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I think ARM performance is still way off from the i5/i7 x86_64 you get at the higher-end macs, and rosetta-style x86_64 emulation on arm is probably even furthe

by 0x0 12y ago

I think ARM performance is still way off from the i5/i7 x86_64 you get at the higher-end macs, and rosetta-style x86_64 emulation on arm is probably even further off. Lack of virtualbox/vmware support is also a bit of a showstopper, at least for cross-browser testing and web development. My guess is that ARM based high-end macs are at least 3-5 years away from today. At least with Adobe CC being a monthly subscription and all, there won't be an extra upgrade cost for the arch switch :)

cpeterso 12y ago
Given how long Adobe took to add 64 bit support, I think we will be waiting for ARM ports of CC applications for a long time.
- wtallis 12y ago
  Adobe took forever to add 64-bit support because Apple wasn't offering 64-bit versions of many Classic Mac OS APIs, for x86-64 or PPC64. Now that Adobe's using OS X-native APIs, they can benefit from the proven portability of those frameworks: OS X has run on PPC, x86, and ARM in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of each, and NeXTSTEP also ran on 68k, SPARC, and PA-RISC.
  - cmsj 12y ago
    (Assuming Adobe isn't using lots of x86 assembly in its low level image/video code)
    - jakobegger 12y ago
      You might run into issues even if you don't use any assembly at all. For example, unlike x86, ARM doesn't support unaligned memory access. Took me some time to figure out when I ported some OS X code to iOS.
noahl 12y ago
Given the large base of x86 applications they will want to support, Apple might ship computers with both x86 and ARM chips. If the ARM chip was running the OS, it could turn off the x86 chip when it wasn't needed to reduce power consumption, and Apple might hope that applications would migrate to the ARM chip over time, until it could finally remove x86 entirely. However, I would be worried about the power consumption of the two chips, even with the ability to turn off the x86 one on demand. Maybe Apple would be able to reduce the power consumption when the computer was running only on the ARM chip enough that it would be worth it overall.
- __bjoernd 12y ago
  But then all software will have to be shipped as ARM and as x86 binaries. Sure, that is possible engineering-wise, but at least the binaries are going to double in size. And there may be slight issues when you migrate applications between the ARM and x86 world with respect to data layout etc.
  - X-Istence 12y ago
    Didn't Apple do something like that before? You know, Universal binaries that contained both PowerPC and Intel within a single fat binary... Double size binaries is nothing compared to the amount of storage you have today.
    - 0x0 12y ago
      They did and still do, sometimes even 3 or more archs in the same binary; On OSX: combinations of PPC, x86, x86_64 could be built On iOS: default at the moment is a triple of armv7, armv7s, arm64, I believe. For a while used to be armv6+armv7.
      - ams6110 12y ago
        Support for this dates all the way back to NEXTSTEP which ran on multiple architectures (68K, x86, and IIRC Sparc and/or PA-RISC) back in the 1990s.
hvjackson 12y ago
I don't think Apple gives two hoots about VM support. They only released Bootcamp because it cost them almost nothing, but I think they would drop it in a heartbeat if it let them lower power consumption in laptops.
- 0x0 12y ago
  With the switch to x86 and with hardware virtualization available via virtualbox/vmware fusion/parallels, combined with a much larger user base with many having switched over from pc, I think they may find the demand for backwards compability and virtualization is much greater now than during their ppc->intel switch (which happened at a time where, at least from my vantage points, macs were still considered a fringe/specialists/niche platform)
cmsj 12y ago
FWIW, there are ARM instructions for virtualisation. Linux's KVM hypervisor supports them.

by 0x0 12y ago

cpeterso 12y ago

Given how long Adobe took to add 64 bit support, I think we will be waiting for ARM ports of CC applications for a long time.

wtallis 12y ago
Adobe took forever to add 64-bit support because Apple wasn't offering 64-bit versions of many Classic Mac OS APIs, for x86-64 or PPC64. Now that Adobe's using OS X-native APIs, they can benefit from the proven portability of those frameworks: OS X has run on PPC, x86, and ARM in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of each, and NeXTSTEP also ran on 68k, SPARC, and PA-RISC.
- cmsj 12y ago
  (Assuming Adobe isn't using lots of x86 assembly in its low level image/video code)
  - jakobegger 12y ago
    You might run into issues even if you don't use any assembly at all. For example, unlike x86, ARM doesn't support unaligned memory access. Took me some time to figure out when I ported some OS X code to iOS.

noahl 12y ago

Given the large base of x86 applications they will want to support, Apple might ship computers with both x86 and ARM chips. If the ARM chip was running the OS, it could turn off the x86 chip when it wasn't needed to reduce power consumption, and Apple might hope that applications would migrate to the ARM chip over time, until it could finally remove x86 entirely. However, I would be worried about the power consumption of the two chips, even with the ability to turn off the x86 one on demand. Maybe Apple would be able to reduce the power consumption when the computer was running only on the ARM chip enough that it would be worth it overall.

__bjoernd 12y ago
But then all software will have to be shipped as ARM and as x86 binaries. Sure, that is possible engineering-wise, but at least the binaries are going to double in size. And there may be slight issues when you migrate applications between the ARM and x86 world with respect to data layout etc.
- X-Istence 12y ago
  Didn't Apple do something like that before? You know, Universal binaries that contained both PowerPC and Intel within a single fat binary... Double size binaries is nothing compared to the amount of storage you have today.
  - 0x0 12y ago
    They did and still do, sometimes even 3 or more archs in the same binary; On OSX: combinations of PPC, x86, x86_64 could be built On iOS: default at the moment is a triple of armv7, armv7s, arm64, I believe. For a while used to be armv6+armv7.
    - ams6110 12y ago
      Support for this dates all the way back to NEXTSTEP which ran on multiple architectures (68K, x86, and IIRC Sparc and/or PA-RISC) back in the 1990s.

hvjackson 12y ago

I don't think Apple gives two hoots about VM support. They only released Bootcamp because it cost them almost nothing, but I think they would drop it in a heartbeat if it let them lower power consumption in laptops.

0x0 12y ago
With the switch to x86 and with hardware virtualization available via virtualbox/vmware fusion/parallels, combined with a much larger user base with many having switched over from pc, I think they may find the demand for backwards compability and virtualization is much greater now than during their ppc->intel switch (which happened at a time where, at least from my vantage points, macs were still considered a fringe/specialists/niche platform)

cmsj 12y ago

FWIW, there are ARM instructions for virtualisation. Linux's KVM hypervisor supports them.