Arm Processors with Mac Pro Level Performance Possible Today

[Val-kyrie]

That article is about AMD, not ARM

Either way, I hope they stick to Intel as well

I don't think anyone should want Intel in light of the imminent release of the new Ryzen 4000 series, either for performance or more importantly security reasons.

Perhaps this comment posted this morning will alter your perspective:
The Intel funded research used unpatched kernels and libraries. This is not a new flaw, it's just a new attack vector for older side channel vulnerabilities that have already been patched. They didn't even bother to file a CVE before disclosure. The real security news is Intel's insecure and UNFIXABLE chipsets that break Intel's Trusted Platform Module that underpins the whole enterprise-grade OS security apparatus, from UEFI to OS boot to drivers and running applications.

The article on AMD's security flaw is just a diversion from Intel's most recent security issues.

from the register

"Ampere's Altra: This TSMC-fabricated 7nm-node server-grade microprocessor features up to 80 64-bit CPU cores, arranged in a grid-like cache-coherent mesh, consuming up to 210W per package. The Arm-designed N1 cores are compatible with Armv8.2+, clocked up to 3GHz in turbo mode, and feature a four-wide superscalar pipeline with "aggressive" out-of-order execution."

I suppose that's better than amd's offering. But these do not sip power.

Don't oversell ARM's computing abilities. ARM's performance in the server market is not at parity with Intel or AMD; otherwise, you would see a lot more ARM servers, of which there are currently very few.

So long as I can still virtualise Windows then this is not something I have much of an opinion about either way. Otherwise it’s a showstopper.

There won't be any virtualization with any transition to ARM. Apple will simply push SAAS.

 

[ridgero]

The multitasking is a crutch. The gestures are unintuitive, limited, and error-prone.

For example:

The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

To reach its potential, Apple needs to recognize they have made profound conceptual mistakes in the iPad user interface, mistakes that need to be scrapped and replaced, not polished and refined. I worry that iPadOS 13 suggests the opposite — that Apple is steering the iPad full speed ahead down...

daringfireball.net

It’s Not About Intuitiveness

That’s what makes the state of iPadOS so crushingly disappointing — it has an inherent leg up on MacOS on intuitiveness by nature of its conceptual foundation. The problems with the iPad are about *consistency*, *coherence*, and *discoverability*.

daringfireball.net

A Deceptively Simple iPad Multitasking Concept

Link to: https://twitter.com/rutherling/status/1232062925570891779

daringfireball.net

I still don’t get your point? That has nothing to do with the CPU capability

 

[mazz0]

The Snapdragon 865 is a better proc than the A13

I haven't heard that claim before, do you have a link to figures?

 

[iZac]

...Waiting for an iBook

 

[crsh1976]

Have you used iPad OS recently? The multitasking has so much improved lately. Tell me more about „complex“ applications. What do you mean with that?

Can you run a dev tool akin to Xcode on iOS?

Pretty sure you can't.

 

[chucker23n1]

None of this has anything to do with the CPUs capability to multitask well: the hardware works just fine. This is a software issue.

Yes, that's true. I was responding to the assertion that "The multitasking has so much improved lately." Maybe, but it's still worse than System 6.x.

 

[MikeSmoke]

The 12” Macbook was a really good test bed. It is not difficult to see a similar ARM based model in the near future.
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The Apple of today is not the same Apple that transitioned from Motorola/Power PC/Intel CPU’s. If Apple makes another transition to in house ARM based CPU’s you can bet it will be done in a way where users will not notice any difference.

 

[ridgero]

Can you run a dev tool akin to Xcode on iOS?

Pretty sure you can't.

That’s the CPUs fault?

Not yet! It’s obvious that the transition from x86 to ARM architecture is not a matter of months.

 

[JosephAW]

Actually I was hoping that Apple was going to release renamed branch of a LTS macOS for all non-Apple hardware to capture MS remaining market share as well as Linux and 3rd party OS. This would not only be for x86 but also for AMD, ARM and RISC hardware unifying the desktop experience for everyone.

 

[chucker23n1]

I still don’t get your point? That has nothing to do with the CPU capability

Ummm… you're the one who brought up iPad multitasking. iPadOS/iOS multitasking was never a limitation of the CPU, but of what Apple wanted to expose in the UI.
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Actually I was hoping that Apple was going to release renamed branch of a LTS macOS for all non-Apple hardware to capture MS remaining market share as well as Linux and 3rd party OS. This would not only be for x86 but also for AMD, ARM and RISC hardware unifying the desktop experience for everyone.

