Other A11 vs desktop CPUs... actual comparison?

[Falhófnir]

Microsoft Office? Photoshop? Skype? Chrome? Firefox? Dropbox? Spotify?

And when looking at the current "Five Essential Apps for Your Mac" article and thread: Bartender? Alfred? Caffeine? BetterTouchTool? Little Snitch?

That list goes on and on, and that's still only scratching the surface. I won't even talk about more specialist applications or popular games.

Office would almost certainly end up with a version - Microsoft already has the iOS version, a bit of tinkering and good to go. Same with most of the others you list.

5 essentials are all App Store based, Apple issues an edict that they have to support arm macs, the developers comply.

If you’re talking games, either this isn’t the sort of computer you want, or it’s the sort of web based casual game that wouldn’t be an issue.

 

[Janichsan]

5 essentials are all App Store based, Apple issues an edict that they have to support arm macs, the developers comply.

Bartender is not on the MAS, and the corresponding forum thread I explicitly mentioned contains numerous far more essential apps than the five from the article which also are all not on the MAS.

 

[Falhófnir]

Bartender is not on the MAS, and the corresponding forum thread I explicitly mentioned contains numerous far more essential apps than the five from the article which also are all not on the MAS.

So then either it sticks to Intel macs as long as they exist, or they adapt it for arm macs, guess it depends on if the developer wants to continue making revenue from it. Here’s the deal, every time macOS is updated, it has a chance of breaking something. Developers have to do maintenance or apps eventually just stop working anyway. If they are doing that, recompiling some code shouldn’t be too much more of a bother, if they are not, it’s a matter of time before the abandonware stops woriking anyway.

 

[diamond.g]

If Apple gave me an ARM compiler for MacOS all my code would recompile with no changes whatsoever. Programs are not developed for x86. They are built for a 32 bit or 64 bit system, possibly and rarely for a little-endian system. I absolutely don't care what processor is used.

Does ARM have an AVX512 equivalent?

 

[jav6454]

I think I probably "made your point" because I misunderstood the argument. Which is my fault really.

No problem.

And then what? Leave literally thousands of legacy applications that would not be recompiled behind? Good luck trying to explain the average, not too tech savvy user why their old applications and/or games no longer work on their new shiny (and probably expensive) Mac.

You have to be joking right? Better yet, you weren't around when Apple transitioned from PowerPC based Macs to Intel based Macs. Have you ever even heard about Rosetta?

A lot of code is hand tuned for the processor. The compiler is good enough to produce code for a large number of x86 platforms but developers have spent a lot of time targeting specifically for specific generations of Intel processors, whether it's Sandy Bridge or Haswell.

Once again... Rosetta

 

[Jimmy James]

There is no way any smartphone can come close to my 6 core Intel CPU with 64 GB of RAM in the machine. It is just laughable.

That wasn't exactly the original question. You're humble bragging.

 

[JPack]

Once again... Rosetta

Rosetta cut performance in half compared to native x86.

As I mentioned earlier, Qualcomm notebooks running Windows ARM already exist. When those notebooks emulate x86, Geekbench scores are halved.

The question isn't whether emulation is possible. Everybody knows Rosetta exists and emulation is possible.

The issue is what's the point taking a 50% performance hit for the next 5 years? And asking developers to rewrite code for ARM when x86 is perfectly healthy? Basically uprooting the entire ecosystem again. x86 isn't going off a power/performance cliff the way PowerPC 970 was. There's a huge library of x86 software and expertise. Is Apple having trouble developing thin and light notebooks with Intel processors? None of those problems exist.

Developing A11 is entirely different from a desktop processor. ARM breaks backwards compatibility every couple of generations. Apple can kill off 32-bit support as they wish with A11. Desktop processors are different from smartphones as replacement cycles are much longer and backwards compatibility is far more important.

It's the same reason why Apple doesn't develop its own baseband modem - because it's incredibly difficult and risky. To make an LTE modem, Apple needs to ensure backward compatibility and master 2G and 3G.

 

[Falhófnir]

Rosetta cut performance in half compared to native x86.

As I mentioned earlier, Qualcomm notebooks running Windows ARM already exist. When those notebooks emulate x86, Geekbench scores are halved.

The question isn't whether emulation is possible. Everybody knows Rosetta exists and emulation is possible.

The issue is what's the point taking a 50% performance hit for the next 5 years? And asking developers to rewrite code for ARM when x86 is perfectly healthy? Basically uprooting the entire ecosystem again. x86 isn't going off a power/performance cliff the way PowerPC 970 was. There's a huge library of x86 software and expertise. Is Apple having trouble developing thin and light notebooks with Intel processors? None of those problems exist.

