Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple to Move from Intel to ARM Processors in Future Laptops?
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
People seem to think just because Windows 8 will support ARM that it can run all the x86 legacy software out there. It won't, at least not without emulation, which is going to be dog slow and rife with compatibility issues, especially since ARM will be emulating an architecture faster than it (you usually take at up to an order of magnitude performance hit with emulation).
If Apple moves Mac OS X, you can say goodbye to any useful Bootcamp, and VMware and Parallels support too.
If Apple moves Mac OS X, you can say goodbye to any useful Bootcamp, and VMware and Parallels support too.
Yeah, sure...
I remember trying to download Windows Mobile CE apps for "ARM" processor PDA's and couldn't figure out which version of the app I needed, if it was available for my PDA's version of ARM at all...
Ive seen a lot of good analysis in this thread that do seem to point to the merger of OSX and IOS being the reason the adoption of the ARM processor is logical.
I for one hope it is not true, for the simple reason that it would indeed point to the abandonment of pro software and hardware. However, recient moves by apple do seem to point to the evenutal demise of the 'pro' side of the buisness. In particular, the 'pro-sumer' changes to Final Cut, and the neglect of the Mac Pro line.
--C. Alan
I for one hope it is not true, for the simple reason that it would indeed point to the abandonment of pro software and hardware. However, recient moves by apple do seem to point to the evenutal demise of the 'pro' side of the buisness. In particular, the 'pro-sumer' changes to Final Cut, and the neglect of the Mac Pro line.
--C. Alan
Watson is a great example of an AI problem that requires massive parallel processing power (2880 cores). If Apple ever wants to ship a tablet with an AI agent like the Knowledge Navigator it will probably require a next generation CPU with dozens or hundreds of cores.
Thank you soooooo much for digging that up - love it!
iOS 1.0 = Panther
iOS 2.0 = Tiger
iOS 3.0 = Leopard
iOS 4.0 = Snow Leopard
iOS 5.0 = Lion
Based on the version of Darwin, and the API changes coincident with Mac OS X, too. Until iOS 4, the iOS release schedule was behind Mac OS X. If Apple releases iOS 5 alongside Lion, things got normalized.
Your definition of fork is kinda wrong. A fork is a copy, whose changes don't affect the parent. iOS 4 and Snow Leopard is actually the same thing, only thing is that AppKit has been replaced with UIKit, and Aqua has been replaced with the touch GUI. You might consider iOS a fork off Mac OS X.
And for PPC, there is no difference at all between Leopard PPC and Leopard Intel, there is just Leopard. The Intel compatibility exists alongside PPC, hence it's not a fork. You just didn't know it's there because there were no Intel Macs, thus Apple did hide it from us gossipy dudes. Look at Linux and on how much architectures it officially runs - none of it is a fork. But if there are no Alpha Macs, why should Apple A) bother implementing Alpha compatibility and B) tell us that technically, it runs on Alpha, but you can't because there is no consumer hardware.
Mac OS X does not have to be ported to ARM!
iOS 4.0 is Snow Leopard, running on ARM. All you need to do is put AppKit and Aqua back in place. This involves basically no to very little change at all. Just like Wolfram Alpha was ported to Intel by one dude in a couple of hours, because as soon as Darwin and even layers further at the top are ported to ARM, which they are and which is actually the work intensive part, it's kiddie stuff to port the higher layers - in case they even need porting at all. Wolfram Alpha needed addition of Intel assembler alongside PPC assembler. Aqua and AppKit shouldn't come with that much assembler at all, and even if it does, Apples workforce is a little larger than a single dude who didn't even had a clue what he has to do before he got briefed by Apple.
Besides, we're not even allowed to look inside our Mac without voiding the warranty. What do we even care what's actually in the neat aluminum case, as long as it's as fast as possible and runs our apps? Apple could as well replace Mach-O binaries with byte code and change architectures with every hardware refresh, and we wouldn't even notice, nor would we really care as long as it's faster than the previous iteration.
If I need massive parallel power for video editing, I need a 1024- or 2048-core ARM machine, not a 24-core Xeon.
Last edited:
When it comes to hardware/architecture...Apple can never make up it's mind.
