Much like Grendel in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, the much talked about but rarely seen version 9 of the Arm instruction set has been officially announced. Simon Segars, Arm's CEO, did so on the company's website:
Armv9 officially announced.
For a third-party analysis, take a look at Andrei Frumusanu's quick take at Anandtech:
Anandtech article on Armv9.
I admit that, at best, I have a passing familiarity with the topic discussed. Other than being a long-time Mac enthusiast, and interested in the latest extensions to AArch64 for obvious reasons, my primary reason for posting this here is to learn from others on the Macrumors forum. I'm not averse to admitting when I am mostly unfamiliar with a new technology, which would be the case here. Many regular posters here, such as @leman and @cmaier to name a few, are quite helpful on such matters. I welcome all feedback, of course.
While I am not qualified to pinpoint exactly what impact this will have on the future of Mac silicon development and how software developers will take advantage of those features, from my understanding, SVE2 will be of the most impactful. Apple already seems to have a great deal invested in security and machine learning, so perhaps they will benefit the most from the SVE2 enhancements. That doesn't even include the more esoteric aspects of Armv9 that the articles don't focus on. Also, if Apple's release history with the A-series is any indication, Apple has been working with Armv9 for quite some time now and has likely had CPU designs in the works that integrate these capabilities for much longer than is obvious to those outside of Apple and their most trusted partners.
From my own personal experiences, I was an early adopter during the Intel transition, using the first Intel Core Solo 1.5Ghz that I eventually upgraded to a 2.33Ghz Core 2 Duo because the CPU was socketed and easily switched. I'm currently typing this on my fourth Mac mini over the past 16 years, a base model 2018 3.6Ghz i3 Mac mini which I have upgraded with 64GB of RAM and a BlackMagic RX 580 eGPU. Even before the first Intel model, I started with the 1.5Ghz G4, so it's been quite the journey.
The first Intel minis came with 32-bit Core CPUs and were quickly supplanted with the more robust 64-bit Core 2 Duos. While the AArch64 v9 instruction set isn't likely to be nearly as impactful, I believe that this is another example of Apple moving the Mac platform forward while dispensing with the cruft of the past decades.
To explain the transition away from Intel to a non-technical friend of mine, I co-opted Apple's Rosetta analogy, and compared it to Intel CPUs using hieroglyphics to process information. Apple Silicon drops all of the old barnacles that still lurk inside the x86 platform, while Apple has worked to exorcise those revenants of the past from their hardware and software.
Apple is an old hand at doing these transitions. I'm sure that the current M1 Macs will receive decent support for some time to come, but history has demonstrated that a version 1.0 (or even 2.0) Apple product is usually refined and replaced quickly, compared to successive generations. Plus, the industry as a whole is doing a surprisingly large cluster of simultaneous transitions at this point in time, including the move to DDR5, Ray Tracing, chiplet designs, Armv9, among many other technologies. My point being is that, while tech is constantly changing, this period in time stands out as being an unusually active transition period.
Anyway, I'm curious about what other Macrumors forum members are thinking about Arm v9, along with the general direction of the industry. I'm personally going to wait it out until a few iterations of Apple Silicon are released and then make a decision. I'm okay with what I am using for now, but that Intel i3-8100 is showing its age. I'm hoping to wait until a theoretical M3 CPU along with the rumored Apple GPU implementation, in whatever form that takes.
With Apple's increasing reliance on their own bespoke vertical engineering designs for the Mac, many of the already limited upgrade paths are going away as a tradeoff for the performance gains to be had. That will make it more difficult for those of us who like to upgrade our Macs, but that's a different discussion entirely. For folks like me, that means that waiting until the transition is complete is beneficial in order to have a more complete understanding of Apple's entire Mac lineup. So, while I've only had interest in the Mac mini previously, as a desktop user, it would be beneficial to see where the Mac mini, iMac, and Mac Pro stand after the transition is complete.
Okay then, thanks for reading and I'm curious what you nice folks have to say about the situation and what your opinions are about what Arm has (or has not) announced with their roadmap and what impact it will have on Apple Silicon and the Mac moving forward.
