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Desktops (Apple) Apple

Apple To Release First ARM Mac Without Intel Processor in Next 18 Months, Predicts Kuo (9to5mac.com) 141

Posted by msmash from the Shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Ming-Chi Kuo is out with a new analyst note today and the most interesting part of his forecast is that Apple will release its first Mac with an ARM processor in the first half of 2021. From a report: Kuo is predicting that one of Apple's new products to be released within the next 12-18 months will be a Mac with an in-house processor, instead of using an Intel CPU. There have been growing reports over the last couple of years about Apple making the switch to a custom-designed ARM processor for its Macs and today's report gives a concrete timeframe for when to expect that launch, which has actually held true since Kuo's prediction back in 2018. Since the coronavirus outbreak, Kuo highlights that Apple has been "more aggressive" with its funding for research, development, and production of 5nm process chips that are expected to show up in the first Macs with ARM CPUs. That's because 5nm chips will be integral to iPhone, iPad later this year, as well as Macs come 2021.
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Apple To Release First ARM Mac Without Intel Processor in Next 18 Months, Predicts Kuo More

Apple To Release First ARM Mac Without Intel Processor in Next 18 Months, Predicts Kuo

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  • A broken clock gives the correct time twice a day (Score:5, Insightful)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @02:13PM (#59761566)

    I've been hearing this prediction since apple acquired P.A. Semi in 2008...

    At some point it will happen, no doubt about it, but has been about 8 years of "next 18 months"... so...

    When it finally happens, do not go about praising the anal-yst about his/her acurate prediction. Instead, search the web for the other 8 preceding mistaken predictions.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      You've "been hearing this prediction" publicly since 2008? If so, citations? If not, are you one of these "anal-yst"s you speak of?

      Also, 2008 is far more than 8 years ago, so get your lies and exaggerations straight.

      As for the real question, what does an ARM Mac do for the customer? Is it faster, cheaper, lighter, more efficient? Why should anyone care?

      • Re: A broken clock gives the correct time twice a (Score:5, Informative)

        by saloomy ( 2817221 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @02:28PM (#59761656)
        Arm would presumably have better power management, bringing MacBook power lifecycles closer to the iPad. Software wise, might break boot camp, or make it vastly slower. Last time they went PPC to x86, the transition was pretty smooth. Because Apple provided all the tools (Xcode, App Store) they were able to manage binary selection in a fairly painless way. Presumably they'd dust the covers off some of those strategies and be intelligent about it. I'd assume though that they wouldn't just drop a new architecture on the public. They should be announcing a transition / coexistence model so developers can develop. My gut tells me that if a MacBook has an ARM cpu, it will be what drives the OS and any of the common apps, but an X86 co-processor will remain to keep boot camp functionality, support other software, and allow software that requires Xeon level performance like final cut and Logic Pro.
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dfghjk ( 711126 )

            Transmeta was not the first to do x86 code translation, not even for x86. They weren't even second on the x86. What they did was implement that on an VLIW architecture and they failed because it sucked. Let's not glorify losers in the market, Apple would not "remember Transmeta" except to have a laugh.

          • There exists an x86 emulator for ARM since 1987:

            - Acorn Archimedes PC Emulator Installation leaflet [computinghistory.org.uk]
            - PCW January 1988 Review [computinghistory.org.uk]

            I used it at the time, with MS-DOS 3.21, mainly for running the Topspeed Modula-2 compiler for programming class, and also to open the odd WordPerfect or DBase II file. It worked quite well, emulating the PC at XT (8086) speed in the AT (80286) era.

        • Last time they went PPC to x86, the transition was pretty smooth.

          ...but the earlier transition from MacOS to OSX was not. I suspect they may be willing to drop backward compatibility with x86 in favor of "sideways" compatibility with iOS apps.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dfghjk ( 711126 )

            There transition plan will be "what, you don't get all your apps through the App Store?"

          • Last time they went PPC to x86, the transition was pretty smooth.

            ...but the earlier transition from MacOS to OSX was not. I suspect they may be willing to drop backward compatibility with x86 in favor of "sideways" compatibility with iOS apps.

            The transition from MacOS (Classic) to OS X was about a smooth as it could be; Apple's brilliant CarbonLib saw to that, as well as the OS 9 Virtual Machine built into (well, bolted-onto) OS X for awhile. In fact, it was so successful, Apple had to intentionally discontinue that seamless integration, or Adobe and Avid would never have ported their Applications to OS X-native!

