6 ms·

What would happen to the cost, battery life, and size of an A10-powered MacBook Air? It would be worse in almost every aspect. The cost wouldn't change much,

by ggreer 12y ago

What would happen to the cost, battery life, and size of an A10-powered MacBook Air? It would be worse in almost every aspect. The cost wouldn't change much, and Apple wouldn't profit much more from the switch. The cited CPU cost is the suggested retail price. Apple's volume lets them negotiate huge discounts. Battery life would go up a bit, but battery life is already pretty good on Apple laptops. My 2013 11" Air gets 8 hours easily, but can go as long as 12 or as short as 2 depending on screen brightness and CPU usage. Unless you're keeping the CPU busy, the screen is the biggest consumer of power. Cutting CPU power consumption in half would only increase battery life by 20-ish%. The PowerPC to Intel transition worked for several reasons. Most importantly, Intel CPUs were much faster than PowerPC. In everyday usage, the fastest ARM chips are 10x slower than a quad-core Haswell. Moving to x86 also increased the features of Macs, allowing them to dual-boot Windows and efficiently virtualize other x86-based OSes. Switching to ARM would backtrack on both fronts. An ARM-based Apple laptop would have no boot camp, no Windows virtualization, and no efficient emulation of legacy applications. CPUs are only a small part of why tablets have longer battery life than laptops. Tablets have no keyboard, trackpad, or hinge, so they can basically be a giant battery with a screen attached. The iPad has a bigger battery than the 11" MacBook Air, despite the Air weighing 50% more and taking up 30% more volume. (Edit: This has recently changed. The 11" Air has a 38 watt-hour battery. The iPad 3 and 4 had a 42 watt-hour battery, but the iPad Air has a 32 watt-hour battery. Still, it's even smaller than the earlier iPads, massing less than half the 11" Air.) In short, it doesn't seem worthwhile to do all this work and sacrifice so much performance for some incremental increases in battery life and profit.

