Apple Plans to Ditch Intel and Use Custom Mac Chips Starting in 2020

[ArthurCrown]

How much of the software I have now running on an Intel Mac will run on a Mac with Mac chips?
Upgrading software from the pre-Intel days cost me a pretty penny ...

 

[barmann]

I am not sure what you mean, but probably best just to disagree.

iOS is ancient in its approach and technology .

It's like eating soup with a fork .
It kind of works, but it's ineffiecient, messy and you look silly doing it .

 

[hajime]

So, we will see iPad PRO turning into real MBP computer in 2020?

 

[DNichter]

iOS is ancient in its approach and technology .

It's like eating soup with a fork .
It kind of works, but it's ineffiecient, messy and you look silly doing it .

Yet it works perfectly for me and my business. I am not in operations so I am happy with the value my iPad Pro provides.

 

[obitow]

The architecture of the processor dictates the bit order of the data. Search for "endianess".

Is this backup like a memory dump? Because it seems to me a DB file should be CPU-independent. Like, AFAIK, CoreData uses the same SQLite data files on all platforms.

Also, the Wikipedia article on endianness says ARM support both big and little, so this shouldn't be a problem.

 

[BitsnPieces]

I'm really split on this one. Product design decisions under Cook have been awful - however this is news from the engineering department, and the best thing out of Apple right now is its custom designed silicone over at the iOS world ... but we will need to deal with a transition period and many apps might not be ported natively and those might continue to run in some sort of emulation mode. It won't help if the OS runs fast as hell but all productivity apps not created by Apple won't. I just can't shake the feeling Cook is only doing this to save some money and Ive uses the more efficient chips as an excuse to flatten our laptops just a little bit more while removing all remaining ports along with it ...

 

[crsh1976]

I find this strip extremely short sighted. We're old folks, friend. We are comfortable in our "real work" OSes, with physical keyboards and mice. But these "retarded" kids are just in another reality and a lot of them will never touch a desktop in their lives.

Except the real world isn't quite like that "what's a computer" ad, unless you just throw together cute 1-pagers for your class and spend the rest of your time surfing.

Somewhere along their highly profitable quarterly reports, it feels like Apple lost track with reality - iOS devices and the platform itself earn them a lot of money, and that's fine, but it's nowhere near a professional platform in any sort of way that can or should replace OSX.

 

[cmaier]

No one can design a new architecture to rival Intel in 2 yrs, this surely would have been in the development pipeline for many many yrs.

Lots of people can do it in two years. We did it at AMD in two years repeatedly.
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Is this backup like a memory dump? Because it seems to me a DB file should be CPU-independent. Like, AFAIK, CoreData uses the same SQLite data files on all platforms.

Also, the Wikipedia article on endianness says ARM support both big and little, so this shouldn't be a problem.

Correct

 

[applepuree]

Oh no. Not again.

 

[cram501]

Is this backup like a memory dump? Because it seems to me a DB file should be CPU-independent. Like, AFAIK, CoreData uses the same SQLite data files on all platforms.

Also, the Wikipedia article on endianness says ARM support both big and little, so this shouldn't be a problem.

I have no idea what software the poster was talking about. I can probably assume that the database is contained in binary file(s) where bit order matters. I can also assume he/she wants to avoid importing/exporting 100's of GB of SQL (or whatever his DB supports). It's slow and takes space.

Support for endianess isn't the issue. Support just makes it faster to process. You still need to know how and when it needs to be handled. You also hope that the software you use can handle it properly. I haven't dealt with endianess in years and so my knowledge has aged but it can be a pita.

This would be an issue that would need to be handled for a lot of software if the underlying cpu architecture changes.

 

[Val-kyrie]

I can't see any benefit at all for non power-constrained Macs, like iMacs and the rumoured Mac Pro. I can however see them running a parallel line of ARM powered laptops. E.g. Move the consumer aimed MacBook line to ARM. For everything else I'm struggling to see the logic.

Interesting proposal, I wonder how that would work, in terms of support, pricing and product development, i.e., two different platforms.

I don't see that happening. It would simply be too confusing to try to inform customers about which software runs on which machines. That was a nightmare for Microsoft and it would be so for Apple as well.

If Apple chooses to introduce ARM-based Macs in a certain subset of its computers--I believe it will be introduced in an entry-level MacBook initially, with MacBooks, Mac Minis, and iMacs to follow in one year, and the MacBook Pros and iMac Pros to close it out the second year--you can be assured that it will eventually power all of its Macs. Given the potential for a lot of confusion, it would behoove Apple to make this transition as short as possible, even shorter than I have outlined here.

 

[DNichter]

Except the real world isn't quite like that "what's a computer" ad, unless you just throw together cute 1-pagers for your class and spend the rest of your time surfing.

Somewhere along their highly profitable quarterly reports, it feels like Apple lost track with reality - iOS devices and the platform itself earn them a lot of money, and that's fine, but it's nowhere near a professional platform in any sort of way that can or should replace OSX.

I manage a team of 60 people for a logistics brokerage with nothing but my iPad Pro and iPhone X. Apps, stability, battery life, portability, security, all much better for me. It can certainly be done.

 

[Hrududu]

Goodbye pro market.

Hello John Sculley!
Macs will be so thin, Apple will be able to sell them from Pepsi machines and you'll be able to recycle all parts just like the Pepsi cans for environmental reasons!

John Sculley literally invented the pro Mac market. His time at Apple saw the Macintosh II and Quadra lineup introduced which gave users expansion cards, more powerful CPUs and more display options. Scully did more for pro users than Cook could even imagine.

