Apple will announce move to ARM-based Macs later this month, says report

[Spindel]

I'm actually hoping for a ARM iMac.

 

Currently on a late 2013 iMac (with an Nvidia Geforce 780M!) so it's not exactly new, but because of all the ARM rumors I don't want to upgrade to a Intel mac currently. But I'm thorn because do I really want to upgrade to a first generation ARM iMac (if it comes)?

 

I'm generally positive for a potential move to ARM and have seen the potential of ARM (as a future evolution) for at least 10 years now. Drop all the legacy stuff, move forward towards a modern design. 

 

I'm not worried about software (in the long run), because honestly, hardly anyone program in assembly/machine code these days. And any potential legacy software one might need should be possible to emulate simply because if the software is so old it doesn't get any updates a modern CPU shouldn't have a problem running it just fine through emulation. 

 

A interesting question IF apple moves towards ARM in their macs is how they will handle graphics. Will they stick to current kind of offerings with dedicated GPUs, from AMD (or Nvidia if they can come to terms) as an option in some of their models or will they ditch that market completely and just run their own integrated ARM graphics. For the phone/tablet market the graphics units in the A-series chips are plenty competent, but how would Apple chose to handle desktops/laptops?

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, hishnash said:

No i mean fat applications build with Xcode 12 that include both Arm and x86 will be able to run on 10.15 since 10.15 already knows how to select the x86 version.

Yet, that's not how developers code anything. They hang on to old stuff forever. That's why it's such a pain in the ass to to get cross-platform things between Windows and MacOS X in the first place. OSX "oh suddenly we decided to force 64bit", suddenly all the mac software in the store is 64bit, but everything produced outside the store is a mixture of 32-bit only and 64-bit only. Now add ARM into it, and now you don't know what you're getting.

 

Look no further than the hellscape that's Android to see how frequently x86 is skipped over in favor of an ARM-only build. I know Apple can do this better, and has pretty much done so with iOS, but MacOS X has 19 years of software built for it, of which everything built for 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 had to be thrown away with the Intel switch, and everything built for 10.4 and 10.5 had to be thrown away if it only had a PPC version. 

 

My issue is that while I applaud some arm-twisting to get 64-bit only OS's out there, splitting them with ARM and OSX versions just makes them that much harder to develop with unless you want to target only the slowest machine (the MacBook Air.)  

 

Like I'm really expecting Apple to come out and say they've turned iPad OS into a full OS, and you can now buy iPad's in the same form factor the MacBook Air came in and they discontinue the Macbook Air. Because good gawd the MacBook Air is Apple's worst PC product that it's own phones run circles around.

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

 "oh suddenly we decided to force 64bit"

Apple gave over 8 years warning to us developers! there was nothing sudden about it!
 

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

Now add ARM into it,

Your not adding arm into it, since modern Xcode will not produce 32bit compiled code  if you use a recent build of xcode you will just be producing x86-64 and ARM builds.

 

[AK89]

I feel these ARM-based processor will work great with the MacOS ecosystem

[Master Disaster]

17 hours ago, MadmanRB said:

well if we say goodbye to x86 we say goodbye to a lot of games and emulators.

OSX is now practically game/emulator free now making mac users probably wanting to use windows now.

X86 has nothing to do with that, heck you can emulate anything up to the Wii on a phone which uses an ARM chip. The reason macOS is so bad for gaming is because Apple only support an old version of OpenGL, they refuse to support Vulkan at all and instead insist that all games running on macOS/iOS use the Metal API.

[hishnash]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

X86 has nothing to do with that, heck you can emulate anything up to the Wii on a phone which uses an ARM chip. The reason macOS is so bad for gaming is because Apple only support an old version of OpenGL, they refuse to support Vulkan at all and instead insist that all games running on macOS/iOS use the Metal API.

Apple are not that bothered since there is MoltenVK that provides the vulkan api on-top of metal. It would be nice if apple contributed to this project directly however. That is proably a better solution than them providing a closed source version that you cant look into and understand a bug etc. it is not impossible that they do start contributing to tbis apple have been putting a lot of open source dev in over the years across a lot of projects. 