            Remember how long it was before ProTools and Photoshop were real OS X Applications? I do...

          • Actually it was. MacOS Applications ran under Rosetta. I ran Diablo II on my 17" OS X 10.3 later 10.4 just fine. For most Apps I did not even know if they were 68k or PPC. And on top of that: it included a complete MacOS 9.x Emulator.

            • Actually it was. MacOS Applications ran under Rosetta. I ran Diablo II on my 17" OS X 10.3 later 10.4 just fine. For most Apps I did not even know if they were 68k or PPC. And on top of that: it included a complete MacOS 9.x Emulator.

              That was actually a separate Transition from the MacOS (Classic) to OS X transition. Rosetta was for the PPC to Intel Transition; there wasn't an actual "product name" for the 68k to PPC transition built into MacOS (Classic). But you are correct that it worked great! So great that Apple was able to drag their feet on converting some of their OS-code to PPC from 68k for a long, long time.

              By contrast, Apple purchased Rosetta (PPC emulation for Intel), and it was far less "performant" than the 68k -> PPC JI

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dfghjk ( 711126 )

          What value is it to Apple to introduce an ARM Mac that also includes an "X86 co-processor" to keep Boot Camp? Makes no sense.

          Also, "better power management" doesn't bring "MacBook power lifecycles closer to the iPad", it's much more complicated than that.

          Speculating based on not understanding the issues isn't valuable, even if it is standard for /.

          • Compared to an iPad, the MacBook has worse battery life.

            If some of the tasks you ran could be run on an 8w A*X processor, and not a 35w Intel i5 CPU (even with all the power savings Intel chip may have), that will reduce the power requirement, extending battery life.

            What the delta in savings on power consumption and its impact on battery life might be is speculation, but there is reason to believe it would be for better battery life, something they could boast about (and isn't something I speculated on)

        • Software wise, might break boot camp, or make it vastly slower.

          No. Boot camp is not about emulation. It is about booting a native version of Windows running directly on the hardware as it would on any other PC. Boot Camp on an ARM based mac will boot into Windows 10 for ARM. Windows, like macOS, will be native code.

          Last time they went PPC to x86, the transition was pretty smooth. Because Apple provided all the tools (Xcode, App Store) they were able to manage binary selection in a fairly painless way.

          ARM is not a new architecture for developers given iOS devices, so the tools are already here to a very large degree.

          There may also be emulation for legacy apps. However there is another alternative. ARM based macs will be a specialized niche offering. I'

          • You perhaps are missing the most important point: with ARM + macOS on ARM you are pretty close in running iOS (iPad and iPhone/iPod) apps on it directly, or only a very thin iOS VM is needed for it.

            • You perhaps are missing the most important point: with ARM + macOS on ARM you are pretty close in running iOS (iPad and iPhone/iPod) apps on it directly, or only a very thin iOS VM is needed for it.

              They aren't going that way, apparently.

              Instead, there is macOS Catalyst:

              https://developer.apple.com/ma... [apple.com]

          • This path helps explain why the ordinary MacBook and the MacBook Air still exist. The two have gotten so similar it seems strangely redundant. Unless one of them goes ARM and the other stays Intel.

            I agree with all of your post, and in fact have been predicting exactly this for over a year, now. But I must offer a minor correction to the text, above.

            Apple quietly discontinued the 12" MacBook (non Air, non Pro) when they refreshed the Air about a year ago:

            https://9to5mac.com/2019/07/09... [9to5mac.com]

            Just FYI.

        • Arm would presumably have better power management

          I'm a chip guy (as are a lot of slashdotters), so I'm curious: how so? Only a small % of the chip deals with opcode decode.

      • Well there is this article [digitaltrends.com] from 2012 which is almost 8 years ago (it's from Nov) and itself cites Bloomberg (but that's paywalled). Certainly, I have heard this claim before so the OP seems to be right: if you keep on making the same prediction year after year for almost 8 years at some point you might luck out and get it right.

      • You've "been hearing this prediction" publicly since 2008? If so, citations? If not, are you one of these "anal-yst"s you speak of?

        Also, 2008 is far more than 8 years ago, so get your lies and exaggerations straight.

        As for the real question, what does an ARM Mac do for the customer? Is it faster, cheaper, lighter, more efficient? Why should anyone care?

