Thoughts on Apple moving the Mac line over to ARM?

[AMD A10-9600P]

Curious to hear what everyone thinks of this, it's likely it could have a wider impact too, potentially (imo) pushing Intel even further behind?

[Roswell]

Intel isn't behind though, they have something like 85% of total marketshare and close to 100% data center marketshare. 

 

As much as people rag on Intel for having production issues, AMD is 10x worse. They rely on other people's fabrication and couldn't scale to threaten Intel no matter how good their stuff is.

 

Then there's the fact that if ARM on PC caught on, Intel could simply just start making ARM processors, there's nothing stopping them from doing so.

 

Looking to the future though, there's really only one more feasible die shrink past 7nm. Once that happens the playing field will be leveled again. Innovation will need to go in another direction. 

[kompetenzbolzen]

honestly, I think it's a good move. ARM is way more power efficient and can be really good performance wise. Software compat is the one thing they have to get working, but windows managed, so i think they'll be fine.

 

I think Linus Torvalds once said, that the only thing that is holding ARM back in conquering Desktop is the availability of affordable powerful workstations.

 

I would really welcome to see more ARM on the Desktop

[CRWND_12]

Apple's move will make it far behind in the distant future. Since Apple were infested with a lot of engineering failures, their shift to their own Silicon would like to result some possible problems once they release it. Like more frequent kernel panics, system instabilty and they might even shift from active cooling to passive or even worse, fanless cooling like in the macbook air and 12" macbook.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, kompetenzbolzen said:

honestly, I think it's a good move. ARM is way more power efficient and can be really good performance wise. Software compat is the one thing they have to get working, but windows managed, so i think they'll be fine.

 

I think Linus Torvalds once said, that the only thing that is holding ARM back in conquering Desktop is the availability of affordable powerful workstations.

 

I would really welcome to see more ARM on the Desktop

 

Linus Torvalds might now how to code an OS, but his understanding of corporate management and market/product

strategy is very lacking.

 

 

 

[AMD A10-9600P]

51 minutes ago, CRWND_12 said:

Apple's move will make it far behind in the distant future. Since Apple were infested with a lot of engineering failures, their shift to their own Silicon would like to result some possible problems once they release it. Like more frequent kernel panics, system instabilty and they might even shift from active cooling to passive or even worse, fanless cooling like in the macbook air and 12" macbook.

I agree that they will no doubt have a plethora of issues to sort within the first few years after using their own silicon, however, it looked as if their demo used an A12Z Bionic chip, so, in my limited opinion, I feel it's much more likely that the issues will stem from software and not hardware, as Apple already has a tonne of experience with their A series chips. Releasing a slightly watered down MacBook on a chip designed for the iPad Pro seems to me to be a likely move, and not a bad move either. The iPad Pros have shown how powerful Apple has been able to make their own chips, certainly not up to the current standard of a laptop Intel Core or AMD Ryzen CPU, but surprisingly powerful nonetheless. I disagree about the distant future though (if you're talking about Apple here and not Intel), Apple tends to set trends in mobile computing, look at the iPad and iPhone. Plus the average consumer doesn't care about ARM, Intel or AMD, or any performance numbers, except maybe battery life, especially if they're buying a MacBook. If Apple is able to push a chip into their hands then that's all that matters, and that will happen. Personally though, I think that this can only bring them closer to performance we expect from Intel and AMD in the future, not the opposite. Technologically speaking, at the moment, Apple seems to move much faster than Intel, and to me that's what seems to be holding the MacBook line back. Thinner, lighter, faster, quieter and cooler. They want not only performance, but power efficiency and good thermals, three things that Intel has been lacking on for the past few generations (don't get me wrong, Intel does not provide bad chips by any means, but for thinner and thinner MacBooks they are becoming less and less favourable), these are also things that Apple has already delivered with on the iPad Pro, making leaps and bounds each year (although, admittedly, the 2020 iPad Pro was essentially the 2019 one with a LIDAR sensor). Unlike Intel, year on year Apple can provide huge performance jumps between each generation of iPad and A chip, in my opinion, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do that with the Mac. Plus they're already committed to porting software across

[Uttamattamakin]

This will really Compete with the Arm based Chromebooks. A Mac will essentially be a Chromebook running Mac OS.  However, dont think the AMD x86-64 based pc will go away.  Freedom to run any program and the whole back catalogue of x86 software will matter for anyone who is not just playing mobile games.

[Jet_ski]

I’m more concerned about people who are buying MacBooks on the Intel platform. What will happen to those computers in a couple of years?! I hope they don’t become completely useless due to a lack of software support.

[AMD A10-9600P]

6 hours ago, Jet_ski said:

I’m more concerned about people who are buying MacBooks on the Intel platform. What will happen to those computers in a couple of years?! I hope they don’t become completely useless due to a lack of software support.

I guess it's just going to be a question of either when Apple decides to entirely phase out x86 or when the developers decide it's no longer viable to have to develop for both, whichever comes first. Either way that's not too brilliant

[Lord Vile]

On 6/23/2020 at 10:50 AM, bengeoghegan11 said:

I agree that they will no doubt have a plethora of issues to sort within the first few years after using their own silicon, however, it looked as if their demo used an A12Z Bionic chip, so, in my limited opinion, I feel it's much more likely that the issues will stem from software and not hardware, as Apple already has a tonne of experience with their A series chips. Releasing a slightly watered down MacBook on a chip designed for the iPad Pro seems to me to be a likely move, and not a bad move either. The iPad Pros have shown how powerful Apple has been able to make their own chips, certainly not up to the current standard of a laptop Intel Core or AMD Ryzen CPU, but surprisingly powerful nonetheless. I disagree about the distant future though (if you're talking about Apple here and not Intel), Apple tends to set trends in mobile computing, look at the iPad and iPhone. Plus the average consumer doesn't care about ARM, Intel or AMD, or any performance numbers, except maybe battery life, especially if they're buying a MacBook. If Apple is able to push a chip into their hands then that's all that matters, and that will happen. Personally though, I think that this can only bring them closer to performance we expect from Intel and AMD in the future, not the opposite. Technologically speaking, at the moment, Apple seems to move much faster than Intel, and to me that's what seems to be holding the MacBook line back. Thinner, lighter, faster, quieter and cooler. They want not only performance, but power efficiency and good thermals, three things that Intel has been lacking on for the past few generations (don't get me wrong, Intel does not provide bad chips by any means, but for thinner and thinner MacBooks they are becoming less and less favourable), these are also things that Apple has already delivered with on the iPad Pro, making leaps and bounds each year (although, admittedly, the 2020 iPad Pro was essentially the 2019 one with a LIDAR sensor). Unlike Intel, year on year Apple can provide huge performance jumps between each generation of iPad and A chip, in my opinion, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do that with the Mac. Plus they're already committed to porting software across

The latests A series chips actually outperform the lower end intel chips, with a bigger power budget and scaling up they should rival the upper end chips, assuming it scales well. Handled FC fine if the demos are anywhere near real world and the A12 is 2 gens behind what will likely be released.