Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

You have to understand if an ARM chip exceeds the x86 in floating point performance without gpu offloading then the x86 is defacto obsolete. Which means AMD will be brought to it's knees and intel will be on life support.

The only people who will be buying x86 will be retro gamers.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

We'll see but people are excited about ARM so Intel should be concerned. The warning signs have been there for a while now, first when the iPhone started really started getting impressive numbers and then when the iPad Pro started dominating in multi-score tests as well as single-core ones.

The iPad Pro is genuinely more powerful than most consumer laptops.

If Apple prove ARM to work very well on proper laptops then Intel will be in serious trouble for the consumer market.

They might be saved by compatibility issues with the software. Apple is well-suited for such transitions because they don't have too many businesses running 20-year-old software on modern macs. Their control over the platform for the software that is run means they can get developers over quickly to the new platform. Microsoft will find this transition harder.

I don't know enough about servers but my understanding is x86 will survive there for a while yet according to people who do know. Xeon chips just seem to be well suited to that task.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

I feel there's a 3rd, much more obvious (and in my mind, likely) possibility - they're simply not as fast as x86.

x86 vs ARM is not a new thing, it's something that has been debated for years and years. They're ultimately both very good at different things but apples to apples, ARM is way more efficient at lower power draw and x86 is way more powerful (And expensive!) at higher power draws.

We've seen both sides of this - we've seen x86 in embedded devices, like phones and got great performance with awful battery life. We've also now got ARM in the server space, which (shock horror) isn't quite as fast as its x86 counterparts but works out much cheaper overall as they're cheaper to run (And presumably cheaper to buy). Keep in mind those benchmarks were against slightly older-gen x86, but even then it's clear where ARM shines and where it doesn't.

I would not expect to see performance gains here at all, that's not what ARM has ever been about , but..comparable performance is still nothing to be sniffed at.

Apple tends to have some pretty awful thermal designs in their machines, so you might even see better performance just from sheer efficiency, but Apple aren't going to be looking to knock Intel or AMD's performance crown off any time soon.

Keep expectations in check, competition is always a good thing.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

What I foresee happening is Apple implementing APIs for offloading things to the GPU, adobe will quickly adapt to establish market share (as it seems they already have high performing software). Initially open source software will be frozen out by lack of manpower leaving them with crap performance for a while.

Maybe after a few years it will have evened out depending on how open the apple standard is.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

I think there would be surprise if Apple doesn't outperform the equivalent intel chips when they first come out. After all they're posting very competitive scores with their phones and iPads at the moment and those devices have to consume less power and generate less heat than their laptop counterparts.

The advantages may only come from efficiency but that's sort of the point. In laptops and anything that doesn't have the luxury of being able to generate a lot of heat and a lot of power it may be that ARM can get better performance than x86 for the same heat/power draw.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

I think there's going to be a big distinction between Apple's ARM chips compared to the intel equivalent and Apple's ARM chips compared to previous Apple implementations of those chips.

This is something I watched recently and is related to the subject. Essentially, Apple's recent devices haven't been particularly great at thermal management of those chips. I think at one point in the video Linus speculates if it's deliberately bad so that when it comes to the ARM chip switch, it doesn't look like you're loosing much (any?) ground. While that's a throwaway comment and not meant to be taken seriously, I do think there's possibly a sliver of truth to it.

So you'll have this situation where you'll see comparable or even better performance than the previous gen Apple machines, but realistically the performance won't actually beat x86 if x86 has adequate cooling. In other words Apple will use murky comparisons to skew things in their favour. And maybe that's fine, because you can argue that it's a strength of ARM to require less cooling, but you can tell from the Video that Apple really half-arsed their cooling.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

The thermal advantage only exists if Apple don't cram too much stuff on the SOC, ie: Co-processors, encoding chips etc etc. Cramming more components onto a tiny surface area doesn't really bode well for dissipating heat.

We don't really know much at this point what is going into the new machines. The only information which seems to be out there are some supposed leaked benchmarks from the developer kits Apple have been sending out. This is probably the most informative article:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020...ransition-kit/

Main things to note:

- The developer kit is a Mac Mini running a hobbled A12X SOC from the iPad Pro (half of the cores disabled)

- Benchmarks are from non-native (x86) Geekbench tests via the Rosetta 2 interpreter

- Results: 20% slower benchmarks than an entry level i3 Macbook Air on single thread performance

- 38% faster for multi threading

Which is not too bad really if you factor in the fact there's a performance penalty associated with not running native ARM code.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

Yeah I remember reading that article a few days ago. It's certainly looking like Rosetta is at least decent at what it does, but there's so many caveats and questions it's hard to really draw many conclusions.

I'm going to try anyway, though!