        Curiously enough, the one thing that might suffer (at least somewhat) in all this would be Windows compatibility. Unless MS has its "Windows on Arm" (WOA?) JIT-Compiler-thing working really, really well, Windows 10 64-bit Applications will be essentially inaccessible on an ARM-based Mac (or any other ARM-based laptops) until that happens.

        Other than that, Apple has proven time and again that they can rather seamlessly pull-off Architecture changes; so I expect the sturm and drang to feel no "pain". And for s

        • Windows has run on ARM for a long time. It's a different license, though, if I'm not mistaken, so you can't just use your existing Windows license and will have to purchase a new one.

          • Windows has run on ARM for a long time. It's a different license, though, if I'm not mistaken, so you can't just use your existing Windows license and will have to purchase a new one.

            Apparently Windows on Arm for x64 is still not quite a "thing", at least the last time I looked.

            Of course it's a different license; that's MS' way...

            • It's a thing.
              Windows10 supports ARM64.
              What it doesn't support, is emulating x86-64. It only emulates x86.

              • It's a thing.

                Windows10 supports ARM64.

                What it doesn't support, is emulating x86-64. It only emulates x86.

                I meant x86-64 sorry!

                And according to the relevant page on MS' Windows-on-ARM "site" (which hasn't been updated since 2018 (bad sign!), 64-bit Windows emulation is still not a "thing". In fact, they really don't even talk about it (another bad sign)...

                https://docs.microsoft.com/en-... [microsoft.com]

                • Ya, I suspect it won't ever be a thing.
                  I own a Windows Arm laptop. x86 emulation is pretty terrible in performance. That won't get better with a more complicated ISA.

                  • Ya, I suspect it won't ever be a thing.

                    I own a Windows Arm laptop. x86 emulation is pretty terrible in performance. That won't get better with a more complicated ISA.

                    Really? Terrible? Even with JIT Compiling?!? Leave it to MS to mess up a wet dream!

                    Sigh. I wonder if Apple's massive gains in ARM (or even Arm) performance over the Qualcomm (I assume) SoC in your laptop, will make a significant difference?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by vux984 ( 928602 )

          Sure it's "seamless" in the sense that:

          a) "If anything breaks, Apple suggests you stop using it, and buy a new version."
          b) "Even if it doesn't break today, it 100% will break pretty soon, so you better start planning to buy a new version"

          Can you run 68k era apps on the latest OSX? No.
          Can you run PPC era apps on the latest OSX? No. Discontinued as of 10.7
          Can you run 32bit intel apps on the latest OSX? No. Discontinued as of 10.15

          MacOS Catalina released last year, hundreds of Mac games on steam broke and mo

          • Sure it's "seamless" in the sense that:

            a) "If anything breaks, Apple suggests you stop using it, and buy a new version."
            b) "Even if it doesn't break today, it 100% will break pretty soon, so you better start planning to buy a new version"

            Can you run 68k era apps on the latest OSX? No.
            Can you run PPC era apps on the latest OSX? No. Discontinued as of 10.7
            Can you run 32bit intel apps on the latest OSX? No. Discontinued as of 10.15

            MacOS Catalina released last year, hundreds of Mac games on steam broke and most will not ever be updated to 64bit.

            * Sure you can install and run emulators of your own on your own and that may or may not work, but that isn't officially endorsed or supported by Apple, so it doesn't count any more than being able to install an NES emulator.

            You're being ridiculous. Can you run 8086-based Applications (not "Apps") on Windows 10? Heck, even early Pentiums are left out under Windows 10. So, "No".

            Apple "prematurely" ended PPC Emulation in OS X past 10.6 for 2 reasons:

            1. Performance under Rosetta was not great. From what I remember, one of the biggest problems was there was an "Endian" problem between the PPC G5 and Intel CPUs that really screwed-up the ability to create a reasonable JIT-Compiler; or more precisely, one that could emit nice, tight

            • Afterall, when a new OS version comes out; your old one doesn't magically stop working...

              with apple new hardware forces an OS update right away.
              with windows they don't kill the old ones that fast.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

                Do you live in some fantasy world where your old hardware upgrades magically when Apple releases new hardware? Because old installs of macOS are not affected by new hardware in the real world.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

            You apparently have no fucking clue what the word transition means.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Or look into the record of that particular analyst. Maybe they just got lucky, or maybe thereâ(TM)s something more going on.

    • Yes, I'd mostly agree with you, but Kuo is pretty prolific when it comes to Apple. The predictions are often very specific and accurate.

