Huawei's first ARM-based desktop sees the light of day.

[williamcll]

1 hour ago, Orfieus said:

I already have the Canadian government spying on me and the US government spying on me, with Huawei the Chinese government will make 3 and I'm a firm believer 3's a crowd

Just use RISC-V, it's in the Swiss alps now.

[Results45]

8 hours ago, williamcll said:

Just use RISC-V, it's in the Swiss alps now.

Yup and just dish em template architectures out like Linux distros!

[leadeater]

22 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Software will follow MacOS because money. It might cost Adobe a bit to put it on ARM Macs but they already have heavily cut down versions of lightroom, PS and premiere on iOS. 

No not really, if Adobe or AutoDesk do not see the viability in developing for an ARM system they won't. People that actually need their software will move platform/OS, software needs come above choice of OS. So if you need and you were using Mac and now it's Windows only your next computer will be Windows.

 

22 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Apple generally is a trend setter because software doesn’t want to miss out on the money the platform brings in. Apples gone to ARM so a lot of software will get ported. Might actually make Windows for ARM viable too. 

Apple makes bank only in the mobile sector, they are literally the small fry in the PC market. Their biggest share in a sub section of the market would be laptops but even that is very small compared to Windows laptops.

 

Where I work is education which has a disproportionately high representation of Apple/Mac, of the ~10000 computers 1224 of them are Apple/Mac OS. Public market share data isn't really all that accurate, but grant Mac OS share is larger than our 1% because there are many places that are Mac only or have a higher ratio than us but there are far greater amounts of business buying far more than we do that are all not any significantly different when it comes to Windows vs Mac.

[atxcyclist]

The only real benefit of ARM chips is the low power usage for light tasks, with modern AMD64 chips this just isn't an issue in a desktop. Something like a Ryzen-based Athlon 3000G and B450 chipset uses very little power. ARM almost makes sense in a thin and light, but having limited compatibility, no upgrade path, and etc. on a desktop completely defeats the point.

[Results45]

54 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

The only real benefit of ARM chips is the low power usage for light tasks, with modern AMD64 chips this just isn't an issue in a desktop. Something like a Ryzen-based Athlon 3000G and B450 chipset uses very little power. ARM almost makes sense in a thin and light, but having limited compatibility, no upgrade path, and etc. on a desktop completely defeats the point.

 

That is, unless enough software support & hardware-accelerated workloads are developed in the workstation/data center sector where 64-128 core ARM chips from Ampere, Fujitsu, Marvell, and Amazon are becoming more popular by the quarter.

 

Plus, ARM/RISC-V seems to be more customizable than x86. Want twice as many cores? Check. A CPU that can efficiently take on GPU workloads too? Check check. An architecture and I/O design optimized for robotics, additive manufacturing, & Machine Learning? Check-check-check. Four times the performance per watt? Quadruple check that!

 

Totally forgot about this: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15165/arm-server-cpus-you-can-now-buy-amperes-emag-in-a-workstation

[atxcyclist]

22 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Obviously not but with 3x the resources you can push it a lot further. 
 

I know but these aren’t consumer products they’re professional or industry products. 
 

Software will follow MacOS because money. It might cost Adobe a bit to put it on ARM Macs but they already have heavily cut down versions of lightroom, PS and premiere on iOS. 
 

 

Apple generally is a trend setter because software doesn’t want to miss out on the money the platform brings in. Apples gone to ARM so a lot of software will get ported. Might actually make Windows for ARM viable too. 

Professional software, and especially what's for Windows is coded for x86/AMD64. Without API support there's no point in calling something a professional product. Most of the big boys (SGI, Sun) using RISC have terminated their workstation development years or decades ago, for good reason. 

 

The ARM push is because Apple is looking for product control and to allow computer illiterates a common interface between their tablets and laptops/desktops, professionals are not pushing this. When Apple stops making Intel-based Mac Pros, you will see a ton of current Apple professional power-users go over to Windows/Linux AMD64 systems. 

[atxcyclist]

10 minutes ago, Results45 said:

 

That is, unless enough software support & hardware-accelerated workloads are developed in the workstation/data center sector where 64-128 core ARM chips from Ampere, Fujitsu, Marvell, and Amazon are becoming more popular by the quarter.

 

Totally forgot about this: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15165/arm-server-cpus-you-can-now-buy-amperes-emag-in-a-workstation

The design requirements for a system doing datacenter use VS a desktop GUI workstation that's rendering a movie or one that someone is using for building modelling, are completely different. 

