Intel Unveils Full Lineup of Skylake Processors for Notebooks and Desktops, Early 2016 Likely for Most Macs

[nutjob]

The fact of the matter is that currently ARM isn't fast enough to power anything other than a low end laptop. You've seen posts complaining that the rMB isn't much faster than an iPad. Well, where is the ARM chip that will power a high end laptop?

I'm only referencing information posted earlier in the thread. If you want more proof, it is out there.

You're missing the point. It's like saying: How can a Prius compete with a F-150? It can't carry a ton of lumber!

The future is low power and portability. ARM is built with low power usage in mind. Intel is high power usage with better single thread performance. Currently legacy software needs good single thread performance because it was designed for it, in the future software will be built for a larger number of cores. It's already happening now and will accelerate for two reasons: (a) it uses less power and (b) it's the only way to increase performance.

The latest and greatest i7-6700K is what 5% faster than the previous generation? But doubling the number of cores gives you close to double the performance with well written software.

Intel has already hit the single thread performance wall, and it's in trouble. The future is ARM.

 

[randian]

The fact of the matter is that currently ARM isn't fast enough to power anything other than a low end laptop.

Yes, but that's not an ARM problem, it's a physical architecture problem. You could design a high power/high speed ARM if you wanted to, using many of the same tricks Intel uses on x86.

 

[Thebeat07]

The only good thing about this delay is that i will save money this year lol

 

[vault]

Can we just agree it is different (different balance). Yes the CPU is not as powerful as the Macbook Air, but if you take 80% to 90% of people using their computers today - there CPU sits idle 80% - 90% (sometimes) more of the time since the tasks they run are not big. If you are using it for web browsing, for watching videos, for editing a document, spreadsheets, coding, etc. the core-m is more than sufficient. The biggest gains for the average user has been in the speed of the storage - it is what gives the user "performance". I would not use the Macbook for video editing, but then if I were doing that I would probably skip over the Macbook air and go to Macbook pro. I would have loved that machine when I was a road-warrior since I could carry it with me and it would not bug me as much as something like a standard laptop and would serve most of my uses. My preference is to have a full desktop at home (I just finished running something that took 60 hours on an 8 core machine), not a laptop and the Macbook fills the gap of having a mobile computer.

Actually, studies have shown that the average casual user (clearly the Macbook target audience) is not very likely to notice any difference between two SSDs, no matter their performance. If we're talking about "web browsing or editing a document", differences between a cheap SATA drive and expensive PCI-Express one in such tasks would be measured in milliseconds. To take advantage of all that speed you need to be constantly copying data between two comparable devices, across a channel that can sustain such speed. This is not a normal use-case for Macbook, where storage stays idle 80% - 90% (even more so than the CPU).

Fast SSDs excel at IOPS, but do very little if you're already not IOPS constrained. That's why people notice the huge jump from HDD to SSD, but almost none when they move from one SSD to another.

Putting a multiple hundred dollar storage in what should be a netbook-class device is just a way for Apple to sell it with a huge price premium.

 

[nelsonammo]

The MBAs will be discontinued once the MBs go down enough in price and up enough in power. The successor to the 13" MBA is the 13" MBPr. I suspect there will be a resdesign soon as well at that time for the MBP to make it as small and light as the current 13" MBA.

 

[QCassidy352]

The 21" and non-retina 27" iMacs have not seen an update since September 2013. Two years. And still there aren't appropriate chips available?

 

[T5BRICK]

You're missing the point. It's like saying: How can a Prius compete with a F-150? It can't carry a ton of lumber!

Don't start with the car comparison, they don't hold up. In this scenario, Toyota sells the Tundra, it can be competitive with the F150. It also gets poor mileage.

There isn't an ARM chip that is competitive with the current Intel offerings in that class.

The future is low power and portability. ARM is built with low power usage in mind. Intel is high power usage with better single thread performance. Currently legacy software needs good single thread performance because it was designed for it, in the future software will be built for a larger number of cores. It's already happening now and will accelerate for two reasons: (a) it uses less power and (b) it's the only way to increase performance.

The latest and greatest i7-6700K is what 5% faster than the previous generation? But doubling the number of cores gives you close to double the performance with well written software.

Intel has already hit the single thread performance wall, and it's in trouble. The future is ARM.

Again, where are the high end ARM chips? We keep talking about how it's easy to just add more cores, but Intel can do the same thing. They sell dual, quad, six and eight core chips right now. They'll be adding more cores in the future.

