Intel Confirms: Macs to switch to ARM by 2020.

[mrchow19910319]

53 minutes ago, mr moose said:

each to their own,  I think we misunderstand non-techies more than they misunderstand technology.

care to elaborate? 

[mr moose]

11 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

care to elaborate? 

I read a lot of posts that rely on the condition of consumer ignorance in order to maintain an opinion on a company/government.   I maintain that whilst the vast majority of the population may not know the difference between ram and rom, they are not that ignorant to not understand scaled value, purpose design or even marketing tricks (we are just as gullible as they are to advertising).    This can be extended to any discipline not just tech, like medicine and health or social policy.

 

Most apple products have a cheaper alternative, some of them are not that much cheaper while other s are plenty cheaper, just because more people prefer an iphone doesn't make them ignorant,  in fact it has been long established that iphones where more likely to be found in the hands of managers and upper academics in their first few years of release.  Hardly the stereotype of ignorance.  However people tend to argue these days that consumer ignorance is the only reason apple sell so much.  I personally would rather find a more robust data set to base those claims on.

[ZacoAttaco]

5 hours ago, floofer said:

Yeah pretty much. Although I suppose this opens up a new avenue, perhaps a mackintosh Chromebook?

My guess it would be hardware limited. Don't Chromebooks mostly rely on web apps?

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Windows can run on ARM, but it would be up to Microsoft to ensure that it runs well. Which MS is not going to do. 

To approach this from a different angle, it's still more licensing money for them potentially... Do they really care about what hardware it's run on? It's just whether or not the ROI is there, which it probably isn't.

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

I've always had a problem with people hating apple for the price,  Not recommending it for the price is one thing, but actually hating a company because they can charge more has never really made any sense to me.   If I could charge more for my services and not actually do anything better than the competition I would have it made.

I suppose you're right. Their users are used to paying the higher premium but there is also generally that high-level of trust in their products and services, it's not something many other tech companies can boast about.

[Guest]

28 minutes ago, ZacoAttaco said:

My guess it would be hardware limited. Don't Chromebooks mostly rely on web apps?

It's mostly the hardware that matters. As long as there is compatibility with the processor and motherboard, that's the main thing. Limited hardware would also mean better support - people can only provide support for available hardware, a limited selection means people are more likely to have the same computer. 

[Linus_torvalds]

7 hours ago, yian88 said:

It doesnt matter the RAM usage thats what linux community keeps failing to realize, its all about platform quality, stability, full hardware feature support and control and ofcourse driver + pro software support, linux has none of that as dekstop (not as kernel), xorg,wayland, gpu drivers, systemd, pulseaudio, DE's, compositors are all unstable buggy, laggy, lacking modern features and too opinionated.

I think x86 is dying, it just simply doesnt scale on mobile devices, its inefficient and overheats like hell.

The newer ARM desktop chips look really promising, and mobile has way more quality apps, making all of them available to mac's will be awesome.

Windows/Linux is going nowhere fast, MS failed miserably to understand mobile market needs and linux has its head deep down its asshole with linux elitists arguing about DE's lmao, when its 2019 and linux doesnt have an APP store or a unified way everyone gets apps like snaps, flatpak etc.

 

If google pulled its head out of its own ass aswell they would have pushed android x86+ ARM desktop a long time ago, chrombooks suck period, we need android for desktop and if Apple does it successfully i hope google moves quick into desktop x86/ARM so i can finally get a decent desktop/laptop OS and get rid of trash Windows/linux.

HAHA linux is not stable. I hear this many times on this forum. Seems like you guys who say this can't configure/use it. But the truth is it's the most stable OS in the world! That's why it's used in many places! Repositories ARE app stores! You just type pacman -S vim and vim installs. If you want GUI there are graphical interface programs where you find software (say vim) click install and it just installs. What is it if it's not an app store?

 

Resource usage matters! That is why linux can run on very slow hardware. If something is too old to run windows even xp which is outdated one can install modern linux on it and give a new life. My router also runs linux and it only has 128 MB RAM, i also have second with 32 MB RAM.

 

Also it's about responsiveness. I like responsive computers and the way i have set up my arch is that things happen instantly. Kernel is optimized for responsiveness and for exactly my cpu generation. I use linux-ck-sandybridge. When i have to use mac or windows, i feel that those two are much slower then my system is. This is very important to me. And you can never ever modify mac or windows to be more responsive.

 

Linunx works great on arm already. If computers will transit to arm chips it won't have any issues. First OS which will be 100% compatible with those kind of PCs will be linux. Mac and windows have so much software that won't run on arm also mac themself won't run on it.