 

RISC workstations probably account for a tiny fraction of one percent of those in professional environments, that's ignoring the near 100% usage of x86/AMD64 hardware in consumer computers. Outside of ultra-cheap single-board systems and a few outliers, the workstation software space already thoroughly supports x86/AMD64-based computing, there's no need to switch.

[Lord Vile]

14 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

Professional software, and especially what's for Windows is coded for x86/AMD64. Without API support there's no point in calling something a professional product. Most of the big boys (SGI, Sun) using RISC have terminated their workstation development years or decades ago, for good reason. 

 

The ARM push is because Apple is looking for product control and to allow computer illiterates a common interface between their tablets and laptops/desktops, professionals are not pushing this. When Apple stops making Intel-based Mac Pros, you will see a ton of current Apple professional power-users go over to Windows/Linux AMD64 systems. 

Unless the software is released as an ARM compatible variant. Adobe is already doing it and all of apples own products will be too. Plus if apple can pull more performance than intel or AMD people might go to apple, especially on the laptop side.

 

Think it's partially that and getting fed up with intel. They did promise stuff and not deliver since 2016.

[Results45]

.

26 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

The design requirements for a system doing datacenter use VS a desktop GUI workstation that's rendering a movie or one that someone is using for building modelling, are completely different. 

 

RISC workstations probably account for a tiny fraction of one percent of those in professional environments, that's ignoring the near 100% usage of x86/AMD64 hardware in consumer computers. Outside of ultra-cheap single-board systems and a few outliers, the industry already thoroughly supports x86/AMD64-based computing, there's no need to switch.

 

That may be true for up to another 10 years (5-7 generations of incremental IPC improvements), but I ultimately believe that by then at least 25-40% of servers and supercomputers will have or will be in the process of switching to ARM. Maybe an additional 5-10% will have integrated RISC-V by then too!

 

There's no way the consumer PC market wouldn't have a dozen or two appealing ARM offerings with competitive software support by then if BOTH the AR-VR/smartphone/foldables/wearable and Linux workstation-server-datacenter-HPC ends of the computing market are saturated with Arm64.

[atxcyclist]

16 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

Unless the software is released as an ARM compatible variant. Adobe is already doing it and all of apples own products will be too. Plus if apple can pull more performance than intel or AMD people might go to apple, especially on the laptop side.

 

Think it's partially that and getting fed up with intel. They did promise stuff and not deliver since 2016.

 

Apple will orphan themselves in a mainly unsupported code with ARM stuff, any software developer that's not tied to the hip of Apple will be continuing to code in x86/AMD64, because the vast majority of machines on earth use that hardware. Laptops/tablets/phones are where ARM makes sense, because battery life is a primary concern. Non-power-users (internet surfers and mobile gamers) won't care, but those guys usually go with a cheap Dell if they need a laptop anyway.

 

Apple was crazy for letting that go so long, but their kernel couldn't have possibly needed many tweaks to run on AMD hardware. Hackintosh peeps have been doing this for years.

 

 

[Lord Vile]

Just now, atxcyclist said:

 

Apple will orphan themselves in a mainly unsupported code with ARM stuff, any software developer that's not tied to the hip of Apple will be continuing to code in x86/AMD64, because the vast majority of machines on earth use that hardware. Laptops/tables/phones are where ARM makes sense, because battery life is a primary concern. Non-power-users (internet surfers and mobile gamers) won't care, but those guys usually go with a cheap Dell if they need a laptop anyway.

 

Apple was crazy for letting that go so long, but their kernel couldn't have possibly needed many tweaks to run on AMD hardware. Hackintosh peeps have been doing this for years.

 

 

Or they could do both because why would they leave money on the table? Also also with the dev kit benchmarks apple seems to be taking around a 20-25% hit in performance from emulation. If they can get that back from faster chips then they have better efficiency and the same performance.

 

I'm guessing they have an intel exclusivity deal which bans them from using AMD CPUs that's either expiring soon or doesn't stop them using their own chips. 

[leadeater]

23 minutes ago, Results45 said:

That may be true for up to another 10 years (5-7 generations of incremental IPC improvements), but I ultimately believe that by then at least 25-40% of servers and supercomputers will have or will be in the process of switching to ARM. Maybe an additional 5-10% will have integrated RISC-V by then too!

No way that is happening in that time frame, server market moves too slowly. AMD isn't even close to that and it's 4 years now and that is with the x86_64 compatibility benefit.

