Why Apple's move to ARM will Fail (Discussion and views)

[SSOB]

Now, having kept a close eye on the recent developments in the Apple and Intel debacle. There are a few things I want to say, This is not a scientific approach or even journalistic approach to the matter but as someone who has been doing exactly this, keeping eyes on stock portfolios in the ''tech-sector'' , I do believe that Apple will fail in this matter, making this a cover up to go to AMD CPU's making Intel ultimately fail.

 

Now there are a couple of reasons why:

 

1. Having spoken to developers, they have seen the new kit Apple provided, they have assured me, no developer is waiting for this. They have enlightened me that even Pandora 2 is only vaguely effective, the fact that they have to code for ARM Chips as oppose to x86 has been a true challenge and a true headache, making for a stagnation  in developement of apps. One of them, she assured me that it will take at least 5-10 years before things catch up in that regard. Now, people underestimate how big this move is, for the end-user , the normal consumer it's not an issue, but for the people that have to work on it, it will take perhaps a decade before things catch up, can Apple, and the industry as a whole afford this?

 

 

 

2.  This can be a decoy to go with AMD chips for the big horsepower in the future. Being Apple, Apple always has ways of doing things in the larger and bigger scheme, whether it be dodging taxes, being somewhat of a fashion brand as oppose to actually developing technology and being a brand that is driven on sales, as oppose to innovation. Which is  Totally fine, Without Samsung's engineers, decades ago the x86 (  Mind you x86 does come from the houses of AMD and not Intel, wouldn't  it be ironical that on the last legs of this architecture, which might now be the case or may not, it will fall in the hands of AMD again, this would be extremely fair regarding Intel really uses AMD technology for all of the foundations of their silicon, maybe something behind closed doors, maybe not, who knows)  Apple would not have been able to release products.

 

Now knowing this, why would they do this? Results speak for themselves, if under the table, Apple Has struck a deal to buy Chips from AMD for 50 dollars, as oppose to 100 dollars on the Intel side, for the same predictable performance, they would of course do this. How to do this without breaking one million contracts and becoming even more of the black sheep in the industry? Taking the loss. 

 

It is 100% much easier to Switch to AMD which will CUT COSTS for Apple, Intel however does know this. What can Apple do? Try to cover everything up with the ''Move to ARM''

Who are they kidding, the senior engineers all are thinking that this is the case. 

 

Apple is a Cost driven company, Cash is the reason why they breathe, now, if they can do something to cut the cost without losing their brand image, they will.

 

 

 

3.  ARM knows that this cannot be done in the foreseeable future. Without a huge capital injection from Apple, there is no way that the GPU performance can come anywhere near the ''Traditional'' x86. Now is

 

this a problem Yes,  this is a big problem, again, not for the consumer, but for the developers and professionals who I truly believe, make up a big enough chunk of Apples sales, that this WILL  hurt them!

 

Now again  once all ''Fails'' And, we stop and we do this and that. The people at Apple have already basically ditched Intel, in this, Intel will have suffered a big enough loss for Apple to say, ''You guys are no longer relevant'' And then proceed to go with the AMD counterparts, Making it kind of more sensible even, Apple and AMD have always had great relationships, I cannot see why not now AMD is on top again.

 

 

 

The 4th and most important reason:  Lawsuits, after a while, I am sure that Intel will Significantly feel this and start to Sue, Now Apple being the king of lawsuits, this won't be a problem for them, again , can this be the decoy to switch over to AMD, Questions questions and more questions!

 

 

Would love to hear you guys opinion and views on this! 

[jaslion]

I see them being successful in their move. The one part I am concerned about is gpu power but I wouldn't be surprised if they are doing a apple cpu + amd gpu combo for the bigger devices.

 

Developers will see this as a drag that is for sure power pc to intel was rough too in the beginning but a year or 2 after the move lower end intel macs were beating the best of the best g5s. Yes there was some stagnation in terms of software development but what happened afterwards was a huge boom. Just look at adobe and the move. Going from cs3 to cs4 wasn't that big but both cs5 and cs6 were massive improvements. Plenty of other examples out there but those were the easiest to spot.

