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Why can't you have dual silicon - ie one apple and one intel in the same device?

eish2306

eish2306

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 30, 2013
177
50
Wales
The computer would run on the apple silicon and would enable the intel one for Bootcamp or intel specific applications and hardware - ie each bit of silicon would run whatever its best suited to run!

This would obviously be costly so I assume only the pro machines would get this option.
 
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you already have it on T2 macs, t2 is apple cpu running watchos-like operating system. :D
 
Why would Apple want to go to all of that trouble and expense to allow people to run competitors operating systems?
They're only interested in the advantages that their own silicon gives them.
It's only a small percentage of Mac users who want to run Windows apps anyway.
 
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wyrdness said:
Why would Apple want to go to all of that trouble and expense to allow people to run competitors operating systems?
They're only interested in the advantages that their own silicon gives them.
It's only a small percentage of Mac users who want to run Windows apps anyway.
Click to expand...
probably concentrated amongst the ones who buy the higher end pro machines - I would rather pay extra for an extra chip which runs windows etc for the occasional use than have to buy a separate machine
They spent a lot of time selling bootcamp as a feature so to go cold turkey on that, is a bit odd
 
there is no (or maybe an extremely limited) market for that, plus, the system would have to get a whole lot bigger too, and, as you stated, very expensive
 
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eish2306 said:
probably concentrated amongst the ones who buy the higher end pro machines - I would rather pay extra for an extra chip which runs windows etc for the occasional use than have to buy a separate machine
They spent a lot of time selling bootcamp as a feature so to go cold turkey on that, is a bit odd
Click to expand...
And they have not. Craig Federighi recently said, that there aren’t any technical limitations keeping Microsoft from licensing an ARM version of windows for end users to be installed on apple silicon macs.
 
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eish2306 said:
probably concentrated amongst the ones who buy the higher end pro machines - I would rather pay extra for an extra chip which runs windows etc for the occasional use than have to buy a separate machine
They spent a lot of time selling bootcamp as a feature so to go cold turkey on that, is a bit odd
Click to expand...
The price for adding a second chip( and the system built around that chip) will cost you no less just buy another windows pc.
 
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Once upon a time I owned a similar beast. A PowerMac G3 with an Orange Micro i386 board inside. One box that functioned as two computers.

I wonder if you could just use a compute stick these days?
 
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And, a pro-level machine user would probably be doing the same as many pros do: Run the system that you need in a virtual machine.
I expect that the Apple silicon won't be a huge challenge for the folks that code for VM apps.
 
Heck ya! Apple already did this back in the day.
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I can see why Apple wouldn't do this.
- Cost would be ridiculous. I couldn't even imagine the tech hurdles of giving both CPU direct access to the RAM and PCIe bus. Plus they'd have to use discrete graphics.
- It would hinder the ARM transition. Why would third party devs bother making universal software. When they could stick with x86. Unless they were trying to unify iOS and macOS developement.
- The majority of Mac users don't need it nor care about it.
 
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In theory it should be possible. Mac's that have dedicated GPU's also have the GPU that is built into the Intel CPU. Both GPU's have access to the same onboard memory and storage, they just have their signals sent down different paths. The same could be done for both ARM and Intel on one board BUT remember this, ARM chips have been out for many years and such, such an idea has not interested any of the big PC motherboard manufacturers because no such thing has been built. Therefore, if any one of the manufacturers thought there was commercial value in making such a dual system, it would have been done already. The fact it hasn't means there cannot be much demand for such a system.
 
There were cards for Macs, Amigas, even Acorn ARMs. Seems to me depending on your work needs on Windows/AMD64 Linux RDP or remoting into a VM or PC. I personally have an HP Probook Ryzen I just moved my two VM from Fusion to Workstation the non commercial edition. As cheap as PCs are just buy a PC or if you could even lease a VM on the cloud.
 
eish2306 said:
The computer would run on the apple silicon and would enable the intel one for Bootcamp or intel specific applications and hardware - ie each bit of silicon would run whatever its best suited to run!

This would obviously be costly so I assume only the pro machines would get this option.
Click to expand...

you can’t have that. Because the computer with system on chip is not designed to cater for both arm and intel. And it would be very messy and run in big problems particularly with heat
 
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netkas said:
you already have it on T2 macs, t2 is apple cpu running watchos-like operating system. :D
Click to expand...

but intel machines with T2 chip cannot run iOS software or iOS based operating systems unless the app is designed to work with both iPad and Mac through catalyst
 
chabig said:
This, people, is the right answer.
Click to expand...
Amen! Let PC’s run Windows and Macs run MacOS! And nare the twain shall meet... ever again, I hope!

However, if MS makes a version of Windows 10 for AS Macs, that’s an acceptable alternative, if people are desparate enough to use it. ;)
 
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eish2306 said:
The computer would run on the apple silicon and would enable the intel one for Bootcamp or intel specific applications and hardware - ie each bit of silicon would run whatever its best suited to run!

This would obviously be costly so I assume only the pro machines would get this option.
Click to expand...
It would be a waste of motherboard space, as the intel chip will require additional components like RAM, controllers, etc, and it will also bloat macOS for longer than necessary. I bet Apple is itching to drop x86 support on macOS (and all the legacy stuff with it) like a hot potato.
 
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eish2306 said:
The computer would run on the apple silicon and would enable the intel one for Bootcamp or intel specific applications and hardware - ie each bit of silicon would run whatever its best suited to run!

This would obviously be costly so I assume only the pro machines would get this option.
Click to expand...
There are a number of reasons for that being very unlikely:
- Little real market demand at Apple scale
- SoC encapsulation would require the Intel part to have a complete subsystem with RAM etc. incl. GPU, since a lot of people want Intel for games
- Hypervisor with Rosetta2 emulated Intel machines will give plenty of performance equivalent to that of avg machines a few years ago. Scale that up to M2 or M3 high end SoC systems
- MS will likely make their ARM based version of Windows 10 available including an x86 and x64 code translation environment. They already have that on other systems.

There is nothing to prevent a third party from going bankrupt trying to implement a daughter board still hampered by poor graphics access.
 
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I imagine getting that to work would be a massive pain for very little real value.

A few reasons I can think of off the top of my head:
- The Intel CPU would have to access everything through the M-series SoC, RAM, Storage, I/O, all the critical stuff. It would just hobble performance on chips already hobbled.
- Instead of programming for the new architecture, devs would just get lazy and just let it run on the (hobbled) Intel CPU.
- It would theoretically introduce security holes in Apple's SoC, since it has to address the same resources.

Taking this into account, Rosetta 2 is probably less resource intensive and glitchy.

Also, thinking of "Pro" Machines, I imagine you'll be able to slot one of these in an M-Series Mac Pro:
www.ieiworld.com

PCIE-Q370 single board computer with Intel coffee lake CPU

IEI Integration Corp. is a global supplier of industrial computer products and AIoT solutions, including embedded system, panel PC, embedded computer, single board computer, network appliance and fanless embedded box PC, etc. IEI provides ODM services and industrial computer integration...
www.ieiworld.com www.ieiworld.com
 
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