Since Apple is the ONLY company that makes Apples/Macs, it should be pretty easy to standardize and come up with a great business relationship. It doesn't have to last 50 years but 5-10 years seems a bit short, especially considering all the kudos AND success of moving to Intel ~10 years ago.
But yet Apple loves to flip flop every 5-10 years...let's make clones! let's not. Let's buy Intel! Let's not. Let's use ____ vid cards...Let's not.
Us technology people can sometimes appreciate the Apple moves...but this is not the Wintel world where there are billions of choices of hardware. Apple has done EXTREMELY well with Intel and moving away could really hurt on many levels.
Since Apple is the ONLY company that makes Apples/Macs, it should be pretty easy to standardize and come up with a great business relationship. It doesn't have to last 50 years but 5-10 years seems a bit short, especially considering all the kudos AND success of moving to Intel ~10 years ago.
But yet Apple loves to flip flop every 5-10 years...let's make clones! let's not. Let's buy Intel! Let's not. Let's use ____ vid cards...Let's not.
Us technology people can sometimes appreciate the Apple moves...but this is not the Wintel world where there are billions of choices of hardware. Apple has done EXTREMELY well with Intel and moving away could really hurt on many levels.
As I previously stated Windows 8 will just be a more modern, and finger friendly version of Windows CE, which ran on ARM, x86, and a few other architectures. They just want something to compete better with the iPad. So, for OSX to go ARM that seems a bit odd as some people actually need more power than ARM can offer right now or even in the near future.
What might be happening is that Apple is finding out that the majority of customers who can afford to buy fancy new hardware are not running any significant amount of legacy software. So they don't care, because they will gain more new profitable customers than they will lose by dumping those who require legacy support (which they have successfully done several times: They currently mint buckets more profit than they did when supporting PPC, or nuBus, or 68k, or 6502, etc.).
As well, most of the important Windows software will eventually be ported to Windows 8, and thus may run on ARM processors. Apple often jumps ahead to force software companies update their products in order to keep the richest and most profitable segment of their customer base.
ARM? I hope not!
I hope this is just another silly rumor.
Does Apple really think they can match Intel when it comes to processor development?
Does Apple really think it would be a good idea to subject users to a third processor architecture change?
I hope this is just another silly rumor.
Does Apple really think they can match Intel when it comes to processor development?
Does Apple really think it would be a good idea to subject users to a third processor architecture change?
I'm guessing virtualization and WINE aren't going to work after this. Virtualization is very important, and Apple can't afford to abandon that. This is probably just rumor.
While I think we will eventually kill off x86, I doubt it will be anytime soon.
While I think we will eventually kill off x86, I doubt it will be anytime soon.
not a good idea
After all the hard work and pain switching the Mac to Intel CPUs, switching to ARM would be a really bad idea.
At least at this time, the ARM architecture has zero performance advantage on the desktop, and is unlikely to have any in the future.
Another reason to keep the Mac on Intel is that Mac hardware can be used to run Windows and Linux. This drives sales in an enormous way! At a minimum, it gives customers comfort that all their past investments aren't lost by switching platforms - they can always get at those Windows-only programs when they have to. Moving to ARM would remove one of the biggest capabilities and selling points the Mac has.
I was able to buy 5 Macs for our office, and the only reason that it was allowed to fly was the ability to run Windows along side MacOS. My company is not unique. No Intel, no more Macs. It's really that simple.
ARM on iDevices is just fine, because they are a new (and the biggest) mobile platform, and dependent on syncing with a PC anyway. Not so for the Mac. Switching to ARM on the Mac would be the fastest way to kill it. Remember how well Apple was doing when the Mac was on PowerPC?... Oh yea, that's right, it almost died.
After all the hard work and pain switching the Mac to Intel CPUs, switching to ARM would be a really bad idea.
At least at this time, the ARM architecture has zero performance advantage on the desktop, and is unlikely to have any in the future.
Another reason to keep the Mac on Intel is that Mac hardware can be used to run Windows and Linux. This drives sales in an enormous way! At a minimum, it gives customers comfort that all their past investments aren't lost by switching platforms - they can always get at those Windows-only programs when they have to. Moving to ARM would remove one of the biggest capabilities and selling points the Mac has.
