Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
ARM MacBook Pro I don’t want an Overpriced Netbook.
- Thread starter TheRealAlex
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Apple is capable of focusing on more than one thing. They said (and there is no reason to disbelieve them) that this was in process for a while - they needed to bring the A Series to the point it is at now before they could start the new family for the Macs. So the resources likely have always been tasked for this. For Apple it lets them push the laptop design envelope in ways you can't do with off the shelf components. It also gets them off of relying on someone else's cadence for their releases.
Plus it's virtually indestructible. You can hurl it every time you are frustrated and you won't need to pay a deductible!
really!? i’ll try tomorrow linking R to the latest version on an intel dual 18-core cpu server.
are the optimizations only available to some cpu generations or across the range going back a couple of years?
Did you restore any apps or data to the new machine? You know that a new Mac will do a full Spotlight index of the disk, which is CPU intensive. If you have any cloud accounts that need to sync (Dropbox, OneDrive etc.), these are also CPU hogs.
I would have given it a week of use until your software is fully set up and "stable". Depending on your tasks, 4-5 hours isn't too bad for an MBP13. You'll only get 9-10 hours for light tasks such as browsing a few non-intensive web sites, document editing, and maybe 720p or FHD video streaming. I had a brand-new Dell with the same CPU as the MBP13 that struggled to get 2 hours for my usual work, so 4.5-5 hrs would be fine.
The "size" of the fabrication refers to the smallest "features" that the lithographic process can produce. If you have a look at https://sst.semiconductor-digest.co...g/2017/04/10/intel-unveils-more-10nm-details/ you can see more microscopic images of what the field-effect transistors look like (Intel Fin-FET). The width of the "fins" is about 10nm.
Last edited:
One of my thoughts that I had about the ARM switch, is how it would affect corporate environments with in-house applications. I am forced into using Windows for a design tool that is critical to my job. IT will issue you either a PC or Mac based upon preference, and you can run Parallels or VirtualBox to use some of these critical tools we have. What the heck happens when the ARM machine comes out and I would only presume that a 'traditional' VM or bootcamp wouldn't work (at least in the immediate future). Sure they would likely have a way to execute Intel x86 code via emulation for MacOS apps but what about Windows? My guess is IT would stop issuing them to anyone in engineering department, or perhaps ditch support for them altogether.
Additional thought: I saw some of the discussion on the math processing side of things and how its handled on Intel x86_64 architectures. Makes me wonder about some of the math processing languages (such as MATLAB) that are architected specifically for x86 platforms. That stuff is dead in the water and some of it is so compute heavy that emulation of something like that seems utterly laughable.
Additional thought: I saw some of the discussion on the math processing side of things and how its handled on Intel x86_64 architectures. Makes me wonder about some of the math processing languages (such as MATLAB) that are architected specifically for x86 platforms. That stuff is dead in the water and some of it is so compute heavy that emulation of something like that seems utterly laughable.
Last edited:
Hmmm... ok? So you‘re saying that the A14 series and its ASi and iPad Pro variants and derivatives being based on TSMC’s “5nm” process, is all conjecture? And that they have not been in production despite the chips not being the cause of the delay (reported here on MacRumors, it is other component delays causing the pushed back releases). This despite the process size being probably the only thing we actually do know for sure about the next generation on Apple’s SoC hardware. So you won’t accept this as fact until Apple tell us at the keynote, or the iFixit teardown, or AnandTech analytical review?
Agreed it will likely be a MacBook Air and a MacMini maybe a Macbook.
But it would be a humiliation if a 13” or 14” or 16” MacBook Pro was a Lesser device with an A14X Chip
Like I said I don’t want an Over priced NetBook. with NO support for.
Gaming and eGPU‘s or Windows 10 BootCamp. Its like StarCraft 2 Isn’t gonna run with an ARM chip.
Lets Face It We care about the CPU Speed. And how Fast it can perform. Is the Loss of x86 Software worth it ?
This is a Move to Make Money Not to “help“ customers. Apple needs to Increase it sales of Apps and transactions within those apps. So Shift Everything to ARM and be 100% App Store dependent.
This switch to ARM is about Software Control and Money from in App 30% Transactions to Apple.
My friend, x86 software will be supported from Day one. See some WWDC 2020 videos - if it's running on Mac now, it will run on ARM Macs as well.
And if we'll get an A14X chip (or better) in a MacBook, I personally wouldn't worry much about speed and/or efficiency. Intel is doing no good in efficiency, and the A12X runs circles around most low-budget Intel chips anyway.
