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Microsoft Claims Upcoming ARM-Powered Laptops Offer Multi-Day Battery Life
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All of that stuff is a bane using current top end MBP gear, let alone laptops designed for FaceBook and emoji.
Okay Apple, time to start the transition for MacOS - you have a huge performance advantage with your A series ARM chips over what Qualcomm will give to the Windows world. I want a MacbookPro that I just charge couple of times a week.
Intel's future is looking dire. Other than the few uses that require true high performance output of the top of the line Intel / AMD CPU's - these ARM laptops are going to be fine for ~80-90% of the market. Of course the other ARM CPU vendors are years behind Apple in performance.
Intel's stock is going to go in the toilet as the sales shift over to ARM based laptops.
Intel's future is looking dire. Other than the few uses that require true high performance output of the top of the line Intel / AMD CPU's - these ARM laptops are going to be fine for ~80-90% of the market. Of course the other ARM CPU vendors are years behind Apple in performance.
Intel's stock is going to go in the toilet as the sales shift over to ARM based laptops.
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Do you honestly think, if pressed, Intel couldn't transition their fab to ARM if they wanted to?
Jesus.
Like they're going to replace all of their Itanium and Xeon kit with ARM processors... heh.
Jesus.
Like they're going to replace all of their Itanium and Xeon kit with ARM processors... heh.
So... if Apple potentially is considering shifting to the A11 chips for the MacBook. Would it run iOS and tech be an iPad or would it run macOS?
It would have to run macOS. iOS is for toys, it's a joke. Perfect if you want to take selfies and share with friends, useless for actually doing anything.
They could shift to licensing ARM CPU's but do you think their profits would be anywhere near what its been for the last 5 years with their stagnant i3 - i5 - i7 - Xeon chips and no price competition? Now there will be multiple vendors forcing competition on price. A big No there.
Itanium is almost gone and Xeon's are a tiny fraction of the market and use alot of energy (which is why ARM will take over) - the server side of things will want to go ARM as well because of that (power consumption makes a huge cost difference in data centers). Intel will still exist but in no way will they be the powerhouse they are today...guessing their stock will tank over the years as this transition occurs. JMHO...
Because the popularity of portable devices has most CPU development efforts focus on power efficiency rather than brute force power.
Rendering solutions like PRMan and Arnold, as well as simulation software like Houdini, or DCC tools as used by the Visual Effects industry still very much rely on the concept of 'the more CPU+GPU+RAM the better'. Rooms filled with racks filled blades decked out with multi CPU/cores and oodles of RAM are needed to create your average Hollywood block buster, or content seen in games like Battle Front. In those settings iPads are rarely used as anything other than devices for 2D illustration, but nothing more strenuous than that.
Furthermore, until the aforementioned software can run much faster/cheaper on ARM than it does on x86 there simply won't be much of an impetus from the developers to port their code. Look how long it is taking some developers *cough*solidangle*cough* to add GPU support to their existing products. (answer: it's been years and still nothing).
That said, I'd welcome the addition of an ARM based Mac. Just not as a replacement for the current line-up (underwhelming as it may be for some at the moment).
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Xeons a tiny part of the market? Intel-86 (and AMD-86 processors I guess) -are- the current market! Look at the cloud offerings that everyone is spinning up... Point is with Itanium that HP paid how much to continue with it? Hundreds of millions. If the entire world was going ARM (AMD's K12 is ARM based so I'm not discounting it) the amount of money that Intel would be handed over to support x86 would be monumental, more than enough for them to continue to develop their own kit (especially especially especially in the server market, where those big juicy contracts are) and remain dominant.
Processor power consumption in data centres isn't a big a factor as heat output, although the two generally go hand in hand... It takes way more power to keep things cool than it does to process things.
Title should be Microsoft to usher in a new era of Junk PCs, so thin, even the weakest of nerds can snap them in two pieces.
That's the question, if iOS then how different will it be, in comparison to the iPad Pro?
Surface Books are -designed- to be snapped into two separate pieces.
iPhone 6's not so much.
Mac = ARM (current cylinder-shaped Mac Pro, but smaller)
Mac Pro = Intel + ARM (older tower-style Mac Pro)
MacBook = ARM
MacBook Pro = Intel + ARM
And just to parrot users who keep saying Apple should discontinue the Mac mini and the MacBook Air, I say Apple should discontinue the iMac.
I could see it going either way, as macOS could run on ARM which would be the easy transition, but iOS would be a clean break from the past. It may not be ideal, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them pull off the transition similar to OS 9 to 10, providing a sandboxed version of the legacy OS for your apps but pushing as much on to iOS as possible. Some sort of blend of the two could be interesting though...
We are already seeing what may be the start of this. While the Touch Bar wasn't too positively received, the T1 is them starting a tiny fusion of their own chips along with Intel. It's like a tiny taste of iOS on the Mac, but I won't be surprised to see it grow into something bigger over time.
The day when a Qi charging pad can fully charge up a MacBook overnight, you will not see a single port on the MacBook, and it will be really, really thin and light.
Because, courage.
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They may no need to emulate anything, they probably can introduce something like bitcode for macOS too. And then re-optimize apps for ARM. Potentially can happen this way.
I think the question isn't IF Apple and MS switch to ARM, it is a question of when. I'd like to hear what time frame people predict. I'm saying for a full announcement and exit of Intel and x86, just like the announcement and transition from PowerPC to Intel (which happened in 2006) I'm predicting 5.5 years (summer of 2023).