keithwarren 12y ago
I would also venture a guess that Apple may know a percentage if not even a majority are only interested in trying a Mac because the x86 proc gives them a bridge from Windows. If you take that away then mac sales may take a hit and possibly a significant one. Anecdotally I know for me, this would cause me to move from a top of the line Macbook Pro Retina to an Air or even a mini. Time and market has changed to where having a mac is a must for me as a professional developer but I won't spend 3K on a single machine whose primary differentiator is ability to compile iOS applications.
Symmetry 12y ago
You say that ARM chips are 10x slower than Haswells, but the difference isn't actually that large anymore and for Apple's A7 it's around 3x versus a normal desktop chip like the 4770 and only 1.7X versus the 4250U you'd find in a Macbook Air[1]. Diminishing returns is a constant factor in engineering and I'd expect it to be very hard for Apple to make up the remaining distance between themselves and Intel, but we shouldn't exaggerate how large that difference is. And it is possible that some hypothetical A8 could be made competitive with Intel in the 15W range due to not having to make the compromises required to hit 4 GHz. I do agree that the ~10W you'd save by using an A7 versus an 4250U in a Mackbook Air would be a false economy. EDIT: To explain that bit about targeted power ranges a bit more, to hit high frequencies at a given process node (like 45 nm or whatever) you need to break up your logic into a fairly high number of simple stages separated by clock driven latches. A core that doesn't worry about hitting high frequencies can divide up it's logic into fewer stages, simplifying design and requiring fewer transistors for latching. [1]http://www.computingcompendium.com/p/arm-vs-intel-benchmarks.html http://www.computingcompendium.com/p/arm-vs-intel-benchmarks...
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  The difference is actually smaller, since we're comparing to a 1.3 Ghz Air, not a 3.3 Ghz (or whatever) desktop chip.
  - Symmetry 12y ago
    The 4250U I mentioned is the one in the 1.3 Ghz Air.
- rodgerd 12y ago
  > for Apple's A7 it's around 3x versus a normal desktop chip like the 4770 and only 1.7X versus the 4250U you'd find in a Macbook Air That would still be noticeably slower for native software, and unbearable for anything run under emulation. It would also be very painful for use cases such as people wanting occasional Windows applications or Linux VMs.
  - 12y ago
dgallagher 12y ago
What if Apple introduced workstation-class ARM another way; made a really powerful iPad/iPhone which could sit in a dock with keyboard/mouse/monitor, and run both iOS and ARM OSX? x86 computers could continue to exist for high-end users, but typical-users might be content with a hybrid tablet/computer. As ARM increased in power, x86 might dissapear entirely. Your comments on Windows compatibility/virtualization are spot on. Cloud streaming, Citrix/XenApp, can help in some situations here. In a few years virtually all major apps will probably be cloud/browser based (Microsoft Office, Adobe Suite, streaming games/apps, etc). Windows on Mac might not be as important then. It's possible Microsoft might release ARM Windows too (besides RT). If ARM gets popular in the datacenter you may see Windows Server 2015 ARM Edition. They've done this in the past with Itanium.
- Kadin 12y ago
  I think that it would be more likely that they'd just drop OS X in that scenario, and just have a beefed-up version of iOS with better keyboard and touchpad support. The number of users who would actually benefit from OS X vs iOS, but would not be ticked off at an inability to dual boot Windows or run any legacy applications, is very small indeed. iOS for ARM and OS X for x86 seems likely to remain in the future, but I do think that Apple could do a netbook or dockable tablet running ARM/iOS if they really thought there was demand. I'm not sure there is, but if the product was good enough they have shown in the past an ability to manufacture demand where it didn't exist previously...
- alialkhatib 12y ago
  What you're describing (a mobile device that docks into a workstation environment and powers the KVM) sounds like the dream mobile product designers have been having for well over a decade. I remember Canonical recently coming up with a concept of a phone that would do this (see: Ubuntu Edge[0]). That being said, the roadmap implied by iOS 8 and Yosemite strongly suggests that they're just going to bridge these gaps over the Internet. Google is also pretty clearly going in this direction, and given the ubiquity of Internet access (especially compared to available KVM terminals), I think this is the direction we're all going to go in. 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edge
higherpurpose 12y ago
The discounts aren't that "huge" when compared to ARM chip prices. They are only "huge" in comparison to other Intel customers. But the difference still remains something close to an order of magnitude. It's been shown before that Intel chips make up roughly 40 percent of the BOM/retail price (however you want to account it) of a PC. I doubt it's less than say 30 percent for an Apple Mac. The retail price for a high-end chip is like $30, max. The retail price for a Core i5 can be more than $300. So yes, I think the pricing difference can be significant. Or rather the profit difference for Apple. Apple could basically sell an ARM-based Macbook Air for $700, and make the same amount of profit per unit - BUT, sell a lot more of them, since they're $700 per unit. Apple could also sell it for $800, and make a lot more in profit per unit, too.
- dzhiurgis 12y ago
  Since when Apple cares about their bottom line?
- ayrx 12y ago
  "The retail price for a high-end chip is like $30, max." Citation?
- dragontamer 12y ago
  Microsoft tried to sell WinRT based ARM tablets at $300, and still couldn't sell any. In comparison, the $1000+ Surface Pro (once you get the keyboard attachment and everything, it breaks $1000 easy) has been getting pretty decent reviews and has fallen into a solid niche. Why would an ARM-based Mac do any better than WinRT?
baddox 12y ago
> It would be worse in almost every aspect. I don't see any explanation in your comment of how any of those aspects would be worse. You say "Apple wouldn't profit much more from the switch" because of the volume discounts they get from Intel, but you don't cite exactly how much of a discount they get, and you still concede that Apple's own ARM chips might have a lower cost. You say "battery life would go up a bit," and seem to imply that it could be up to 20%, which in my opinion is massive. And you don't address size. How then are any of those aspects worse? Even under your own seemingly pessimistic estimates, cost and battery life would improve.
- forgotketchup 12y ago
  Worse from the customer perspective. All their old apps now run probably 2 to 10 times slower, until new native binaries arrived. Compare that with the PPC->Intel transition, when old binary apps stayed about the same or maybe got a little faster. Also, emulating Intel binary apps with the CPU pegged for twice as long nullifies any energy savings, so the battery life in practice gets worse. Even if it is 20% for native binary apps, consumers are going to see "new computer, worse battery life, Og smash!" during the transition. You're not going to see a 20% gain in battery life for native binaries, though. The only way you'd see that is if the ARM CPU used no energy at all. Extraordinary claims, evidence, and all that. Is there really any reason to think that an Intel and ARM chip of comparable performance will have significantly different package sizes? Intel has always been the leader in process technology, so it would surprise me if the ARM die were any smaller.
ams6110 12y ago
The transition also worked because they had done it before. NEXTSTEP was already running on several CPU architectures (both big- and little-endian) including x86 before Apple even entered the picture. Undoubtedly Mac OS X is already running on ARM in Apple's labs. I don't think boot camp/Windows virtualization is relevant. I don't know anyone who uses these features on their Macs. I'm sure there are people for whom this is a make-or-break capability, but it may be that Apple thinks that at this point, they are expendable. Processor speed means a lot less than it used to. Even processors from half a decade ago are more than fast enough for what most people do with a computer.
ricw 12y ago
You're making the incorrect assumption that apple would in fact emulate. As they control the whole stack, they can (relatively) quickly switch architectures. They'd lose the market that does in fact install windows on mac hardware, though that is likely a negligible niche. So for the vast majority of their customers there would not be a performance penalty. Quite the opposite. Apple chips are in terms of tech already competitive with anything Intel has to offer [1], though of course currently optimised for mobile. Introduce a dedicated chip for macOS without the heat and power restrictions and Apple won't be chained to intel any more. It will save the extra $50-500 they pay intel for every chip. On top of that, the battery will be smaller/cheaper; it will require fewer external chips as the SoC will incorporate this functionality (also cheaper, more control); the retina graphics will be driven by a chip that is adequately powered and optimised (intels graphics chips are extremely slow): all of the sudden the whole package is extremely compelling. All you lose is windows compatibility. A small downside to multiple big upsides. [1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/7910/apples-cyclone-microarchitecture-detailed http://www.anandtech.com/show/7910/apples-cyclone-microarchi...
- mschuster91 12y ago
  No. You also lose compatibility with every game and most major applications like Adobe, since all of these use lots of highly optimized, handwritten assembler code for critical sections, as well of all code paths using x86 vector instructions or other hw acceleration. Thanks but no thanks.
  - dragontamer 12y ago
    They'd also lose compatibility with any 3rd party hardware (think ThunderBolt), any video editing device drivers which were made for the x86 platform will need to be recompiled for the ARM platform. A switch like this would kill Thunderbolt and many USB drivers. Besides, we already saw what happens when Microsoft tried to switch to ARM through WinRT. That was an absolute disaster. Why would Apple try to do the same?
    - ayrx 12y ago
bluthru 12y ago
You're forgetting about there being no fan. No fan noise, no fan volume, no openings for dust to get inside the system. I personally can't wait until laptop fans go away.
- The_Sponge 12y ago
  ARM doesn't mean "no fan". I can't wait for laptop fans to go away but currently the only fanless laptops you can buy are atom based and all of them outperform their ARM equivalents. When you start getting into "laptop level" power (ie comparable to pentium), even at the ARM level, you start seeing fans. For example, the first generation nvidia shield.

