How do you refer to Apple's ARM chips?

[theluggage]

This means that it applies to ALL of Apple’s products assuming they continue to conform to ARM specs and that it is an existing designation rather than Apple-specific. That is to say; as Microsoft develops ARM compatible software, it wouldn’t break convention to call it “A64 Windows” when describing its compatibility with hardware.

I think you need to read:

ARM Options (Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC))

ARM Options (Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC))

gcc.gnu.org

...and weep. Sometimes, complicated subject is complicated.

All Arm64/A64 will give you is a rough idea of compatibility for simple binaries, and its good enough to give you a clue when the choice is "amd64" or "arm64" but for a full-blown application there are many other factors. Not just 101 different official ARM architecture versions, but all the other things that go into an Apple Silicon system-on-a-chip, like the graphics, secure enclave, neural engine etc. which could break compatibility in the future (and which Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung etc. may well produce their own incompatible versions of).

I think you've also got a rose-tinted view of how simple things were with Intel. "x86" has meant different things over the years, e.g. there were versions of x86 MacOS released that wouldn't run on the original "Core/Core Duo" Macs, most "x86" linux distros dropped support for anything before i686 years ago.

 

[MrCheeto]

I think you need to read:

ARM Options (Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC))

ARM Options (Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC))

gcc.gnu.org

...and weep.

Not only will I not read such, I didn’t read any further than this quote. 🤷🏾‍♂️

 

[oofio2461]

Apple Potato Chips!

 

[MrCheeto]

Apple Potato Chips!

Lawsuit pending.

 

[Wando64]

Is that what you’re going to type out every time you search for a piece of software or for support?

Can’t you see how difficult that is to hash for search engines etc?

Nobody goes around asking for “an IBM processor version of Snow Leopard” or “a universal binary for AIM RISC and intel Core 2/Core i processors”. The convention is: “Universal binary: PPC/x86”.

I can’t see “Universal binary: x86/Apple Silicon” or, gag me, “x86/AS” 🤮 becoming any sort of widely accepted standard.

The best I could see as a straight forward designation is when downloading from certain sites I have seen options such as “x86, A64”. While I like “A64”, again I amn’t sure we should include the bit-width in the title.

Do you have real life examples where this has become an issue, or is this just a thought exercise to pass your time?
Perhaps we can help you with real life issues?
In my experience typing ‘Apple Universal Binary’ always returns the correct results, relevant to today‘s M series processors.

 

[Wando64]

Then you have to explain why they can’t get a straight answer when they ask if something they want to buy “works with silicon”.

Have you ever heard anyone asking such a question?
Again, I feel we are just debating for the sake of debating, as if this was a philosophy forum.

In the real world, software and hardware producers refer to compatibility with M1 (which implies compatibility with the entire M architecture) or compatibility with Apple M Series processors.
If Apple were ever to change the underlying architecture they would also change the name of the chip from M to something else.

 

[MrCheeto]

Yes. I’ve seen somebody ask if something “runs on silicone”. I didn’t misspell “silicone”.

Consider it this way; for years I put up with unsavvy customers asking if the “Mac Pro do DVD’s”. After a long conversation, it would surface that what they intend to do is burn DVD’s on their MacBook Pro.

Have a Mac mini? PowerMac G4? How about a MacBook Air? Either way, they will refer to it as their “iMac” and you have to drill down a tree of questions to arrive at the correct answer.

If they want to run a piece of software, you can send smoke signals or even tattoo it on the back of their hands that they need a “Mac with Intel processor” because it’s not compatible with their PowerMac yet, without fail, they will frustratingly text and email that they asked somebody at Best Buy but can’t find any Intel PowerMac’s and that they hate how difficult this is and that they almost don’t want to even try running said software at all and end the phone call with “man, F*** MAC! *click*”

I don’t have to exaggerate the number of customers that asked to have more RAM, memory, or cache installed and they show up wanting a larger Hard Drive installed and all of their data preserved. They didn’t bring a hard drive.