    • When OS X was released. There was buzz around Apple Switching to Intel Processors back in the early 2000's. Noting how a lot of the OS design was more platform independent allowing a much easier migration to a different CPU.

      I Expect Apple after they dropped Power PC and moved to Intel, They began to find additional baskets to put their eggs in.

      Now that the Intel Core i Series is starting to show its age, AMD is out performing them, and the fact that if it is x86 compatible is less relevant then it has been

    • You're not wrong.

      BUT.

      Since 2008, we've seen Apple have to delay a lot of computers. They were pegged to the Intel timeline, and frankly, it burned them. No small part of the reason why they brought chip design under their roof is because it gives them a predictable schedule. When Intel screws up their timeline and Apple delays upgrading/updating their laptops, everyone blames Apple for it, and if there's one thing that Apple institutionally hates, it's being on the hook for other people's mistakes.

      For the l

      • That doesn't sound right. The vast majority of Macs don't come with the latest and greatest Intel processors.

        • That doesn't sound right. The vast majority of Macs don't come with the latest and greatest Intel processors.

          I think that is generally untrue when they are introduced. In fact, Apple is often one of the first customers of whatever CPU they decide to Upgrade-to. They just don't upgrade them every single time the Intel Rep. comes calling with the latest .00002% improvement in performance with the 10% price increase. Not to mention the fact that, in a company as picky as Apple, that "new" CPU, no matter how similar, has to be "Qualified" in every computer it is intended-for.

      • "No small part of the reason why they brought chip design under their roof is because it gives them a predictable schedule. When Intel screws up their timeline"

        Then Apple will get a chance to screw up their own timeline.

        "Apple's chips are far more power efficient than Intel's."

        Yes, but they're also far less powerful than Intel's, let alone AMD's. Running full OSX is already disappointingly slow on Intel processors, if you remember that it was just as snappy on a 25MHz '040 back when it was called NeXTStep,

  • Apple has had to work with others in the past. The challenge has been they are the small, but the advantage was they could pay real money. They were not asking for scraps like most of the PC market. They have gone through Motorola, IBM and Intel. They were able to leverage Intel who was only selling to those who wanted the cheapest product. Apple gave them a market for the high end product.

    It has been clear for a while that Intel is no longer giving Apple special treatment and that it can get R&D mon

    • They have gone through Motorola, IBM and Intel.

      ...and MOS if you go back to the Apple II.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      When Apple transitioned to PPC and to Intel, it did not present a "high end product" opportunity to processor manufacturers. During the PPC transition, PPC itself was very explicitly "similar performance at half the price" so you are clearly wrong there, and during the x86 transition Apple was not yet recovered from near bankruptcy and had zero market share.

      Sorry, but your premise is wrong. Apple today is viewed as a high end product, not then.

  • Intel versus Arm flame wars... (Score:3)

    by mschaffer ( 97223 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @02:46PM (#59761732)

    Intel versus Arm flame wars starting in ...3...2...1........

  • Doubt they will comply with ARM specs exactly (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @02:47PM (#59761736)

    I doubt they would even call it ARM .. at best they may say it is ARM based .. given Appleâ(TM)s modus operandi, why would they stick to exactly ARM when they have an architectural license that allows them to extend the instruction set in a proprietary manner?

    • Well at that point why wouldn't they start from scratch and stop paying royalties to ARM?
      If they pay ARM to get that license, it's because they think it has some value. If they are to design their own instruction set, they would be better off without ARM.

      • It can provide a starting point. They can change some opcodes and also add a few new instructions while keeping most of it the same.

        • You understand the goal of this license is to save money compared to the full license which would give them access to the full Cortex cores IP, right?

          • You understand the goal of this license is to save money compared to the full license which would give them access to the full Cortex cores IP, right?

            Apple already holds the highest-level license that ARM offers.

            They have access to whatever they want, ARM-wise, and literally more ARM experience than anyone on the planet.

      • They most likely don't pay royalties to Arm / Softbank. After all they used to own it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leptons ( 891340 )
      It has to be compatible with ARM so that it will run IOS apps, because that's practically the only software it will be able to run natively.

  • I presume that this is motivated by trying to get a better price for parts (which may or may not be passed on to the consumer. It's Apple) but I am wondering that if down the road I buy a ARM-based MacBook what differences in software will I see?

    I am thinking of the bad old days when developers had to ship "dual binaries" which had both Intel and PowerPC compilation targets in the same deliverable. Will we see that again?