 

Arm is now a very mature platform and they have one big trick up their sleeves that you haven't mentioned too. Microsoft. They are pushing for a windows arm experience and have been trying for ages. Now we finally have a somewhat usable windows experience finally (not great) but it works. That's the most important part. Both giant apple and Microsoft are pushing now to move x86 programs to arm. Which then puts pressure on developers to use more universal stuff so programs work on both.

 

Also performance concerns aren't really that big. Currently arm has basically just been for mobile passively cooled devices. But now they suddenly can have heatsinks and whatnot. The current performance we have seen from arm chipsets is pretty good but just imagine what a purpose built desktop arm solution could do without having to worry about heat.

 

Also the move to arm is cheaper for them as it will all be in house stuff then. So they have an even higher profit margin per device. Also they can then decide to make a cheaper device that won't compromise the apple experience they hold so high with low end specs that are actually enough to run the new mac os. Intel didn't exactly give them many options for that as their true cheap mobile cpu's are kinda ancient and just garbage.

[Brennan Price]

You must understand that Apple will be making their own ARM chips (Like they do already for their mobile devices) for their MacBooks. Saying that the performance that they want will take years to grasp is untrue as well. Apple design their operating systems incredibly well to gain the most out of their devices so I do not feel that this will be an issue. Apple (sadly) are not moving to AMD. 

 

About the GPU's as well... They are going into MacBooks remember.... When was the last time that you saw someone buy a MacBook purely for the graphical performance?

[aisle9]

It's not a ploy to switch to AMD. If Apple wanted to switch to AMD, they'd do it. Like you said, if Intel chooses to sue the pants off of Apple, good luck to them. Apple is doing this for the same reason that their various OS platforms are only available (officially) on Apple hardware. They want 100% control of their hardware and software ecosystem. Going ARM gives them that. Going AMD leaves them dependent upon another OEM, which may or may not go through a dark age like Intel did between Sandy Bridge and Kaby Lake. Zero major gains, zero innovation, just marginal performance improvements based as much on clock bumps as IPC growth. By going with ARM, they dictate the pace of development. By staying with Intel or AMD, they risk a situation like they had with Intel, where the CPUs in their 2017 MacBook Pros aren't appreciably better than the CPUs in their 2011 MacBook Pros.

[kelvinhall05]

I disagree. I have a feeling that this is going to completely shift the computer market, and I think Apple is going to be very, VERY successful with ARM (especially as I agree with Linus's tinfoil hat theory about them slowing down their Intel macs and making them look like it's Intel's fault and not Apple's intentionally bad engineering/cooling/etc to make ARM look better when it launches).

 

Honestly, I haven't been this excited for any computer hardware stuff in a very, very long time. I am a huge supporter of ARM and I personally believe that the most limiting factor is that the vast majority of ARM devices are locked-down phones and stuff.

 

Also, one big thing I am curious about is how much battery life they can squeeze out. 

[SSOB]

1 minute ago, Brennan Price said:

You must understand that Apple will be making their own ARM chips (Like they do already for their mobile devices) for their MacBooks. Saying that the performance that they want will take years to grasp is untrue as well. Apple design their operating systems incredibly well to gain the most out of their devices and even lower powered ships so I do not feel that this will be an issue. Apple (sadly) and not moving to AMD. 

 

About the GPU's as well... They are going into MacBooks remember.... When was the last time that you saw someone buy a MacBook purely for the graphical performance?

I feel like the GPU's will be so weak on the ARM chips, It won't even be able to handle Youtube at 4k, We will see but I really do believe this is a big decoy

[SSOB]

Just now, kelvinhall05 said:

I disagree. I have a feeling that this is going to completely shift the computer market, and I think Apple is going to be very, VERY successful with ARM (especially as I agree with Linus's tinfoil hat theory about them slowing down their Intel macs and making them look like it's Intel's fault and not Apple's intentionally bad engineering/cooling/etc to make ARM look better when it launches).

 

Honestly, I haven't been this excited for any computer hardware stuff in a very, very long time. I am a huge supporter of ARM and I personally believe that the most limiting factor is that the vast majority of ARM devices are locked-down phones and stuff.

 

Also, one big thing I am curious about is how much battery life they can squeeze out. 

That's why this is a discussion topic, Good view  

 

 

[kelvinhall05]

1 minute ago, SSOB said:

I feel like the GPU's will be so weak on the ARM chips, It won't even be able to handle Youtube at 4k, We will see but I really do believe this is a big decoy

Phones can easily do 4k YouTube, those are all ARM based.

