Do you think Apple will go all out to annihilate Intel CPUs or hold back a bit?

[spiderman0616]

Like everyone says, there isn't competition, as Apple doesn't sell silicon. I agree that crushing Intel sounds like good fun, but that just may be a side effect of robust sales

Yep--pretty much this.

Why should Apple care what any of the other PC component companies are doing at this point? As time goes on, Apple develops and owns most of their own hardware stack. M1 is just the latest in that process, and 5G modems for iOS devices are probably next.

Apple is in a position to do this because they don't need or want to license out any of their hardware or software. Their only concern is to make the best Mac/iPhone/iPad/etc. they can. If that were not their goal, we would not have M chips, A chips, or any of the other powerful components they put in their hardware, and they wouldn't have started down this road 10 years ago when they started making their own chip architecture.

M1 is an absolute revelation, yes, but anyone paying attention over the last few years saw it coming. It just seems more disruptive because we didn't realize how much better it would actually be than most everything else out there. Apple has kind of hinted that they didn't fully realize it either. This is a breakthrough product and probably the most important thing Apple has launched in years. If that kills Intel or AMD, so be it, but that's not what drives Apple's product development.

 

[Krevnik]

M1 is an absolute revelation, yes, but anyone paying attention over the last few years saw it coming. It just seems more disruptive because we didn't realize how much better it would actually be than most everything else out there. Apple has kind of hinted that they didn't fully realize it either. This is a breakthrough product and probably the most important thing Apple has launched in years. If that kills Intel or AMD, so be it, but that's not what drives Apple's product development.

Yet, how much did we hear that those numbers “weren’t comparable” the last couple years?

But yes. Intel’s major threats come from two places: AMD and potentially ARM more generally. Having both Epyc and ARM attacking the server space, and Ryzen on the desktop being competitive is trouble for Intel. And AMD is encroaching into the laptop space which Intel still has some advantages in in terms of being able to use less power with light loads.

Apple here is demonstrating that ARM can be just as competitive on the desktop and there’s potentially room for more than just Intel and AMD if Nvidia, Qualcomm, or Samsung wanted to get serious.

 

[pshufd]

Yet, how much did we hear that those numbers “weren’t comparable” the last couple years?

But yes. Intel’s major threats come from two places: AMD and potentially ARM more generally. Having both Epyc and ARM attacking the server space, and Ryzen on the desktop being competitive is trouble for Intel. And AMD is encroaching into the laptop space which Intel still has some advantages in in terms of being able to use less power with light loads.

Apple here is demonstrating that ARM can be just as competitive on the desktop and there’s potentially room for more than just Intel and AMD if Nvidia, Qualcomm, or Samsung wanted to get serious.

Intel is going Big-Little on 12th generation. That's something that AMD could also do to improve battery life. It seems like anything Intel can do, AMD can also do.

 

[satcomer]

To me I have, heard Microsoft is worried m1 beta Virtual software is running Windows ARM software WAY quicker then any Microsoft Surface ARM software ever ran it! This tell me the low power M1 still beats other ARM chips right now too! This should give M1 Mac users something to smile at!

 

[Joelist]

M1 runs rings around all other ARM chips and a large reason is it is completely different from all of them, in its own world in microarchitecture terms.

 

[Joe The Dragon]

Yep--pretty much this.

Why should Apple care what any of the other PC component companies are doing at this point? As time goes on, Apple develops and owns most of their own hardware stack. M1 is just the latest in that process, and 5G modems for iOS devices are probably next.

Apple is in a position to do this because they don't need or want to license out any of their hardware or software. Their only concern is to make the best Mac/iPhone/iPad/etc. they can. If that were not their goal, we would not have M chips, A chips, or any of the other powerful components they put in their hardware, and they wouldn't have started down this road 10 years ago when they started making their own chip architecture.

M1 is an absolute revelation, yes, but anyone paying attention over the last few years saw it coming. It just seems more disruptive because we didn't realize how much better it would actually be than most everything else out there. Apple has kind of hinted that they didn't fully realize it either. This is a breakthrough product and probably the most important thing Apple has launched in years. If that kills Intel or AMD, so be it, but that's not what drives Apple's product development.

and apple will mess it up with high priced locked in storage and very overpriced ram upgrades.

next mac pro low pci-e lanes and apple only (locked to the MB) 4 slot only in raid 0 mode.
and ram say 32G-64G base to 128G $5K-6K 256G $10K-$12K 512G $25K 1TB $50K

 

[Krevnik]

Intel is going Big-Little on 12th generation. That's something that AMD could also do to improve battery life. It seems like anything Intel can do, AMD can also do.