[GDRRiley]

12 hours ago, hishnash said:

For the macPro target user ARM is a much better solution, even if you go for vanilla ARM. For the macPro it is all about mutli-threaded performance.

* Building a 32core or even 64core ARM cpu is easy, even people like AWS have been doing this.
* ARM cpus support DDR6 the improved memory speed/latency will be a massive perf improvement for pro workloads.
* ARM supports PCIe4 and even PCIe5 (this year) and has supported PCIe4 for over 4 year now! this will mean apple can drop the costly PCIe switch they have on the motherboard and improve bandwidth to the slots.

have you seen how much epyc destroys the arm machines? EPYC 2nd gen and threadripper just don't care. They went with the safe bet of intel but by doing so left 1/2 the performance on the table and made their PCIE lives more of a pain.

Memory bandwidth only applies to some-workloads.

 

dual epyc in mac pros would be insane

Spoiler

 

if you believe Marvells numbers ThunderX3 will be faster than Rome but we already got new EPYC chips due out later this year or start of next

https://www.servethehome.com/marvell-thunderx3-arm-server-cpu-with-768-threads-in-2020/

 

I don't see this coming to the pro desktops till the last ones even then I wouldn't be surprised if theirs a big push to not convert.

that assume that this leak/rumor is real.

[hishnash]

3 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

have you seen how much epyc destroys the arm machines? EPYC 2nd gen and threadripper just don't care.

Firstly apple do not need to compare to Epyc they need to compare to the current Xeon in the macPro. Secondly those comparison are between 7nm EPYC cpus from AMD and 14nm ARM cpus from companies that are only started building cpus in the last 2 years... apple has more active cpu talent than AMD and these cpus will be on 5nm TSMC.

5 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

Memory bandwidth only applies to some-workloads.

yes but memory latency applies to all.

 

6 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

I don't see this coming to the pro desktops till the last ones even then I wouldn't be surprised if theirs a big push to not convert.

If they dont move the entier line they will have a real fragmentation issue, apple does not like things to be fragmented. If they dont move the macPro they will just stop selling it.

[Master Disaster]

37 minutes ago, hishnash said:

Apple are not that bothered since there is MoltenVK that provides the vulkan api on-top of metal. It would be nice if apple contributed to this project directly however. That is proably a better solution than them providing a closed source version that you cant look into and understand a bug etc. it is not impossible that they do start contributing to tbis apple have been putting a lot of open source dev in over the years across a lot of projects. 

Yeah and meanwhile Linux has shot past macOS and become the second choice OS for playing games on. I get the impression that Apple don't care about gaming at all, to them its a case of "if it works then we won't actively try to break it but if it doesn't work there's no chance we're putting in any effort to fix it".

[GDRRiley]

Just now, hishnash said:

Firstly apple do not need to compare to Epyc they need to compare to the current Xeon in the macPro. Secondly those comparison are between 7nm EPYC cpus from AMD and 14nm ARM cpus from companies that are only started building cpus in the last 2 years... apple has more active cpu talent than AMD and these cpus will be on 5nm TSMC.

yes but memory latency applies to all.

 

If they dont move the entier line they will have a real fragmentation issue, apple does not like things to be fragmented. If they dont move the macPro they will just stop selling it.

Apples mac pro doesn't exist in a vacuum and more and more users are moving back to PC or to linux. EPYC/3000 threadripper is a real threat to it

you realize I was mostly talking about Marvell who bought Cavium whos been working with ARM back in ~2010 right which is about the same time as apple. Their Thunder line is the fastest large core count ARM we have seen.

 

DDR5 doesn't start mass production till 2021 which is around the same time we expect epyc Genoa based on Zen 4

 

if they want it to be fragmented or not there is lots of legacy apps used on Mac Pros and others that will take time to get moved. Adobe is going to take 2-3 years.

They already have a habit of abandoning the Mac Pro and they destroyed its biggest user base with the 6K starting price

[hishnash]

5 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

DDR5 doesn't start mass production till 2021 which is around the same time we expect epyc Genoa based on Zen 4

has been in mass production for the mobile market for years, DDR6 is already out producing DDR4. You forget how many phones people buy and throw away every year.