Do you think it’s possible to insert the 80-or-so-pin connectors on a car’s ECM backwards? With a hammer, I swear that it is and that, after a customer decided to make such a genius DIY money-saving maneuver, they will make a furious phone call blaming the guy that adjusted his headlights for breaking his engine.

Just my personal experience in the real real world but I can confidently say that everything has gotten severely worse in every aspect. I live in America. People here think it’s a Government-funded basic human right to never have to think or know anything and whenever they are the sole orchestrator of their own demise, somebody is going to get sued or have their city burned down.

God is always making a better idiot and for God’s sake we should not do anything to confuse them further.

So, like, philosophize me, man. 🍄

 

[obviouslogic]

The Apple chips use ARM64 or AArch64 instruction set but is it Apple specific? Also, we've never used the bit-width in reference to the architecture in general. I've seen PowerPC-64 when an application requires 64-bits specifically but that is very rare. Why would it make sense to include "64" with the new chipsets? Do we simply call it ARM? If so, how do we specify that it is Apple ARM? I suppose that one relies on the answer to the previous question about how much the ISA is Apple-specific.

Type "arch" into terminal and Apple will tell you that it's "arm64". So does that make it official? Let's end the confusion.

Yes, Apple's SoC's are based off the ARMv8-A ISA, but with Apple extensions added as they were needed. This makes them unique from true ARMv8-A CPUs, but they are still backward compatible as per licensing agreements. From what I understand, their ARMv8 extensions are fairly extensive, so much so, they made not even adopt the ARMv9 ISA.

As far as referring to them...
- ASi (Apple Silicon) is a general term for referring to Apple's SoC's; Ax, Mx, Tx, Wx, etc.
- ARMv8-A is the ISA their CPU cores are based off of, which is part of "arm64". So yeah, arm64 works, but ARMv8.x-A is more specific.

 

[bousozoku]

Basic makes a lot of good points. While I dislike the naming convention of the ISA, “A64” is as close as we can get to following the trend with prior chip designs.

This means that it applies to ALL of Apple’s products assuming they continue to conform to ARM specs and that it is an existing designation rather than Apple-specific. That is to say; as Microsoft develops ARM compatible software, it wouldn’t break convention to call it “A64 Windows” when describing its compatibility with hardware.

You might have to consider the Newton Messenger et al. as they were also using ARM-based processors way back when.

As far as PowerPC processors, we didn't refer to them as Gx because they started with the 601. PowerPC or PPC were used.

 

[antiprotest]

I call them Apple chips and people always get what I mean given the context.

 

[Basic75]

So starting with the Macintosh, we go;

68k>PPC>x86>A64

Actually the Mac went 68K - PPC32 - PPC64 - x86 - x86-64 - A64 with the caveat that Mac OS X was only partially 64bit on PPC64.

 

[Basic75]

When I said microprocessor, I meant the whole chip, as the word "microprocessor" traditionally means. I wasn't referring to particular cores. But thank you for sharing that information with me. I didn't know that.

Sure, "microprocessor" traditionally referred to the whole chip back when the chip contained a microprocessor and nothing else. But with Apple's A- and M-line we are dealing with SoCs ("system-on-a-chip") which contain multiple CPU cores of different types, a GPU, audio and video encoding and decoding engines, neural processor, memory controller, storage controller, USB and Thunderbolt, and a bunch of other supporting functions.

 

[MrCheeto]

As far as PowerPC processors, we didn't refer to them as Gx because they started with the 601.

Once G3 then G4 etc. became part of the model name it was a trap for the common person to just consider it a series that can simply be denoted by what they have in common; G-this or G-that. I have heard people refer to these as the G-series or a G-Mac.

601 was Generation 1.