Not in a million years. Not only is the potential market rather niche, but the pricing would be prohibitive to make it worth it. They wouldn't sell that below at least $299.

 

[MikeSmoke]

iOS and MacOS are based on the same code. iOS runs fine on ARM.

 

[Rogifan]

The multitasking is a crutch. The gestures are unintuitive, limited, and error-prone.

For example:

The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10

To reach its potential, Apple needs to recognize they have made profound conceptual mistakes in the iPad user interface, mistakes that need to be scrapped and replaced, not polished and refined. I worry that iPadOS 13 suggests the opposite — that Apple is steering the iPad full speed ahead down...

daringfireball.net

It’s Not About Intuitiveness

That’s what makes the state of iPadOS so crushingly disappointing — it has an inherent leg up on MacOS on intuitiveness by nature of its conceptual foundation. The problems with the iPad are about *consistency*, *coherence*, and *discoverability*.

daringfireball.net

A Deceptively Simple iPad Multitasking Concept

Link to: https://twitter.com/rutherling/status/1232062925570891779

daringfireball.net

I wouldn’t use John Gruber as a benchmark for iPad. He’s a Mac guy. And when Gruber really doesn’t like something he’s not shy about saying so. There are people like Federico Vittici, Myke Hurley, Jason Snell that do a lot of work on iPad. Yes they’d agree multitasking isn’t perfect but they’re not nearly as harsh about it as Gruber is.

 

[639051]

My 2011 MBP died in 2018 because of the motherboard problem (it had already been replaced once under the replacement program, but that ended). So I got zero - broken laptop, and zero worth, after 6-7 years.

Unfortunately this isn't an Apple only problem. I hate on Apple frequently (and I use many of their products and will continue to) but having dealt with Dell, HP, Lenovo and other OEMs the situation is generally worse. A friend of mine had an XPS 13 that was roughly 1.5 years old, suddenly when booting into windows the screen went black. We determined it to have been a combination of a recent (forced) BIOS update and the intel display driver.

Many others had this exact issue and posted on the Dell forums... never a peep from dell about it. The problem STILL exists to this day.

It should be completely unacceptable from an OEM but this is normal practice sadly.

 

[H2SO4]

Honestly, I’d rather have Intel compatibility at this point. I don’t really need more performance out of my system. In fact, I’m happy with pretty much everything my iMac does. I don’t sit down and think “man, I wish my processor was 2x as powerful.” I sit down and enjoy my speedy iMac and I’m happy.

The only reason I’d upgrade is to be able to update to the latest macOS, as I get obsoleted.

This for me too. I don't spend all day working with huge data set and crunching massive numbers so for me Intel compatibility is where it's at.
My Macs directly bring me an income now so I don't need the hassle of switching.

 

[MikeSmoke]

It is not difficult to perceive that MacOS running on an ARM CPU would blow away MacOS on Intel x86. The tight integration of iOS and the ‘A’ series CPU is why we have such a powerful platform. The only thing is running Windows. It is not a factor for me. I walked away from Windows 15 years ago but many people rely on Windows for their work.

 

[H2SO4]

What about a drastic power reduction? Cooler operation without fans (or smaller fans) meaning increased battery life?

Nope, for now my computers work. Low power and low temperature are secondary if the thing doesn't work properly.

 

[theluggage]

Saw this article on Engadget this weekend

The recent wave of CPU vulnerabilities - Spectre, Meltdown and more that keep appearing are mostly the result of fundamental flaws in optimisation techniques such as speculative execution that are used in virtually all modern CPU designs, be they Intel x86, AMD x86 or ARM. Switching processor won't dodge these - although others might get satisfactory fixes/workarounds before Intel.
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As a current Hackintosh user my biggest concern is when the OS goes ARM only.

ARM or not, all current Macs except the iMac have a T2 chip, so once they've updated the iMac (rumoured this year and long overdue) they'll be free to make a future MacOS T2-only.

 

[PortoMavericks]

I don’t think Windows ARM will ever work on a Mac ARM with boot camp.

A-Series chipset does not use the standard Cortex core. There’s a lot of optimizations that are certainly locked down to prevent Qualcomm from copying it.

