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Why Apple Will Switch to ARM-Based Macs (2014)
- willcate 4y agoOr, going back even further: https://www.mattrichman.net/apple-and-arm-sitting-in-a-tree/ https://www.mattrichman.net/apple-and-arm-sitting-in-a-tree/
- hoistbypetard 4y agoAlso hugged to death at the moment: https://archive.ph/NtapO https://archive.ph/NtapO
- denkmoon 4y agoDeath Hugged :)
- hoistbypetard 4y agoSince it seems hugged to death: https://archive.ph/6pjS1 https://archive.ph/6pjS1
- logankeenan 4y agoArchive Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20180721080441/https://www.mattrichman.net/why-apple-will-switch-to-arm-based-macs/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180721080441/https://www.mattr...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y agoYou could argue it was inevitably going to happen since Apple started designing their own silicon. iOS is macOS, more or less (modulo a few system libraries and apps), so since the beginning of the iPhone project, Apple has had the software in place to make an ARM-based Mac if they wanted to.
- kaba0 4y ago> iOS is macOS Could you please expand on that? I heard they were quite distinct, e.g. sandboxing/security is done completely differently, with ios having a much more modern approach. While pedantically it can be included in your modulo, but are they really that similar?
- quirino 4y agoWhen presenting the original iPhone Steve Jobs announced that it ran OS X. I'm not sure how far apart they've grown but at that point they were probably very similar.
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y agoWhat I mean is that iOS is a fork (or, I suspect, maybe just a build configuration) of macOS. Since it was a new platform, Apple could try some new things and enforce new restrictions (like sandboxing), but they're not completely different codebases in the way that Windows CE and Windows NT are. The core technologies are the same at most levels of the OS and, if they're not maintained a single codebase, clearly many components are. Therefore I strongly suspect that Apple had macOS running on the iPhone and iPad from very early on. They just did not want to release it because the UI is not suited to a phone.
- johnklos 4y agoI think there were a good number of us who recognized that Intel was a bad fit for Apple. The lackadaisical progress of PowerPC simply forced the issue, and Intel was the only real option at the time. Intel is like Mike Brady with his architectural designs that all look suspiciously like his own house. They refused to compete with themselves and kept x86 as 32 bit so they could promote Itanic, and therefore lost the lead to AMD for years (it wasn't just 64 bit - actively REDUCING instructions per clock with Netburst was... well, legendary - just in a bad way). It just so happened that the kick in the ass Intel got from AMD came a few years before Apple needed Intel, so Intel had finally started trying enough that they had a product line that would work for Apple. But really, is Intel suitable for low power? Could anyone seriously imagine an x86-based phone? Their one-hit wonder is only barely keeping up with AMD and ARM when Intel throws hundreds of watts at their chips and turbo-clocks the heck out of them. Even though Ryzen has been showing up Intel for years, they've floundered so long that there was practically zero chance Apple could stay with them long term. But even in 2005, Intel wasn't necessarily good - they just happened to be the least bad right then.
- kube-system 4y ago> Could anyone seriously imagine an x86-based phone? You forget about Atom?
- DHowett 4y ago> Could anyone seriously imagine an x86-based phone? > ... Atom? Indeed! The Motorola RAZR i was Atom-powered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_RAZR_i https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_RAZR_i
- kube-system 4y agoI only remembered it because recently I pulled an old android tablet out of a junk drawer, installed CPU-Z on it, and scratched my head for a moment about why it said “x86” as the architecture… I then remembered why it was in the junk drawer.
- keepquestioning 4y agoNow the clock begins on Apple switching to RISC-V
- ridiculous_fish 4y agoA Tom's Hardware piece about the possibility: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-looking-for-risc-v-programmers https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-looking-for-risc-v-p... I speculate this is somewhat less likely now that the NVidia / ARM deal has fallen through but surely Apple wants the option at least.
- senttoschool 4y agoIt's not going to happen. Apple probably already use RISC-V designs somewhere in their hardware stack. But the ISA will remain ARM for a long long time. Even Apple Silicon has a ton of stock ARM cores to control various SoC tasks.
- NobodyNada 4y agoThis seems very, very unlikely to me. RISC-V is a very similar architecture to AArch64; I haven't heard a reason to expect it to have improved performance or efficiency. (Its only distinguishing feature (that I know of) is compressed instructions -- which ARM used to have (THUMB mode) before dropping support in AArch64, so presumably it doesn't help on Apple's systems with their huge caches and high memory bandwidth.) Rather, RISC-V's primary advantage over ARM is its openness; vendors can do whatever they want with the ISA without having to pay license fees or maintain compatibility. But this doesn't affect Apple at all; they co-founded ARM, and they have a huge amount of influence over the direction of the architecture along with some sort of special license that allows them to do things other CPU vendors aren't allowed to do (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29782840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29782840, https://twitter.com/stuntpants/status/1346470705446092811 https://twitter.com/stuntpants/status/1346470705446092811). Developing an entirely new high-end CPU mircoarchitecture takes many years and many billions of dollars. It's not something Apple's going to do unless they have a very, very good reason -- and RISC-V being really cool is unfortunately not a good enough reason.
