A9X Die Photo From iPad Pro Reveals 12-Cluster Graphics, No L3 Cache

[firewood]

"A Mac won't run ARM User Code."

Correction. An x86 based Mac won't run ARM user code.

However Macs (not just in labs, but in people's homes) have already used 3 very different CPU architectures. Another CPU architecture (especially a modern one such as x86-64 or arm64) would not be any problem at all. Especially given that the A9X is many times faster than the processor in several of my Macs and MacBooks that can run some version of OS X.

 

[szw-mapple fan]

Irrelevant. The A9X will never run OSX. A MacBook will not run iOS. You are fundamentally confused as to what constitutes an Operating System. ARM is not X86.

Never? Just like Intel chips will never run Mac OS back in the early 2000s? Just because it doesn't right now doesn't mean that it's not capable of doing so. The Mach kernel can be easily ported to different architectures. I'm sure Apple has some internal version of OS X running on A chips and vice versa, just like their pre-intel days when they were testing intel CPUs.

 

[diamond.g]

Never? Just like Intel chips will never run Mac OS back in the early 2000s? Just because it doesn't right now doesn't mean that it's not capable of doing so. The Mach kernel can be easily ported to different architectures. I'm sure Apple has some internal version of OS X running on A chips and vice versa, just like their pre-intel days when they were testing intel CPUs.

I agree. And it only stands to reason they haven't switched is because the ARM chips are not fast enough. Contrary to what the benchmarks are saying.