[Nicnac]

if you're just a simple end-user and want an incredibly thin laptop with incredible battery life this is great news. I might be able to take a device like that into lecture for a few days without the need to recharge. Or a photographer in the field could do work while traveling for extended periods of time. If you're a software engineer or anyone really how needs to worry about architecture this is probably an emulation nightmare tho.

I device like this would be an ideal mb air product, especially for students if priced right.

[GDRRiley]

5 minutes ago, hishnash said:

has been in mass production for the mobile market for years, DDR6 is already out producing DDR4. You forget how many phones people buy and throw away every year.

LPDRR5 for mobile isn’t the same as desktop and is no where near as fast. DDR4 2933 is 4x per stick faster than LPDDR5 from Samsung 

 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, GDRRiley said:

Apples mac pro doesn't exist in a vacuum and more and more users are moving back to PC or to linux. EPYC/3000 threadripper is a real threat to it

you realize I was mostly talking about Marvell who bought Cavium whos been working with ARM back in ~2010 right which is about the same time as apple. Their Thunder line is the fastest large core count ARM we have seen.

Apple moving to ARM on Pro products isn't going to happen while a large amount of their user base relies on non Apple software and Apple can't get those major vendors to support the ARM move on release or at worst within a year. Software makes a platform not hardware so it really makes no difference what anyone is doing with ARM.

 

The other thing is x86_64 isn't actually as limiting as people make out, not compared to ARM. Sure it's got a ton of legacy in there but all the accelerated execution paths that exist today are no different to any other CPU arch, Power/ARM etc. As ARM increases performance it becomes more like x86 and as x86 scales it core counts and efficiencies it becomes more like ARM. Both do have and will have dead weight at some point but is that really holding them back. AMD Zen has smashed a lot of these notions because it's actually done what most thought was unthinkable/impossible on x86.

 

These high performance custom ARM CPUs that get deployed are only possible because of the backing from the entity wanting them, the economics don't make sense otherwise. Making CPUs that are application/deployment specific doesn't make any sense in the wider industry but there are companies and government entities that are large enough and have enough money to get these tailored designs made for them, that in no way makes any of these actually suitable for usage in a desktop platform for general usage. Apple could design and make their own ARM CPU but that doesn't mean it will actually be better than what Intel or AMD have to offer. So the question really is does it make business sense for Apple to go down this path for this usage? I'm actually not sure it does however I can see Apple doing it but I'm simply not going to believe these ARM rumors until I see it and what it's actually being used in if it does happen. Apple ARM on MacBook Air, yep I can see that. Apple ARM on Macbook, yep can see that. Apple ARM on MacBook Pro, hmm not any time soon. Apple ARM on iMac, as an option not the only sure. Apple ARM on iMac Pro, can't see this for a long time. Apple ARM on Mac Pro, even longer again.

[Spindel]

22 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Apple moving to ARM on Pro products isn't going to happen while a large amount of their user base relies on non Apple software and Apple can't get those major vendors to support the ARM move on release or at worst within a year. Software makes a platform not hardware so it really makes no difference what anyone is doing with ARM.

 

The other thing is x86_64 isn't actually as limiting as people make out, not compared to ARM. Sure it's got a ton of legacy in there but all the accelerated execution paths that exist today are no different to any other CPU arch, Power/ARM etc. As ARM increases performance it becomes more like x86 and as x86 scales it core counts and efficiencies it becomes more like ARM. Both do have and will have dead weight at some point but is that really holding them back. AMD Zen has smashed a lot of these notions because it's actually done what most thought was unthinkable/impossible on x86.

 

These high performance custom ARM CPUs that get deployed are only possible because of the backing from the entity wanting them, the economics don't make sense otherwise. Making CPUs that are application/deployment specific doesn't make any sense in the winder industry but there are companies and government entities that are large enough and have enough money to get these tailored designs made for them, that in no way makes any of these actually suitable for usage in a desktop platform for general usage. Apple could design and make their own ARM CPU but that doesn't mean it will actually be better than what Intel or AMD have to offer. So the question really is does it make business sense for Apple to go down this path for this usage? I'm actually not sure it does however I can see Apple doing it but I'm simply not going to believe these ARM rumors until I see it and what it's actually being used in if it does happen. Apple ARM on MacBook Air, yep I can see that. Apple ARM on Macbook, yep can see that. Apple ARM on MacBook Pro, hmm not any time soon. Apple ARM on iMac, as an option not the only sure. Apple ARM on iMac Pro, can't see this for a long time. Apple ARM on Mac Pro, even longer again.