- SeanLuke 4y ago> Somewhere on Apple’s campus, ARM-based Macs are already running OS X. Okay. NeXTSTEP originally ran on the Motorola 68030, then the 040. Then NeXT fully ported the operating system to run on the HP PA-RISC, Sun Sparc, Intel 486, Motorola 88000, and at least tentatively to the IBM RS/6000. This was as diverse a collection of processors as one could imagine. When NeXTSTEP was transformed into MacOS X, it was just one more minor step to include PowerPC in that list. When iOS was developed on the iPhone, it was obvious that it was little more than a modified version of MacOS X, and primarily NeXTSTEP. Surely that's how they developed it: Apple just ported MacOS X to ARM and did development on top of it. I guess what I'm saying is that it's not at all interesting or surprising that someone in 2014 prognosticated that MacOS X had been ported to ARM. It was clear as of 2006 that Apple had already done that. And given that NeXTSTEP had been ported to at least seven processor families prior to that, it was hardly a big deal.
- tambourine_man 4y agoThe porting was obvious, the switching was not.
- SeanLuke 4y agoAgreed, but that's not what I'm annoyed by here.
- alwillis 4y agoThe porting was obvious, the switching was not. It was obvious to me, knowing that MacOS is based on NeXTStep and how that ran on a bunch of different architectures—68000, Intel, Sparc, etc. I even wrote 3 years ago here on HN (before Apple announced their transition to ARM) that I wouldn't be surprised if there were ARM-based Macs in the lab [1]. And also knowing that Apple always wants to be in control of as much of the technology they rely on as possible. After Motorola/IBM dropped the ball with PowerPC and Intel couldn't deliver the performance per watt they needed, they weren't going to fooled a third time. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21235236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21235236
- esturk 4y agoI think it's more interesting to see HN's past discussion from 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9244240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9244240 Some key take away: - A lot of people got it wrong with the bet on Intel. - 2 people that said it will take 5 years were right. - Suggestion to use Rosetta was right. - Indicator for fan less Macbooks was right. It's easy to doubt but it actually takes effort to form educated guesses about the future.
- frostwarrior 4y agoAlso, it was until 2015 where Intel was on a great streak with their processors and didn't show signs of stagnation until around 2017/2018 I5/i7's were great at that time
- lettergram 4y agoNot entirely true, people watching and in the field knew. Back in 2015 I made a massive bet on AMD because people on HN working in the field explained the arch shift. Similar with this move by Apple. There are people in those rooms, making the decisions, sharpening their ideas on HN — if we care to listen.
- nebula8804 4y agoThe problem is how do you separate the gold from the cruft? Seems impossible. Also, so much cruft makes you miss the gold as well. :/
- cortesoft 4y agoFrom my understanding, it is way more costly to miss the gold than to get some cruft.
- lettergram 4y agoI actually wrote software to do that lol Built this: https://insideropinion.com/ https://insideropinion.com/ But use it for investments. You can’t completely remove risk, but I invest in areas where insiders discuss publicly about their work. It provides insight often fundamentals lack; leaving massive potential upside.
- ridiculous_fish 4y agoWhile we know that the current chips are ARM-based, Apple is very deliberately calling it "Apple Silicon," perhaps to avoid committing to any particular ISA. An interesting question is how far Apple Silicon will diverge from ARM64. We know there are extensions like AMX already.
- bmitc 4y agoI am curious. Is that allowed as part of ARM's licensing? It would be surprising that ARM is okay with that, unless Apple bullied them into allowing them to call and market it as Apple silicon.
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- TheCoreh 4y agoApple co-founded ARM, so they almost certainly have a custom deal/licensing terms.
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- senttoschool 4y agoQualcomm calls their ARM chips Snapdragon. Samsung calls their's Exynos. Mediatek calls their's Dimensity. ARM doesn't care what you call them.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- andy_ppp 4y agoIf true then can we expect macOS to be being compiled for RISC-V right now?
- owaislone 4y agoBad article. Totally missed that one. Apple released M series chips, not B series. Ha!
- sitkack 4y agoArm is a flash in the pan. 5 years from now it will all be RISC-V and high level bytecode. Arm's ISA victory is Pyrrhic.
- Mandelmus 4y agoYou base that confident statement on what exactly?
- wmf 4y agoThere's no reason for Apple to switch. The amount they might save on license fees wouldn't pay for the transition.
