Apple Transitioning Macs to Custom Chips With 'Incredible' Performance Starting Later This Year

[acader]

Wow!! I started with PowerPC, then Intel and now custom. Back in the day PPC was blazing. Waiting to see how the A* chips perform.

 

[Biorunner]

Alright alright alright, yes I know we all knew this was coming, yes this has been something that's been rumoured for several years, but to see it actually happen is something else.

Couple thoughts here
1) apple is moving to arm merely as a way to better control the apps and programs it's users can access, by transitioning to apple ARM, apple now has the ability to greater restrict the types of apps allowed on it's platform much like it does with IOS and IpadOS. This is a disaster for professionals, hobbyists, and regular computer users which aren't just wealthy virtue signally consumers.

2) Apple is at this point more or less accepting that their computers, tablets, phones, etc are just overpriced toys and not actually computers.

Safe to say, my next computer will not be a mac. Even though I love my 16 inch mac dearly and that it's specs are high enough for me to avoid any need to upgrade for at least 5 years, apple will be pulling support for intel macs within 3 years, something which isn't horrible considering how apple care works. But due to this I'm hugely considering a permanent transition back to microsoft windows. And I do this with huge reluctance.

I agree with part of your first point - Apple probably does want more control it's evident from the changes we've seen from Sierra to Catalina. I do think it allows Apple to make more consumer wallet friendly machines however as Apple effectively makes their own chips (kinda) and won't have to pay Intel's licensing fees. I'm being optimistic here of course.

Your second point - I disagree, the amount of power in these chips is phenomenal and I'm pretty sure they can match / beat a maxed out 16" MBP for certain tasks, obviously not all. As ARM is a reduced instruction set I am concerned about how they will tackle multi-tasking.

We must remember that back in the PowerPC days those Apple/Motorola/IBM chips where amazing but very power hungry. Apple knows what they're doing.

 

[iBug2]

which ones because I can’t find any that runs any proper OS other than raspberry pi devices

A photo editing app for example. When Adobe updates Lightroom, you can bet that it's ARM version is going to be installed in more devices than its intel desktop version.

 

[gugy]

I remember a lot of people we're very negative when Apple transitioned to Intel from PowerPC. I for one am excited if that Photoshop/Lightroom demo was legit. I also love the smooth integration of iOS apps on the Mac.

 

[sosumi99]

You mean the part where they launch a terminal in Debian and it clearly says: Mac OS Intel ?

You’re misreading that. That’s Apache printing out the request coming from Safari, so it’s just the identification string coming from Safari on the host machine (I imagine it’s pretending to be “Mac OS Intel” so that during testing it wouldn’t accidentally reveal that it’s really ARM in server logs offsite). It‘s not 100% clear, but it appears that the Linux instance is just virtualized and not emulated (that is, it’s the ARM version of Debian).

 

[iBug2]

Well, I don't believe in magic. Lower power consumption = less powerful A/G/C/PU, it's general rule for more or less similar tech process. You need power for transistors. Lesser number of transistors - lesser computing power.

Then how does a passively cooled iPad run faster than an actively cooled 13" MBP?

 

[Ursadorable]

I'm hyped about this.. the Mac Mini is finally going to get a decent boost in video processing power over Intel's lousy integrated gpu.

 

[ivan86]

I knew if it happened it would be quick. But why say new intel Macs are coming????

Tiger Lake MacBook Pro 13 (or 14?) incoming ;-)

 

[djjeff]

If developers are developing for ARM-based Macs, Apple is providing backwards compatibility. If developers have already been developing for Intel-based Macs, all the tools are provided for supporting both ARM and Intel. If in 7 years Apple stops supplying a version of macOS that supports Intel, then for three more years they can use the last version of macOS that does support Intel. All these concerns have been addressed.

The only compatibility issue is for developers who NEVER supported Mac on Intel - those who said, "Apple has Bootcamp, why bother producing a Mac version at all?"

How many developers will continue to develop for both architectures and for how long will they continue to do so? It has been my experience that in the Apple ecosystem developers quickly adopt new features quickly leaving older technology behind. While Apple may deliver macOS 11.3 for Intel based Macintoshes the question is will developers release x64 versions of their software? Or will they have transitioned exclusively around the release of macOS 11.1?

 

[oneMadRssn]

And it also means goodby Hackintosh users or unsupported Macs. Been fun having you.

What makes you think it won't be installable on other ARM-based computers?

For example, the Raspberry Pi 4 has a quad-core 1.5ghz cpu, 8GB DDR4 ram, and can drive dual 4k displays at 60fps. It's no slouch.

There are also several good ARM-based laptops out there.

 

[cmaier]

Well, I don't believe in magic. Lower power consumption = less powerful A/G/C/PU, it's general rule for more or less similar tech process. You need power for transistors. Lesser number of transistors - lesser computing power.

No, that is completely false.

There are two components of power - static and dynamic.

For CMOS circuits (which is what we are talking about here), static power is the smaller share - ranging from 10-25% of the power consumption, depending on many things. The more transistors, the more static power you consume.

Dynamic power is based on the switching of transistors - transistors don’t switch unless they are in use. A small percentage of transistors switch in any clock cycle. The power consumed is equal to the switching frequency times the capacitive load times the voltage squared.

There are many ways to increase performance without increasing power consumption.

 

[MacOH21]

So now we'll finally get our PowerBook G5 !?!

(And yes, I'm sure someone has made that joke in the prior 24 pages of comments.)

