Which is why Apple will roll their own full-custom and bypass ARM all together.
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Intel's New Core i9 and Coffee Lake Chips Pave Way for Quad-Core 13" MacBook Pro, Mac Mini Refresh, and More
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Which is why Apple will roll their own full-custom and bypass ARM all together.
No sale, until Apple finds a way to get past 16gb of RAM. We've been stuck at 16gb for EIGHT years. Thanks Apple + Intel....
(Luckily those laptops bought in 2010 with 2gb ram are still easily upgradable to 16gb...
(Luckily those laptops bought in 2010 with 2gb ram are still easily upgradable to 16gb...
You mean they will roll their own microarchitecture, right? Because there's no way they'd abandon the ARM instruction set and make all iOS apps incompatible as well as x86. What would be the advantage anyway?
Does anyone know if Intel has published a roadmap of when their mobile processors will finally support LPDDR4?
Stranger things have happened. For instance, there’s no way a computer company can put together a decent cell phone...
Apple Insider has a good (but wordy) take, here: https://iphone.appleinsider.com/art...switch-from-intel-to-its-own-chips-in-the-mac
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That’s an Intel bottleneck....
I got less expensive and less well-specced mixed up. Though one could argue that getting the fastest processor option for the MB is needed to equalise as much as possible the specs (and then the fastest MB processor is still slower than the slowest MBP processor). With this, the MB is actually more expensive for the same RAM/SSD combo, eg:
MB (1.4 GHz, 8 GB, 512 GB) -- $1750
MBP esc (2.3 GHz, 8 GB, 512 GB) -- $1700
I mostly agree with you, except for the above. Those are chips with GT2 graphics. All 13" MBPs use GT3e (Iris Plus), both Touch Bar and Fn Keys.
There are no 8th gen 15 Watt chips with GT3(e) graphics yet. Remains to be seen if there will be.
Maybe there's a chance the Fn Keys model will just retain the current 7th gen processors, helping bring price down to something MacBook Air-ish, and further differentiating an updated Touch Bar model.
And Apple are considering ditching Intel.....Utter Madness
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https://everymac.com/systems/apple/...inch-aluminum-mid-2011-thunderbolt-specs.html
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Not sure I follow. I have upgraded my Mid 2011 21.5" iMac to 32gb RAM although Apple claim it will support only 16gb
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/...inch-aluminum-mid-2011-thunderbolt-specs.html
I should've been more specific, all Apple macbooks in the last 8 years are limited to 16gb of ram, which is fine for most, but not when you're editing 4K video or 45MP DSLR images on the road...
My imac has 32gb of ram and has to cache to the SSD much less often than my 2015 rMBP 15 with 16gb of ram.
Considering my partner's Dell XPS is currently humming along with 32gb of DDR4 tells me otherwise.
Apple should offer us the loss of standby battery life (I don't give a flying fig about 30 day hibernation stats) by offering DDR4 option in the rMBP's....
You’re over-estimating the drawing power of 32GB, which a lot of buyers won’t want to pay an extra $400 for. Those who would are already wanting high CPU/GPU performance, they’re either going to be 15” or 13” TB customers.
These users aren’t going to suddenly abandon high performance machines and settle for a 4.5W CPU just to get 32GB a little earlier than they will on high performance MBP platforms. And if they do, they’re the same types who would re-buy MBP 6 or 9 months later when Ice Lake releases. Apple wins big in this case.
Those who would buy the 13” nTB are already foregoing the more expensive 13” TB, presumably due mostly to price. They’re not looking for maximum performance. If they go to the rMB line to get 32GB, Apple’s fine with that; the 12” MB and the 13” nTB are basically offered at roughly the same price points at equivalent configurations.
I don’t see any downside to Apple offering 32GB on rMB first. But we’ll find out later this year, or early next year, when the MB gets refreshed
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Nothing official that I've seen, but it's been widely reported that Cannonlake and Ice Lake were planned to support 32GB of mobile-friendly RAM, whether LPDDR4 or otherwise. Both have been delayed by years, so much so that Cannonlake is being mostly skipped. Best hope for the MBP line is Ice Lake, which is now tentatively due next year.
Have you ever designed hardware?
I've been doing it for 30 years.
That statement makes no sense.
They are going to create an incompatible CPU architecture?
They are going to create a tool chain and optimized compiler for it?
They are going to do that in two years to compete with Intel?
SMH......
Almost nobody buying it wouldn't be a downside? Drawing even more attention to the lack of 32 GB on the 15" MBP by having the MB upstage it wouldn't be a downside?
And besides, having no downsides isn't the only requirement. Having clear upsides is also one, and almost nobody needing 32 GB of RAM on a 4.5 W CPU means there is almost no upside.