Assuming that it's legitimate and somewhat indicative of performance, assuming overhead for the Rosetta2 implementation, etc. I still think it's in line with what I'm saying - these processors aren't going to be faster than x86, apples to apples. The single-threaded performance is a dead giveaway, even accounting for the Rosetta overhead. If it was emulation we were talking about then that would be one thing, but recompiled code shouldn't be 30% slower.

I do wonder why they've disabled 4 of the 8 cores of the A12, presumably the disabled cores are the little low-power cores, maybe they just don't have a fully working OSX scheduler that can handle big.LITTLE CPU's so it's easier to just fudge a homogenous chip for now.

You could have 8 beefy full cores instead, plus with general manufacturing process improvements, etc. that could be quite the beefy chip when all is said and done, but again even accounting for all that, there's nothing that suggests Apple has suddenly beaten the likes of Intel and AMD at things like IPC. Core to Core, I just don't see Apple beating big blue or AMD any time soon.

The only thing that could possibly swing it is accounting for Rosetta's overhead (Which as I said, I doubt is that big), or Apple going for multithreaded performance with a 12 or 16 core SoC - but even still, Intel and AMD especially have gone there and beyond and I would expect 8 core CPUs to be pretty mainstream in 2 years time so again, it's not really an area I see Apple competing in.

I genuinely believe Apple is doing this to give themselves more control over their ecosystem. They'll be able to make thinner, lighter devices with better battery life than the competition, they'll be able to push a universal app ecosystem that more easily allows developers to develop native apps for iOS and desktop with the same codebase (Something that others have tried and so far failed to do well), that will perform well enough but isn't going to be the top performer out there - and it doesn't need to be.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

There's reports that apple did this because intel faffed them around with skylake. I imagine the heterogeneous bandwagon is also instrumental. Since they have so much control over their eco system they are in the best position to leverage it.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

That's Apple clearly capping the developer unit because they knew people would benchmark it. They didn't just disable the cores, they seem to have underclocked it as well

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

Yes it seems likely and the fact that the low power cores to which the article relates have been disabled this could be a nod to the fact that these will not be used in the chips which will power the RTM units when they finally surface. Also, perhaps some of the embedded image processing stuff which is used by mobile device cameras won't be required.

Looking at the bigger picture though, some of the tech which goes into these new generations of processing engines is mind bending stuff so it's difficult to make meaningful comparisons with the olde worlde tech we used to use in our systems to play Doom and Sim City.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

Eldest begins studying sound production in September and is in the market for a high-end laptop to support his education. He’s leaning towards a MacBook Pro ... we’re a Mac household, and he’s been composing on GarageBand since he was about 7. But is it now a serious risk, buying a powerful MacBook in the next 8 weeks? Normally I’d hope for at least 5-7 years service out of such a machine but if their range fully transitions to ARM-based chips over the next 2 years, at some point they’ll cut support for intel machines.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

Without visibility of any firm timescales it's difficult to say how much of a risk it would be sinking a hefty chunk of cash into a new machine in the next few weeks.

During the previous transition from PPC to Intel Apple dropped OS support for PPC three years after releasing the first Intel units. That doesn't mean to say that apps stopped working of course. IIRC Logic Pro for example was still working on PPC until X was released in 2013.

My 2p worth would be to hang on until Christmas time and see what falls out of Santa's sack when he empties it and perhaps wait a little while longer to find out whether or not the new platform turns out to be good or crap.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

I purchased a new Macbook Pro just last month with full knowledge that switch was happening. I typically replace on a 4-year cycle but here are my reasons why:

• Intel support is not going anywhere soon. They still have Macs with these chips to release and Apple supports hardware for a long time. At the very least it'll be inclusive of the three year Applecare warranty from the date of the last Intel Mac that can be purchased. They're not going to have Macs still in the Applecare window on an old OS
• I would prefer to have the last generation of the Intel Mac than the first generation of the ARM-based ones. The former is a mature and long-developed range of products. The ARM one will be the first generation with all the risks and quirks that comes with first-generation products.
• Whilst most applications are likely to be native from day one (especially Garageband) you already know your software will work on the current Mac.
• Windows! If you need to Bootcamp for virtualise Windows then that works fine on an Intel Mac.

I get the risk you are worried about. The other thing to consider we expect the first ARM-based Macs to have a nicer screen with a smaller bezel and Face ID. If they were BOTH out today then I might lean towards getting the newer one but it's a close call and i think taking into account the wait then now is a good time.

Just make sure you do get the NEW one so it has the nicer keyboard.

Also if it's for University then wait a bit because Apple always does a 'Back to School' promotion around August/September where you get free AirPods or something. Also, your son would get a UniDays account which gets you 10% off.

Re: Apple to transition Macs to their own chipset
 

Given they aren't going to be selling ARM macs for a couple of years and they'll be supporting their existing Macs for a couple of years after that, I see no issue with buying a Mac today.

In 12-18 months that gets tricky.

Macs (And Apple hardware in general) tends to retain its value really well regardless.