their ARM computers.
  - macintux 6y ago
    And it's not particularly relevant, but the Newton was an ARM device, so Apple's head start is even longer than that.
    - mattkevan 6y ago
      ARM was a joint project between Apple, Acorn and VLSI, so you could say that they had a head-start on pretty much everyone except Acorn, who invented it in the first place.
- pmarreck 6y ago
  What’s the Windows app compatibility look like on those, though?

sangnoir 6y ago

> Or force Intel and AMD to pull a rabit out of their hat to match the performance/watt of ARM chips. AMD has been great (and improving) on performance/watt. It appears that the M1 has the upper hand, but then again Apple bought all the 5nm capacity for the year. I'm really curious how well 5nm Zen chips would compete non performance/watt - I suspect Zen 4 (5nm) will compete very favorably.

doggydogs94 6y ago

Linus said no to Linux on M1.

detaro 6y ago
The parent comment doesn't say it has to be M1, just that M1 could be the push to make it happen elsewhere. (also, even if it were about on M1, Linus said he thinks its unlikely, other qualified people disagree)

heavyset_go 6y ago

More ARM SoCs means more machines that will never see Linux or *BSD support. A lot more work[1] needs to go into supporting each individual SoCs than x86 machines require. [1] https://elinux.org/images/a/ad/Arm-soc-checklist.pdf https://elinux.org/images/a/ad/Arm-soc-checklist.pdf