 

[dannys1]

Doh! I really need a new 15" MacBook Pro this year (and a MacBook Air - if it gets a redesign + retina).
Crossing my fingers for a surprise at the october event ...

Just buy the Macbook Pro, I'm almost certain they won't update until mid-2016.

 

[Val-kyrie]

And the new Retina Macbook is a 2011*-slow laptop with one port and a horrible keyboard (I tried it). Not good enough.

I agree that the rMB is slow and limited 1-USB-non-TB port) but I guess I am in the minority in liking the keyboard. I am a touch typist and I liked the shorter travel, but I only spent 15-20 minutes typing on it. I might change my mind after typing on it for a longer period of time.

 

[vault]

Again, where are the high end ARM chips? We keep talking about how it's easy to just add more cores, but Intel can do the same thing. They sell dual, quad, six and eight core chips right now. They'll be adding more cores in the future.

I wouldn't get excited about the supposed multi-core ARMs crushing x86, seeing as Intel even now sells 18-core Xeons. There's just no market for them on the mainstream.

 

[dannys1]

Does early 2016 mean March 2016? I don't think apple ever releases laptops in January or February but I might be wrong.

At the earliest, id put money on there being no 15" rMBP update until mid-2016

 

[dannys1]

The new MacBook Pros are going to be available in retina MacBook colors, including Space Gray. I suspect that, like the 12" MacBook's going to be replacing the 13" MacBook Air, there are going to be new 14"/16" MacBook Pros to replace the current 13"/15" MacBook Pros.

The colours are inevitable, the size changes will never happen.

 

[anubis]

I feel like Intel needs some serious competition in the computer market; they're getting slower and slower between releases.

This has nothing to do with competition and everything to do with physics.

Planar photolithography has its limits. Back in the day, it's true that processor updates were very frequent, but that's because shrinking the process was relatively easy. However, today's 14nm process is pushing the absolute limits of quantum mechanics. The transistor dielectric layer in a 14nm process is 2 atoms thick. Multiply that by billions of transistors that all have to be atomically perfect. You'll spend billions of dollars in R&D to get there, and oh, consumers won't pay more than a couple hundred bucks per chip. We're rapidly approaching the point where you simply can't shrink the process any further due to quantum physics. The only place left to go in conventional silicon semiconductors is to make single atom-thick transistor components, which might be achievable with many years and billions of dollars more in research.

In the future, we will see the emergence of exotic compound semiconductor materials in order to improve speed and TDP, such as Gallium Arsenide or Cadmium Telluride. However these technologies are incredibly immature compared to silicon and we're years, if not decades, away from seeing their widespread emergence.

This is the new normal: years between processor updates that will maybe deliver a few percent in performance improvements.

 

[subsonix]

Actually, studies have shown that the average casual user (clearly the Macbook target audience) is not very likely to notice any difference between two SSDs, no matter their performance. If we're talking about "web browsing or editing a document", differences between a cheap SATA drive and expensive PCI-Express one in such tasks would be measured in milliseconds.

The PCIe option isn't neccissarily more expensive, but you need to keep one thing in mind when determining if a user notice a difference. First of all, boot time isn't only held back by disk I/O, it also performs hardware initialization. If you play with the idea of an SSD that approaches DRAM perfomance, it's possible to write software to exploit that, using disk as ram.

This has nothing to do with competition and everything to do with physics.

Lot's of it has to do with competition, the x86 instruction set is proprietary. Meaning Intel get's massive scale by an effective monopoly with Wintel. Massive scale is neccessary to build cutting edge fabs and offering products at a reasonable price.

 

[unobtainium]

waiting for a new rMBP 15" has been the most painful experience of my life. Let's get a new form factor and colors! come on apple

Lol you have apparently lived a very charmed life.

 

[HVDynamo]

I would actually love to see Apple purchase AMD and throw a couple billion at their R&D teams, would be nice to finally see them catch up to Intel and/or surpass the competition like they did over a decade ago.

I think the problem with that would be that the x86 license is not transferable from AMD if another company buys them out. So that would effectively take them out of the x86 game. Otherwise I would agree completely.

 

[wiz329]

Indeed, and yet we're getting marginal increases in performance. Whatever the benefits of die shrinks are they're not flowing through to the retail customer. I wonder if that's because Intel is effectively a monopoly?

I wonder if that's because of the limitations in the laws of physics?