- naikrovek 4y agowhat would be their motivation to switch? They already control everything they need to with Arm. RISC-V would not open any doors for them that are not already opened, as far as I can tell. It is far easier for them to adjust their existing silicon designs than to adopt an entirely new ISA, given equal gains. What we're going to see now is 20 years of solid innovation on Arm CPUs from Apple. I don't even like Apple at all, and that is apparent to me.
- _ph_ 4y agoARM is already around for decades and has a solid 100% market share in smartphone applications. It also has a very high market share in anything embedded, though there PowerPCs, Mips and others are still surviving. Not having to pay royalties for the CPU architecture and the architecture being quite extensible has a lot of charm. That is why completely new CPU designs these days start on RISC-V, especially in research. On the other side, there are plenty of ARM-IPs, so unless you are designing your own processor cores, it often is way more efficient for the project just to include the ARM-IP. I can see RISC-V might make quite an impact on embedded systems short term, but smartphone vendors basically buy what Qualcomm produces. Until they produce an equally powerful RISC-V based design for less money, they will of course stick with the current architecture.
- vbezhenar 4y agoFor me the pivotal point was when iPhone XS outperformed 7700K with number crunching. It was some weird benchmark and everyone could find issues with it. But it did show tremendous progress happened with mobile chips performance and desktop stagnation. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~bornholt/post/z3-iphone.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~bornholt/post/z3-iphone.html
- panda88888 4y agoThis is a hidden gem for me. Thank you for sharing the article.
- rock_artist 4y agoAs it quotes, Anandtech had many benchmarks suggesting Apple's chips are going strong and even speculating similar idea. Anand Shimpi who founded Anandtech has stepped down from Anandtech and is working for few years now at Apple in hardware.
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- klelatti 4y agoI think it's important to draw a distinction between 'can' and 'will' here. With the the A7 SoC and the A64 ISA it became clear that the ISA and Apple's Silicon design capabilities were sufficient to build SoC's that would compete with the best that Intel could offer. However, the costs of making a transition would still be significant, maybe not in cash terms for Apple, but certainly in manpower and focus. I suspect that it was Intel's process stumbles that led to the decision being made in the end. How many times, I wonder, did Intel promise something to Apple behind the scenes, only to fail to deliver? With the success of TSMC the opportunity for Apple's management to take more control of their own destiny would have been too compelling.
- philistine 4y agoWhen you look at the laser focus and clear talking points of Johny Srouji, compared to the way Intel leadership talk about themselves, it’s no wonder why Apple chose to deal with him and his team instead of Intel.
- klelatti 4y agoIIRC the whole relationship got off to a bad start when Intel failed to deliver 64 bit (x86-64) in time for the first MacBook Pros. Apple had to ship OSX on 32 bit only to replace it a year later when Core 2 Duo came out. Given Tim Cook's known zeal for delivery I hesitate to think how bad things must have become later on.
- MaxikCZ 4y agoGot any examples of comparison?
- sylware 4y agoI am no a fan of apple and their digital golden jail, but I see that move as a way to prepare to jump to risc-v which does not have toxic IP tied to it, once wi have performant risc-v cpus ofc. This is a little drop of good in a ocean of bad.
- klelatti 4y agoSorry this makes no sense: 1. Apple clearly has no problem with 'toxic' (not sure what that means) IP as long as they have access on acceptable terms - which they clearly do with Arm. 2. Apple were almost certainly one of (maybe the only) lead partner for Arm in developing the A64 ISA - they have had a lot more input into A64 than they have into RISC-V. 3. They design their own architecture - they could have built a RISC-V CPU for the Mac if they'd wanted - they don't have to wait for anyone else.
- chrsw 4y agoI don't think RISC-V was ready for prime time when Apple decided to switch away from Intel, which was likely many years before the first M1 products were announced. The RISC-V spec may be stable and fine but you need a whole ecosystem around it to put it to the kind of use Apple wants.
- klelatti 4y agoBut: - ARM64 was announced in October 2011. Apple was shipping SoCs based on ARM64 only two years later. Apple can do these things very quickly when it wants to. - Apple had all the info it would need to base a decision on Arm or RISC-V at the time of the decision to leave Intel. It could have delayed a short while to allow the ecosystem to mature if it had wanted to go for RISC-V. - It controls a large chunk of the ecosystem anyway (LLVM etc). I really find the idea that Apple - hardly the most open company in the world (to say the least) - is expected to switch ISAs again to RISC-V for no apparent commercial advantage very, very implausible.
- philistine 4y ago
- TXCSwe 4y agoOne thing: Intel produces chips. Apple produces hardware with bundled software. Apple doesn't design chips, they design functionality. Intel design chips that are as much flexible as possible.