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

[Spanky Deluxe]

Yes, but I doubt that most Mac users bought their Macs to run Windows. I did it for a while to play games as well but then stopped. This will hurt some people, but not many.

I did the same originally but ended up going for a dedicated Windows PC for games and keep my work/play life separated as a result. I do really hope they either come up or at least allow a route to virtualisation of x86 e.g. PCIe x86 accelerator cards or something for people that want to use VMWare. I use a number of virtual machines for work and would rather not waste CPU time on emulation. I don’t really want to have an expensive third computer for virtualisation purposes only.

 

[dgdosen]

Should all work fine with Rosetta 2

It sounds like that's the only way to use something like homebrew binaries on arm macs. I'm thinking that will be ugly, but am willing to see how it shakes out. I'd of rather had Apple say they'll support aarch64.

As it stands now, Apple did nothing to allay my fears that the only "native code" you can run on a mac will be via the app store. My gut says I wouldn't want to use one of these machines as a daily until (if ever?) those machines started supporting aarch64 natively.

Who knows, maybe in a couple years it'll be much easier/nicer to have dev environments in the cloud, or maybe Rossetta2 will be awesome sauce. I just think if Apple made cloud devs a bit happier, it'd be better for them in the long run.

 

[djjeff]

Windows also has a Binary Translation technology like Rosetta, it might work, I mean when the Industry and chips are ready Microsoft would do a good job. I agree the job they did on Surface X was not good but the ARM chips weren't ready either.

The problem is that such translations end up hurting performance. I doubt many Windows users will be willing to move to ARM and run the majority of software through translation. Furthermore few developers have incentive to make native ARM applications. The x64 market is just too large and Microsoft doesn't have the leverage like Apple does.

 

[now i see it]

PowerPC all over again. History repeating itself.

 

[Tesix2]

The end of user side compute, hence how Apple can shift to their own processors.
You will buy a pretty thin terminal to sit on your desk, and buy all your software as a service, with all the heavy lifting done in the cloud.
Welcome to $400 a month subscriptions replacing initial hardware outlay.

 

[tommyparadise]

Cooler, faster, longer battery Macs? Bring it on!

 

[iBug2]

PowerPC all over again. History repeating itself.

PowerPC was an IBM chip. Not an Apple silicon.

 

[mrkite77]

Actually, Intel's curve is not getting any higher lately. Their 2019 chips are faster than their 2020 chips under some tasks. Intel dropped the ball long time ago. They are still at 14 nm. A14 is going to be a 5nm chip.

You do know that TSMC's 5nm chip is all marketing, right? TSMC's "5nm" chip has a gate pitch of 48nm and interconnect pitch of 30nm, which actually fits ITRS's specs for an 11nm process. Plus TSMC was caught lying about their gate sizes last year.

 

[SegNerd]

Can the virtualization run Android? Is there some reason no one is talking about that?

 

[gugy]

That's the million dollar question. It's my opinion Apple wouldn't be doing this if they couldn't.

Yep. My only concern is in regards to Thunderbolt support down the road. Luckily I have not invested heavily on it.

 

[cardfan]

But that's a big difference, don't you see? The transition from PPC to Intel allowed software that didn't then exist on Mac at all. Will the transition from Intel to ARM offer any new software that has never been on a Mac previously? Everyone keeps mentioning ARM versions of Office and Photoshop, but we already have Office and Photoshop. That's not new.

Plus the arm versions will suck and won’t be anywhere near full versions. Think toy apps for iPad.

 

[neuroleone]

Well, and there was similar question regarding running Linux for ARM natively. My bet is, Linux - NEVER, while Windows - POSSIBLY. Why: T2 security chip in recent Macs already disallows anything but macOS and Windows. Apple had clear chance to totally destroy Boot Camp by not allowing T2-equipped Macs to load Windows, and for the reason. Yet they chose to let it load.

I think you can run Linux in bootcamp, you have to change some settings in recovery.

 

[Toby_95]

PowerPC all over again. History repeating itself.

Not at all! From a long term development perspective it can only be positive to have Apple Developing their own chips.

 

[iBug2]

You do know that TSMC's 5nm chip is all marketing, right? TSMC's "5nm" chip has a gate pitch of 48nm and interconnect pitch of 30nm, which actually fits ITRS's specs for an 11nm process. Plus TSMC was caught lying about their gate sizes last year.