 

ARM in servers is still specialized, really great for where it's used and for those that want it but as you move to more generalized server usage nobody there wants to deal with or put in the effort to make such a switch. If it can be done seamlessly then it becomes purely economics like any other purchase is where you're comparing different vendor qoutes for essentially the same thing.

[Results45]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Now way that is happening in that time frame, server market moves too slowly. AMD isn't even close to that and it's 4 years now and that is with the x86_64 compatibility benefit.

 

ARM in servers is still specialized, really great for where it's used and for those that want it but as you move to more generalized server usage nobody there wasn't to deal with or put in the effort to make such a switch. If it can be done seamlessly then it becomes purely economics like any other purchase is where you're comparing different vendor qoutes for essentially the same thing.

 

So....more like by 2035? 2040?

[leadeater]

Just now, Results45 said:

So....more like by 2035? 2040?

Not sure, interesting thing about the server market is once they do decide to switch it's done very quickly. So it might be 10 years of nope, nope nope, then on the 11th year literally everything being purchased is that thing they were saying no to before.

[Guest]

On 7/7/2020 at 8:16 PM, Lord Vile said:

Remember the rule, Apple does then everyone else copies.

Lets face it, Apple's ARM can run tomb raider. This can run office. There is little comparison. 

[Lord Vile]

55 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

Lets face it, Apple's ARM can run tomb raider. This can run office. There is little comparison. 

More impressive is it’s emulating tomb raider 

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

More impressive is it’s emulating tomb raider 

For sure. I wonder what’s holding Huawei back regarding loading Windows on their computer to emulate x86

[Lord Vile]

55 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

For sure. I wonder what’s holding Huawei back regarding loading Windows on their computer to emulate x86

They have to wait on Microsoft to do that and windows for ARM is horrendous? 

[Guest]

10 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

They have to wait on Microsoft to do that and windows for ARM is horrendous? 

I don’t think so, all those low end tablets can’t have waited on Microsoft for Windows ARM. I don’t think Windows ARM is that bad though.

[Lord Vile]

8 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

I don’t think so, all those low end tablets can’t have waited on Microsoft for Windows ARM. I don’t think Windows ARM is that bad though.

What low end tablets? 

 

No software support, maybe apple going to ARM might make Microsoft care.

[Guest]

Just now, Lord Vile said:

What low end tablets? 

 

No software support, maybe apple going to ARM might make Microsoft care.

Like those ones on AliExpress 

[Lord Vile]

Just now, RorzNZ said:

Like those ones on AliExpress 

Do you trust anything on AliExpress?

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Lord Vile said:

Do you trust anything on AliExpress?

Not really, but I guess they still run and sell Windows and Huawei can’t? Maybe it’s to do with the sanctions.

[Lord Vile]

27 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

Not really, but I guess they still run and sell Windows and Huawei can’t? Maybe it’s to do with the sanctions.

Nah cos they still sell the matebook 

[Kisai]

On 7/8/2020 at 11:19 PM, atxcyclist said:

 

The ARM push is because Apple is looking for product control and to allow computer illiterates a common interface between their tablets and laptops/desktops, professionals are not pushing this. When Apple stops making Intel-based Mac Pros, you will see a ton of current Apple professional power-users go over to Windows/Linux AMD64 systems. 

Doubtful. Apple users hang onto their systems for 7 years. The last Mac Pro update to the "cheese grater" model before the current one was the last proper update and only exists because someone needed it, otherwise why refresh a model that is more expensive to produce.

 

The current Mac Pro is likely to stick around until 2026 or so I do not see Apple immediately throwing out all their engineering work on this one only to switch to ARM parts that aren't even in the ballpark. I speculate AMD drivers for the AMD GPU's would work fine since they would still be eGPU options as well, so drivers will probably be produced regardless. So if an ARM Mac Pro is the last thing that gets built, Apple has at least 5 years to engineer one.

 

Meanwhile, just to show you how long companies hold onto equipment. One of my clients are still using 15 year old hardware for their web server... and the office I work at, has exactly the same server hardware they are disposing of this year. Businesses do not throw stuff out if it is still meeting their needs, especially if it's been paid for.

 

End users, consumers, basically, are not the target of the Mac Pro, the MacBook and the iMac are. Which is also kinda amusing if you think about it, because I can almost guarantee you we are going to see a "ultrabook-inspired" iMac that is as thin as an iPad.