Double standards much? So it’s ok to use benchmarks to determine that an i9 is fast but it’s not ok to use the same benchmarks to determine that Apple CPUs are fast?
Of course, because Apple CPUs are not real CPUs. Just like iPads are not real computers, et cetera. Listen to the experts
Sarcasm off: I don't get that double standard either. Maybe they won't accept that Apple has a better way of doing things, just like they managed to get smartphones working, or de-throning Qualcomm, or essentially capturing the all-in-one-PC-market for themselves, or tablets.
Most of which are idle. Who cares about the number of existing threads? The only reasons why Macs deal better with them is because they have more RAM. Thread switching is as good in Apple CPUs at it is on Intel and Apple CPUs have more cache and better memory level parallelism (according to in-depth technical analysis).
All most apps need us a simple recompile. You are overestimating the “porting” difficulties. If you have a well-behaved macOS application that doesn’t use platform-specific code, it is already ARM ready.
Most likely because of AVX-512. Right now, Apple CPUs are strictly inferior to Intel offerings in terms of HPC. Latest Intel can do a 512bit SIMD per clock, where Apple can only do 3x 128bit SIMD per clock. However, your application needs to explicitly use the AVX512 instruction set, which is still uncommon. Most vector code out there still uses SSE and here Apple outperforms Intel (using SSE Intel is limited to 2x 128bit SIMD per clock).
I hope that Apple will add a fourth SIMD unit to their new CPUs while offering support for ARM SVE (the official new vector ISA). This would give Apple same peak SIMD throughout as newest Xeons/Tiger Lakes with better average throughput.
So very true. While Apple has generally stayed clear of talking too much about clock frequency, core etc, they do love to show their benchmarks, how performance has improved vs previous generations. If they'd fail to show that with the Apple Silicon, it would be a tremendous blow to the Apple Silicon as a product and make it pretty much dead in the water.
Newsflash: cuda on Mac has been walking dead since about 2012. if you invested 3k in a titan v to run with a Mac that's on you...
All serious ML people are running something other than macOS. Likely Linux.
And even if the performance was "just" the same like Intel does now, there are other factors to consider. What about battery life, what about heat, what about charging times? The best thing that can happen to Apple (and I strongly believe this) is that they have faster chips that are simultaneously needing less power, which would underscore the newly found dominance from the Apple Silicon architecture.
Apple was one of the first few laptops since 2016 to offer 3x3 WiFi, I don’t see them going backwards. It wasn’t to do with 10th gen but just the very late availability of 3x3 WiFi 6 cards: https://investors.broadcom.com/news...-industrys-first-3x3-wi-fi-6-chip-mass-market
Maybe that's why they're releasing the 14" MacBook Pro first. Also why not release the best product first
Or they are releasing the 12" MacBook first, and saying "this is with an iPad Pro processor, the A14X. Just imagine what we can do when we are trying - and oh boy, are we trying."
Either way a great PR strategy, and cannibalizing their own sales is pretty nice too!
That's not what the latest rumors say but who knows. I believe they will release the Pro first because it makes the most sense to me but we'll know for sure on Tuesday.
One of the few hard facts we have is that Apple CPUs need around 1/5 of power to produce the same performance compared to Intel CPUs. This is not a speculation, not a guess, it's a fact. if Apple wanted, they could take their last year CPUs, build a laptop around it, and it will have the same CPU performance (+ faster GPU) as Intel fastest Ice Lake laptops, while consuming less power.
Power consumption of A13 is a known quantity. It will consume around 4-5 Watts when the CPU runs on full load. Of course your small phone gets warm to the touch. Compare that with Intel CPUs that need to draw more than 20 wats to offer the same level of performance.
This I completely agree with. It would make perfect sense to release low-end first while the more intricate high-end details are still being worked out. That said, I don't think that the Apple-Silicon based Air or 12" is going to be underwhelming. If they go for a 8+4+16 core configuration, it should have performance levels comparable to the i9-equipped 16" MBP.
You think they will focus on Apple Watch, iPad AND Apple Silicon Macs? Not sure about that. I'd say AS Macs will be coming in the October keynote, because what else to show besides the newest iPhones?
I think the focus will be on iPhone and AR. I think they will release the AW and I hope at least one Mac. The Mac is just me being hopeful but I don't see why they wouldn't. It's a two hour event so they have time.