I think it is a mistake to think about today's shipping processors, (which btw, the iPhone 7 beat the $12,500 Mac Pro in single thread performance last year (geekbench)). It is also a mistake to call the iPad and iPhone toys and selfy machines, even if they are, the CPUs are just processing units and the "ios is a toy" is irrelevant to this discussion. The %change between A6 and A11 is 459%, in single thread performance, that's 5 years. Imagine how much better they could be in 5 years? Before you accuse me of straight-line thinking, remember that Apple can purpose-build a larger chip for a laptop, they could put in two A-Series chips, (they could put in 4!), they will optimize the living crap out of their silicon for their own OS and lose all the X86 overhead. (Of course, they are likely to re-brand an ARM chip purpose-built for Macs: X-Series!)
I think Apple's CPU business has been underestimated for the last 10 years, but make no mistake, no one can touch the A11 it is a sign of more to come.
[Sidecar] Plus, as mentioned by others, Apple is already putting MacOS background updating to their ARM chip in the touch ID macs. I'm sure the will off-load more standby tasks to the ARM chip in the next 5 years. I have enjoyed the comments from others suggesting a hybrid ARM+Intel and that seems very reasonable...of course that would make my prediction in the previous paragraphs incorrect But an ARM chip that takes on more tasks, over-night updating, standby mode, I/O input, and eventually, a full OS running on ARM (not emulated) but launching Intel only when apps requiring Intel are launched. It doesn't sound expensive if Apple puts one of their existing $18 A-series chips as a sidecar to the Intel CPU and it wouldn't require a fully new X-series mac-only Apple ARM. If you are going to quote me, I am sticking with my full ARM transition in the summer of 2023 prediction, even though fools predict the future they can't control.
[doublepost=1508338080][/doublepost]Not mentioned in this article, but pretty damn critical to this conversation is that Intel said they will sue the crap out of anyone who emulates x86, yeah, Apple could pay for emulation, and so will MS, but I think MS will be first and will license and Apple will hold off until they transition away from x86 fully. (Intel boasts of putting an emulation company out of business.) https://www.forbes.com/sites/tirias...and-qualcomm-over-x86-emulation/#44c68d3454f4
I think it is a mistake to think about today's shipping processors, (which btw, the iPhone 7 beat the $12,500 Mac Pro in single thread performance last year (geekbench)). It is also a mistake to call the iPad and iPhone toys and selfy machines, even if they are, the CPUs are just processing units and the "ios is a toy" is irrelevant to this discussion. The %change between A6 and A11 is 459%, in single thread performance, that's 5 years. Imagine how much better they could be in 5 years? Before you accuse me of straight-line thinking, remember that Apple can purpose-build a larger chip for a laptop, they could put in two A-Series chips, (they could put in 4!), they will optimize the living crap out of their silicon for their own OS and lose all the X86 overhead. (Of course, they are likely to re-brand an ARM chip purpose-built for Macs: X-Series!)
I think Apple's CPU business has been underestimated for the last 10 years, but make no mistake, no one can touch the A11 it is a sign of more to come.
[Sidecar] Plus, as mentioned by others, Apple is already putting MacOS background updating to their ARM chip in the touch ID macs. I'm sure the will off-load more standby tasks to the ARM chip in the next 5 years. I have enjoyed the comments from others suggesting a hybrid ARM+Intel and that seems very reasonable...of course that would make my prediction in the previous paragraphs incorrect
But an ARM chip that takes on more tasks, over-night updating, standby mode, I/O input, and eventually, a full OS running on ARM (not emulated) but launching Intel only when apps requiring Intel are launched. It doesn't sound expensive if Apple puts one of their existing $18 A-series chips as a sidecar to the Intel CPU and it wouldn't require a fully new X-series mac-only Apple ARM. If you are going to quote me, I am sticking with my full ARM transition in the summer of 2023 prediction, even though fools predict the future they can't control.[doublepost=1508338080][/doublepost]Not mentioned in this article, but pretty damn critical to this conversation is that Intel said they will sue the crap out of anyone who emulates x86, yeah, Apple could pay for emulation, and so will MS, but I think MS will be first and will license and Apple will hold off until they transition away from x86 fully. (Intel boasts of putting an emulation company out of business.) https://www.forbes.com/sites/tirias...and-qualcomm-over-x86-emulation/#44c68d3454f4
If I can run a vm of windows on my iPad I would over night no longer need my laptop. Considering the relative price of a iPad Pro to a mid grade MacBook Pro the price is in favor of the iPad. Especially if I can pair a existing magic keyboard to it.
In addition I also use Maya on my iMac. If Maya could be put out on the iPad and support the pencil...(drools)
How about iPad Pro's with enough power to emulate/run legacy macOS apps, AirPlay to AppleTV-connected screen? Then all you're missing is the trackpad/mouse as your other input device..
People are forgetting something. MS have already had an ARM Windows system in near past, Windows RT. It failed big time. However, when Windows Phone was still alive, Microsoft published UWP (basic idea is that when you are compiling software on x86 to x86, you could compile the software to ARM and have the software in MS Store at the same time, to all devices, regardless what HW the device is having).
Dated 10/10/2017, coincidence?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/layout/design-and-ui-intro
If I had to do a wild guess, MS is going to ship ARM machines with Windows 10 S and the machine is locked up, that there is now way to install linux on it. Direct competition against Chromebooks.
Dated 10/10/2017, coincidence?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/layout/design-and-ui-intro
If I had to do a wild guess, MS is going to ship ARM machines with Windows 10 S and the machine is locked up, that there is now way to install linux on it. Direct competition against Chromebooks.