4 ms·

I don't see apple silicon in macs having been the right decision a decade from now because competing toe to toe with the entire semis industry on architecture h

I don't see apple silicon in macs having been the right decision a decade from now because competing toe to toe with the entire semis industry on architecture has never worked before except in iphone where they had a huge first mover advantage.

larkost 3y ago
I think the argument that this might not be great in the long run is worth considering, but in the short run I think that their results over the last few years are nothing short of astonishing. Specifically their laptops, especially when not plugged into a power source, have both stunning performance and battery life at the same time. Yes there are competitor chips from AMD and the like that are faster when plugged in, but at a power budget that mean they are severely throttled when unplugged. This is what Apple cares about, and at this point they are unmatched. Apple likes to have fast desktop machines (and they do), but they don't care about that nearly as much as they care about laptops-in-laptop-mode. We are a couple of years into this, and Intel is making noises about trying to match this, but has not yet, and Apple seems to be pulling further ahead in specifically this area. And they have a huge overlap in this focus in the development of the related processors for their iPhones/iPads/AppleTV products, and the upcoming headset. A lot of the development work gets largely reused in that other space, making Apples ROI even better. So long as their is a big enough market that cares about that (and from the look of sales, there is), Apple's strategy seems to be a winning one.
- flashback2199 3y ago
  They are making themselves more different from the rest of the market instead of "the same but better" which brought people back to the mac in the first place. It used to be as a normal person you bought the latest Mac and it came with the latest i7 and you didn't even think about it and none of your friends on PC could say anything bad about it because it was the same chip they had. Now it's like woo M chip is so different and fast look at my new Mac guys and then your friends who have PC say actually it's not faster it's just more power efficient and now the seed of wondering if Apple is really better has been planted whether or not it's totally true. I've already started seeing this happen on forums. The average person buying a Mac doesn't want to have to think about the nuances of specs and once they start digging into specs they might find themselves buying a PC instead. But we'll see, maybe the past won't repeat itself this time.
  - foldr 3y ago
    >It used to be as a normal person you bought the latest Mac and it came with the latest i7 and you didn't even think about it and none of your friends on PC could say anything bad about it because it was the same chip they had. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of people who buy computers have conversations like this with their friends. I am a software engineer and could not care less which chips my friends have in their laptops.
    - flashback2199 3y ago
      Then why is their marketing right now all about the chip not the product
  - astrange 3y ago
    Why are you arguing about PC performance with your friends? Don't you have something better to do? The biggest advantage of ARM over x86 is security, efficiency is second. Performance is nice to have but is kind of coincidental (depending on workload) and I'd expect everyone else to catch up.
    - flashback2199 3y ago
      Are you lost? This is HN, I talk with people about computers a lot.
      - astrange 3y ago
        Yeah but you probably shouldn't. In my experience enthusiasts/power users aren't actually any more accurate on this subject than, say, your grandma. They just know bigger words they can use in conversations. So there's got to be something either more productive or more grass-touching to do.
aseo 3y ago
I always understood the move to Apple Silicon was also for supply chain concerns, and not just technical. I remember reading that Apple would often express frustration at having to align their products' schedules based on Intel's schedules, and there would be a lack of support from Intel in their collaboration -- I could see this is a a valid bottleneck for Apple, and this isn't their first rodeo in processor transitions. Of course, now, their bottleneck moves down the supply chain and will be TSMC, but TSMC seems to be happy to provide whatever Apple asks for, as seen with their large 3nm orders.
- flashback2199 3y ago
  So why work only with Intel and not also with AMD. Never understood that. They chose vendor lock in so of course the vendor is going to sit on it same as Motorola did and later IBM. Now they still have vendor lock in except the vendor is internal. From a distance, it looks super dumb, betting that you can do better with an internal project than playing off the established duopoly. I'm sure I'm too out of the know to understand.
  - acdha 3y ago
    One thing to remember is that hardware designs have a much longer lead time than software and significant support commitments since they need to maintain a business relationship for a decade. When AMD started gaining on speed versus Intel, especially for the thermally-constrained systems Apple sells, Apple already had an in-house CPU design team which was doing good work and they were quite familiar with the benefits in terms of roadmap coordination, pricing, and support.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    Apple used the AMD chips that didn't absolutely suck: the GPUs (and they still got plenty of criticism for that). AMD's CPUs were not at all suitable for Apple's most important products until the past few years. The first Zen mobile processors were only a year before Intel's 10nm Ice Lake.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mdasen 3y ago
I certainly thought this back in 2012 when Apple started designing their own mobile CPU cores. How could Apple compete with ARM's designs which would have much greater economies of scale or with Qualcomm who would be shipping way more units than Apple? More than a decade later and it's proven to be a durable competitive advantage. I would point out that Apple had no first mover advantage with the iPhone. Apple was using standard ARM cores for the first 5 years. It's not like ARM didn't have a multi-decade head start on Apple designing ARM cores. There are certainly risks, but so far it looks like Apple is making the right decision. Intel and AMD are mostly still targeting a higher power/thermal level than Apple is looking for. Apple likes being able to run things without relying on an external GPU. Having the ability to design things themselves means they're able to make what is most important to their users. With Intel, Apple was always at the whims of what Intel wanted to produce. It took forever to get the 1038NG7 28W part from Intel which meant that Apple couldn't offer a 13" laptop with the speed that a lot of users wanted. It also meant that they were beholden to crappy Intel graphics - even as they paid up for the Iris graphics. With their own CPUs, their destiny is in their hands. It's worked extremely well for the iPhone and it's working well for their Macs too. One of the things to remember: Apple already needs to design these cores for their iPhones and iPads. Once you're doing that, it makes a certain amount of sense to re-use those core designs for the Macs. It isn't zero effort, but they aren't starting from scratch. I'd also note that Apple tends to do less than a lot of companies and the same applies to their processors. Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm are trying to make parts for a huge range of devices. Apple has a much narrower field of products. While Qualcomm is trying to create processors for $100 cheap phones, Apple just goes with a single CPU for its mobile devices (sometimes using last year's CPU for some devices). With the Mac, Apple has a little more variety, but it's still pretty constrained. An M Ultra is basically just two M Maxes put together. Most of the time, the design is basically the same and Apple has just changed the core count or something like that. Will Apple compete with Nvidia's GPUs? Probably not, but an M2 Ultra is competing with an Nvidia RTX 3070 desktop GPU. Sure, that's not the current generation or Nvidia's highest spec, but it's still good - and OpenCL isn't great on Mac so it isn't even a fair test. The new M3s have much upgraded graphics and it'll be interesting to see how well they do. You can say it has never worked before, but I think that might ignore a few things. First, one of the reasons that Intel came to dominate things is because everyone who tried to vertically integrate their processors tried to charge too much. Regardless of what you think of Apple's pricing, they aren't charging more for the privilege of their M processors than they were for their Intel ones. I think it also ignores the fact that Apple has so much money. Finally, in terms of cores shipped in the segments that Apple is shipping them, they're huge. ARM isn't shipping many X-series cores (their top performance cores). They're mostly shipping lower spec'd cores. There aren't a ton of flagship Android phones being sold. Intel is mostly shipping lower-end laptop CPUs destined for machines in the $400-800 range, server CPUs, etc. Apple has a lot of scale for the cores it is designing. There is risk, but Apple took that risk a decade ago with their iPhone CPUs and they've had a great advantage there. While Intel and others are looking to revitalize their CPU game, it seems like they're doing it at a higher thermal/power level than Apple is looking for - and trying to benchmark themselves against Apple parts at a fraction of the power. Apple is getting to design parts that do what they need and they've proven that they can beat the industry for more than a decade. I'd say it was the right decision to move to Apple Silicon for Macs.