I was able to buy 5 Macs for our office, and the only reason that it was allowed to fly was the ability to run Windows along side MacOS. My company is not unique. No Intel, no more Macs. It's really that simple.
ARM on iDevices is just fine, because they are a new (and the biggest) mobile platform, and dependent on syncing with a PC anyway. Not so for the Mac. Switching to ARM on the Mac would be the fastest way to kill it. Remember how well Apple was doing when the Mac was on PowerPC?... Oh yea, that's right, it almost died.
...we're already in the post-x86 world...
Intel abandoned the x86 architecture in silicon with the P6 architecture chips in fall 1995 (marketed as the Pentium Pro chips).
Internally, P6 (and Netburst and Core) CPUs do not run the x86 (or x64) instruction sets. In a fashion somewhat like a Java VM translating bytecode, the CPUs take the x86 instruction stream and convert it to μops that are implemented in the silicon.
That's key to Intel's performance leaps and the tick-tock engineering - Intel can make radical changes to the actual architecture of the CPU, yet binaries written in the x86 pseudo-code can be translated to the actual silicon and run.
Intel abandoned the x86 architecture in silicon with the P6 architecture chips in fall 1995 (marketed as the Pentium Pro chips).
Internally, P6 (and Netburst and Core) CPUs do not run the x86 (or x64) instruction sets. In a fashion somewhat like a Java VM translating bytecode, the CPUs take the x86 instruction stream and convert it to μops that are implemented in the silicon.
That's key to Intel's performance leaps and the tick-tock engineering - Intel can make radical changes to the actual architecture of the CPU, yet binaries written in the x86 pseudo-code can be translated to the actual silicon and run.
Absolutely agreed!
Content creation still requires high-powered content.
Apple knows ATi makes the fastest GPUs (the 5870 being the start of an nVidia-killer IMHO), and they know Intel is sublime at innovating on the x86 with finesse. (When Apple migrated from the G5, I was skeptical, but Intel had overtaken.)
I'm not sure if 8 ARM cores will do better than 4 i7 cores, and for low-end Macbooks I would say that the ARM is likely the reality.
But is Apple absconding Intel? Not in the foreseeable future (e.g. 5~10 years) and not for their mid~high-end products to be sure. Just like how Apple won't be using AMD processors. Especially given Intel's new "tri-fate" transistor technology, which sounds PHENOMENAL, and how Intel has been trumping AMD's line for a long time now, with even AMD's most recent CPUs presented (as of 05/03/2011) lagging badly: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
Intel, as with ATi, are going to remain Apple's standard for content creation.
And others make an interesting point in having a hybrid system for mobile Macbooks. ARM for regular usage, and i7 (or whatever versions exists at the time) for processing muscle power...
Almost laugh worthy considering that ARM has shown nothing to rival the likes of SB, much less the anticipated performance of IB. I'll believe it when i see it
As with most rumors about Apple, this one will prove to be wrong. Intel is simply way ahead of the curve on laptop and desktop architecture. Apple is using ARM for mobile devices and thats where its going to stay. That said, I fully expect iPad development to evolve to greater functionality replacing the laptop for many more users.
Someone please slowly explain how an ARM-based processor could come even close to beating, an, um, I'm going to go with G5.
I could see them switching back to the PowerPC (they won't, but I wish to hell they would; Power7 is off the freaking charts). But ARM? Lol.
Can you imagine? The new Mac Pro. Now with 16 ARM Processors. 1/64th the speed of the last generation. Change is good.
I could see them switching back to the PowerPC (they won't, but I wish to hell they would; Power7 is off the freaking charts). But ARM? Lol.
Can you imagine? The new Mac Pro. Now with 16 ARM Processors. 1/64th the speed of the last generation. Change is good.
They will loose many developers if they do this!
Our codebase works on Windows XP through Windows 7. With each of these moves from Apple - i.e. PPC to Intel we have to rewrite a bunch of code.
I am tired of this hassel. I love the MacOS and we do all our development on that platform. They do this, and we are done with Apple.
I am tired of developing for their boxes, building a business around it and then they switch or pull it. The pulling of XServes was the last one. NO MORE!
Our codebase works on Windows XP through Windows 7. With each of these moves from Apple - i.e. PPC to Intel we have to rewrite a bunch of code.