 

 

[Master Disaster]

8 hours ago, suits said:

Calling it now, Mac prices won't drop, and performance will be worse.

Addendum to this: Apple will market this as a new and better architecture and will actually use it to increase prices. Most Apple customers will swallow it hook, line and sinker despite ARM being ~30 years old and much cheaper to produce and Apple will do what they always do, profiteer.

[Guest]

Just now, Master Disaster said:

Addendum to this: Apple will market this as a new and better architecture and will actually use it to increase prices. Most Apple customers will swallow it hook, line and sinker despite ARM being ~30 years old and much cheaper to produce and Apple will do what they always do, profiteer.

IDK though, an upgrade will be an upgrade, if there are no other Mac options, haven't got much choice. If I need to replace my Mac laptop, and I've only got ARM options (but worse performance) I really wouldn't know what to do. Apple have such a monopoly on MacOS, so if I want handoff etc, I'm going to need one. 

[JoostinOnline]

Doesn't this mean no more thunderbolt 3?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, JoostinOnline said:

Doesn't this mean no more thunderbolt 3?

I wouldn't rule it out. It's certainly possible to run thunderbolt on AMD devices currently. Seeing as TB is royalty-free now, it's only a matter of implementation by vendors. I could totally see Apple continuing TB, and even paying Intel for the technology.

[JoostinOnline]

19 minutes ago, floofer said:

I wouldn't rule it out. It's certainly possible to run thunderbolt on AMD devices currently. Seeing as TB is royalty-free now, it's only a matter of implementation by vendors. I could totally see Apple continuing TB, and even paying Intel for the technology.

Are you sure about that? Thunderbolt isn't supported by any AMD products that I know of.

[Chaftalie]

its definitelly possible as this video suggests:

 

 

[Guest]

18 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Are you sure about that? Thunderbolt isn't supported by any AMD products that I know of.

Not supported by the board doesn't mean impossible. There are plenty off add-in boards available, but probably expensive. 

[duncannah]

Well, guess that means no more hackintoshing, gotta buy Apple products now

[Blademaster91]

2 hours ago, floofer said:

IDK though, an upgrade will be an upgrade, if there are no other Mac options, haven't got much choice. If I need to replace my Mac laptop, and I've only got ARM options (but worse performance) I really wouldn't know what to do. Apple have such a monopoly on MacOS, so if I want handoff etc, I'm going to need one. 

It depends on what is considered an upgrade, an ARM CPU would be better for efficiency and probably fine for most people using a 12" macbook, but performance would likely be worse in more cpu intensive tasks.

1 hour ago, floofer said:

Not supported by the board doesn't mean impossible. There are plenty off add-in boards available, but probably expensive. 

The need for add in boards or custom chips would definitely increase prices. What about the need for a dGPU in workstations?

[williamcll]

Excited to see a high clocked ARM chip in the future.

[ScratchCat]

9 hours ago, mr moose said:

No they're not.  AMD's "giant leaps"  are only catching them upto Intel and ARM have at least a decade long developmental path before they are anywhere near workstation/server suitable.

ARM's N1 and E1 platforms are approaching the performance of x86 systems. If this design launches in the next year or two there will not be time for x86 to leap forward in performance to maintain it's lead on ARM for long.

Source

 

[JoostinOnline]

1 hour ago, Chaftalie said:

its definitelly possible as this video suggests:

 

 

 

1 hour ago, floofer said:

Not supported by the board doesn't mean impossible. There are plenty off add-in boards available, but probably expensive. 

Well it sounds like Intel would have to essentially give AMD/ARM permission via certification for it, which they haven't done, and have no reason to do.

 

Edit: On a side note, I feel really old. It seems like just a few years ago that Apple switched from PPC to x86.

[LAwLz]

10 hours ago, mr moose said:

There seems to be a lot of issues involved in melding the two systems despite the fact everyone has been throwing resources at the problem for quite some time now.

It can be a problem, but it really depends on what your goals are. For example most if not all of the GNU tools and utilities follow rather strict standards (using standard libraries and things like POSIX) and can easily be converted from one architecture to another with a simple option change in the compiler.

Things get really messy when it's proprietary and non-standard libraries, especially closed source, though.

 

Another big issue is incentivizing developers to actually put in the effort. If Apple goes "Macbooks will use ARM going forward" then developers for MacOS don't have much choice other than to start targeting ARM.

