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Probably because there's basically no competition in the ARM space, especially in non-mobile. I'd like to see what amd and intel can do with ARM before saying a

Probably because there's basically no competition in the ARM space, especially in non-mobile. I'd like to see what amd and intel can do with ARM before saying apple will continue to be king.

mlyle 6y ago
Qualcomm, Samsung, Cavium/Marvell, and nVidia don't count? Not to mention ARM's own cores...
- wmf 6y ago
  They don't count in the PC space. For desktop PCs there's just the Mac mini and various hacker boards. For laptops there's the new MacBooks and the mediocre Qualcomm 8cx/SQ2 and nothing else.
  - cestith 6y ago
    There's Exynos.
    - vetinari 6y ago
      Exynos is dead.
    - wmf 6y ago
      No, there aren't any PCs running Exynos.
      - cestith 6y ago
        That's true if you consider Chromebooks not to be PC-class machines.
  - ghettoimp 6y ago
    For other ARM manufacturers, I wonder how much of this is a software problem. I mean, what would the market be for a super-fast ARM laptop/desktop machine? It would run Windows RT, I guess? How much better than Intel/AMD would the ARM machine need to be to justify buying it and running that? It seems like the M1's "magic" is not just the chip, but very much also the Rosetta thing.
    - sgerenser 6y ago
      Windows RT doesn't exist anymore. Now its Windows ARM, which is basically 100% fully featured Windows with the exception that x86 apps have to be run in emulation and x86-64 apps don't run at all (yet).
    - nordsieck 6y ago
      > For other ARM manufacturers, I wonder how much of this is a software problem. IMO, one of the key innovations Apple made in the M1 is a modification to the memory model so that it is much more efficient to translate x86 code into ARM code.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    No one said "in the PC space" here. There's lots of credible ARM work in both the mobile and the server space. Generally, a lot of it would work OK in the PC space, but for the lack of software support. Apple has the ability to leapfrog that particular problem. Still, Apple seems to have done pretty well compared to both the other mobile and server ARM vendors with their PC offering.
    - r00fus 6y ago
      This whole article and thread are about the desktop (not server) space. I do agree that Apple's push to ARM for laptops will have a dramatic impact on the server space in a year or two. Intel is in for a world of hurt unless they can pull a rabbit out of their hat.
      - sliken 6y ago
        Dunno, seems more like now. Amazon has arm instances, there's a bunch of arm systems in the server space already and the world's fastest HPC cluster is already arm.
- vetinari 6y ago
  Samsung stopped Exynos development a year ago. Cavium is basically dead (yes, bought out by Marvell). Qualcomm is interested only in mobile SoCs at mobile SoCs volumes where they can also sell radios, and Nvidia was traditionally not capable of delivering anything at promised power consumption.
  - jcheng 6y ago
    Are you sure about Exynos? They announced the 1080 just a couple of weeks ago and the 2100 is expected next year.
    - vetinari 6y ago
      This is from wikipedia (under "Exynos"), so apply the appropriate amount of salt: On October 1, 2019, rumors emerged that Samsung had laid off their custom CPU teams at SARC.[21][22][23] On November 1, 2019, Samsung filed a WARN letter with the Texas Workforce Commission, notifying of upcoming layoffs of their SARC CPU team and termination of their custom CPU development.[24] SARC and ACL will still continue development of custom SoC, AI, and GPU.[25]
      - wmf 6y ago
        You misunderstood what that means. Samsung is continuing to develop Exynos SoCs using stock Arm CPU cores and AMD GPU cores. This will require fewer people hence the layoff.
        vetinari 6y ago
        Exactly; they do not have their cores anymore, they are going to use ARM's Cortex. So their SoC will be always average at best, by definition. They won't be able to make anything exceptional.
        andor 6y ago
        HiSilicon's Kirin chips use Cortex microarchitecture and are very competitive. I didn't follow recent releases, but I remember that the Kirin 970 was way ahead of the Snapdragon and Exynos chips at the time, both in terms of performance and power efficiency.
- erk__ 6y ago
  And Fujutsu as well, I think they are making the fastests chips at the moment, or at least the fastest systems with ARM.