I see TSMC chips getting considerably faster every year, have not seen the same from intel though. Even AMD did finally catch up with intel because intel is not doing anything lately.

 

[NT1440]

This is terrifying for those of us with loads of TB3 devices. How is this going to pan out? Intel could always say piss off to Apple in regards to Thunderbolt.

No, they can’t given Intel released the TB spec free of charge already.

That and the fact that TB stemmed from a joint effort between Apple and Intel (light peak). Apple likely has plenty of patents in their name or licensed already.

TB wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Intel AND Apple.

This is a dev unit, it’s not for TB use. That has NO impact on the release of future macs.

 

[Squeak825]

As it stands now, Apple did nothing to allay my fears that the only "native code" you can run on a mac will be via the app store.

yes they did. They showed native Photoshop, which is not the app store.

 

[DailySlow]

Same here, except 1984 in my case. 😁

86 here

 

[AnthonyHarris]

But powerpc to intel was moving towards an industry standard rather than away from it

An industry standard that has since stagnated.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Software development today is done more for ARM and less for intel. Probably there are 10 times more developers, maybe 100 times, developing for ARM. So bringing the mac to the ARM ecosystem should attract even more software development. If you have people working for you, developing for ARM already, using them for a Mac project is easier now since they don't have to learn how to develop for intel.

I think it's fair to say there are 100x more developers developing in an environment that abstracts the underlying architecture than developers developing for Intel specifically. But I get your point.

I'm just saying that end-users will be puzzled by the move at first because Apple didn't explain the benefits. I got the impression that Apple wanted to say "all your favorite apps you know and love on your iPhone will have a native Mac app" but stopped short; probably because that's hyperbolic and they can't make that promise. Instead we got vague promises of power per watt and nothing else.

I know it's a developer conference, but surely Apple knows that these announcements will hit the mainstream media and news aggregators like Apple News and Google News and Facebook, and thus the masses will see it. They'll see Apple making a big move without any primary-source information about benefits to them.

 

[yozh]

So what you're saying is that Apple is going to ignore their massive installed base of Intel Mac users right after the ARM transition, and those poor forlorn Intel Mac users are going to throw away their Intel Macs and go out and buy new ARM machines, overnight?

Wake up, you're dreaming.

no what Im saying is they will not support you as a intel user and shift forward to ARM, leaving us with hardware that still works, but in terms of usability limited. Do you think youll run iOS appa on MaC intel ? Or ARM based apps on MAC Intel ? Yes do wake up the writing is on the wall. In 2 years current machines would be hard to give away let alone sell. And based on what I saw they are going all in on ARM.

 

[sracer]

macbook is dead to me, i dont want an enlarged ipad

It will take a few years before Apple takes the opportunity to lock macOS devices down to App Store only... all for the sake of security and privacy.

 

[PortoMavericks]

You just need to shove the silicon under an electronic microscope and you learn all the secrets. Apple might stop developing drivers if they feel that the demand isn't there, but if the demand is there, they'll continue to do so. I really don't see them spending any time and/or resources in blocking the bootloader either. That'd be a complete waste of resources as there will aways be someone who can open it.

Very simplistic.

 

[pankajdoharey]

I’m looking forward to finding out exactly what was meant here:

“Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon Macs offers fast performance and translates your apps at install time.”

There’s evidently something more than just emulation going on here. My first impression was that maybe it’s some sort of decompile+recompile process, but that seems far fetched.

If you observe Open source projects like say https://github.com/lifting-bits/remill What it does lift X86 or ARM ISA to LLVM Bit code and once you have that you can Jit or AOT the whole thing. Since the mentioned "during install" much of it might be happening AOT, but in the presentation they also mentioned Java VM will also run seemlessly so they might also be doing some JIT + Caching.

 

[dspdoc]

Yep. My only concern is in regards to Thunderbolt support down the road. Luckily I have not invested heavily on it.

I have invested heavily in Thunderbolt devices. This is quite disturbing. Especially given that there is no information about that roadmap from Apple. Zero reassurance.

 

[ivan86]

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

I hope you are right. Looks like they were using Pro Display XDR with an ARM developer kit, meaning Thundebolt 3 / custom controllers work just fine already and there will be no need in T2 chip and no kernel panics associated to it.

ARM MacBook Pro should be more stable and secure than Intel version and that what makes me most excited about the transition.