 

[Squeak825]

You’re misreading that. That’s Apache printing out the request coming from Safari, so it’s just Mac OS Intel running on the host machine (where Safari is running). It‘s not 100% clear, but it appears that the Linux instance is just virtualized and not emulated (that is, it’s the ARM version of Debian).

No...most likely it is the MacOS ARM version running, just Safari had not been updated to reflect true CPU in its headers it returns so it can be used out in the wild right now and not give it away. Notice how it says Mac OS X 10_16 -- which is not the real version of Big Sur (it is 11.0)

 

[djjeff]

It's the same benchmark whether you run it on a phone or a desktop computer. The device is doing the exact same thing. You can only worry about long time sustainability of this performance, what happens if the benchmark lasts 1 hour instead of 1 minute. But remember A series chips are passively cooled, for now.

I think people need to be cautious with their enthusiasm for the release of ARM based Macs. I've been through this before with the 68K to PPC transition. While the PPC processor was a solid processor we all know how that eventually ended. I hear similar statements to the transition to ARM and we haven't even seen an ARM based Macintosh yet (and, apparently, few details were released today).

 

[oneMadRssn]

They did not show any numbers on the intel transition either. They did the exact same thing here. They are not going to ruin the surprise by releasing benchmarks of unreleased apple hardware.

They talked about more tangible benefits of Intel over PPC back then.

 

[cppguy]

What Windows software can you not find replacements for in Mac OS?
Get a gaming PC for the games..

Corporate apps. The world is not just Facebook and Photoshop.

 

[JayKay514]

Looking good!

No more Bootcamp/ Windows, though? Only virtualization?

I don't think that would be possible without a native Windows-for-AppleSilicon build. I doubt Microsoft would write a version of Windows specifically for that hardware.

 

[djjeff]

If this is expected to take 2 years to transition, they cannot just sit on the current configurations. Intel released new 10th generation processors and will release at least another generation in the next two years.

The transition to Intel took much less time than Apple had announced it would. I wouldn't be surprised if the same happened this time around.

 

[torana355]

Let the guinea pigs have at it. I can see a lack of high quality desktop applications missing on ARM Macs for many years to come. Mac OS is already a redheaded step child next to Windows, and now moving to ARM will ensure there won’t be a ported Mac version of Windows applications.

There isn’t anyone making powerful ARM CPUs for Windows either. Apple is pretty much alone in this fight. Unlike iOS, Mac devices don’t have the same commanding power to dictate the entire industry. Software availability outside of garbage mobile apps is going to be scarce!

Exactly, while I think Apples arm chips will perform great I can see them being overpowered toys, software is a huge part of the equation!!

 

[biffuz]

My questions:
- freedom of installing apps outside of App Store*
- traditional Unix stuff*
- Java*
- the games I actually play on my Macbook: World of Warcraft, American/Euro Truck Simulator, and Civ V (I guess I can update to VI)
- actual performance of x86 emulators for old Windows and MacOS

* = no, a Linux VM is not the answer, if I have to use Linux I'll get a Linux laptop (also, the games I mentioned run on Linux)

 

[Ursadorable]

I can see this setting Apple up to drop notebooks entirely and the iPad Pro moving into the Macbook Pro slot once the majority of software has been converted to ARM.

 

[KPOM]

Tiger Lake MacBook Pro 13 (or 14?) incoming ;-)

More likely the 16”. I think they will update the 13/14” to their own chips next. Those are more popular.

 

[iBug2]

They talked about more tangible benefits of Intel over PPC back then.

Steve said we want high performance with low power. He said he promised Powerbook G5 two years ago and haven't made it yet because IBM cannot give that performance in low power. Then he said intel can. I don't remember him mentioning any numbers whatsoever and I have watched that keynote so many times.

 

[honcho]

This is the right move. Even though I bought a 16” MBP fairly recently, the i9 will allow me to smoothly run legacy applications until I’m ready to go all in on ARM.

Even though Apple devices haven’t been madly innovative for some time, Apple silicon has been. Once some of the thermal constraints are removed, the performance of Mac OS devices should be something special.

 

[Krevnik]

Single core Geekbench:

2019 ARM A12Z iPhone 11 Pro 1327
2019 27" iMac Core-i9 1243
2019 Xeon Mac Pro 1143

iPhone/iPad multiprocessing doesn't beat Intel laptops and desktops YET, but that's only because they don't need that many performance cores in a phone or tablet, but it's not far behind and the performance will be higher for an ARM chip specifically designed for a laptop/desktop. Apple's chip performance curve is increasing much faster than Intel's.

The real question for me is:

What does the final die size look like? Are we getting bigger dies for more cores? Will we see chiplets? Are we going to see higher TDPs or fanless designs? Are they going to go full Ampere and drop a 64-core monster in the Mac Pro? All this determines how much performance we can expect to see in shipping products.

Right now, with a big.LITTLE design, Apple's 8 core A12Z chip is also only getting that 1327 on four cores (4/4). We got a demo that the A12Z is clearly good enough for macOS (that I never doubted), but we got nothing that Apple is ready to scale this stuff up. The fact that the 2018 and 2020 iPad Pro use the same die is worrying. Either they were sinking effort into researching how to scale up, and aren't showing the fruits, or they are approaching their own plateau. So we're in a holding pattern waiting to see what these desktop-class chips look like.

I remember the exact same thing. Steve said we want high performance with low power. He said he promised Powerbook G5 two years ago and haven't made it yet because IBM cannot give that performance in low power. Then he said intel can. I don't remember him mentioning any numbers whatsoever and I have watched that keynote so many times.

The main difference is that Apple didn't need to describe what Intel was capable of, since Intel was already telling everyone.