Developing A11 is entirely different from a desktop processor. ARM breaks backwards compatibility every couple of generations. Apple can kill off 32-bit support as they wish with A11. Desktop processors are different from smartphones as replacement cycles are much longer and backwards compatibility is far more important.

It's the same reason why Apple doesn't develop its own baseband modem - because it's incredibly difficult and risky. To make an LTE modem, Apple needs to ensure backward compatibility and master 2G and 3G.

Er it wasn’t me that said it...

 

[Janichsan]

You have to be joking right? Better yet, you weren't around when Apple transitioned from PowerPC based Macs to Intel based Macs. Have you ever even heard about Rosetta?

Your lesson for today: make sure to understand the context of a statement when barging in on a discussion. I was replying to thingstoponder's proposal that Apple would just eschew any compatibility layer and simply drops all x86 support.

As for your suggestion: as others (and I) already have pointed out, ARM CPUs don't have enough power to spare to emulate Intel CPUs at an acceptable speed.

 

[kevingill]

It all all comes down to thermal dissipation. The iPhone chip is in fact faster than many intel chips, the benchmarks don’t lie. The phone can’t keep up that level of performance very long because it would get too hot.

If you put the chips on equal footing dissipation wise the arm chip would more than hold’s own. An Intel chip without a fan and large heat sink would crash almost instantly!

As far as Apple switching to arm on the desktop I don’t think it will happen. There are plenty of folks out there like me who require Intel compatibility. If they switched to ARM I would have no choice but to abandon the platform.

It actually looks like Apple is going to put out a desktop version of MACOSX that runs on an ARM based platform. Strange but true

 

[nordique]

People buy the bs they read online about the A11 chip being comparable to a desktop.

A desktop can multitask several things at once, a desktop cpu can play video games at higher resolution with proper gpu. If you put an apple a12 it’s not gonna even run it. I’m honestly tired of seeing people comparing a smartphone cpu to a desktop cpu. It will destroy the smart phone cpu when running apps.

This so many times.

 

[IowaLynn]

I ran the Samsung DeX on Note 8. That runs some kind of Linux kernel. It won’t run Photoshop but it was interesting nonetheless.

 

[Eeemmmaaannnresu]

Take a look at this:
4:36

I'm sorry if I'm wrong, but a11 being even more powerful than sd845 might be at least comparable.
I really am amazed that mobile chips have come this far. And it was 2016.

 

[beerbaron23]

OK.

Can the iPhone or iPad (even the Pro) run Adobe CC 2017, Acrobat Pro with Enfocus Pitstop Pro (a ~$800 Prepress plugin), Suitcase Fusion 8 and QuarkXPress 2017?

Going to need access to my library of over 4000 fonts. I'll need to attach a keyboard and a mouse (touch is going to kill my productivity).

I will also need the device to be able to access our Windows shares natively through SMB2 as all our files exist on a Windows Server.

Oh! And I need to be able to attach a DVD burner with burn software, preferably Toast, because I backup each publication week of our newspaper to DVD.

Sorry, you answered the question…but the iPhone and iPad still have a very long way to go before they can just slot in as a sub for my Mac Pro.

ou are not really thinking clearly here, they are not going to slide an ipad in a MacBook Chassy..
When Apple launches their ARM64 ships in their Macbooks, it’s suggested they will be 22 cores, they will be able to be clocked way faster as well (due to having a fan) and have much more ram to work with….

Also isn’t not like they will keep the same GPU, they are obviously going to ship with a competing one and if you been following Video Editing/Photo editing you already know that year by year those programs are being more accelerated buy the GPU instead of the CPU.

So yes of coarse you would be able to do all that, in fact they plan on shipping them in 2 years, so in 2 years an Apple ARM64 processor would kill your setup….

Just right now they are being used in gaming consoles, Like the nVidia Shield and Nintendo Switch which both sport ARM processors. As we move into the future the CPU becomes less important and the GPU becomes more important...
[doublepost=1529824308][/doublepost]As for your suggestion: as others (and I) already have pointed out, ARM CPUs don't have enough power to spare to emulate Intel CPUs at an acceptable speed.[/QUOTE]


You are VERY VERY wrong, they already have ARM64 processors that are decoding x86_64 code on the fly in emulation and it works well enough that you can use photoshop! What's more amazing is that they are using the same ARM chip thats in my cell phone haha

https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/7/13866936/microsoft-windows-10-arm-desktop-apps-support-qualcomm

Case Closed

 

[beerbaron23]

People also forget PowerPC has less than 2% market share in 2006. Intel and AMD dominated the desktop PC market back then and they continue to do so today.