[Brennan Price]

1 minute ago, SSOB said:

I feel like the GPU's will be so weak on the ARM chips, It won't even be able to handle Youtube at 4k, We will see but I really do believe this is a big decoy

But we now have phones with 4K screens and they can play 4K video just fine... I really don't see what the issue is. 

[Trinopoty]

As a programmer myself. I feel like the CPU architecture does not have a huge impact on my ability to make software for it.

Now, this only holds true for non performance critical software. Something like Autodesk 3DS Max or Maya or Adobe's suite definitely has optimization specifically targeted at the CPU architecture and will need significant rework to make them usable. But for the random developer writing software, it won't effect too much. (We already have most x86 software on the Raspberry PI on the Linux side of things.)

As for the GPU issue, ARM does have PCI Express and thus, can run any desktop GPU. I can totally see them using an AMD or nVidia GPU chip paired with their ARM processor.

[jaslion]

2 minutes ago, SSOB said:

I feel like the GPU's will be so weak on the ARM chips, It won't even be able to handle Youtube at 4k, We will see but I really do believe this is a big decoy

Phones can film in 8k nowadays and view it no problem. If you worry about gpu power nobody is stopping them in joining their cpu with a amd gpu (nvidia aint happening probably). Just like nvidia does on their shield devices and the switch.

[SSOB]

3 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Phones can film in 8k nowadays and view it no problem. If you worry about gpu power nobody is stopping them in joining their cpu with a amd gpu (nvidia aint happening probably). Just like nvidia does on their shield devices and the switch.

PC's  do not run iOS or Android

[SSOB]

4 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Phones can film in 8k nowadays and view it no problem. If you worry about gpu power nobody is stopping them in joining their cpu with a amd gpu (nvidia aint happening probably). Just like nvidia does on their shield devices and the switch.

If the shield were to run Windows or MacOS , it would be worth a potato

[jaslion]

3 minutes ago, SSOB said:

PC's  do not run iOS or Android

Yes so? The surface x plays back 8k video on youtube fine?

3 minutes ago, SSOB said:

If the shield were to run Windows or MacOS , it would be worth a potato

We basically have a nvidia shield tv running windows called the Microsoft surface x. It's good enough but a first gen product. Windows 10 x will most likely help a ton for those devices.

[Master Disaster]

There's one very good reason why it wont fail. The majority of Apple users don't care what the system is running and probably won't notice the change either. The Apple crowd will continue to buy millions of iMacs a year no matter what Apple do to them and Apple will claim victory because profits have increased since the change.

[igormp]

I guess there are some things not quite clear to you, let's try to break it down:

54 minutes ago, SSOB said:

1. Having spoken to developers, they have seen the new kit Apple provided, they have assured me, no developer is waiting for this. 

What kind of devs? For iOS devs, having an ARM Mac would be a dream come true, and those are the ones apple cares the most.

For webdevs, some tools may run slower, but they're actually used to it and it won't make that much of a difference.

Sysadmins and the likes won't care at all, as long as their tools still work (and most tools in the UNIX world already have ARM ports).

 

Quote

2.  This can be a decoy to go with AMD chips for the big horsepower in the future.

That sounds like a weird conspiracy. if they wanted to, they'd have done it already. Going with AMD would still mean chips that are more expensive than an in house one, and would leave them at mercy of what AMD can or can't do, instead of pulling the reins on the whole chain by themselves. This also allow them to have all of their custom IPs in a single chip for a lower price.

 

Quote

3.  ARM knows that this cannot be done in the foreseeable future. Without a huge capital injection from Apple, there is no way that the GPU performance can come anywhere near the ''Traditional'' x86. Now is

ARM has PCIe, so they can simply slap an AMD GPU in there like they have done before, so I don't see what's the problem? Also keep in mind that apple forced everyone to use Metal for anything graphics on Macs, so an architectural change won't matter on the graphics side since the API calls are still the same.