I am tired of this hassel. I love the MacOS and we do all our development on that platform. They do this, and we are done with Apple.
I am tired of developing for their boxes, building a business around it and then they switch or pull it. The pulling of XServes was the last one. NO MORE!
ARM chips built by Intel
Intel wants to manufacture Apple's A5
Now apply tri-gate, quickpath and vector acceleration instruction set and we have a winner! A quick recompile in Xcode will get code running on ARM if it's using Cocoa.
Intel wants to manufacture Apple's A5
Now apply tri-gate, quickpath and vector acceleration instruction set and we have a winner! A quick recompile in Xcode will get code running on ARM if it's using Cocoa.
I find this truly hard to believe, how is ARM going to compete with Intel & AMD? If they had something that good, then it'd be available in the market, and it would also be mainstream.. Intel & AMD are both set to release newer and faster processors..
This would be a very bad move by Apple, an ARM processor today can no way run a real OS properly, even if it does happen then it would be bad for a lot of people, why? well Apple has to make the transition to ARM, which means support for Intel processors eventually would be no more.. not to mention it'll take the same few yrs it took for the G5...
Apple do yourself a favour and stick with Intel, the 1155 processors are extremely energy efficient, especially the Core i3's, last time I checked they only consume 22W IDLE and 48W Full LOAD..
And anyway, Intel is not done, the LGA 1155 is by no means a high performance platform, they are working to release the LGA 2011 platform and it's supposed to take the place of the 1366 platform..
This would be a very bad move by Apple, an ARM processor today can no way run a real OS properly
, even if it does happen then it would be bad for a lot of people, why? well Apple has to make the transition to ARM, which means support for Intel processors eventually would be no more.. not to mention it'll take the same few yrs it took for the G5...Apple do yourself a favour and stick with Intel, the 1155 processors are extremely energy efficient, especially the Core i3's, last time I checked they only consume 22W IDLE and 48W Full LOAD..
And anyway, Intel is not done, the LGA 1155 is by no means a high performance platform, they are working to release the LGA 2011 platform and it's supposed to take the place of the 1366 platform..
That's actually how IBM System I works programs are complied to TIMI instructions which are translated by the system into the actual machine code. If you copy a program to another machine with a different CPU, the system recompiles it on the fly to the new ISA.
That's kind of what I was thinking Apple was planning to do with LLVM. If you distributed your program in LLVM code, users could run it on PowerPC, Intel, or ARM chips with LLVM translating it into native code on a separate fork.
Intel could do the same thing replace the current RISC core (I think it's based on the HP PA-RISC) with an ARM core.
The guy got it wrong...
The source of this rumor probably overheard something about Apple and Intel and ARM and switching and decided that Apple is going to switch from x86 to ARM. He got it wrong. Apple is going to switch from ARM to x86. Usually architecture updates bring 15...40% performance boost (just check how iPhone progressed in four years). With this type of progress in 2013 ARM chips will be as fast as Atom chips are today. Does anybody think that Apple will switch in 2013 from Sandy Bridge performance to Atom performance (in today terms)? Obviously not. The reverse switch however does make sense. All indications are that in 2012 Atom will be on par with ARM in terms of power consumption (performance never was an issue) and in 2013 Atom will outperforms ARM in both CPU performance and power consumption terms.
So yes, Apple is switching: from ARM to x86 for iOS (bad news for some iPad owners but not as bad as when switch occurs on desktop platform).
The source of this rumor probably overheard something about Apple and Intel and ARM and switching and decided that Apple is going to switch from x86 to ARM. He got it wrong. Apple is going to switch from ARM to x86. Usually architecture updates bring 15...40% performance boost (just check how iPhone progressed in four years). With this type of progress in 2013 ARM chips will be as fast as Atom chips are today. Does anybody think that Apple will switch in 2013 from Sandy Bridge performance to Atom performance (in today terms)? Obviously not. The reverse switch however does make sense. All indications are that in 2012 Atom will be on par with ARM in terms of power consumption (performance never was an issue) and in 2013 Atom will outperforms ARM in both CPU performance and power consumption terms.
So yes, Apple is switching: from ARM to x86 for iOS (bad news for some iPad owners but not as bad as when switch occurs on desktop platform).
- Status