Not saying they can’t. Just that at least as of today, Intel’s existing CPUs tend to have better idle and low-load power consumption. Going to Big/Little would potentially help low-load power consumption even more. So right now, the laptop space is about the only x86 market sector where Intel isn’t clearly falling behind in terms of technology. But with AMD making inroads there now, I wouldn’t be surprised to see AMD see market share gains there as well. And laptops are currently the key market for x86 in general outside of servers.

But seeing how Intel is pouring effort making sure that their 10nm node is feeding their laptop CPUs, they understand this as well, so they may be able to keep AMD at bay there for a while.

But my point is that Intel is being attacked on all fronts right now, and their “last bastion” of tech leadership may not last long depending on what AMD does.

 

[JohnnyGo]

M1 is an absolute revelation, yes, but anyone paying attention over the last few years saw it coming. It just seems more disruptive because we didn't realize how much better it would actually be than most everything else out there. Apple has kind of hinted that they didn't fully realize it either. This is a breakthrough product and probably the most important thing Apple has launched in years.

Most saw the transition coming indeed. But the execution by Apple was almost flawless and there were significant surprises:
1) Rosetta delivered on running 95-98% of Intel software with little penalty (AS chips are so fast that the old software runs faster in the new machines)
2) Apple designed specific solution/features in AS chips as to both run MacOS very fast and run well Intel code (translated)
3) The transition tools Apple developed really helped large software developers (Microsoft, Adobe, etc) to have native software released 1-2 months after launch

The only area people were expecting more and Apple delivered less was in terms of iOS software running on Macs. But my guess is that it was just lack of focus / too much on the plate. Next MacOS and better iOS transition tools will help make the vast catalog of iOS apps a reality on Macs.

 

[Kung gu]

Looking at Apple’s history, imo Apple will self sabotage their huge lead in some way or another. I mean just look at the rumors. We are barely at the first generation, and Apple is already going to make thinner MacBooks that will undoubtly shave whatever battery life advantage the M1 has. That’s like giving the competitors room to match it. With thinner design, comes thermal compromises, which will affect sustained performance rate.

And through time, Apple will likely to keep 8GB RAM as standard for a looong time, giving room for competitors to offer better value by having 16GB RAM as standard. In my country, we can only get the default configurations of current M1 Macs, so we can only buy models with 8GB of RAM. That’s BS. Apple’s incessant desire to profit from BTO upgrades will make the base models uncompetitive. Worse, in some markets Apple Macs become undesirable at all due to lack of desired configurations. Just look at how long Apple kept the iMac with default slow 5400rpm hard drives.

So Apple might have the technological advantage, but decisions like I mention above will surely allow the competitors to catch up.

The going thinner rumour is for the next-gen MacBook Air, which IMO does need to get thinner. After all it touted as Apple's best ultraportable laptop. The current M1 MacBook Air is thicker near the screen end than the MBP 13".
The M1 is basically a A14X that goes into iPad Pro's which have no heat spreaders.

There are window's laptops that are thinner and lighter than the MacBook Air

I believe the battery life will be the same as M1 MacBook Air due to Apple going 5nm+ as it will be more efficient.
If the M2 MacBook Air launches Early 2022 then it will have a SoC based on A15.

Also which country are you from? As for the built to option yeah that sucks.

Take a look it this.
source:

This is AMD's 5000's series APUs.
Notice it does throttle after a while and look the watts.
What AMD does it pump up the watts to get great performance but after a while the watts drop, temps increase
leading to performance loss.



Apple's SoC focus on performance per watt and this is what Apple's approach has been for a while now.

 

[ekwipt]

I don't even see how AMD is a competitor. Plain and simple Apple's chips will run on Macs and AMD will not be running on Macs so there's no contest because even if AMD proves to be faster that wouldn't matter unless a person would prefer Windows to Mac.