by ggreer 12y ago

keithwarren 12y ago

I would also venture a guess that Apple may know a percentage if not even a majority are only interested in trying a Mac because the x86 proc gives them a bridge from Windows. If you take that away then mac sales may take a hit and possibly a significant one. Anecdotally I know for me, this would cause me to move from a top of the line Macbook Pro Retina to an Air or even a mini. Time and market has changed to where having a mac is a must for me as a professional developer but I won't spend 3K on a single machine whose primary differentiator is ability to compile iOS applications.

Symmetry 12y ago

You say that ARM chips are 10x slower than Haswells, but the difference isn't actually that large anymore and for Apple's A7 it's around 3x versus a normal desktop chip like the 4770 and only 1.7X versus the 4250U you'd find in a Macbook Air[1]. Diminishing returns is a constant factor in engineering and I'd expect it to be very hard for Apple to make up the remaining distance between themselves and Intel, but we shouldn't exaggerate how large that difference is. And it is possible that some hypothetical A8 could be made competitive with Intel in the 15W range due to not having to make the compromises required to hit 4 GHz. I do agree that the ~10W you'd save by using an A7 versus an 4250U in a Mackbook Air would be a false economy. EDIT: To explain that bit about targeted power ranges a bit more, to hit high frequencies at a given process node (like 45 nm or whatever) you need to break up your logic into a fairly high number of simple stages separated by clock driven latches. A core that doesn't worry about hitting high frequencies can divide up it's logic into fewer stages, simplifying design and requiring fewer transistors for latching. [1]http://www.computingcompendium.com/p/arm-vs-intel-benchmarks.html http://www.computingcompendium.com/p/arm-vs-intel-benchmarks...