On Windows, ARM laptops are new, rarely used and quite frankly garbage. So why would a developer spend time and effort targeting a platform barely anyone uses?

Apple rules their hardware and software with an iron-fist and will most likely have a far easier time transitioning because of it.

 

 

10 hours ago, BuckGup said:

Judging by the ARM CPUs used in HPCs being built today I have no doubt that they will be faster than anything Intel has to offer at significantly less power usage. Also Apple can make this chips EXACTLY how they want so there software can be crazy optimized. Also kills all Hackintoshes

I've heard a lot of hype about ARM in servers but I don't think we are anywhere near to it taking off.

I haven't looked that much into it, but from what I've gathered there are very little standardization for hardware interfaces, and how they get passed and handled by the kernel.

It's the reason why you can't just take an Android ISO and install it on any phone, like you can with GNU/Linux or Windows and install it on any x86 PC.

 

I don't think it's performance, efficiency or cost holding ARM back. It's a lack of standardization as well as a very unhealthy drive by manufactures to keep things proprietary. I mean, why would for example Qualcomm want to make their SoCs replaceable by some other chip? They would rather make it so the OS developer has to code specifically for their chip, making it a pain in the ass to change to some other chip vendor.

 

 

 

[LAwLz]

8 hours ago, mr moose said:

I know quite a few software type people who like mac because it is both  a Unix like system and runs on x86.   I wonder if removing the x86 component makes them more or less useless for programing.  

Depends on what platform you're targeting.

 

ARM computer = Good for developing ARM software on.

x86 computer = Good for developing x86 software on.

 

Linus Torvalds had a mail conversation about it and the problems "ARM powered cloud" will have, like a week ago and it's a really interesting read.

Here is a quote from it:

Spoiler

Guys, do you really not understand why x86 took over the server market?

It wasn't just all price. It was literally this "develop at home" issue. Thousands of small companies ended up having random small internal workloads where it was easy to just get a random whitebox PC and run some silly small thing on it yourself. Then as the workload expanded, it became a "real server". And then once that thing expanded, suddenly it made a whole lot of sense to let somebody else manage the hardware and hosting, and the cloud took over.

Do you really not understand? This isn't rocket science. This isn't some made up story. This is literally what happened, and what killed all the RISC vendors, and made x86 be the undisputed king of the hill of servers, to the point where everybody else is just a rounding error. Something that sounded entirely fictional a couple of decades ago.

Without a development platform, ARM in the server space is never going to make it. Trying to sell a 64-bit "hyperscaling" model is idiotic, when you don't have customers and you don't have workloads because you never sold the small cheap box that got the whole market started in the first place.

The price advantage of ARM will never be there for ARM servers unless you get enough volume to make up for the absolutely huge advantage in server volume that Intel has right now. Being a smaller die with cheaper NRE doesn't matter one whit, when you can't make up for the development costs in volume. Look at every ARM server offering so far: they were not only slower, they were more expensive!

And the power advantage is still largely theoretical and doesn't show very much on a system level anyway, and is also entirely irrelevant if people end up willing to pay more for an x86 box simply because it's what they developed their load on.

Which leaves absolutely no real advantage to ARM.

This is basic economics.

And the only way that changes is if you end up saying "look, you can deploy more cheaply on an ARM box, and here's the development box you can do your work on".

 

 

8 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

Unless there would be some kind of emulation to allow programming for x86,though that would just be slower than actual x86 hardware. But removing x86, and no dGPU or intel iGPU for hw acceleration seems like it would drive away the power users. 

I assume you mean hardware acceleration for video encoding since you brought up Intel's iGPU?

We already have hardware accelerated video encoding and decoding in ARM chips. Intel does not have exclusivity for that feature.

In fact, there aren't any Intel/AMD/Nvidia hardware acceleration features you won't find in ARM chips these days, apart from maybe ray tracing (which isn't widely used anyway).

[RejZoR]

10 hours ago, Finwillwin said:

Intel is in deep trouble, AMD is making giant leaps in desktop PCs and ARM is now getting put in laptops and MACs.  

But then AMD is facing the same issue. Although I don' think x86 will go anywhere anytime soon. The thing is just too widespread and quite frankly, still performs great. We're getting absurd amounts of fast cores these days, we need to shape software to take better advantage of it, especially games that even today still heavily rely on high performance single threads, even though they use few more nowadays...

[Guest]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

It can be a problem, but it really depends on what your goals are. For example most if not all of the GNU tools and utilities follow rather strict standards (using standard libraries and things like POSIX) and can easily be converted from one architecture to another with a simple option change in the compiler.