Depends on what you do, for example, I’m a video editor working in Avid Media Composer and DaVinci Resove. Apple and Windows (M1, AMD and Intel) are all direct competition as a user can choose to go with whatever platform and the experience will be more or less the same. It doesn’t treaty matter what O/S you run, what matters is the speed the CPU and graphics (and disk, Ethernet etc can run at).

So professionals the case is not always I can only run Windows or Mac, you buy the hardware that runs the fastest for your particular use case .

 

[Maconplasma]

Depends on what you do, for example, I’m a video editor working in Avid Media Composer and DaVinci Resove. Apple and Windows (M1, AMD and Intel) are all direct competition as a user can choose to go with whatever platform and the experience will be more or less the same. It doesn’t treaty matter what O/S you run, what matters is the speed the CPU and graphics (and disk, Ethernet etc can run at).

So professionals the case is not always I can only run Windows or Mac, you buy the hardware that runs the fastest for your particular use case .

I definitely understand your point and it's well taken but if you have to look at it from a standpoint of ALL customers and not just some professionals. What you do is considered in the minority sector. Specialized professions will always be in the minority.

 

[JohnnyGo]

Apple's SoC focus on performance per watt and this is what Apple's approach has been for a while now.

I agree.

Steve’s vision still holds. In Apple’s transition to Intel they already said it was all about roadmaps and performance per watt. They anticipated the shift to laptops 10 years earlier.

Now they will focus more than ever on battery life and weight. Intel/AMD offerings are not bad. But if one pushes workload through them, laptops will quit on you after 4-6 hours.

The incredible feature of Apple Silicon is that even pushing heavy workloads, the battery life doesn’t suffer much. You can still get 9-12hrs depending on the workload.

 

[Fomalhaut]

16" MacBook still has dedicated GPU that runs circles around M1. So in order for Apple to claim "similar GPU performance" as the current-gen 16", the M1X needs like... 3-4x the GPU performance of M1. If Apple wants to claim "2x GPU performance as last generation", they need at least a 64-core GPU, plus dedicated video memory to keep up with demands. That means power consumption of this theoretical M1X chip will be worse than M1. So I'd think M1X will have worse performance per watt than M1.

As performance scales up, performance per watt gets worse, not better. M1 is most likely already the absolute best performance per watt that Apple can achieve. It's all downhill from here... all in pursuit of better performance.

The current M1 Macs have a GPU Metal score of nearly 23,000 and IIRC the MBP 16 with AMD Radeon Pro 5600 scores about 40,000, so a bit less than 2x the performance, not 3-4x.

Given GPU performance scales almost linearly with core count, increasing to 16 similarly capable GPU cores in the "M1X" would meet the requirement of matching or slightly exceeding the current best mobile GPU in the MBP 16.

However, I do agree that performance per watt will decline. People thinking that an M1X (with possibly 12+8 CPU cores and 16+ GPU cores) could have 30-hour battery life are dreaming. 15-18 hours is a more reasonable expectation, and it could be less. My Intel MBP16 realistically only gets 5-6 hours in real-world use, so I would be happy with 10-12 "real" hours in a new machine.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I think Apple will annihilate Intel from its own lineup - in the long run, it should be much more efficient to maintain macOS on one hardware platform instead of two.

But even this is still a long way to go and Apple has not the time to throttle themselves as the competition does not sleep.

I am sure, and reports say so (cf. https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/07/a...e-count-apple-silicon-chips-for-high-end-macs), that is testing chips with more cores (CPU performance, CPU efficiency, GPU, neural). The viable maximum will go to an Apple Silicon Mac Pro, the minimum is in the M1 series we already know of, and everything in between remains to be seen...

Huh? In the "long run"? Did you not hear Tim Cook tell the world that the transition will take "about 2 years", and is quite likely to be quicker (with the possible exception of the Mac Pro). I doubt you will be able to buy an Intel laptop or iMac with an Intel CPU by mid 2022.

 

[nothingtoseehere]

Huh? In the "long run"? Did you not hear Tim Cook tell the world that the transition will take "about 2 years", and is quite likely to be quicker (with the possible exception of the Mac Pro). I doubt you will be able to buy an Intel laptop or iMac with an Intel CPU by mid 2022.