higherpurpose 12y ago
The difference is actually smaller, since we're comparing to a 1.3 Ghz Air, not a 3.3 Ghz (or whatever) desktop chip.
- Symmetry 12y ago
  The 4250U I mentioned is the one in the 1.3 Ghz Air.
rodgerd 12y ago
> for Apple's A7 it's around 3x versus a normal desktop chip like the 4770 and only 1.7X versus the 4250U you'd find in a Macbook Air That would still be noticeably slower for native software, and unbearable for anything run under emulation. It would also be very painful for use cases such as people wanting occasional Windows applications or Linux VMs.
- 12y ago

dgallagher 12y ago

What if Apple introduced workstation-class ARM another way; made a really powerful iPad/iPhone which could sit in a dock with keyboard/mouse/monitor, and run both iOS and ARM OSX? x86 computers could continue to exist for high-end users, but typical-users might be content with a hybrid tablet/computer. As ARM increased in power, x86 might dissapear entirely. Your comments on Windows compatibility/virtualization are spot on. Cloud streaming, Citrix/XenApp, can help in some situations here. In a few years virtually all major apps will probably be cloud/browser based (Microsoft Office, Adobe Suite, streaming games/apps, etc). Windows on Mac might not be as important then. It's possible Microsoft might release ARM Windows too (besides RT). If ARM gets popular in the datacenter you may see Windows Server 2015 ARM Edition. They've done this in the past with Itanium.

Kadin 12y ago
I think that it would be more likely that they'd just drop OS X in that scenario, and just have a beefed-up version of iOS with better keyboard and touchpad support. The number of users who would actually benefit from OS X vs iOS, but would not be ticked off at an inability to dual boot Windows or run any legacy applications, is very small indeed. iOS for ARM and OS X for x86 seems likely to remain in the future, but I do think that Apple could do a netbook or dockable tablet running ARM/iOS if they really thought there was demand. I'm not sure there is, but if the product was good enough they have shown in the past an ability to manufacture demand where it didn't exist previously...
alialkhatib 12y ago
What you're describing (a mobile device that docks into a workstation environment and powers the KVM) sounds like the dream mobile product designers have been having for well over a decade. I remember Canonical recently coming up with a concept of a phone that would do this (see: Ubuntu Edge[0]). That being said, the roadmap implied by iOS 8 and Yosemite strongly suggests that they're just going to bridge these gaps over the Internet. Google is also pretty clearly going in this direction, and given the ubiquity of Internet access (especially compared to available KVM terminals), I think this is the direction we're all going to go in. 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edge

higherpurpose 12y ago

The discounts aren't that "huge" when compared to ARM chip prices. They are only "huge" in comparison to other Intel customers. But the difference still remains something close to an order of magnitude. It's been shown before that Intel chips make up roughly 40 percent of the BOM/retail price (however you want to account it) of a PC. I doubt it's less than say 30 percent for an Apple Mac. The retail price for a high-end chip is like $30, max. The retail price for a Core i5 can be more than $300. So yes, I think the pricing difference can be significant. Or rather the profit difference for Apple. Apple could basically sell an ARM-based Macbook Air for $700, and make the same amount of profit per unit - BUT, sell a lot more of them, since they're $700 per unit. Apple could also sell it for $800, and make a lot more in profit per unit, too.

dzhiurgis 12y ago
Since when Apple cares about their bottom line?
ayrx 12y ago
"The retail price for a high-end chip is like $30, max." Citation?
dragontamer 12y ago
Microsoft tried to sell WinRT based ARM tablets at $300, and still couldn't sell any. In comparison, the $1000+ Surface Pro (once you get the keyboard attachment and everything, it breaks $1000 easy) has been getting pretty decent reviews and has fallen into a solid niche. Why would an ARM-based Mac do any better than WinRT?

