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After four different CPU ISA's (68000, powerpc, x86, ARM) an Apple ISA is next.
by hyperpallium2 6y ago
After four different CPU ISA's (68000, powerpc, x86, ARM) an Apple ISA is next.
- Teongot 6y agoThere's a tidy mathematical progression in Apple CPU architectures. 6502 (Apple 1,2,3): 1976 68k (Mac): 1984 (+8 years) PPC: 1994 (+10 years) x86: 2006 (+12 years) ARM: 2020 (+14 years) If the trend continues, we will see Apple's next architecture in 2036.
- ithkuil 6y ago2036, Apple Mill
- mhh__ 6y agoWell, the people behind the Mill might not being around in 16 years time. That being said, I would really like to see the Mill make it to Silicon - even if it doesn't work in the end, it's much more interesting to me than RISC-V.
- ithkuil 6y agoPatents will survive their retirement ;-) I assume RISC-V appeal is because it's open and thus allows people to explore (proprietary) implementations while maintaining compatibility at the ISA level. If I understand correctly you cannot do this with Mill either. Their work looks very interesting, but I'm not drawn in writing an fpga implementation or work on a toolchain for it, since I know any success may be impeded by patents
- jecel 6y agoWhat about the Apple IIgs (1986) and its 65C816 processor? I suppose it would be valid to consider it a version of the 6502 if you are not separating 32 and 64 bit PPCs, x86 and ARMs.
- bitwize 6y agoFrom a third-party developer's perspective the ISA will be Swift. The actual CPU ISA will be a closely guarded trade secret. It will, however, run Swift code 2-3x faster (on a single-core basis) than any commercially available commodity CPU -- especially since Apple pays silicon fabs to not manufacture 3nm hypercubic gallium-arsenide ICs or whatever the cutting edge is on behalf of competitors.
- klelatti 6y agoI assume this is satire.
- userbinator 6y agoNo, I think it is very prescient --- the same way almost no one believed RMS a few decades ago and thought he was crazy. But it's clear where things are heading with Apple.
- bitwize 6y agoNah fam. It's clear what Apple want: soup-to-nuts control of the platform and ecosystem. Anything less would be putting the value of the #1 brand in the world in the hands of potentially unscrupulous third-party devs. So whether you can run anything on Apple Silicon, what you can run, what inputs you are allowed to run it on will be decisions made in Cupertino. If just anyone is allowed to emit Apple Silicon binaries that presents a problem to the whole chain of custody. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if future versions of Xcode did all their compilation in Apple's cloud, without an option for local compilation.
- rasz 6y ago:) reminds me of https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...
- duskwuff 6y agoApple was actually considering designing their own CPUs as early in the mid/late 80s. As far as I'm aware, they never got to the point of fabrication, but the architecture and ISA was pretty fully fleshed out: https://archive.org/details/scorpius_architecture https://archive.org/details/scorpius_architecture
- masklinn 6y agoApple doesn't really need their own ISA, because they have an architectural ARM license, and complete design knowledge in-house. Meaning they can do anything they want on an ARM base, they're already not beholden to any third-party designer or roadmap, which is what hampered them with both PPC and x86 (I'm not old enough to remember the 68k and really know why they moved off of it). The only reason they'd have to move away from ARM is if the ISA ends up preventing them from doing something, somehow.