 

42 minutes ago, SSOB said:

I feel like the GPU's will be so weak on the ARM chips, It won't even be able to handle Youtube at 4k, We will see but I really do believe this is a big decoy

 

35 minutes ago, SSOB said:

PC's  do not run iOS or Android

Media decoding is done in 2 ways: Software decoding, which is slow and CPU taxing, or hardware decoding, which is what most stuff relies on. Those hardware decoders are individual custom chips built into GPUs, and are usually the same for an entire generation. That means that a almighty and powerful gtx 980ti or even a Titan X will crap the bad to play a VP9 1080p video (as in, won't be able to play at all and will leave all the work to the CPU), while a gt 1030 will do so flawlessly, since it has the same NVDEC engine as any GPU on the pascal family (so it's able to play as much 4k videos as an Titan Xp).

 

Knowing that, Apple has tons of custom IPs to accelerate stuff instead of relying on the CPU or GPU (media engines, neural processors, security processors, etc etc), so it will be able to play 8k videos without breaking a sweat.

[HM-2]

Haven't ARM already started getting pretty decent traction in the server/infrastructure/distributed computing space? 

[SSOB]

42 minutes ago, igormp said:

I guess there are some things not quite clear to you, let's try to break it down:

What kind of devs? For iOS devs, having an ARM Mac would be a dream come true, and those are the ones apple cares the most.

For webdevs, some tools may run slower, but they're actually used to it and it won't make that much of a difference.

Sysadmins and the likes won't care at all, as long as their tools still work (and most tools in the UNIX world already have ARM ports).

 

That sounds like a weird conspiracy. if they wanted to, they'd have done it already. Going with AMD would still mean chips that are more expensive than an in house one, and would leave them at mercy of what AMD can or can't do, instead of pulling the reins on the whole chain by themselves. This also allow them to have all of their custom IPs in a single chip for a lower price.

 

ARM has PCIe, so they can simply slap an AMD GPU in there like they have done before, so I don't see what's the problem? Also keep in mind that apple forced everyone to use Metal for anything graphics on Macs, so an architectural change won't matter on the graphics side since the API calls are still the same.

 

 

Media decoding is done in 2 ways: Software decoding, which is slow and CPU taxing, or hardware decoding, which is what most stuff relies on. Those hardware decoders are individual custom chips built into GPUs, and are usually the same for an entire generation. That means that a almighty and powerful gtx 980ti or even a Titan X will crap the bad to play a VP9 1080p video (as in, won't be able to play at all and will leave all the work to the CPU), while a gt 1030 will do so flawlessly, since it has the same NVDEC engine as any GPU on the pascal family (so it's able to play as much 4k videos as an Titan Xp).

 

Knowing that, Apple has tons of custom IPs to accelerate stuff instead of relying on the CPU or GPU (media engines, neural processors, security processors, etc etc), so it will be able to play 8k videos without breaking a sweat.

1. MacOS devs

2.Of course, As I stated, all conspiracies at this point

3. No, It doesn't work like that, also watch Dave2D's video, good explanation on the situation

4.Doesn't matter, It's about the developing for the platform, NOT the actual use once the ''program/app is done''

[igormp]

1 hour ago, SSOB said:

1. MacOS devs

2.Of course, As I stated, all conspiracies at this point

3. No, It doesn't work like that, also watch Dave2D's video, good explanation on the situation

4.Doesn't matter, It's about the developing for the platform, NOT the actual use once the ''program/app is done''

1. Those would love ARM based Macs so they could get rid of the overhead while running the iOS emulator.

 

3. Dude, what are you talking about? PCIe doesn't care about architecture, there are many ARM, Power and even Risc-V CPUs with PCIe slots that are able to run your regular AMD or Nvidia card.

Edit: just saw the video you mentioned, it was really superficial and mostly caters to regular consumers, only mentioned integrated graphics and I don't see how it relates to what I talked about?

 

4. Cross compiling is easy nowadays, really. When it comes to web, it doesn't even matter because most of the time you're dealing with interpreters. Also, apple has a nice grasp on the devs that target their platforms, they can break an entire API and make everyone move onto the next one pretty easy (at least when compared to windows or linux).

Edited July 2, 2020 by igormp

[Nena Trinity]

ARM is the future x86 will be obsolete if not the open-source competitor will make ARM obsolete... (when devs bother to patch their game to support ARM we will finally get some usable benchmarks)

[SSOB]

3 hours ago, Nena Trinity said:

ARM is the future x86 will be obsolete if not the open-source competitor will make ARM obsolete... (when devs bother to patch their game to support ARM we will finally get some usable benchmarks)

But is that going to be in the next 2 years? I highly highly doubt it