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> Yes M1 is great. But it's a closed system It doesn't matter. Sure, that might mean that an Apple system is not for you. But the crux of the matter is: Apple

> Yes M1 is great. But it's a closed system It doesn't matter. Sure, that might mean that an Apple system is not for you. But the crux of the matter is: Apple did something truly revolutionary. How is the rest of the market going to respond? Specifically, how are Intel, AMD and Microsoft going to respond? Microsoft, at least, has Windows running on ARM, but it doesn't have Rosetta. Intel and AMD have nothing remotely comparable.

Hamuko 6y ago
Has Intel really had any response even for Ryzen?
- r00fus 6y ago
  Their response was probably more along the line of previous "advertising campaigns" [1] (ie, payola) for the big PC manufacturers to avoid using AMD for their high margin items. They can't do that with Apple. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/07/dells-shame-intel-payola-propped-up-companys-earnings-sec-says/60447/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/07/dells...
- p1necone 6y ago
  Depends on the price point. Largely Ryzen is winning at the moment but Intel has some compelling options at the low end. E.g. the 10100f looks pretty good if you're not wanting to spend much. Of course AMD haven't released the 5000 series options on the low end yet, so you can only choose between it and a ryzen 3000 series CPU.
- wmf 6y ago
  Tiger Lake-H and Alder Lake sound pretty good but they haven't been released yet.
  - sempron64 6y ago
    Tiger Lake laptop processors have been released and they are competetive with ryzen 4000 mobile processors. All these comparisons of the M1 to 10th-gen intel cpus are quite unfair when the 11th gen 10nm chips are on the market now and have perf characteristics much closer to the M1 Disclosure: I just chose a Ryzen 4500 budget machine, and the 1135G7 is comparable.
oldmanhorton 6y ago
Microsoft does have their own Rosetta, which has been able to run x86 apps for a long time and will be able to run x64 apps within the next few months in preview builds
- sgerenser 6y ago
  Microsoft’s solution is emulation, not binary translation. This is a much slower approach than Rosetta. Hopefully this gives MS the kick in the pants it needs to step up their game though.
  - fomine3 6y ago
    JIT vs AOT would be better term.
  - vmladenov 6y ago
    IIRC Microsoft did ahead-of-time binary translation to get PowerPC Xbox 360 games running on the Xbox One. Wonder if they’ll do the same here.
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "Microsoft, at least, has Windows running on ARM, but it doesn't have Rosetta" I thought that Microsoft's emulation efforts were hampered by Intel making threats, e.g. "Intel recently made an unprecedented public challenge to Microsoft and Qualcomm that basically told the latter two companies: if you ship an x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) emulator, we’re coming after you.", from https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2017/06/16/intel-threatens-microsoft-and-qualcomm-over-x86-emulation/?sh=eeca82454f43 https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2017/06/16/intel... If so, the blame for that really lies at Intel's doorstep as well.
- usefulcat 6y ago
  Did Intel similarly threaten Apple? If not, why not? Even if they didn't know for sure exactly what Apple was up to with the M1, they surely could have speculated, as so many others did.
  - shaggyfrog 6y ago
    The threat was regarding emulation. Rosetta 2 isn't emulation, it's translation.
    - erik 6y ago
      Rosetta 2 includes both ahead-of-time translation and run-time emulation. It can run x64 jit software for example.
      - coldtea 6y ago
        The jit is run-time translation still - not run-time emulation.
        dtech 6y ago
        Can you provide a definition that specifies the difference? The end result is identical: being able to run software compiled for foreign ISA.
Technically 6y ago
You know I really wouldn't characterize this as "revolutionary" so much as moving to the front of the pack just using existing tech. That is unless you're referring to them vertically integrating CPU design, which is pretty revolutionary.
fgonzag 6y ago
What is revolutionary about it? We still haven't seen Zen in the same node as the M1. Zen still scores higher in absolute terms (albeit at higher power). It's evolutionary. The power efficiency is great, and the core design is great (wouldn't expect less from those who were Intel's and Qualcomms most talented staff), but calling it revolutionary is an overstatement.
- nwienert 6y ago
  Using an M1 Air, coming from a 16" Pro, here's the diff: - Cost: $1400 vs $4000 (nearly 1/3) - Speed: Air feels significantly faster, and more apps move to native, will be even moreso - Battery: At least double, if not 3x - Size: Less than 1/2 the weight The revolutionary thing is doing all of those at once. Nearly tripling battery life while making a huge leap in performance, at 1/3 the cost and half the weight is simply incredible.