Probably because there's basically no competition in the ARM space, especially in non-mobile. I'd like to see what amd and intel can do with ARM before saying apple will continue to be king.

mlyle 6y ago

Qualcomm, Samsung, Cavium/Marvell, and nVidia don't count? Not to mention ARM's own cores...

wmf 6y ago
They don't count in the PC space. For desktop PCs there's just the Mac mini and various hacker boards. For laptops there's the new MacBooks and the mediocre Qualcomm 8cx/SQ2 and nothing else.
- cestith 6y ago
  There's Exynos.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    Exynos is dead.
  - wmf 6y ago
    No, there aren't any PCs running Exynos.
    - cestith 6y ago
      That's true if you consider Chromebooks not to be PC-class machines.
- ghettoimp 6y ago
  For other ARM manufacturers, I wonder how much of this is a software problem. I mean, what would the market be for a super-fast ARM laptop/desktop machine? It would run Windows RT, I guess? How much better than Intel/AMD would the ARM machine need to be to justify buying it and running that? It seems like the M1's "magic" is not just the chip, but very much also the Rosetta thing.
  - sgerenser 6y ago
    Windows RT doesn't exist anymore. Now its Windows ARM, which is basically 100% fully featured Windows with the exception that x86 apps have to be run in emulation and x86-64 apps don't run at all (yet).
  - nordsieck 6y ago
    > For other ARM manufacturers, I wonder how much of this is a software problem. IMO, one of the key innovations Apple made in the M1 is a modification to the memory model so that it is much more efficient to translate x86 code into ARM code.
- mlyle 6y ago
  No one said "in the PC space" here. There's lots of credible ARM work in both the mobile and the server space. Generally, a lot of it would work OK in the PC space, but for the lack of software support. Apple has the ability to leapfrog that particular problem. Still, Apple seems to have done pretty well compared to both the other mobile and server ARM vendors with their PC offering.
  - r00fus 6y ago
    This whole article and thread are about the desktop (not server) space. I do agree that Apple's push to ARM for laptops will have a dramatic impact on the server space in a year or two. Intel is in for a world of hurt unless they can pull a rabbit out of their hat.
    - sliken 6y ago
      Dunno, seems more like now. Amazon has arm instances, there's a bunch of arm systems in the server space already and the world's fastest HPC cluster is already arm.
vetinari 6y ago
Samsung stopped Exynos development a year ago. Cavium is basically dead (yes, bought out by Marvell). Qualcomm is interested only in mobile SoCs at mobile SoCs volumes where they can also sell radios, and Nvidia was traditionally not capable of delivering anything at promised power consumption.
- jcheng 6y ago
  Are you sure about Exynos? They announced the 1080 just a couple of weeks ago and the 2100 is expected next year.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    This is from wikipedia (under "Exynos"), so apply the appropriate amount of salt: On October 1, 2019, rumors emerged that Samsung had laid off their custom CPU teams at SARC.[21][22][23] On November 1, 2019, Samsung filed a WARN letter with the Texas Workforce Commission, notifying of upcoming layoffs of their SARC CPU team and termination of their custom CPU development.[24] SARC and ACL will still continue development of custom SoC, AI, and GPU.[25]
    - wmf 6y ago
      You misunderstood what that means. Samsung is continuing to develop Exynos SoCs using stock Arm CPU cores and AMD GPU cores. This will require fewer people hence the layoff.
      - vetinari 6y ago
        Exactly; they do not have their cores anymore, they are going to use ARM's Cortex. So their SoC will be always average at best, by definition. They won't be able to make anything exceptional.
        andor 6y ago
        HiSilicon's Kirin chips use Cortex microarchitecture and are very competitive. I didn't follow recent releases, but I remember that the Kirin 970 was way ahead of the Snapdragon and Exynos chips at the time, both in terms of performance and power efficiency.
erk__ 6y ago
And Fujutsu as well, I think they are making the fastests chips at the moment, or at least the fastest systems with ARM.