7 ms·

As somebody who worked for Intel I am deeply ashamed for this result. I mean, seriously, all that tradition and experience and you have a phone company make ci

As somebody who worked for Intel I am deeply ashamed for this result. I mean, seriously, all that tradition and experience and you have a phone company make circles around you on your own field.

spankyspangler 5y ago
Well, the roots of the technology came from PA Semi, which was founded with big names who had a long tradition and experience in the industry. They specialized in high performance power efficient processors for embedded, which happens to fit very well with what smartphones need. But their very first design (a PowerPC front end, before Apple bought them) was already quite impressive. Strap a lot of cash and volume behind that after they get bought, and the results speak for themselves. There is no shame in it. Intel has been stumbling at the moment, but others were stumbling in the decade from Core 2 to Skylake.
- olliej 5y ago
  I mean they acquired PA more than a decade ago now, and have released multiple new generations of chips since then, how long do we keep saying PA is the source of all the performance?
  - spankyspangler 5y ago
    Who is "we"? Did you actually read what I wrote before replying?
B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago
> a phone company PA Semi aren't a phone company, they just work for one ... "These guys aren't just going to walk in and ..." (famous last words, LXXXV)
- kergonath 5y ago
  PA Semi hasn’t been a company for quite some time now. They have joined a team of Apple engineers, and that team has changed quite a bit in the last decade. It currently does not have much in common with PA Semi when it still existed.
johnklos 5y ago
To be fair, the x86 is a completely shit architecture, no matter how many billions of dollars and billions of transistors you throw at it. There are clearly so many things that x86 does that no sane person would do if making a clean design today.
- baggy_trough 5y ago
  Wouldn't it be fair for Intel to feel bad about that?
  - creato 5y ago
    "There are clearly so many things that x86 does that no sane person would do if making a clean design today" and "x86 has been a continuously supported backwards compatible architecture for 35 years, and enabled the existence of most computers for most of those 35 years" are basically saying the same thing. Depending on which way you look at it, Intel can feel bad about it, or feel good about it.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      Backwards compatibility was more important when everyone ran Windows. We aren’t there anymore.
- arvinsim 5y ago
  I mean, we can say that about any legacy software system, right?
nine_k 5y ago
If you drop backwards compatibility, you can get a lot of headroom for better performance. Apple is in a unique position of being able to force a new architecture on its customers, without losing them. They have done it twice. They even aren't exactly compatible with normal ARM, due to a special agreement with ARM Holdings. Intel had I960, quite cool and successful, and could not capitalize on it in the long term for low-power devices. Intel bought rights to ARM, and could not capitalize on it in the long term either, even though ARM was well-suited for battery-powered devices, and sold it! Intel used to be the king of data centres, using an architecture from 1980s, extended and pimped up to the brim — but still beholden by backwards compatibility. And a king it still is. But this pillar seems to shake more and more. I don't think this is a result of poor engineering. It was, to my mind, a set of business bets, which worked well, until they didn't any more.
- lostgame 5y ago
  Holy crap, man - I read two sentences into your comment before literally hitting reply to say ‘as a long-time Mac and iOS dev this is one of the most logical and undeniable statements I’ve ever heard’. I read the rest after typing this. Intel was...it was king. To be honest - Apple actually got some pretty damn good performance out of the PowerPC chips and architecture - my Quad-Core G5 tower with 16GB RAM is still used for finalization of my music projects, due to its insanely smooth performance - and tbh coming from a very experienced user of modern Macs it still kicks ass.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  Apple's CPUs are compatible at the userspace level with normal ARM. At the kernel level, I only know of one architectural violation so far (other than adding custom optional stuff): the M1 has the HCR_EL2.E2H bit forced to 1, which forces hypervisors to use VHE mode (non-VHE operation is not supported, which is a violation of the arch spec). This only matters for hypervisors, as regular OS operation doesn't care about this. It is true that Apple implemented a bunch of custom optional features (some of which are, arguably, in violation of architectural expectations), and they definitely have some kind of deal with ARM to be able to do this, but from a developer perspective they are all optional and can be ignored. I don't think Apple exposes any of them directly to iOS/macOS developers. They only use them internally in their own software and libraries (some are for Rosetta, some are used in Accelerate.framework, some are used to implement MAP_JIT and pthread_jit_write_protect_np, some are only used by the kernel).
Veedrac 5y ago
To be fair said phone company is the largest public company in the world by market cap, using a process provided by the eleventh largest public company in the world by market cap.
viktorcode 5y ago
Funny, Apple was called "computer company" by the phone industry guys before, and now it is "phone company", curtesy of Intel.