  - p1necone 6y ago
    Comparing it to previous gen Apple devices doesn't really tell the whole story. You can get a machine from a different manufacturer with similar hardware for much much less than $4000, and it wont have totally broken cooling[0]. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Core-i9-slower-than-Core-i7.396971.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Core-i9-s... Bear in mind that I'm not arguing that the m1 macbooks aren't a really compelling option. I'm just saying this is evolutionary, not revolutionary. (Making other laptop/desktop manufacturers and OS devs wake up to non x86 architectures could be revolutionary for competition and pricing though, we'll see.)
    - nwienert 6y ago
      For years we've been evolving. I've owned ~6 laptops over the last 10 years, all Intel Macs. Each year you get about ~20% ~performance increase for the same "costs" (weight, battery, price). This year you get about 100% performance increase and the costs are all halved. Ok, so... we'll call it a "huge" evolution. All I know is I've been waiting since the air came out for this laptop to exist: fast enough to handle all my work, with decent battery life. It's been almost a decade of waiting, and not only did it finally come, but it somehow is much faster than even the biggest of last generation and super cheap. If you made a graph showing (price * perf * battery-life * weight) you'd see a nice evolutionary curve over the last decade, and then this generation you'd see a huge jump - way more than double. You're ignoring the fact this is a 10W CPU doing more than 28W, fanless! And the diff in subjective performance isn't small, it feels bigger than any previous generation jump by quite a lot...
p1necone 6y ago
> Apple did something truly revolutionary This is hyperbole. Apple has released a CPU that has very good perf/watt compared to it's current competition. That's it. This isn't revolutionary, it's just another incremental step in CPU improvements. Can we please give Apple praise for competing well in the hardware market without fully drinking the kool aid and parroting their marketing.
- wpietri 6y ago
  I would like the people downvoting you to explain why they think it's truly revolutionary. I just went back to reread the Tom's Hardware article on the chip, thinking I must have missed something, and I'm not seeing it. Full credit to Apple for incrementally improving their A-series processors over the last decade until they're good enough for laptops. But I'm not seeing that this makes anything fundamentally different. Just compare the A14 with the M1, for example: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-apple_a14_bionic-1693 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-a...
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >I would like the people downvoting you to explain why they think it's truly revolutionary. For one, it's the first PC chip with these kind of thermals and power combo. Second, it brings many new design decisions, from unified memory, to the SoC design, various coprocessors, etc, that have not been available in the form of laptop/desktop PCs. The last of this kind in the mass market would be something like the Amiga, which is still a very different design. Third, it's hella fast and many different things, both given its power draw, but also irrespective of it. Fourth, it makes ARM for PC computing mainstream suddenly, after decades where it was relegated to the mobile and hobbyist/specialist (rapsberry, etc) space. If that's not a revolutionary change, I don't know what you expected. A CPU made from flour with alien technology that's 1000 times faster and uses quantum bits? Yeah, they didn't make that.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      Like the iPhone and iPod, it's a revolutionary entrant from the consumer point of view in terms of user experience. And like the iPhone and iPod, from a technical point of view, it's merely a very competent iteration down a natural evolutionary pathway, in a preexisting product type.
zmmmmm 6y ago
> Yes M1 is great. But it's a closed system ... > Apple did something truly revolutionary While I don't deny they deserve a lot of credit for this, I think it's important to keep in mind that in many cases Apple does this by exploiting its lack of openness. ie: these things are not unlinked. So where some people see Apple innovating and achieving breakthroughs, I also see them exploiting and leaching off an ecosystem in a toxic way. It's like a chemical plant that dumps its waste into the local river - they get a free ride (not complying with interoperable / openness) which is fine if they are a small part of the ecosystem. But if every company was like that we would be living in technology hell. There would be no internet, no ecosystem of reliable affordable server infrastructure, there wouldn't be a single phone you could write an app for if it wasn't in the corporate interest of a mammoth entity, etc etc.