I agree. What was in my mind was that with the end of selling Intel Macs, Apple still has to maintain OS support for Intel for a while ("years to come").

 

[Joelist]

Remember that when they announce the next MacBook Pros they likely will also be rolling out the successors to Firestorn, Icestorm and the current GPU core architecture. So it may not be linear scaling. We may see something like going to 8+4 from the current 4+4 and also 12 GPU cores and more cache. Also the additional controllers because of more and different ports. And finally more RAM (probably 16/32 as opposed to the current 8/16).

 

[Fomalhaut]

I agree. What was in my mind was that with the end of selling Intel Macs, Apple still has to maintain OS support for Intel for a while ("years to come").

OK - I see your point now. Agreed, Apple will want to end support for the current line of Intel CPUs as soon as they "reasonably can" - i.e. without aggravating their current user base of Intel-Mac users by dropping support. I'd estimate another 2, maybe 3 releases of MacOS plus a further 2-3 years of security patch updates.

 

[09872738]

Remember that when they announce the next MacBook Pros they likely will also be rolling out the successors to Firestorn, Icestorm and the current GPU core architecture. So it may not be linear scaling. We may see something like going to 8+4 from the current 4+4 and also 12 GPU cores and more cache. Also the additional controllers because of more and different ports. And finally more RAM (probably 16/32 as opposed to the current 8/16).

Indeed. They pretty much hold the mobile CPU crown already, going 4+8 likely exceeds anything the competition comes up with CPU-wise.
Focusing on GPU/Metal performance therefore might just be the way to go. Question is how they solve interfacing CPU-GPU, provided they likely need some sort of expandibility/upgradeability for the Mac Pro line

 

[jdb8167]

Remember that when they announce the next MacBook Pros they likely will also be rolling out the successors to Firestorn, Icestorm and the current GPU core architecture. So it may not be linear scaling. We may see something like going to 8+4 from the current 4+4 and also 12 GPU cores and more cache. Also the additional controllers because of more and different ports. And finally more RAM (probably 16/32 as opposed to the current 8/16).

Can you explain why you think this is likely? It seems more likely to me that they keep the same cores since they are only about 6 months old and just scale with more cores. Unless you believe that the cores are limiting the amount of RAM that the SoC can address? As long as Apple stays on the same 5nm TSMC process, I would expect them to continue to use the Firestorm and Icestorm core designs.

 

[bill-p]

The current M1 Macs have a GPU Metal score of nearly 23,000 and IIRC the MBP 16 with AMD Radeon Pro 5600 scores about 40,000, so a bit less than 2x the performance, not 3-4x.

Given GPU performance scales almost linearly with core count, increasing to 16 similarly capable GPU cores in the "M1X" would meet the requirement of matching or slightly exceeding the current best mobile GPU in the MBP 16.

However, I do agree that performance per watt will decline. People thinking that an M1X (with possibly 12+8 CPU cores and 16+ GPU cores) could have 30-hour battery life are dreaming. 15-18 hours is a more reasonable expectation, and it could be less. My Intel MBP16 realistically only gets 5-6 hours in real-world use, so I would be happy with 10-12 "real" hours in a new machine.

The Metal benchmark in Geekbench scores compute performance, not graphics performance. But even in the same test, M1 gets about 21000 (7-core Air gets about 19000) and the Radeon Pro 5600M gets about 42000 on average. So the 5600M is actually faster than you may think.

Apple of course isn't just aiming to "match" the performance of the 5600M. Apple has never ever introduced any machine that matches the GPU performance of a previous generation device. So they "need" at least 3-4x the GPU performance to be able to claim something like 1.5 - 2x performance improvement over the last generation. That's why I'm guessing Apple will need more than 16 GPU cores here. It's also to note that it's not as easy as just throwing more cores at the problem. At some point, memory speed becomes a bottleneck as well, and Apple will need to use memory that's faster than LPDDR4X. So of course performance per watt will take a nose dive.

Also, depending on your use case, an M1X chip with a much more powerful GPU may not really last all that long. For instance, if I'm gaming, my M1 MacBook Pro 13" barely lasts about 6 hours with Hitman/Tomb Raider. It does of course reach 15+ hours if I'm just browsing the internet. With a GPU that's 3-4x faster and more CPU cores, I wouldn't be surprised if the 16" MacBook with M1X can blow through the battery in 3 - 4 hours (implying a max power consumption of 30 - 35W here, which is... "generous" considering the M1 is about 15W in the worst case).