To be clear, I don’t believe that people are stupid for not being savvy. I don’t expect somebody to know the difference between RAM and a browser cookie if all they want to do is follow their grandkids on Facebook. I just have a want to clear some confusion for anybody that may need this information at some point.

@Basic75 well you see why I prefer not to include the bit-width as part of the nomenclature unless specificity is desired. It is safely assumed that an app that has the option for “Intel/PPC” downloads means that it can run on any Intel Mac or PowerPC Mac. I know there are minimum system requirements but as far as whether the code can execute…

 

[maflynn]

So what was the purpose of this thread again? Seems like we all like to do our own thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Basic75]

So what was the purpose of this thread again? Seems like we all like to do our own thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Standards

xkcd.com

 

[theluggage]

It is safely assumed that an app that has the option for “Intel/PPC” downloads means that it can run on any Intel Mac or PowerPC Mac.

Except that's not true - for example, 32-bit Intel apps stopped running on MacOS Catalina. On the other hand, PPC apps ran fine on Intel, via Rosetta, until Mac OS Lion, and as of today many Intel apps run reasonably well on Apple Silicon with Rosetta 2. There were also back compatibility issues surrounding the first gen Intel Macs with Core/Core Duo processors.

OK, you could argue that I'm talking about operating system versions rather that the processor/SoC version (although the processor type is indirectly linked with the minimum OS version you can run) but do you expect the non-tech users you're trying to help (yeah, I've been there - ask them what OS they're running and they'll tell you which version of MS Office they use) to appreciate that difference?

Reality is, if there are any mainstream applications being sold today that aren't compatible with the Macs being sold today and don't make that clear, then complaints on a postcard to the companies selling them. If you want to run abandonware, open source, home-brew or products from tiny outfits that can't be expected to keep up then you'll need to know details like ISA type, bit width, OS version and whether Rosetta 2 is good enough for you.

Meanwhile, if you want a more manageable search term than "Apple Silicon" then the correct, unquestionable, obviously correct abbreviation (that doesn't sound like another name for "donkey") is, of course, "ASi". You won't match anything with it because almost nobody uses it, but it's not my fault if reality gets stuff wrong.

 

[MrCheeto]

Except that's not true - for example, 32-bit Intel apps stopped running on MacOS Catalina. On the other hand, PPC apps ran fine on Intel, via Rosetta, until Mac OS Lion, and as of today many Intel apps run reasonably well on Apple Silicon with Rosetta 2. There were also back compatibility issues surrounding the first gen Intel Macs with Core/Core Duo processors.

OK, you could argue that I'm talking about operating system versions rather that the processor/SoC version (although the processor type is indirectly linked with the minimum OS version you can run) but do you expect the non-tech users you're trying to help (yeah, I've been there - ask them what OS they're running and they'll tell you which version of MS Office they use) to appreciate that difference?

Reality is, if there are any mainstream applications being sold today that aren't compatible with the Macs being sold today and don't make that clear, then complaints on a postcard to the companies selling them. If you want to run abandonware, open source, home-brew or products from tiny outfits that can't be expected to keep up then you'll need to know details like ISA type, bit width, OS version and whether Rosetta 2 is good enough for you.

Meanwhile, if you want a more manageable search term than "Apple Silicon" then the correct, unquestionable, obviously correct abbreviation (that doesn't sound like another name for "donkey") is, of course, "ASi". You won't match anything with it because almost nobody uses it, but it's not my fault if reality gets stuff wrong.

I know there are minimum system requirements but as far as whether the code can execute…

 

[Falhófnir]

Apple Silicon includes all of Apple's chips including the iPhone A series and presumably the upcoming 5G chip for e.g. For the Mac line specifically (M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max, M1 Ultra, M2, M2 Pro, M2 Max so far) I prefer M series.

 

[Sydde]

From what I understand, their ARMv8 extensions are fairly extensive, so much so, they made not even adopt the ARMv9 ISA.