    And I guess I would have to give up on running my Windows and AMD-64 Linux VMs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by f00zbll ( 526151 )
      more like they are tired of Intel not fixing speculative execution and having fab issues. I'm sure they noticed the expensive XEON is getting killed by AMD. Why would a sane person pay a premium, when they have their own chip designers in house? How many years have we been waiting for intel to fix their fab issues?

      • On the other hand, they may also be ready to move to AMD for their CPU. It's likely they're not going to want to continue down the Intel path. But there's more than one option. AMD already provides graphics chips for Macs.

      • I'm sure they noticed the expensive XEON is getting killed by AMD.

        They speculate that Apple's ARm chips will reach parity with i3 in 1-2 years. You aren't going to see threadripper class chips anytime soon. This is for Apple netbooks.

    • Yes, for a long while you will have dual arm/x64 binaries

      You will still be able to run windows in bootcamp, but it will be the arm version of windows

      Same with the VMs. You will run windows and Linux VMs, just arm windows and arm Linux.

      The machines will be less powerful, but also less power hungry.

      Most likely, performance per watt will be better than with intel (i.e. you will get more gains in power efficiency than losses in performance).

      In the begining the savings on the processors will be passed on to us c

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        You will still be able to run windows in bootcamp, but it will be the arm version of windows Same with the VMs. You will run windows and Linux VMs, just arm windows and arm Linux.

        Maybe. I find it far more likely that they'll make an iBook working like the iPhone/iPad for consumers and push x86 into the high end. Microsoft's RT line was closed, all Apple's ARM products are closed, if they let you install other operating systems I think that'd be unusually open source friendly for a company that's generally not.

        • You will still be able to run windows in bootcamp, but it will be the arm version of windows Same with the VMs. You will run windows and Linux VMs, just arm windows and arm Linux.

          Maybe. I find it far more likely that they'll make an iBook working like the iPhone/iPad for consumers and push x86 into the high end. Microsoft's RT line was closed, all Apple's ARM products are closed, if they let you install other operating systems I think that'd be unusually open source friendly for a company that's generally not.

          This will not be closed. If you want that, they will basically say "Then you want an iPad Pro."

          If Apple is actually wanting to transition to ARM (and I believe they are); then they cannot make ARM-based Macs anything less than Intel-based Macs. Nothing else makes sense.

          XCode (actually, Clang, right?) can already target ARM; so the (already Running-on-ARM, I'm sure!) XCode is but a pile of (already existing, I'm sure!) Frameworks away from Building for macOS-on-ARM (already Running under Emulation on Intel M

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      I am thinking of the bad old days when developers had to ship "dual binaries" which had both Intel and PowerPC compilation targets in the same deliverable. Will we see that again?

      I suppose that's possible, but a more likely (and less clunky) solution is that Apple will have developers compile their apps to an architecture-neutral, LLVM-based bytecode format, which will get translated/converted/recompiled/optimized (whatever you want to call it) to the local machine's exact CPU architecture as part of the application install process.

      That wouldn't be any more work for developers (or users) than the current Intel-only distribution method, and would have the advantage of allowing every

  • Thinking something NUC sized, has 2 display ports, usb-c for keyboard & mouse. Maybe a bit of local storage, but focus on iCloud Drive backed. Running iPadOS so it's highly configurable, but can be locked down. The push to cloud based services means so many 'standard computer users' need a fraction of what a Mac Mini can do.

    • Thinking something NUC sized, has 2 display ports, usb-c for keyboard & mouse.

      They already have a Mac Mini. They hate not selling a bundled screen because they lose out on so much markup and forced obsolescence.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        "They hate not selling a bundled screen because they lose out on so much markup and forced obsolescence." If that were the case, then they'd have stopped offering the Mac MIni.

        • They went without updating it for almost 5 years. Charging full retail for a 5-year old computer until they refreshed in 2018. The new one is not much faster, now two years old - and they're now massively overcharging for storage above 128GB. When they're already way more overpriced. A computer in 2020 with only an i3 and a 128GB solid state drive for $800.

    • Thinking something NUC sized, has 2 display ports, usb-c for keyboard & mouse.

      Maybe something like this. [virtuallyghetto.com]

  • Trendy nonsense spouting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by davebarnes ( 158106 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @03:24PM (#59761880)

    'Since the coronavirus outbreak, ...Apple has been "more aggressive" with its funding for research'
    A plague that is only a month old changes R&D plans?
    This is silly.