larkost 3y ago

I think the argument that this might not be great in the long run is worth considering, but in the short run I think that their results over the last few years are nothing short of astonishing. Specifically their laptops, especially when not plugged into a power source, have both stunning performance and battery life at the same time. Yes there are competitor chips from AMD and the like that are faster when plugged in, but at a power budget that mean they are severely throttled when unplugged. This is what Apple cares about, and at this point they are unmatched. Apple likes to have fast desktop machines (and they do), but they don't care about that nearly as much as they care about laptops-in-laptop-mode. We are a couple of years into this, and Intel is making noises about trying to match this, but has not yet, and Apple seems to be pulling further ahead in specifically this area. And they have a huge overlap in this focus in the development of the related processors for their iPhones/iPads/AppleTV products, and the upcoming headset. A lot of the development work gets largely reused in that other space, making Apples ROI even better. So long as their is a big enough market that cares about that (and from the look of sales, there is), Apple's strategy seems to be a winning one.

flashback2199 3y ago
They are making themselves more different from the rest of the market instead of "the same but better" which brought people back to the mac in the first place. It used to be as a normal person you bought the latest Mac and it came with the latest i7 and you didn't even think about it and none of your friends on PC could say anything bad about it because it was the same chip they had. Now it's like woo M chip is so different and fast look at my new Mac guys and then your friends who have PC say actually it's not faster it's just more power efficient and now the seed of wondering if Apple is really better has been planted whether or not it's totally true. I've already started seeing this happen on forums. The average person buying a Mac doesn't want to have to think about the nuances of specs and once they start digging into specs they might find themselves buying a PC instead. But we'll see, maybe the past won't repeat itself this time.
- foldr 3y ago
  >It used to be as a normal person you bought the latest Mac and it came with the latest i7 and you didn't even think about it and none of your friends on PC could say anything bad about it because it was the same chip they had. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of people who buy computers have conversations like this with their friends. I am a software engineer and could not care less which chips my friends have in their laptops.
  - flashback2199 3y ago
    Then why is their marketing right now all about the chip not the product
- astrange 3y ago
  Why are you arguing about PC performance with your friends? Don't you have something better to do? The biggest advantage of ARM over x86 is security, efficiency is second. Performance is nice to have but is kind of coincidental (depending on workload) and I'd expect everyone else to catch up.
  - flashback2199 3y ago
    Are you lost? This is HN, I talk with people about computers a lot.
    - astrange 3y ago
      Yeah but you probably shouldn't. In my experience enthusiasts/power users aren't actually any more accurate on this subject than, say, your grandma. They just know bigger words they can use in conversations. So there's got to be something either more productive or more grass-touching to do.