Hamuko 6y ago

Has Intel really had any response even for Ryzen?

r00fus 6y ago
Their response was probably more along the line of previous "advertising campaigns" [1] (ie, payola) for the big PC manufacturers to avoid using AMD for their high margin items. They can't do that with Apple. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/07/dells-shame-intel-payola-propped-up-companys-earnings-sec-says/60447/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/07/dells...
p1necone 6y ago
Depends on the price point. Largely Ryzen is winning at the moment but Intel has some compelling options at the low end. E.g. the 10100f looks pretty good if you're not wanting to spend much. Of course AMD haven't released the 5000 series options on the low end yet, so you can only choose between it and a ryzen 3000 series CPU.
wmf 6y ago
Tiger Lake-H and Alder Lake sound pretty good but they haven't been released yet.
- sempron64 6y ago
  Tiger Lake laptop processors have been released and they are competetive with ryzen 4000 mobile processors. All these comparisons of the M1 to 10th-gen intel cpus are quite unfair when the 11th gen 10nm chips are on the market now and have perf characteristics much closer to the M1 Disclosure: I just chose a Ryzen 4500 budget machine, and the 1135G7 is comparable.

oldmanhorton 6y ago

Microsoft does have their own Rosetta, which has been able to run x86 apps for a long time and will be able to run x64 apps within the next few months in preview builds

sgerenser 6y ago
Microsoft’s solution is emulation, not binary translation. This is a much slower approach than Rosetta. Hopefully this gives MS the kick in the pants it needs to step up their game though.
- fomine3 6y ago
  JIT vs AOT would be better term.
- vmladenov 6y ago
  IIRC Microsoft did ahead-of-time binary translation to get PowerPC Xbox 360 games running on the Xbox One. Wonder if they’ll do the same here.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago

> "Microsoft, at least, has Windows running on ARM, but it doesn't have Rosetta" I thought that Microsoft's emulation efforts were hampered by Intel making threats, e.g. "Intel recently made an unprecedented public challenge to Microsoft and Qualcomm that basically told the latter two companies: if you ship an x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) emulator, we’re coming after you.", from https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2017/06/16/intel-threatens-microsoft-and-qualcomm-over-x86-emulation/?sh=eeca82454f43 https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiriasresearch/2017/06/16/intel... If so, the blame for that really lies at Intel's doorstep as well.

usefulcat 6y ago
Did Intel similarly threaten Apple? If not, why not? Even if they didn't know for sure exactly what Apple was up to with the M1, they surely could have speculated, as so many others did.
- shaggyfrog 6y ago
  The threat was regarding emulation. Rosetta 2 isn't emulation, it's translation.
  - erik 6y ago
    Rosetta 2 includes both ahead-of-time translation and run-time emulation. It can run x64 jit software for example.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      The jit is run-time translation still - not run-time emulation.
      - dtech 6y ago
        Can you provide a definition that specifies the difference? The end result is identical: being able to run software compiled for foreign ISA.

Technically 6y ago

You know I really wouldn't characterize this as "revolutionary" so much as moving to the front of the pack just using existing tech. That is unless you're referring to them vertically integrating CPU design, which is pretty revolutionary.

fgonzag 6y ago

What is revolutionary about it? We still haven't seen Zen in the same node as the M1. Zen still scores higher in absolute terms (albeit at higher power). It's evolutionary. The power efficiency is great, and the core design is great (wouldn't expect less from those who were Intel's and Qualcomms most talented staff), but calling it revolutionary is an overstatement.

