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This is a great news the way they put things together was an engineering marvel. Just imagine how much spacing saving they made. Next year with that extra space they can put some more. Not the whole empty area so every year we have improvements. This really gets me excited because it means next year we have a faster and better iPad. I can't wait!
 
Plus I'm not sure if ARMs run x86 instruction code which would mean that you won't be able to run any current applications.

ARM chips run ARM code. But you would be able to run current applications, in the same way that the x86 version of OS X 10.4 was able to run current PPC applications at that time, namely through CPU emulation. That does, however, mean a speed hit, plus increased complexity and RAM usage. So ARM chips would have to be much faster than X86 chips to make it feasible, and that seems unlikely to happen.

--Eric
 
ARM chips run ARM code. But you would be able to run current applications, in the same way that the x86 version of OS X 10.4 was able to run current PPC applications at that time, namely through CPU emulation. That does, however, mean a speed hit, plus increased complexity and RAM usage.

--Eric

I'd be surprised though if the A9X provides enough power to do this reasonably. The reason they were able to go from PPC -> x86 is because PPC was so behind in performance that they could satisfactory run PPC code emulated on x86 without most people ever seeing a performance hit.

IF A9x could do that with intel's x86 architecture in any reasonable way, I would be very surprised (who knows what the future might bring though). An important thing to note is that, the A9X already shows one of the fastest, most powerful CPU's in the ARM camp. However, the Core M is one, if not one of the slowest, lowest power CPU's in the x86 camp. I think Apple still has a long way to go to bring the A series CPU up in power to be able to replace intel in their PC's
 
Yes, you caught my post before I was quite done with it. ;)

--Eric
HA, no problem.

My question to Arm developers though. ARM is currently the low cost, low power solution. What if they let ARM work in a higher TDP situation? if you scaled up a A-series CPU to 95w to match that of Intel's desktop parts, could they make a CPU that is close?

what about at 15w? what about 45w?

Or are there other limitations in ARM that prevents such scaling?
 
L3 cache is usually SRAM right? Is the LPDDR4 really as fast as SRAM?
It wouldn't be to do with speed in that sense. Anything stored on the cpu's cache can only be read once then it needs to be rewritten. So the process can often be slower if the information needs accessing multiple times.
 
You do realize that the A9X outperforms the Core M in MacBooks (according to benchmarks) in many areas?
If Apple (and some of its customers) weren't so obsessed with thinness and just slapped a Retina screen in a MBA 13 chassis we wouldn't be having this conversation. Even the addition of a fan wouldn't been so bad if it allowed a true Skylake i5/i7 cpu rather than the hapless wonder that is the slow Core M.
 
It's only apple that cares about the thinness, everyone else wants better battery life and quality of software.
I wouldn't buy an MBA even if they stuck in a retina screen.
 
It's only apple that cares about the thinness
That's why the other PC makers started making thin laptops after Apple came out with the MBA?
everyone else wants better battery life
That's why the MacBook Air has usually had some of the longer battery life in its class (accounting for CPU/GPU)?
and quality of software.
That's why your typical PC comes pre-installed with garbage-ware on top of Windows?
I wouldn't buy an MBA even if they stuck in a retina screen.
Sounds like your buying decisions are based on dubious information...
 
ARM chips run ARM code. But you would be able to run current applications, in the same way that the x86 version of OS X 10.4 was able to run current PPC applications at that time, namely through CPU emulation.

That technology was sold to IBM, and reportedly not as efficient at emulating/translating CISC instruction sets such as x86. However, many OS X apps written using Xcode might be easily recompile-able by their developers for arm64.
 
ok,,, so choice do u want a better 12-mega pixel camera or bigger display/better resolution.

Your right. who needs a good camera on a professional device anyway....

If the processor can be faster internally, why bother having any cache externally ? too slow/bottleneck.
 
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HA, no problem.

My question to Arm developers though. ARM is currently the low cost, low power solution. What if they let ARM work in a higher TDP situation? if you scaled up a A-series CPU to 95w to match that of Intel's desktop parts, could they make a CPU that is close?

what about at 15w? what about 45w?

Or are there other limitations in ARM that prevents such scaling?
ARM licenses chip throughout the spectrum, the reason why we hear so much about mobile chips is because that's where the industry is focusing until they can get new material processes scaled up for manufacturing past the 10nm range.

ARM pretty much designs any type of chip you could want, but given mobile and data centers, power efficiency is king.
 
Unlikely, no hints in OS X for it as of yet. Plus I'm not sure if ARMs run x86 instruction code which would mean that you won't be able to run any current applications. And BootCamp support would be a thing of the past.

The need to change processors isn't as important as it was in the waning PPC days, because Apple could've gone with either AMD or Intel. Plus staying with Intel means everybody has the same disadvantage - if Intel don't release any new chips, it's not just Apple who suffer, it's the whole industry.

I'd love to see Apple make their own chips but the performance deficit through emulation would just be too high, and BootCamp support is very important.

ARM will never run Intel x86 code, and Intel x86 will never run ARM code. It's like comparing a toaster and a lamp. Both get warm, both can be used to cook food, but one of those is very inefficient.

The ARM parts started at the "power saving" end of the spectrum, while Intel parts started at "desktops and servers" end of the spectrum, thus the CPU designs have different trade-offs, and having one translate the other is very inefficient.

Intel's low-end low-power parts are worse performers than Apples ARM A-series parts. However likewise, Intel's desktop and server parts blow the A=series out of the water, because the A-series is ONLY a low-power design. Intel's low-power designs are basically crippled desktop designs.
 
That technology was sold to IBM, and reportedly not as efficient at emulating/translating CISC instruction sets such as x86. However, many OS X apps written using Xcode might be easily recompile-able by their developers for arm64.

The concept of CPU emulation isn't something that can be sold to anyone; also Rosetta was specifically for emulating PPC on x86. You might want to ask programmers who were around back then if it was ever a matter of "just recompile your code". ;)

--Eric
 
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