The PowerPC to x86 transition was a do or die situation with Mac.

Apple isn't about to commit suicide by transitioning back to an architecture with such a small market share on the desktop.
[doublepost=1517336910][/doublepost]

That was a VERY different situation, Apple was doing great in the 90's with photo and video editing (Photoshop's how was home Mac at first) and the majority of the reason why was that Mac's used IBM PowerPC RISC based processor (The ARM64 Chip is also a RISC chip) that could easily outperform the x86 CISC based processors from Intel, AMD and Cyrix in high demand environments.

No what happend was that IBM was advancing too fast and released the IBM PowerPC 64 which now gave Apple a huge advantage in the speed department. Problem was there was a bigger market on the old 32bit CISC's processors and building 2 largely different versions of your program was difficult (devs were just learning 64bit).

After this time Intel introduced their 64bit chip IA-64 Itantium and AMD released their AMD64. Problem was if you coded your program on one of them, you would have to port it to both the other procossers to hit the whole market. Further more Intel's 64bit chip was not backwards compadible with 32bit apps. So since AMD64's tech was the one that was backwards compadible it won the 64bit wars and Intel miminic them.

Since all the devs were updating their programs to 64bit they didn't have much time to learn IBM's PPC64 as well (it was a huge job doing this) and applications on Mac were seeing less and less ports (simple economics) When it came to make another deal with IBM, IBM wanted much much money for their first on the scene duel-core processors. Apple was also intereted in making Macbooks and IBM's chips were beasts, on top of that Motorola stopped manufactuing the PPC chips and production was moved to some dumby cheaper plant. Intel cut them a cheaper deal and devs didn;t have to rewrite their ports to a whole new tech.

Now switching back over to a RISC based processor now is no where near what it was like transitioning/learning back with little documentation and dev tools. Now most developers have already programed some things for ARM64 and the market is high for ARM64 ports. Plus is easy today to write for ARM, you open up Xcode on OSX, write your app in Obj-C or Swift, do a bit of customs and Xcode on OSX will compile you your program that will run on ARM. Same going for Android, just they use Java as all their phones run a Java Virtual Machine.

OSX was already compiled for ARMv6 back around the Macbook Air was released as they were thinking about using an ARM chip in that...

------------------------------

Software is a really really big problem.

Unless Apple is willing to rewrite from the ground up software like the Adobe suite for ARM, Apple will not change to ARM. Adobe and other developers have no incentive to develop their software for ARM when >90% of the desktop computers in the world use x86.
----
With the devtool kits we have now, recompiling Photoshop for ARM64 instead of x86_64 is no wher near as hard as you think, you don't need to learn a new language (The Compiler Handles that) or no need to rewrite your whole code cause again, the compiler knows how to compile C++ along with a vast line-up of other ones. SO YES ADOBE WILL 110% develope for ARM64, Photoshop is programmed in C++ and Lua, all they would have to do is open the terminal and type "clang build photoshop6.cpp -archARMv8a" (more switches then that, but for the point) hit enter and wait while it builds the code for the ARM proccessor, no one is programming direct to the chip in Assembly anymore lol
Not too mention Adobe already makes apps for ARM64 and they will port the whole CS suite over to microsofts new ARM64 devices....

 

[Janichsan]

As for your suggestion: as others (and I) already have pointed out, ARM CPUs don't have enough power to spare to emulate Intel CPUs at an acceptable speed.

You are VERY VERY wrong, they already have ARM64 processors that are decoding x86_64 code on the fly in emulation and it works well enough that you can use photoshop! What's more amazing is that they are using the same ARM chip thats in my cell phone haha

https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/7/13866936/microsoft-windows-10-arm-desktop-apps-support-qualcomm

Case Closed

Nope. Case still open, since I'm very, very correct. The important part of my post was "acceptable speed". Benchmarks show that the emulation is in fact atrociously slow, only runs 32 bit applications, and has substantial compatibility issues on top of that.

 

[Sam Luis Obispo]

Over at Engadget, they have a leak about a SDM1000 chip (they think it will be called Snapdragon 1000). Maybe an ARM chip based on the Cortex A76. Got to be an improvement over the 850. I suppose it remains to be seen if it is enough of an improvement...

Edit: Added link
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/snapdragon-1000-powering-high-end-always-connected-pc/