Get Apple to release two different lines of 15" laptops and you can have your wish. But not before that.
Now you’ve abandoned your whole “no, because segmentation” argument. If you think no one would buy it, there’s no point in protecting it from segment crossover. You’re really making the argument 32GB won’t be offered on rMB at all
And Apple isn’t afraid of “drawing even more attention to the lack of 32 GB on the 15" MBP” or rMP upstaging MBP. That’s an Intel problem anyway. It would hardly be the heavy blow to Apple’s “ego” that you seem to think it would be.
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And charged as if it’s top of the notch hardwareMac mini still on the 4th Gen Haswell
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Well... the top of the line iMac is faster than a Mac Pro...I’ve seen stranger things coming from Apple.
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To solve this issue and make everybody happy... don’t solder everything on the motherboard and make relevant things like RAM user interchangeable. Problem solved and everybody happy... except Apple because they ask double the market price for RAM.
The i5 8269 and 8259 are configurable to TDP-down of 20W. That isn't 15W but is also isn't 28W either. It is closer to 15 (5) than it is to 28 ( 8) .
https://ark.intel.com/products/137980/Intel-Core-i5-8269U-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-4_20-GHz
https://ark.intel.com/products/135935/Intel-Core-i5-8259U-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz
The eDRAM is bigger. Just bleeding off clock speed to go lower TDP may or may not be useful to most other system vendors. Intel may not offer anything different for a relatively long while (i.e, until 9th Gen). You can get into slippery slope where the performance from the previous model just pragmatically evaporates.
If the gap is 5W and can get 1-2W back from a reduction in other components ( e.g., PCH , TB, etc. ) then the gap is pretty small to justify a separate processor product SKU.
This model looks like what the MacBook Air update could have been. ( Screen is a bit more higher than a MBA would get but along the lines Apple has been going. ). I doubt Apple would pass through some huge discount for 7th gen processors.
For chip design? Yes, I have (among other jobs as a hardware design engineer, and systems engineer - in the high-speed digital signal processing realm - at other companies). Developed full-custom very high-speed highly pipelined CMOS (effective hundreds/thousands gop/s rates), with our own tools and libraries. Resulting in a variety of multi-channel high-speed digital downconverters and up converters, digital filters, etc for direct-sample A/D-converted IF and RF spectrums on the receive side and high-speed DACs on transmit, QAM modulators, digital pre-distortion to correct power amplifier non-liearities, etc. Tape-outs went to various contract fabs as we were a small company. Devices were initially used by the military and govt agencies (they could afford the high prices - $300 for a four channel DDC), and then commercial wireless infrastructure on the BTS side, as our company grew.
SMH???
OK, how about you?
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That probably isn't the point. For system designers willing to use so-DIMMs the limit is 32GB.
Apple's limit isn't just LPDDR4. It is also DRAM density. Since there are soldering flat to the logic board surface, there is only so much room for RAM chips ( fixed number of chips). To go to 32GB Apple needs denser (higher capacity ) RAM chips as well as LPDDR4. The issue is whether anyone is making those at market tolerable prices yet?
Making a RAM controller for RAM almost nobody is going to buy doesn't work.
Apple's thinnest mania is also a driver here, but Apple doesn't want to say that.
The newer DRAM controller is in Cannon Lake which is delayed. That's Intel's contribution to the problem. The PCH chipsets being used in the new 8th gen systems that are Coffee Lake are from what would have been the Cannon Lake offering. Just missing the CPU "half" which is where the DRAM controller is. Intel might have made it a priority to pull it back to Coffee Lake if most system vendors had asked to make it a priority but most likely they didn't so it wasn't. Apple's isn't Intel's only "tier 1" customer.
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BSEE and MSEE with specialization in computer architecture.
30 years Silicon Valley
Amdahl computer development group in the late 1980's.
From there many companies where I developed custom processors for TCP/IP acceleration, pixel processors for H.264, AVS encode and decode, audio signal processors, ARM processor implementation for GSM cellphones, PCIe switches.
Research in cache coherence.
Papers on FPGA and ASIC unified flow and development.
Patents, and IEEE Senior Member.
I've done designs in BiCMOS, ECL and CMOS at nodes starting at 3.5 microns (I'm old) all the way down to 16nm FinFET.
I've lost count on how many chips have shipped my my stuff in them.
My area of specialization is computer architectures.
Now credential aside.
it makes no sense for them to develop a completely new instruction set with all the collateral behind that it will take.
Instruction set design alone is a monumental chore. I've done it for a custom video processor. Working with the engineer so we could have a compiler was non-trivial. I can't see them going down that path. Anyway, the other thread on moving away from Intel discusses this more and I don't want to pollute this one.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...om-mac-chips-starting-in-2020.2113132/page-53