 

[sudo1996]

The future is low power and portability. ARM is built with low power usage in mind. Intel is high power usage with better single thread performance. Currently legacy software needs good single thread performance because it was designed for it, in the future software will be built for a larger number of cores. It's already happening now and will accelerate for two reasons: (a) it uses less power and (b) it's the only way to increase performance.

There are things that cannot be parallelized well, and it's not a matter of there being a lack of technology for it. And are you saying that ARM has the advantage when it comes to multi-core performance? Is Intel not doing that fine?

 

[MacRazySwe]

Regardless, I also miss the powerPC era.

You miss the lack of programs/applications as well? How all required apps in school or at work were practically non-existent on OS X?

You miss the completely skimped out OS X versions of cross-platform applications? Like MSN Messenger for Mac, Skype, or the Office package?

Lack of support for printers. Lack of support for 3rd party wireless networking adapters?

You miss the complete lack of games?

I'm not saying you're wrong, I very much respect your opinion. Mine is just very different. I have always loved the Mac and OS X, but I think moving to Intel was the best move Apple ever made. Together with the iPod and iPhone of course.
I don't think Apple would have been where they are today if it weren't for Intel. However I do certainly miss the design of the PowerPC era, iMac G4 and PowerMac G4 in particular.

 

[HVDynamo]

Yeah, I've heard about those pro models and what people use them for. Have one myself.

The point is that single core performance of an A9 is on par with entry level Skylake and only 30% lower than the high-end i7-6700. Now just imagine that Apple could a) further optimise their single core performance for laptop/desktop usage and b) for the same OEM-price of an Intel chip, add a dozen or so multi-core ARM's.
That would beat the crap out of any single chip intel design and surely make your Pro-calculation stuff run skyrocket.

There's undoubtedly a couple of complex things to consider for Apple to switch from Intel to arm but I don't think raw performance is the main showstopper anymore.

Throwing more cores at it doesn't solve the problem. Multi-threaded software is pretty hard to code, and a lot of applications can't easily be made to use multiple threads simultaneously. Single core performance is still king in a lot of respects, and two to four cores is about the most you can reasonably use with most software. Software that lends itself to parallel operation would benefit, but most software would not.

 

[sudo1996]

Lot's of it has to do with competition, the x86 instruction set is proprietary. Meaning Intel get's massive scale by an effective monopoly with Wintel. Massive scale is neccessary to build cutting edge fabs and offering products at a reasonable price.

Intel and AMD compete, making processors with the x86_64 architecture. Only AMD is only useful for super lower budget PCs because their higher-tier processors are weaker than comparable Intels.

 

[subsonix]

I wonder if that's because of the limitations in the laws of physics?

It's both, but the mobile class of products has given volume to 3rd party fabs, so you can now do 14nm with Samsung and Global Foundries, and I think TSMC offers 16nm. This levels the field for competing architectures and open ISAs.

Intel and AMD compete, making processors with the x86_64 architecture. Only AMD is only useful for super lower budget PCs.

Read up on the AMD story, the reason is based in some contractual detail, it's also a fact that Intel has sought to hinder aspects of x86 to be used by AMD (I think). Same thing with the VIA implementation, it's based on the fact that VIA sued Intel for patent infringement, and they resolved it by cross licensing for a limited period.

BTW, I'm not saying this as and argument for or against any particular CPU here, I just find it interesting as a geek. That's all.

 

[Analog Kid]

Apple does have another option for a 15" MacBook Pro update, however, as Intel announced Broadwell chips appropriate for the lineup back in early June, just weeks after Apple refreshed the family without upgrading the processors from the previous generation's Haswell chips. But given that it has only been a few months since the last update, Apple may elect to skip a Broadwell refresh of the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro and wait for Skylake early next year.

I'm guessing Apple knew the roadmap when they released. Going with Haswell when they did means they can wait until early 2016 to update to Skylake, or still use Broadwell if Skylake suffers similar delays.

 

[mindquest]

The 21" and non-retina 27" iMacs have not seen an update since September 2013. Two years. And still there aren't appropriate chips available?

Which of the Skylake chips is comparable with the iMac? Do you think the iMac won't get the Skylake upgrade till 2016?

 

[Michael Goff]

Which takes all of a minute to flip a switch on the compiler, plus compile time. No big deal assuming marginally competent programmers.

No, it isn't as simple as flipping a switch on a compiler when things have x86 specific code and optimizations. It doesn't work like that.

Wrong. Apple named it the MacBook. The MBA is still a current model.

Semantics. My point was that the Retina MacBook Air is here and named the MacBook. It fills the role the MBA initially played and does it with a beautiful screen.