Things get really messy when it's proprietary and non-standard libraries, especially closed source, though.

 

 

That's true, ARM has been around in Linux since years (Android, but even before it) so I suppose the toolchains to be really solid and stable

Same as apple, the macos kernel already supports ARM architectures since years, also Xcode supports it from decades, Microsoft was the last and their c/c++ compiler for ARM came out something like the last year? I don't remember if for Windows phone they were using the same compiler but I don't think they were the same thing

 

Well I only have to say I hope Apple really can get into this, because they are the only who could finally push ARM even for desktops

 

10 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

Unless there would be some kind of emulation to allow programming for x86,though that would just be slower than actual x86 hardware. But removing x86, and no dGPU or intel iGPU for hw acceleration seems like it would drive away the power users.

If you go through Chrome in Android you can check for the hardware deciding to be available, and most of the time it is, the features are the same
 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

It can be a problem, but it really depends on what your goals are. For example most if not all of the GNU tools and utilities follow rather strict standards (using standard libraries and things like POSIX) and can easily be converted from one architecture to another with a simple option change in the compiler.

POSIX is more likely to offer advantages in different OS'es, but for GNU programs and libs in general since they are free and already cross-architecture available, its easier to deploy on different architectures, still for different architecture the code may require manual changes as well the complexity is more (that's more a problem on proprietary programs)

Edited March 3, 2019 by Guest

[Guest]

11 hours ago, mr moose said:

I know quite a few software type people who like mac because it is both  a Unix like system and runs on x86.   I wonder if removing the x86 component makes them more or less useless for programing. 

Depends on how old is that statement and what he meant by that, as in the past when PPC Macs were out and Linux was not something considerably decent on desktop, an x86 nix meant a lot even especially for programming, performance, and since x86 was the most wide architecture in the world... It was definitely a thing

 

Today since the arm importance becauz phonez, compiling for arm from x86 became a thing to but definitely this would be faster and easy to test on an arm native architecture, so not really useless for programming. You can still build x86 from arm but vice-versa you got the same issues

 

Compiling arm android for example takes an huge amount of time, and still since there are not any decent "arm Dev boxes" as Linus calls that can be even worse than x86, then we can only hope in the future for better implementations to be made, that's what I hope Apple does

[mrchow19910319]

5 hours ago, mr moose said:

Hardly the stereotype of ignorance.  However people tend to argue these days that consumer ignorance is the only reason apple sell so much.  I personally would rather find a more robust data set to base those claims on.

never believed those claims myself. macOS had plenty of advantages against windows as well as linux. for example when it comes to development it is just easier on a unix based system. nowadays windows 10 is catching up, but it is still a lot more hassle to use compares to linux or macOS.

[captain_to_fire]

1 hour ago, mrchow19910319 said:

macOS had plenty of advantages against windows

Even on the consumer side, there are advantages of macOS over Windows 10 (might be subjective)

• Time Machine > File History 
• Safari (WebKit) > Edge 
• Spotlight search > Cortana search
• macOS updates > obtrusive Windows 10 updates (unless it’s a Pro but still requires GPO) 
• Telemetry off button > Windows 10 has none (unless it’s enterprise) 
• System Preferences > Settings + Control Panel 
• XProtect (relies only on signatures) < Windows Defender (has cloud component for automatic submission of unknown malware) 
• Continuity with iOS and watchOS > Windows Phone is dead 
• HomeKit > does Windows 10 have any IoT control? 
• macOS Photos > UWP Photos 

[mrchow19910319]

10 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

Even on the consumer side, there are advantages of macOS over Windows 10 (might be subjective)

• Time Machine > File History 
• Safari (WebKit) > Edge 
• Spotlight search > Cortana search
• macOS updates > obtrusive Windows 10 updates (unless it’s a Pro but still requires GPO) 
• Telemetry off button > Windows 10 has none (unless it’s enterprise) 
• System Preferences > Settings + Control Panel 
• XProtect (relies only on signatures) < Windows Defender (has cloud component for automatic submission of unknown malware) 
• Continuity with iOS and watchOS > Windows Phone is dead 
• HomeKit > does Windows 10 have any IoT control? 
• macOS Photos > UWP Photos 

wow. you actually listed all those things.

I am just way too lazy to explain to people  that macOS sometimes IS better than windows. 

Now we should wait for the waves and waves of "apple BAD, go fuck yourselff APPLE And APPLE users are sheeple" comment.

 

I will make us some tea, you grab a small table and now we wait.