nwienert 6y ago
Using an M1 Air, coming from a 16" Pro, here's the diff: - Cost: $1400 vs $4000 (nearly 1/3) - Speed: Air feels significantly faster, and more apps move to native, will be even moreso - Battery: At least double, if not 3x - Size: Less than 1/2 the weight The revolutionary thing is doing all of those at once. Nearly tripling battery life while making a huge leap in performance, at 1/3 the cost and half the weight is simply incredible.
- p1necone 6y ago
  Comparing it to previous gen Apple devices doesn't really tell the whole story. You can get a machine from a different manufacturer with similar hardware for much much less than $4000, and it wont have totally broken cooling[0]. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Core-i9-slower-than-Core-i7.396971.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Core-i9-s... Bear in mind that I'm not arguing that the m1 macbooks aren't a really compelling option. I'm just saying this is evolutionary, not revolutionary. (Making other laptop/desktop manufacturers and OS devs wake up to non x86 architectures could be revolutionary for competition and pricing though, we'll see.)
  - nwienert 6y ago
    For years we've been evolving. I've owned ~6 laptops over the last 10 years, all Intel Macs. Each year you get about ~20% ~performance increase for the same "costs" (weight, battery, price). This year you get about 100% performance increase and the costs are all halved. Ok, so... we'll call it a "huge" evolution. All I know is I've been waiting since the air came out for this laptop to exist: fast enough to handle all my work, with decent battery life. It's been almost a decade of waiting, and not only did it finally come, but it somehow is much faster than even the biggest of last generation and super cheap. If you made a graph showing (price * perf * battery-life * weight) you'd see a nice evolutionary curve over the last decade, and then this generation you'd see a huge jump - way more than double. You're ignoring the fact this is a 10W CPU doing more than 28W, fanless! And the diff in subjective performance isn't small, it feels bigger than any previous generation jump by quite a lot...

p1necone 6y ago

> Apple did something truly revolutionary This is hyperbole. Apple has released a CPU that has very good perf/watt compared to it's current competition. That's it. This isn't revolutionary, it's just another incremental step in CPU improvements. Can we please give Apple praise for competing well in the hardware market without fully drinking the kool aid and parroting their marketing.

wpietri 6y ago
I would like the people downvoting you to explain why they think it's truly revolutionary. I just went back to reread the Tom's Hardware article on the chip, thinking I must have missed something, and I'm not seeing it. Full credit to Apple for incrementally improving their A-series processors over the last decade until they're good enough for laptops. But I'm not seeing that this makes anything fundamentally different. Just compare the A14 with the M1, for example: https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-apple_a14_bionic-1693 https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-apple_m1-1804-vs-a...
- coldtea 6y ago
  >I would like the people downvoting you to explain why they think it's truly revolutionary. For one, it's the first PC chip with these kind of thermals and power combo. Second, it brings many new design decisions, from unified memory, to the SoC design, various coprocessors, etc, that have not been available in the form of laptop/desktop PCs. The last of this kind in the mass market would be something like the Amiga, which is still a very different design. Third, it's hella fast and many different things, both given its power draw, but also irrespective of it. Fourth, it makes ARM for PC computing mainstream suddenly, after decades where it was relegated to the mobile and hobbyist/specialist (rapsberry, etc) space. If that's not a revolutionary change, I don't know what you expected. A CPU made from flour with alien technology that's 1000 times faster and uses quantum bits? Yeah, they didn't make that.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Like the iPhone and iPod, it's a revolutionary entrant from the consumer point of view in terms of user experience. And like the iPhone and iPod, from a technical point of view, it's merely a very competent iteration down a natural evolutionary pathway, in a preexisting product type.

zmmmmm 6y ago

> Yes M1 is great. But it's a closed system ... > Apple did something truly revolutionary While I don't deny they deserve a lot of credit for this, I think it's important to keep in mind that in many cases Apple does this by exploiting its lack of openness. ie: these things are not unlinked. So where some people see Apple innovating and achieving breakthroughs, I also see them exploiting and leaching off an ecosystem in a toxic way. It's like a chemical plant that dumps its waste into the local river - they get a free ride (not complying with interoperable / openness) which is fine if they are a small part of the ecosystem. But if every company was like that we would be living in technology hell. There would be no internet, no ecosystem of reliable affordable server infrastructure, there wouldn't be a single phone you could write an app for if it wasn't in the corporate interest of a mammoth entity, etc etc.