 

[imom]

If it has to happen (and I hope it doesn't) then Apple needs to make an Intel-killing CPU and license it to other hardware manufacturers, as Intel is doing now, to establish a new standard.

 

[Heineken]

I manage a team of 60 people for a logistics brokerage with nothing but my iPad Pro and iPhone X. Apps, stability, battery life, portability, security, all much better for me. It can certainly be done.

Some things can be done faster with a touch interface. It has enough power and is very portable. Basically a dream come true device.

 

[crsh1976]

I manage a team of 60 people for a logistics brokerage with nothing but my iPad Pro and iPhone X. Apps, stability, battery life, portability, security, all much better for me. It can certainly be done.

Call me when you can create the brokerage app you use right on an iPad tho, because that's certainly a use case I'm interested in and right now it cannot be done without OSX on a Mac.

 

[DNichter]

Some things can be done faster with a touch interface. It has enough power and is very portable. Basically a dream come true device.

Definitely. The flexibility and collaborative nature of the device has been a huge positive for my team. It's been very freeing to move on from the typical desktop point and click environment.

 

[Arthur123]

For number cruncher's Intel is several orders of magnitude ahead of anything Apple has in the lab.
Several Laptop CPU's from Intel 8th generation prcessors have been on the market for 6 months. Its Apple who has decided to stay 2 generations behind Intel and not Intels doing. I purchased a Dell XPS 8th generation CPU laptop for my son's college work last fall. The thing is significantly faster than the 7th generation and also does better on battery life. There is no excuse Apple did not refresh their "Pro" laptops.

 

[techwhiz]

Well the transistor count on A11 Bionic and 15-core Xeon Ivy Bridge-EX is the same for starters. 4.3 Billion Transistors. A11 Does a lot more than just being a processor, it is a SOC, with GPU and other peripherals and is only a 2x4 (6 Core) Chip. Imagine Apple Producing a 15 Core A20 ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count

You should compare a 2017 processor to a 2017 processor.
You compare Apple's latest processor with a 3-4 year old Intel server processor.
Not even close to bananas and bananas.
But even so, your analysis shows that Apple has a long way to go in performance.

Apple does not include the root complex need for general PCIe connectivity. Not the PCIe lanes nor logic in the chip. They don't supper quite a few functions that are required for a general purpose CPU. The A11 is Apple's embedded processor for thier iOS devices and is not a general purpose CPU.

But Apple will have the same kind of yield problems as Intel, Cavium and Qualcomm if they tried making desktop processors.

Also Apple has not been on a wholesale hiring frenzy to get the type of people needed to do these kinds of chips.
The Ax series is not even close to what you need in a desktop CPU.
They don't have the peripheral support for starters.

 

[DNichter]

Call me when you can create the brokerage app you use right on an iPad tho, because that's certainly a use case I'm interested in and right now it cannot be done without OSX on a Mac.

I am not in an operations position so I have no need for it, but I actually think Xcode for iOS could be coming sooner than later.

 

[nubizus]

So its time. The Dream is over. With this Apple is kicking Hackintosh and clearing third party apps in one big sweep. Strange part is that my first rejection this year was iPhone X - face ID and price. Than this ****. I guess is time to get over the money that i have spend on apple since 2001 and move on to Linux for coding and VM with windows for design. Still have IBM monster workstation with tons of ram and power from 2013. Good. I am glad. Finally apple fanboy is a tag for moronic addict without any sense of reality

 

[AdonisSMU]

I find this strip extremely short sighted. We're old folks, friend. We are comfortable in our "real work" OSes, with physical keyboards and mice. But these "retarded" kids are just in another reality and a lot of them will never touch a desktop in their lives.

Well stated.

 

[techwhiz]

Why not ? The CPU Frequency is way lower and no Heat Sink/CPU Cooler. And besides i think that Apple isnt naive to decide on something without considering these factors isnt it?

Synthetic benchmarks only run for a short period of time.
You must run a torture test to show that the ARM cores with throttle badly due to heat issues on a iOS device.
To get a true idea of what a server or desktop class ARM processor looks like, go to Qualcomm and Cavium.
They only show a marginal thermal improvement over Intel with their ARM offerings.
Neither are cheap either.
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Physics is physics. Static power is mostly a function of the quality of the fabbed transistor, so let’s assume intel is slightly ahead there. Dynamic power is where most of the power is consumed, and that’s cv^2. So assuming the same operating voltage, you want to drive less capacitance. Two ways to do that - fewer switching wires, and better physical design. Better physical design may buy you 20 percent. And you get probably 20 percent fewer switching wires in risc by not having the complex instruction decoder and memory management units you need in x86. So I’d say I’d expect Apple can do 25% better performance per watt in total (20percent of 20 percent, don’t add).

It say you have it wrong.
Since ARM is not really RISC and X86 is no longer really CISC; that power reduction argument is moot.
And you will need the complex MMU and cache coherency with snoop filters and TLBs.
Go look at Qualcomm and Cavium server class ARM processors.

 

[Val-kyrie]

I would love to see a Apple Server comeback based on these A13-A20 Chips ...

Doubtful. Apple has deprecated macOS Server, transposed some of Server's functions into High Sierra, eliminated other Server functions, and basically dumbed down Server into an iOS manager. It seems to clear to me where Apple is heading.

 

[Arthur123]

If it runs well and keeps Linux and Windows compatibility, I am all for it. It feels like the Intel professor cycle has been a bottle neck for Macbook releases in the past several years.

Intel released 8th generation laptop i7 and i5 processors in the fall. Dell and HP have released models with these processors which are about 40% faster than their 7th generation parts. What stopped Apple in updating their laptops??