 

[leman]

The article is slightly misleading. These CPUs are developed for the server market and their performance comes from a large amount of parallel cores. If your workflow is ridiculously parallel (like many server-side or scientific workflows are), these 80-core ARM CPUs are very competitive performance-wise. For a general-purpose machine — not so much.

ARM will only become a serious competitor to x86 when it starts offering competitive performance per-core. We are getting there, but from what I know we are not there yet.

 

[MikeSmoke]

My 2011 MBP died in 2018 because of the motherboard problem (it had already been replaced once under the replacement program, but that ended). So I got zero - broken laptop, and zero worth, after 6-7 years.

There is a person in my area who repairs Macs. Their theory is that the 2011 MBP problem is the result of lead free solder. Not the chips. Believe it or not this person bakes bad motherboards in an oven and they say there are good results. I guess it reseals the solder joints.

 

[theluggage]

otherwise, you would see a lot more ARM servers, of which there are currently very few.

...because after 30-40 years of Intel dominance, interest in ARM servers has only started up in the last few years for two reasons:

(a) Power consumption (...including the cost of air conditioning to get rid of the waste heat) is becoming a big issue. ARM may not be fundamentally faster core-for-core than Intel, but it offers more performance & more cores for the same power consumption.

Power consumption/thermals is also a major design factor in all of Apple's current range (even the Mac Pro has 'quiet operation' as a major selling point - everything else is some variation on 'small form factor' that is currently pushing at its thermal envelope).

(b) More and more server-side stuff is being built with web technologies using open-source backends running on linux (which has been available on ARM since the 1990s). Apps using Node.js, mongo, python etc. mostly don't care whether they're running on ARM or x86.

There won't be any virtualization with any transition to ARM. Apple will simply push SAAS.

There won't be any x86 virtualisation, which is going to be a dealbreaker for some. Whether it's still going to be a dealbreaker in 2-3 years when this comes to a head, or whether Apple regards providing a good Windows experience as a priority is another matter...

No reason there can't be ARM virtualization for Linux, iOS, MacOS, Android or even Windows-on-ARM, though.

Really, we're moving into an era where the underlying instruction set architecture should be increasingly irrelevant - and Apple does have a track record of pulling the rug from under its users every few years, which is why Windows is Windows and MacOS is MacOS.

 

[shaunp]

As a PC user and former Mac user, I'm looking at this with interest. My IT work is becoming more and more cloud-based and I now rely on less running local VMs in a test lab. My other work is photography and the Mac has always been a better platform for photography - colour calibration on a PC isn't as reliable as I would like.

If Apple were to release an updated iMac with an ARM CPU and it was performant enough I'd be interested. I think I've gotten to the point where a computer is just a tool and I'm not that bothered what is in it so long as it is fast and reliable.

 

[theluggage]

My 2011 MBP died in 2018 because of the motherboard problem (it had already been replaced once under the replacement program, but that ended). So I got zero - broken laptop, and zero worth, after 6-7 years.

Same here - but that was still the longest genuinely useful life I've had out of any computer, PC or Mac, in 40 years. Incidentally, assuming its the GPU fault, if you google around you'll find instructions for disabling the AMD GPU after which it will still be perfectly usable for non graphics-intensive work.

 

[WannaGoMac]

I would like to see the number of people using Windows on their Macs (either in VM or dual boot). I suspect switching from x86 to ARM will work out ok given that most applications are web based and dedicated apps will re-compile for ARM. However, i really question the wisdom of doing this by Apple.

Is it worth all this effort and loss of x86 compatibility with the rest of the world?

Unless Apple believes x86 computers are dying for non-professional/home users (given the growing number of home users without a traditional computer at home) so they will try to be ahead of the curve again.

 

[hotdwag]

Again I see ARM as as great contender in lightweight mobile applications. CISC and RISC architectures also have advantages and disadvantages based on the actual application. I love the idea of a lightweight portable Macbook using ARM, but not powering a Mac Pro with high wattage use with little advantage due to architecture virtualization and lack of third party support.

x86-64 and ARM are both good architectures in their own right and Apple's base is large enough to support dual architectures. It would be a bit off-putting to have a full transition to ARM along with in house designs that are extremely locked down / proprietary on top of it.

They need to at least give a roadmap of what they intend to do instead of having it remain a mystery.