We know that x86 does not scale down, for low power applications, as well as ARM. There is a reason that almost all embedded systems and phones and tablets run ARM, not x86.  

 

We (as the public) do not know how well an ARM cpu scale up towards high power application. 

 

x86 has been RISC at it's core since pentium pro, but has a bunch of translation layers built in because of legacy crap. Take away the middle man (the translation layers) and you end up with a more efficient design. That is my hope with a switch to ARM. And if anyone will be able to pioneer ARM for desktops it will be Apple. If they succeed I'll bet we will start to see a movement away from x86 in everything that isn't special applications. 

 

As I said in my previous post, I've been a strong believer in ARM for the last 10 years. During the last 3-4 years it has actually started to look like we are realistically close to actually being able to switch the CPU architecture for a lot of the tasks you need in a desktop/laptop workstation.  

[leadeater]

18 minutes ago, Spindel said:

We know that x86 does not scale down, for low power applications, as well as ARM. There is a reason that almost all embedded systems and phones and tablets run ARM, not x86.  

That doesn't make ARM actually fit within the market segment people are saying it's going to come to. Just look at current Ryzen mobile, that's the power and performance envelope that's been talked about and I just don't see ARM taking a significant lead in either without compromise to the other. It also actually has to perform well in applications that make all kinds of different workloads and instruction set usage with interaction with other hardware, it's actually really easily to score well in a benchmark of one thing but a lot harder to switch between instruction sets and sizes and make calls to GPUs etc. It's all well and good being able to run an export of a video but another to actually sit down and edit one and work with the software to do it and other software at the same time.

 

Embedded systems aren't a laptop or an iMac and definitely not a Mac Pro.

 

18 minutes ago, Spindel said:

but has a bunch of translation layers built in because of legacy crap. Take away the middle man (the translation layers) and you end up with a more efficient design.

These gains are non-linear, a large gain at 4W-7W doesn't mean you'll get equivalent at 15W or 40W or 120W etc.

 

18 minutes ago, Spindel said:

If they succeed I'll bet we will start to see a movement away from x86 in everything that isn't special applications. 

Windows will say otherwise for decades, that is reality here.

[StDragon]

3 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

I get the impression that Apple don't care about gaming at all

Oh, they do, but it's closed off via Apple Arcade.

 

The Apple TV could be the reincarnation of the Apple Pippin game console. It's just apple doesn't have that as their focus. But that's not nearly as strange as their lack of focus for the enterprise market.

 

Tim Cook is a good leader, but it was Jobs that was the visionary. In essence, Apple died with Jobs. You get no fanboi from me here.

[Kisai]

8 hours ago, hishnash said:

Apple gave over 8 years warning to us developers! there was nothing sudden about it!
 

Your not adding arm into it, since modern Xcode will not produce 32bit compiled code  if you use a recent build of xcode you will just be producing x86-64 and ARM builds.

 

Are you just intentionally ignoring what I said?

 

It does NOT matter if Apple gave developers warnings, what matters is that END USERS can still run their 15 year old software. If you can not run the legacy software saying "well then don't buy a new mac" / "don't upgrade past 10.14" is awfully dickish to the people who use software they have licenses for. I explicitly called out Adobe here, because a jack tonne of artists use Adobe CS3/CS4/CS5 (CS2 was PPC) and do not want to pay the Adobe Cloud tax, and when their mac dies, they can't even install it on a new mac. That's the software they know how to use.

 

Likewise, there's plenty of indie software that was built against a specific version of something (eg game maker, Unity, etc) and those tools do not have 64-bit versions or dragged their heels on it (Unity explicitly dragged their heels on 64-bit till this year) , and said games software doesn't have a "recompile to latest unity" buttons. That's Just-Not-How-Games-Dev-Work. At best game engines like Unity, Unreal, Game Maker Studio, Xenko, GoDot, etc, you can only target the minor version, and if the engine dev decides to depreciate functionality (which all of these have) and your game uses it, you're not going to rewrite it for a game you released 10 years ago.

