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I doubt they'd want to pivot right away from ARM64, but I could see them using RISC-V for embedded and controller chips or for low power devices to extend their
by api 5y ago
I doubt they'd want to pivot right away from ARM64, but I could see them using RISC-V for embedded and controller chips or for low power devices to extend their ecosystem.
Having a RISC-V bench also means they have a backup plan in case something bad happens to the ARM ecosystem.
- eeiac928 5y agoFord or GM sell vehicles with engines taylored to customer needs. Given the volumes of chips Apple ships to the end customer, why can't they offer 6 kinds of chip architecture like the choice in colored metal finish? Why does it have to be one chip's ISA one generation at a time?
- api 5y agoThe big down-side is that they'd end up with really fat binaries and edge case bugs in some apps across architectures. Apple can pivot architectures, but I don't think they do it lightly.
- brucehoult 5y agoModern MacOS and iOS app size is completely dominated by image and other media assets. The code is down in the noise.
- saagarjha 5y agoThis is not true; most popular iOS apps have very large binary sizes.
- erwan577 5y agoIn your colored car analogy all cars use the same fuel. An Apple computer with a different chip arch will use different software. Yes fat binary are a thing but anyway all different archs should be tested separately. This is a real bummer especially for small dev shops.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y agoI would expect emulation to be perfectly sufficient for testing purposes?