And yet, if one looks at these delays in more detail, one starts wondering about Intel's responsibility for them... For example, like the fact that they sometimes wouldn't release the performance 28Watt parts until much later, parts that Apple relies on (everyone else just uses the cheaper 15W parts that were made more readily available). Or how their Iris Pro Broadwell and Skylake parts were essentially vaporware — announced but never seemed to actually have shipped in volume. Let's not forget that Apple needs more of high-end CPUs than anyone else — premium laptop models are just a tip of the iceberg for most manufacturers, whose bulk sales usually come from lower end. Apple however have consistently relied on high end. And looking at all the circumstances, I think its very likely that Intel had issue satisfying their demands (Apple representatives did complain about this over and over).
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.
What are the benefits of Apple switching to Arm Macs?
- Thread starter trevpimp
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
And yet, if one looks at these delays in more detail, one starts wondering about Intel's responsibility for them... For example, like the fact that they sometimes wouldn't release the performance 28Watt parts until much later, parts that Apple relies on (everyone else just uses the cheaper 15W parts that were made more readily available). Or how their Iris Pro Broadwell and Skylake parts were essentially vaporware — announced but never seemed to actually have shipped in volume. Let's not forget that Apple needs more of high-end CPUs than anyone else — premium laptop models are just a tip of the iceberg for most manufacturers, whose bulk sales usually come from lower end. Apple however have consistently relied on high end. And looking at all the circumstances, I think its very likely that Intel had issue satisfying their demands (Apple representatives did complain about this over and over).
You are completely correct. Look at the the 10th generation Comet Lake processors. They are just plain bad. Despite Intel advertising that they are 45W chips - that only applies with turbo boost disabled. It has been tested they can pull up to 135W under load. That is just crazy - no wonder Apple doesn't see fit to update the 16" macbook Pro with them.
Part of this however is misunderstanding what TDP means. Intel defines TDP as power under sustained load running on full cores at base frequency. To put it differently: they guarantee that if you load up all the cores with work and limit maximal power dissipation to the TDP, the CPU will run at least at base frequency. This is why TDP is more of a marketing term rather then a technical one. Turbo boost is completely circumstantial.
That said, I believe that there are a lot of issues with Intel parts. In no particular order:
- You actually need to run the CPU at higher TDP in order to get a noticeable performance improvement from the previous generation (this was the source of complaints about the 15" MBP which people claimed were underperforming while they were just following the Intel's spec)
- Intel's strategy for high-performance parts is just to try to cram more cores into the SoC and fine-tune the turbo boost curves so that they can claim performance improvements. The power spikes that result from this are ridiculous and unpredictable.
- Intel's strategy is bad for user psychology, since it cultivates this "if I give more power to my CPU it will run slightly faster" thing. This makes users expect that their laptop CPUs run at what essentially are desktop-level power levels for an under 5% increase in performance. This is entirely Intel's fault since they let their mobile parts reach those power levels in order to claim better performance
- Intel's marketing uses dishonest and misleading tactics. I already mentioned the unpredictable power draw ranges or the fact that the better performance is only possible when you run your mobile CPU in a desktop setting. My favorite one is "Thermal Velocity Boost", where you can get a very brief clock burst of 200mhz if your CPU is running under 60C (which is basically never in a laptop setting). This allows them to sell i9 CPUs as 5.0Ghz parts while in reality they are 4.8hz parts, further inflating user expectations
My last comment on our post: one possible reason why we don't see Comet Lake on MBP yet is simply because it offers nothing of value compared to Coffee Lake R. Comprehensive benchmarks show that i9-10980HK performance is within margin of error compared to i9-9980HK. So why even bother?
Not really... the only benefit you won’t be getting on desktop is the longer battery life, of course. But performance will skyrocket and you will get the same features and same apps as iOS devices even on desktops.
Expect the next iMac, iMac Pro and Mac Pro to completely annihilate their Intel counterparts in performance. Expect at least a 50% improvement on CPU performance across the entire line.
The leaked A14 benchmarks give it already a 20% boost over the best Intel has to offer (Core i9-10900K) in single thread performance. And that’s an iPhone SOC. Just imagine what they will do when they’ll be trying on the desktop. And they will be trying.