As somebody who worked for Intel I am deeply ashamed for this result. I mean, seriously, all that tradition and experience and you have a phone company make circles around you on your own field.

spankyspangler 5y ago

Well, the roots of the technology came from PA Semi, which was founded with big names who had a long tradition and experience in the industry. They specialized in high performance power efficient processors for embedded, which happens to fit very well with what smartphones need. But their very first design (a PowerPC front end, before Apple bought them) was already quite impressive. Strap a lot of cash and volume behind that after they get bought, and the results speak for themselves. There is no shame in it. Intel has been stumbling at the moment, but others were stumbling in the decade from Core 2 to Skylake.

olliej 5y ago
I mean they acquired PA more than a decade ago now, and have released multiple new generations of chips since then, how long do we keep saying PA is the source of all the performance?
- spankyspangler 5y ago
  Who is "we"? Did you actually read what I wrote before replying?

B1FF_PSUVM 5y ago

> a phone company PA Semi aren't a phone company, they just work for one ... "These guys aren't just going to walk in and ..." (famous last words, LXXXV)

kergonath 5y ago
PA Semi hasn’t been a company for quite some time now. They have joined a team of Apple engineers, and that team has changed quite a bit in the last decade. It currently does not have much in common with PA Semi when it still existed.

johnklos 5y ago

To be fair, the x86 is a completely shit architecture, no matter how many billions of dollars and billions of transistors you throw at it. There are clearly so many things that x86 does that no sane person would do if making a clean design today.

baggy_trough 5y ago
Wouldn't it be fair for Intel to feel bad about that?
- creato 5y ago
  "There are clearly so many things that x86 does that no sane person would do if making a clean design today" and "x86 has been a continuously supported backwards compatible architecture for 35 years, and enabled the existence of most computers for most of those 35 years" are basically saying the same thing. Depending on which way you look at it, Intel can feel bad about it, or feel good about it.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    Backwards compatibility was more important when everyone ran Windows. We aren’t there anymore.
arvinsim 5y ago
I mean, we can say that about any legacy software system, right?

nine_k 5y ago

If you drop backwards compatibility, you can get a lot of headroom for better performance. Apple is in a unique position of being able to force a new architecture on its customers, without losing them. They have done it twice. They even aren't exactly compatible with normal ARM, due to a special agreement with ARM Holdings. Intel had I960, quite cool and successful, and could not capitalize on it in the long term for low-power devices. Intel bought rights to ARM, and could not capitalize on it in the long term either, even though ARM was well-suited for battery-powered devices, and sold it! Intel used to be the king of data centres, using an architecture from 1980s, extended and pimped up to the brim — but still beholden by backwards compatibility. And a king it still is. But this pillar seems to shake more and more. I don't think this is a result of poor engineering. It was, to my mind, a set of business bets, which worked well, until they didn't any more.

lostgame 5y ago
Holy crap, man - I read two sentences into your comment before literally hitting reply to say ‘as a long-time Mac and iOS dev this is one of the most logical and undeniable statements I’ve ever heard’. I read the rest after typing this. Intel was...it was king. To be honest - Apple actually got some pretty damn good performance out of the PowerPC chips and architecture - my Quad-Core G5 tower with 16GB RAM is still used for finalization of my music projects, due to its insanely smooth performance - and tbh coming from a very experienced user of modern Macs it still kicks ass.
marcan_42 5y ago
Apple's CPUs are compatible at the userspace level with normal ARM. At the kernel level, I only know of one architectural violation so far (other than adding custom optional stuff): the M1 has the HCR_EL2.E2H bit forced to 1, which forces hypervisors to use VHE mode (non-VHE operation is not supported, which is a violation of the arch spec). This only matters for hypervisors, as regular OS operation doesn't care about this. It is true that Apple implemented a bunch of custom optional features (some of which are, arguably, in violation of architectural expectations), and they definitely have some kind of deal with ARM to be able to do this, but from a developer perspective they are all optional and can be ignored. I don't think Apple exposes any of them directly to iOS/macOS developers. They only use them internally in their own software and libraries (some are for Rosetta, some are used in Accelerate.framework, some are used to implement MAP_JIT and pthread_jit_write_protect_np, some are only used by the kernel).

Veedrac 5y ago

To be fair said phone company is the largest public company in the world by market cap, using a process provided by the eleventh largest public company in the world by market cap.

viktorcode 5y ago

Funny, Apple was called "computer company" by the phone industry guys before, and now it is "phone company", curtesy of Intel.