aseo 3y ago

I always understood the move to Apple Silicon was also for supply chain concerns, and not just technical. I remember reading that Apple would often express frustration at having to align their products' schedules based on Intel's schedules, and there would be a lack of support from Intel in their collaboration -- I could see this is a a valid bottleneck for Apple, and this isn't their first rodeo in processor transitions. Of course, now, their bottleneck moves down the supply chain and will be TSMC, but TSMC seems to be happy to provide whatever Apple asks for, as seen with their large 3nm orders.

flashback2199 3y ago
So why work only with Intel and not also with AMD. Never understood that. They chose vendor lock in so of course the vendor is going to sit on it same as Motorola did and later IBM. Now they still have vendor lock in except the vendor is internal. From a distance, it looks super dumb, betting that you can do better with an internal project than playing off the established duopoly. I'm sure I'm too out of the know to understand.
- acdha 3y ago
  One thing to remember is that hardware designs have a much longer lead time than software and significant support commitments since they need to maintain a business relationship for a decade. When AMD started gaining on speed versus Intel, especially for the thermally-constrained systems Apple sells, Apple already had an in-house CPU design team which was doing good work and they were quite familiar with the benefits in terms of roadmap coordination, pricing, and support.
- wtallis 3y ago
  Apple used the AMD chips that didn't absolutely suck: the GPUs (and they still got plenty of criticism for that). AMD's CPUs were not at all suitable for Apple's most important products until the past few years. The first Zen mobile processors were only a year before Intel's 10nm Ice Lake.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mdasen 3y ago

I certainly thought this back in 2012 when Apple started designing their own mobile CPU cores. How could Apple compete with ARM's designs which would have much greater economies of scale or with Qualcomm who would be shipping way more units than Apple? More than a decade later and it's proven to be a durable competitive advantage. I would point out that Apple had no first mover advantage with the iPhone. Apple was using standard ARM cores for the first 5 years. It's not like ARM didn't have a multi-decade head start on Apple designing ARM cores. There are certainly risks, but so far it looks like Apple is making the right decision. Intel and AMD are mostly still targeting a higher power/thermal level than Apple is looking for. Apple likes being able to run things without relying on an external GPU. Having the ability to design things themselves means they're able to make what is most important to their users. With Intel, Apple was always at the whims of what Intel wanted to produce. It took forever to get the 1038NG7 28W part from Intel which meant that Apple couldn't offer a 13" laptop with the speed that a lot of users wanted. It also meant that they were beholden to crappy Intel graphics - even as they paid up for the Iris graphics. With their own CPUs, their destiny is in their hands. It's worked extremely well for the iPhone and it's working well for their Macs too. One of the things to remember: Apple already needs to design these cores for their iPhones and iPads. Once you're doing that, it makes a certain amount of sense to re-use those core designs for the Macs. It isn't zero effort, but they aren't starting from scratch. I'd also note that Apple tends to do less than a lot of companies and the same applies to their processors. Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm are trying to make parts for a huge range of devices. Apple has a much narrower field of products. While Qualcomm is trying to create processors for $100 cheap phones, Apple just goes with a single CPU for its mobile devices (sometimes using last year's CPU for some devices). With the Mac, Apple has a little more variety, but it's still pretty constrained. An M Ultra is basically just two M Maxes put together. Most of the time, the design is basically the same and Apple has just changed the core count or something like that. Will Apple compete with Nvidia's GPUs? Probably not, but an M2 Ultra is competing with an Nvidia RTX 3070 desktop GPU. Sure, that's not the current generation or Nvidia's highest spec, but it's still good - and OpenCL isn't great on Mac so it isn't even a fair test. The new M3s have much upgraded graphics and it'll be interesting to see how well they do. You can say it has never worked before, but I think that might ignore a few things. First, one of the reasons that Intel came to dominate things is because everyone who tried to vertically integrate their processors tried to charge too much. Regardless of what you think of Apple's pricing, they aren't charging more for the privilege of their M processors than they were for their Intel ones. I think it also ignores the fact that Apple has so much money. Finally, in terms of cores shipped in the segments that Apple is shipping them, they're huge. ARM isn't shipping many X-series cores (their top performance cores). They're mostly shipping lower spec'd cores. There aren't a ton of flagship Android phones being sold. Intel is mostly shipping lower-end laptop CPUs destined for machines in the $400-800 range, server CPUs, etc. Apple has a lot of scale for the cores it is designing. There is risk, but Apple took that risk a decade ago with their iPhone CPUs and they've had a great advantage there. While Intel and others are looking to revitalize their CPU game, it seems like they're doing it at a higher thermal/power level than Apple is looking for - and trying to benchmark themselves against Apple parts at a fraction of the power. Apple is getting to design parts that do what they need and they've proven that they can beat the industry for more than a decade. I'd say it was the right decision to move to Apple Silicon for Macs.