  • Apple will also remove the keyboard (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @04:04PM (#59762056)

    Apple will also remove the keyboard, to complete the transformation of Mac from computer to I-phone. You will like it. You will post that you like it on many social networking sites. You will need bigger pockets. Keep your eyes on the watch. You are getting sleepy.

  • App store only apple wants that 30% of adobe CC

  • In the past two times when Apple had switched from one processor architecture to another: Motorola 680x0 -> PowerPC, and PowerPC to Intel x86, there had been a significant leap in processing power which had allowed existing apps to run reasonably well in emulation.

    I don't see how that would be possible here.
    Modern Intel x86-64 CPUs may have significant areas of silicon dedicated to instruction decode compared to ARM, but other than that, they are as competitive as they can be.

    • "Modern Intel x86-64 CPUs may have significant areas of silicon dedicated to instruction decode compared to ARM,"

      It's a tiny piece of the processor no matter how you slice it. Those processors are dominated by cache.

    • In the past two times when Apple had switched from one processor architecture to another: Motorola 680x0 -> PowerPC, and PowerPC to Intel x86, there had been a significant leap in processing power which had allowed existing apps to run reasonably well in emulation.

      I don't see how that would be possible here.
      Modern Intel x86-64 CPUs may have significant areas of silicon dedicated to instruction decode compared to ARM, but other than that, they are as competitive as they can be.

      It's not "Emulation"; per se. It's JIT (or more accurately, First-Run) Compiling; which is more accurately "Translation" than "Emulation". The (Translated, non-ARM-Native) Applications (or OSes) Run at Native-Speed; and in fact, some might actually run faster than the non-Translated versions.

      And as time goes on, since in the vast majority of cases, it should be just a Build-Option away to create a Fat Binary (for now) Application Package for Intel and ARM Macs; more and more MacARM(tm) Applications

    • No one has been producing ARM for high-end desktop or mobile platforms or even trying to produce them, so there are no existing post-silicon examples of how far you can tune them for that target. For server targets, ARM and X86 are pretty much even when you hit the watts per square foot cooling limit; for phone/tablet x86 is an also-ran and ARM single-threaded performance rivals mobile x86.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

        If Apple is planning on introducing some form of Mac with an Arm CPU, it's a fair bet that they have a desktop or mobile-capable version internal, which their developers will have been using for testing and tuning.

  • I predict (Score:3)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Monday February 24, 2020 @04:18PM (#59762148)

    They go with the POWER architecture.

  • I believe this goal is good for Apple in the short-term since it will provide them with:
    • - More control over their hardware development roadmap
    • - Better performance per watt
    • - Better integration with their software (dedicated hardware acceleration for specific tasks rather than relying on general purpose computing)
    • - Better control over their supply chain
    • - Higher profits since they're cutting out the CPU middle men

    The long-term problem with this strategy is that they'll be jumping in right as the CPU mar

    • A Rosetta-like subsystem will be used to run x64 code for a macOS release or two. A new Universal Binary will come out able to compile for X64 and ARM, and then that will be phased out in a macOS release or two.

      The real people that will be screwed over will be the people buying the 1st gen ARM products. Those will have 2 years of solid macOS support and then the second or third wave will have the real hardware Apple wants to use and require something like "Metal 2.0" which 1st gen Macs won't be able to
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sgage ( 109086 )

        I don't get the impression that Apple is going to be selling these things in the open market against Intel/AMD/et al. I think they're for internal use only, and will be tweaked for i-stuff and Macs. So I don't think they're really 'going up against the combined weight of Intel, AMD, and Nvidia in their primary markets (CPUs/GPUs). '

    • If that is true, it means that they will be entering the GPU market as well which is also becoming even more competitive.

      Apple has been "in the GPU Market" for several years now, and does quite well, actually:

      Even those this article stupidly calls the GPU subsection a "graphics card" (facepalm); the numbers are there:

      https://www.notebookcheck.net/... [notebookcheck.net]

      In fact, Apple first-generation GPU (not licensed by PowerVR) already makes a pretty good showing against some nVidia GPUs of the same time period.

      https://www.notebookcheck.net/... [notebookcheck.net]

      And that was two (three?) Generations of Ax Chips ago...

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Apple extended its ARM, gives Intel the finger.

  • This was posted 1 year ago on this exact day!

    https://apple.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]

    Why should I believe this report over the one from 2019?

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