Apple dropping intel.

InceptionHosting · June 2020

Just read this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/technology/apple-intel-breakup.html

Headlines:

After 15 Years, Apple Prepares to Break Up With Intel
Apple could announce plans as soon as Monday to replace Intel processors in Macs with chips that it designed itself

Apparently, according to the article this was expected, I wonder how much of a hole this will leave in intel, I know it is not comparing apples with apples (excuse the pun) but I remember when a company I worked for was the 3rd largest purchaser of Dell based desktops and servers worldwide were bought by HP and cancelled all Dell contracts (obviously) that help a huge hole in Dell's future and was said to be the reason they started selling in stores back around 2007/8 whereas previously you could only buy dell directly from Dell (A model they seem to be moving back in to in recent years).

deank · June 2020

I want to say Intel deserves it since they haven't been getting anything good out in the last several years.

But - I'd say this is unrelated to that. Apple has been itching to dump Intel or anyone else for that matter for in-house designs. It's far easier to screw customers that way.

Apple can go to the hell.

serv_ee · June 2020

ARM. Meh

InceptionHosting · June 2020

mikho · June 2020

cybertech · June 2020

They making they chips now? Or by TSMC

MichaelCee · June 2020

Funny.. I was just watching Linus Tech Tips saying something along the lines of "I wonder if Apple have been purposely downgrading the performance of their Intel based devices so they can come up with some amazing comparison of how great ARM performance is". tinfoil hat

InceptionHosting · June 2020

Well if they are making their own I am going to guess that they are not going to give a crap about x86 backwards compatibility like when they moved from ppc, so those running native windows stuff via... I forget the name of the software, parallels? are going to love it.... hehe

deank · June 2020

Wouldn't surprise me. I grade Apple less than US congress.

havoc · June 2020

@serv_ee said: ARM. Meh

I'm actually pretty stoked about it. Not so much on the Apple side, but rather what it means for the ARM eco system. Many cool hobby things are reliant on ARM tech

havoc · June 2020

@cybertech said:

They making they chips now? Or by TSMC

Designed by Apple, made by TSMC. Wouldn't be surprised if that recent 12 bn investment in a US fab is connected to this somehow

deank · June 2020

Now that they will be making their own chips, it's pretty much guaranteed that they will add a time bomb.

Harambe · June 2020

I'm excited to see what happens when they scale up their custom silicon. The iPad Pro silicon is already pretty killer in terms of performance to power usage. I think the A12z in current iPad Pro is like 8 cores @ 2.5GHz, and 8 GPU cores.

I think the folks running Parallels/Fusion are pretty much screwed if they buy one of these. MS could do a packaged Windows ARM VM, but there's no benefits there if it isn't going to have transition tech for x86 apps - everyone runs a Windows VM for legacy apps, not fancy new stuff that would be cross compiled for ARM.

For my workload I think this move is fine - web apps, text editors, terminal, etc is where I spend the vast majority of my work day. Interested to play with the v1 Apple Silicon stuff at the store, but will not be buying that shit until v2/v3 releases of each product - been burned in the past.

Also next Mac OS release is going to be buggy as fuck, calling it now.

comi · June 2020

Code fast, use 666 dependencies and giant frameworks for the smallest of tasks, disregard resource efficiency...

Downgrade the CPU....

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..........

Pwner · June 2020

@AnthonySmith said:
Well if they are making their own I am going to guess that they are not going to give a crap about x86 backwards compatibility like when they moved from ppc, so those running native windows stuff via... I forget the name of the software, parallels? are going to love it.... hehe

Oh they're already 2 steps ahead of you on that one, Mac OS Catalina completely removed 32-bit libraries and broke WINE for a lot of users, myself included.

flips · June 2020

@Pwner said: Mac OS Catalina completely removed 32-bit libraries and broke WINE for a lot of users, myself included.

Wine works again (since a few weeks after final release of Catalina).

Ouji · June 2020

I'm not very stoked about ARM. Time will tell. Besides Parallels and VMWare, Apple users should be looking forward to how Bootcamp will be handled.