baddox 12y ago

> It would be worse in almost every aspect. I don't see any explanation in your comment of how any of those aspects would be worse. You say "Apple wouldn't profit much more from the switch" because of the volume discounts they get from Intel, but you don't cite exactly how much of a discount they get, and you still concede that Apple's own ARM chips might have a lower cost. You say "battery life would go up a bit," and seem to imply that it could be up to 20%, which in my opinion is massive. And you don't address size. How then are any of those aspects worse? Even under your own seemingly pessimistic estimates, cost and battery life would improve.

forgotketchup 12y ago
Worse from the customer perspective. All their old apps now run probably 2 to 10 times slower, until new native binaries arrived. Compare that with the PPC->Intel transition, when old binary apps stayed about the same or maybe got a little faster. Also, emulating Intel binary apps with the CPU pegged for twice as long nullifies any energy savings, so the battery life in practice gets worse. Even if it is 20% for native binary apps, consumers are going to see "new computer, worse battery life, Og smash!" during the transition. You're not going to see a 20% gain in battery life for native binaries, though. The only way you'd see that is if the ARM CPU used no energy at all. Extraordinary claims, evidence, and all that. Is there really any reason to think that an Intel and ARM chip of comparable performance will have significantly different package sizes? Intel has always been the leader in process technology, so it would surprise me if the ARM die were any smaller.

ams6110 12y ago

The transition also worked because they had done it before. NEXTSTEP was already running on several CPU architectures (both big- and little-endian) including x86 before Apple even entered the picture. Undoubtedly Mac OS X is already running on ARM in Apple's labs. I don't think boot camp/Windows virtualization is relevant. I don't know anyone who uses these features on their Macs. I'm sure there are people for whom this is a make-or-break capability, but it may be that Apple thinks that at this point, they are expendable. Processor speed means a lot less than it used to. Even processors from half a decade ago are more than fast enough for what most people do with a computer.

ricw 12y ago

You're making the incorrect assumption that apple would in fact emulate. As they control the whole stack, they can (relatively) quickly switch architectures. They'd lose the market that does in fact install windows on mac hardware, though that is likely a negligible niche. So for the vast majority of their customers there would not be a performance penalty. Quite the opposite. Apple chips are in terms of tech already competitive with anything Intel has to offer [1], though of course currently optimised for mobile. Introduce a dedicated chip for macOS without the heat and power restrictions and Apple won't be chained to intel any more. It will save the extra $50-500 they pay intel for every chip. On top of that, the battery will be smaller/cheaper; it will require fewer external chips as the SoC will incorporate this functionality (also cheaper, more control); the retina graphics will be driven by a chip that is adequately powered and optimised (intels graphics chips are extremely slow): all of the sudden the whole package is extremely compelling. All you lose is windows compatibility. A small downside to multiple big upsides. [1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/7910/apples-cyclone-microarchitecture-detailed http://www.anandtech.com/show/7910/apples-cyclone-microarchi...

mschuster91 12y ago
No. You also lose compatibility with every game and most major applications like Adobe, since all of these use lots of highly optimized, handwritten assembler code for critical sections, as well of all code paths using x86 vector instructions or other hw acceleration. Thanks but no thanks.
- dragontamer 12y ago
  They'd also lose compatibility with any 3rd party hardware (think ThunderBolt), any video editing device drivers which were made for the x86 platform will need to be recompiled for the ARM platform. A switch like this would kill Thunderbolt and many USB drivers. Besides, we already saw what happens when Microsoft tried to switch to ARM through WinRT. That was an absolute disaster. Why would Apple try to do the same?
  - ayrx 12y ago

bluthru 12y ago

You're forgetting about there being no fan. No fan noise, no fan volume, no openings for dust to get inside the system. I personally can't wait until laptop fans go away.

The_Sponge 12y ago
ARM doesn't mean "no fan". I can't wait for laptop fans to go away but currently the only fanless laptops you can buy are atom based and all of them outperform their ARM equivalents. When you start getting into "laptop level" power (ie comparable to pentium), even at the ARM level, you start seeing fans. For example, the first generation nvidia shield.