 

It would be nice if there was some kind of unified GPU/CPU/APU/Input API that everything could run on top of, but vendors like Microsoft and Apple adhere to "not-invented-here" and proprietary platforms like game consoles and smartphones also throw a bunch of licensing restrictions on top, so it's just not possible to build for all platforms without some middleware tools, and that means you get stuck with whatever you initially started building the game with.

 

Software like Adobe and Autodesk products, release annual versions, that you would think use the latest API's on the platforms, but no, they actually built their own middleware , and have the exact same problems games do.

[popman]

Since nobody's mentioned it already, apple currently requires uploads of "bitcode" (basically, LLVM IR output, that can be compiled for any architecture) for the iOS appstore.

 

I don't know about the mac appstore, since I've never put anything on there. And some libraries seem to exempt you from uploading bitcode. (flutter apps, for example disable the "upload bitcode" option in xcode)

 

Apps being re-written for ARM shouldn't be a problem since anyone, even apple, can compile the program for your specific microarchitecture. (as long as LLVM can target it)

The obvious exception here is anything with X86 assembly in it, and no matching ARM section.

[DrMacintosh]

13 hours ago, StDragon said:

In essence, Apple died with Jobs.

Perhaps in spirit? But in a literal sense, the company has never been more successful since he died. 

[Arika]

yay vertical monopolies.....

[Spindel]

2 hours ago, Arika S said:

yay vertical monopolies.....

I see this being brought up a lot in this case but I can't actually see the problem (as this is the internet I'm sure someone will educate me on this pretty soon). 

 

Also currently Apple does not make all the components in their computers anyway so it actually won't become a vertical monopoly just because they switch to their own ARM processors. 

 

From my perspective this is rather a good thing. 

 

To make a car analogy: The current state of personal computers is like if the only engine manufacturers in the world, for cars, would be Toyota and Volkswagen. For any car enthusiast this fortunately isn't the case, most still applaud brands that make their own thing (or at least try to) in house (Subaru, Honda, Tesla, Mazda (to some degree) etc and Koenigsegg, Ferrarri etc on the more exclusive side).

 

 

But in the PC world, as soon as there are rumors about Apple making their own CPU, people start to scream "vertical monopoly bad!" until their faces turn red.

 

The thing that is bad for real is the current oligopoly with Intel and AMD, which for long swats of time being basically a monopoly for Intel for the most crucial component in a computer.

 

Most people aren't really worried about Apples "vertical monopoly", they just don't like Apple and that is OK, people just don't need be as obnoxious about it, as they claim Apple fanboys are about Apple.    

 

[hishnash]

8 hours ago, popman said:

Since nobody's mentioned it already, apple currently requires uploads of "bitcode" (basically, LLVM IR output, that can be compiled for any architecture) for the iOS appstore.

 

only watch apps require it. (they already used this to server side covert watch apps from 32bit to 64bit without devs even beeing told) you can submit without bytecode for ios and macos. 

 

yer most apps will go to arm with just a recompile in the new xcode! 

[StDragon]

10 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Perhaps in spirit? But in a literal sense, the company has never been more successful since he died. 

Yes, in spirit.

 

What is it now? 200+- billion in cash on hand, with a market cap of 1.5 TRILLON?

 

For me, the only item of value is their iPhone and arguably the iWatch. Their computers are a ripoff with shoddy hardware reliability. It's like the Jaguar of computing; sexy on the outside, crap engineering on the inside.

[Master Disaster]

10 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Perhaps in spirit? But in a literal sense, the company has never been more successful since he died. 

Success and greatness are not the same thing.

 

11 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Yes, in spirit.

 

What is it now? 200+- billion in cash on hand, with a market cap of 1.5 TRILLON?

 

For me, the only item of value is their iPhone and arguably the iWatch. Their computers are a ripoff with shoddy hardware reliability. It's like the Jaguar of computing; sexy on the outside, crap engineering on the inside.

That's unfair. Apple have many faults but the one thing you cannot accuse them of is bad engineering. In fact the opposite is true, they usually over design & over engineer everything. Form over function as they say.