 

[Apple_Robert]

At this point, Intel has been crushed.

 

[redcaptrickster]

If you were talking about the CEO Steve Jobs that I would say yes, and annihilate is a great word.

But we're talking about Tim Cook here. The limp wet noodle flopping about in the shadow of Steve Jobs.

 

[Joelist]

Can you explain why you think this is likely? It seems more likely to me that they keep the same cores since they are only about 6 months old and just scale with more cores. Unless you believe that the cores are limiting the amount of RAM that the SoC can address? As long as Apple stays on the same 5nm TSMC process, I would expect them to continue to use the Firestorm and Icestorm core designs.

Because by the time the next MacBook Pros are announced Firestorm will be about a year old and Apple seems to be rolling new core designs roughly annually. 2018 was Vortex and 2019 was Lightning and last year was Firestorm.

 

[rezwits]

Actually, I see Apple holding back a bit and releasing products, "FEATURE WISE." What this means is they are gonna slow roll things like FaceID and other features incrementally. But when the M3 M4 hits, it's gonna be laughable, I mean just completely like, "You WHAT? still using Intel? WOW"

Here is one of the things I realized:

People are saying there will be Windows as a "virtual service" where you open a "thin client" and can run Windows. Well I thought about this and I am like how kinda stupid. Why? Because they say this is so you won't have to UPDATE your Windows machine. But WAIT! If you have a PC and Windows on that machine, and then open a Window to launch/view Virtual Windows, at some point you might have to STILL upgrade the ON BOARD Windows. At least yearly, with some minor update patch/fixes. Then what's the point!?!

Virtual so you don't update when you STILL have update? AT THAT POINT, if Virtual Windows happens, this will only benefit TWO PARTIES: macOS people, and possible Linux people, (or even Chromebook people), if all Virtual Windows takes is a browser window.

So people with Apple Silicon, will get INSANLY FAST work machines, and a Virtual Windows Desktop, (that might even be able to run video games like Google Stadia).

That COMPLETE of a package in say 2-3 years will just OBLITERATE the INDUSTRY.

 

[Fomalhaut]

Actually, I see Apple holding back a bit and releasing products, "FEATURE WISE." What this means is they are gonna slow roll things like FaceID and other features incrementally. But when the M3 M4 hits, it's gonna be laughable, I mean just completely like, "You WHAT? still using Intel? WOW"

Here is one of the things I realized:

People are saying there will be Windows as a "virtual service" where you open a "thin client" and can run Windows. Well I thought about this and I am like how kinda stupid. Why? Because they say this is so you won't have to UPDATE your Windows machine. But WAIT! If you have a PC and Windows on that machine, and then open a Window to launch/view Virtual Windows, at some point you might have to STILL upgrade the ON BOARD Windows. At least yearly, with some minor update patch/fixes. Then what's the point!?!

Virtual so you don't update when you STILL have update? AT THAT POINT, if Virtual Windows happens, this will only benefit TWO PARTIES: macOS people, and possible Linux people, (or even Chromebook people), if all Virtual Windows takes is a browser window.

So people with Apple Silicon, will get INSANLY FAST work machines, and a Virtual Windows Desktop, (that might even be able to run video games like Google Stadia).

That COMPLETE of a package in say 2-3 years will just OBLITERATE the INDUSTRY.

The argument for running Windows on remote cloud-based instances is that patching and updates are automated and consistent, provide service management (such as backups) and allow the virtual machine to be scaled according to need. If this becomes your primary instance, where software is installed and run, then the client machine only needs to have a very basic configuration that could even be locked down to a degree to prevent misconfiguration and could be automatically updated as currently happens on Windows 10 if you choose.

As you say, virtual Windows, if it runs well enough (especially for graphically intense tasks), would be of great advantage to non-Windows clients, and possibly more importantly, for non-Intel clients.

The success of the M1 Macs may drive more PC manufacturers to adopt ARM-based CPUs, and many of those users will still want access to x86_64 Windows applications. A virtual PC may be a better option for those users than trying to run ARM-Windows and emulate x86_64 apps.