Armv9 officially announced.
For a third-party analysis, take a look at Andrei Frumusanu's quick take at Anandtech:
Anandtech article on Armv9.
I admit that, at best, I have a passing familiarity with the topic discussed. Other than being a long-time Mac enthusiast, and interested in the latest extensions to AArch64 for obvious reasons, my primary reason for posting this here is to learn from others on the Macrumors forum. I'm not averse to admitting when I am mostly unfamiliar with a new technology, which would be the case here. Many regular posters here, such as @leman and @cmaier to name a few, are quite helpful on such matters. I welcome all feedback, of course.
While I am not qualified to pinpoint exactly what impact this will have on the future of Mac silicon development and how software developers will take advantage of those features, from my understanding, SVE2 will be of the most impactful. Apple already seems to have a great deal invested in security and machine learning, so perhaps they will benefit the most from the SVE2 enhancements. That doesn't even include the more esoteric aspects of Armv9 that the articles don't focus on. Also, if Apple's release history with the A-series is any indication, Apple has been working with Armv9 for quite some time now and has likely had CPU designs in the works that integrate these capabilities for much longer than is obvious to those outside of Apple and their most trusted partners.
From my own personal experiences, I was an early adopter during the Intel transition, using the first Intel Core Solo 1.5Ghz that I eventually upgraded to a 2.33Ghz Core 2 Duo because the CPU was socketed and easily switched. I'm currently typing this on my fourth Mac mini over the past 16 years, a base model 2018 3.6Ghz i3 Mac mini which I have upgraded with 64GB of RAM and a BlackMagic RX 580 eGPU. Even before the first Intel model, I started with the 1.5Ghz G4, so it's been quite the journey.
The first Intel minis came with 32-bit Core CPUs and were quickly supplanted with the more robust 64-bit Core 2 Duos. While the AArch64 v9 instruction set isn't likely to be nearly as impactful, I believe that this is another example of Apple moving the Mac platform forward while dispensing with the cruft of the past decades.
To explain the transition away from Intel to a non-technical friend of mine, I co-opted Apple's Rosetta analogy, and compared it to Intel CPUs using hieroglyphics to process information. Apple Silicon drops all of the old barnacles that still lurk inside the x86 platform, while Apple has worked to exorcise those revenants of the past from their hardware and software.
Apple is an old hand at doing these transitions. I'm sure that the current M1 Macs will receive decent support for some time to come, but history has demonstrated that a version 1.0 (or even 2.0) Apple product is usually refined and replaced quickly, compared to successive generations. Plus, the industry as a whole is doing a surprisingly large cluster of simultaneous transitions at this point in time, including the move to DDR5, Ray Tracing, chiplet designs, Armv9, among many other technologies. My point being is that, while tech is constantly changing, this period in time stands out as being an unusually active transition period.
Anyway, I'm curious about what other Macrumors forum members are thinking about Arm v9, along with the general direction of the industry. I'm personally going to wait it out until a few iterations of Apple Silicon are released and then make a decision. I'm okay with what I am using for now, but that Intel i3-8100 is showing its age. I'm hoping to wait until a theoretical M3 CPU along with the rumored Apple GPU implementation, in whatever form that takes.
With Apple's increasing reliance on their own bespoke vertical engineering designs for the Mac, many of the already limited upgrade paths are going away as a tradeoff for the performance gains to be had. That will make it more difficult for those of us who like to upgrade our Macs, but that's a different discussion entirely. For folks like me, that means that waiting until the transition is complete is beneficial in order to have a more complete understanding of Apple's entire Mac lineup. So, while I've only had interest in the Mac mini previously, as a desktop user, it would be beneficial to see where the Mac mini, iMac, and Mac Pro stand after the transition is complete.
Okay then, thanks for reading and I'm curious what you nice folks have to say about the situation and what your opinions are about what Arm has (or has not) announced with their roadmap and what impact it will have on Apple Silicon and the Mac moving forward.