The ARMv9 ISA is not significantly different from ARMv8. There is SVE2, but that is still optional. Mostly v9 is about a different memory domain model, which can protect user-level dataspace from privileged code. And I am not convinced that Apple really has made "extensive" additions to the ISA. I suspect the majority of their mods are to other parts of the architecture, such as special registers that facilitate control of the other SoC components. There is no doubt a feature that greatly reduces the cost of object-method dispatch, but there really is not much need for a lot is enhancement to the ISA.

 

[applepotato666]

Mostly I see people call them "M1" even if it's M2 or whatever variation of M1/M2. "Apple Silicon" is next. I've never had a problem searching for anything specific to M-series chips by adding "M1" to the query because if it works with M1, it works with M2 and so on.

I agree that the branding around the chips could've been better handled. "Apple silicon" as a term didn't really stick with people and likely won't because it sounds more complex and holds no relation in most people's mind to the M-series chips. Also A-series chips would also fall under the same umbrella of "Apple silicon" and nobody calls the chips in iPhones that.

 

[dmccloud]

Mostly I see people call them "M1" even if it's M2 or whatever variation of M1/M2. "Apple Silicon" is next. I've never had a problem searching for anything specific to M-series chips by adding "M1" to the query because if it works with M1, it works with M2 and so on.

I agree that the branding around the chips could've been better handled. "Apple silicon" as a term didn't really stick with people and likely won't because it sounds more complex and holds no relation in most people's mind to the M-series chips. Also A-series chips would also fall under the same umbrella of "Apple silicon" and nobody calls the chips in iPhones that.

I tend to use M2 when I'm looking for more recent articles, mainly because a lot of those M1 specific articles date back to late 2020 into early and mid-2021, and a lot of software has been updated to take advantage of Apple Silicon since then.

 

[ADGrant]

“Apple Silicon” is ignorant of the actual architecture because what if Apple switches to a slightly different architecture? Suddenly, compatibility is divided and we have to differentiate further. Heck, they’ve already switched from 32bit to 64bit. So if something is “Apple Silicon” compatible, is it assured that it will run on an A4? That’s an example of how “Apple Silicon” is too vague, too long, and I have to say it is confusing people because they shorten it to “silicon” and then others start thinking that “silicon” is a new magic element or technology.

Then you have to explain why they can’t get a straight answer when they ask if something they want to buy “works with silicon”. You may think it’s not an issue but who has never heard of somebody that thought a CD-ROM tray was a cup-holder? This was a real thing that happened in the 90’s. The more we can spoon-feed people, the less likely they will be frustrated with their investments or hobbies.

“Apple Silicon” is just not pocketable.
Next, we should correct “o’clock” to “on the clock”. 🙄

The term you are looking for is arm64.

 

[Sydde]

The term you are looking for is arm64.

It seems like AArch64 has mostly become the de facto standard for ARM-based devices. AArch32 is essentially for compatibility with archaic software and is not used much these days, except in a few embedded implementations. ARM, today, means the 64-bit achitecture, unless it is called ARM32.

 

[Analog Kid]

Apple has been very careful to use the phrase “Apple Silicon” when discussing their family of chips. It is rare, even in WWDC materials to hear any mention of Arm at all. Arm is really only mentioned by people who want to make the point that they’re on a first name basis with the man behind the curtain.

I think the reason Apple uses “Apple Silicon” is two-fold: one is to make the point that this is a fully Apple designed processor and to rightfully take credit for the breakthroughs it contains. I think the other is that they don’t want to marry themselves to Arm. They could conceivably pivot to another ISA in the future and completely hide the transition from the consumer.

The A-series and M-series (and H, U, S and others) just designate instances of Apple Silicon.

Think of it as a taxonomy. Instead of Animal/Mammal/Primate/Chimpanzee you have AS/M-series/M2/M2 Pro.

I don’t think this is all that confusing, especially compared to all the Lake names and i series, multilevel GHz, core counts, sockets and TDPs of the Intel years.