Harambe · June 2020

@Ouji said:
Besides Parallels and VMWare, Apple users should be looking forward to how Bootcamp will be handled.

My guess: it's going away. I'm sure they've run the numbers on how many people actually use Bootcamp and it's some tiny percentage that they're not too concerned about.

Hopefully the final MacOS release with Intel support is quite a few years away.

Ouji · June 2020

@Harambe said:

@Ouji said:
Besides Parallels and VMWare, Apple users should be looking forward to how Bootcamp will be handled.

My guess: it's going away. I'm sure they've run the numbers on how many people actually use Bootcamp and it's some tiny percentage that they're not too concerned about.

Hopefully the final MacOS release with Intel support is quite a few years away.

Should take at minimum four years if not more. I don't see they making their new MBP 2020 legacy in less than four years, so my guess is six years or more.

cybertech · June 2020

TSMC ain't complaining for sure

poisson · June 2020

Here are the details about Apple's roadmap to move away from Intel: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/this-is-apples-roadmap-for-moving-the-first-macs-away-from-intel/

I am quoting a few paragraphs which I think are interesting. First, on the issue of programs breaking because of the lack of x86 support.

Longtime Apple users have been through all this before, with the transition from PowerPC to Intel and now for Intel x86 to ARM. All the big platform transition hits are coming back. The transition to ARM from x86 means that some Mac apps will be native and some won't. For apps that support both x86 and ARM, Apple is introducing the "Universal 2" binary that will package both codebases together. For apps that haven't made the transition to ARM yet, the Rosetta emulator is back as "Rosetta 2" and will now let x86 apps run on your ARM Mac, albeit with reduced performance.

Looks like Mac has made ARM binaries for popular programs that will satisfy most of their user base:

For the new macOS 11 Big Sur, all of the included apps are adding native ARM binaries. Xcode developers can "just open their apps and recompile" to get an ARM binary. Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop were demoed as native ARM apps. Final Cut Pro has an ARM version too, along with features that run on the "Neural Engine" in the Apple SoC.

And apparently Apple's chip division has already reached performance levels comparable with Intel:

Apple's chip division has reached the point where it should be able to reliably compete with Intel on performance. The 2020 iPad Pro with an Apple A12Z SoC turns in comparable Geekbench numbers to a 2019 MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i9. An Apple SoC in a laptop, with a higher thermal budget, should do well, but Apple didn't offer any specifics yet.

aRNoLD · June 2020

how many yrs are there when Apple switches again to some other CPU maker?

BloomVPS · June 2020

@aRNoLD said:
how many yrs are there when Apple switches again to some other CPU maker?

Considering they are switching to in-house chips, likely never.

ouvoun · June 2020

Honestly I think this transition will go fine. Apple is good at architecture transitions. It’s happened before (PowerPC) and it’s happening again. I suspect it’ll be smooth.

I’m looking forward to seeing how Apple’s silicone performs in a less constrained environment on Macs. Intel‘s chips in Macs are currently incredibly hot and power hungry, so I’m suspecting it’ll be a huge improvement. Sure doesn’t help that Apple’s thermal solutions generally favor form over function.

Also, as a former macOS developer in a previous life, I’m fully on board with the future where apps can run universally across all of Apple’s platforms on a shared architecture.

comi · June 2020

@poisson said: Apple's chip division has already reached performance levels comparable with Intel
@poisson said: comparable Geekbench numbers to a 2019 MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i9

Man, they are such geniuses at marketing...

You know that Intel in Macs never reaches it's peak performance due to inability to cool it, right?

poisson · June 2020

@comi said:

@poisson said: Apple's chip division has already reached performance levels comparable with Intel
@poisson said: comparable Geekbench numbers to a 2019 MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i9

Man, they are such geniuses at marketing...

You know that Intel in Macs never reaches it's peak performance due to inability to cool it, right?

You missed out on quoting the word "apparently". Obviously I know.

Apple dropping intel.

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