Last edited:
I think that on the processor side of things, Mac ARM development has been going on for longer than anyone outside of Campus 2 realizes. With the current rumors pointing to the 13" MBP and iMac as the first models to ship with Apple's processors inside, Apple is going to pull off something in the fall to draw all the attention its way. The Mac Pro (and probably iMac Pro) are probably going to be the last machines to make the transition away from Intel, but starting with the iMac and MBP reads to me as a classic example of "go big or go home".
The iMac Pro & Mac Pro might just see a reshuffling of the spec stack & pricing structure, more for (slightly) less...
We may see an ASi Mac laptop & an ASi iMac (I think it would be a 24" model) as the first Apple Silicon Macs, and if that laptop were a 'simple' 14" MacBook that would match the top half of Steve Jobs' 2x2 product matrix from "back in the day"...
We may also see whatever the best Intel-based 27" iMac Apple can manage (thermally & all that), maybe a final Intel laptop; who knows, maybe something stupid like the rumored $5,000 Gaming Mac from awhile back, maybe it is the mythical xMac (with a single MPX slot / bay / whatever)...
Me, I am waiting for the new ASi Mac Pro Cube...! ;^p
We may see an ASi Mac laptop & an ASi iMac (I think it would be a 24" model) as the first Apple Silicon Macs, and if that laptop were a 'simple' 14" MacBook that would match the top half of Steve Jobs' 2x2 product matrix from "back in the day"...
We may also see whatever the best Intel-based 27" iMac Apple can manage (thermally & all that), maybe a final Intel laptop; who knows, maybe something stupid like the rumored $5,000 Gaming Mac from awhile back, maybe it is the mythical xMac (with a single MPX slot / bay / whatever)...
Me, I am waiting for the new ASi Mac Pro Cube...! ;^p
what other said: mips/watt
Intel and AMD chips are just too wasteful of batteries.
as we transition to a battery powered world in the consumer space, power efficiency rules.
Since all the battery powered laptops are going to be "ARM," It makes sense to just go whole hog and make the desktops "ARM" too.
Intel and AMD chips are just too wasteful of batteries.
as we transition to a battery powered world in the consumer space, power efficiency rules.
Since all the battery powered laptops are going to be "ARM," It makes sense to just go whole hog and make the desktops "ARM" too.
I have a feeling this transition to Apple Silicon has been on the radar internally for several years. I think they saw that it was a possibility but had to wait, perhaps a little longer than they wanted, for the right time to make the move. That is why we had the long wait for the new Mac Pro and then several years of slow product rollout between 2014 and 2018. There is a reason the Final Cut has been optimized for multiple cores and the macOS removal of 32bit applications. These have all be steps to get consumers to migrate to ASi with minimal pain.
Apple is used to not mention origins. Example OSX is based on BSD. However, should Apple be in relation with ARM next years, or they are really independent with their ARM-like chips?
Absolutely. To ARM/AS/Whatever is a major major shift and is not something entered into willy-nilly. Billion$ in investor $$ (many of these are funds disinterested in the tech just sure returns) are at stake, patterns for development are at stake on the tech side, and Apple has kept a good balance through this swamp.
Watch this one video and it’ll explain pretty much everything:
The new EOS R5 shoots 8K Raw and 4K H.265 10 bit that even the 7,1 Mac Pro has trouble playing.
Yet it plays perfectly fine on a 2020 iPad Pro. How could that be?
The optimization between CPU and GPU along with hardware decoding makes for an extremely powerful combination. I am more hyped than ever before for the ARM chip upgrade.
The new EOS R5 shoots 8K Raw and 4K H.265 10 bit that even the 7,1 Mac Pro has trouble playing.
Yet it plays perfectly fine on a 2020 iPad Pro. How could that be?
The optimization between CPU and GPU along with hardware decoding makes for an extremely powerful combination. I am more hyped than ever before for the ARM chip upgrade.
For me, the main benefit is moving not to ARM but to SOC computers. And what is more, OEM SOC computers. This will allow optimization, great thermo control, and the best ratio in processing data-graph-video in the market. I think is really a revolutionary move on computer technology in a (mass) consumer scale.
This is one benefit of unified memory. Software can utilize the CPU and the GPU simultaneously without having to copy the data back and forth over the narrow PCIe bus.
Personally, I buy a Mac for the features and performance, not a specific brand of processor which adds nothing to the overall user experience. The CPU marketing was more confusing to me (i# with x-cores and Turbo boost called some random lake and other features), I just jump to the benchmarks.
I'm assuming that this will let Apple add more custom features to be integrated in the SoC, rather than a separate chips like the T2. I guess it will create more margins for them to profit on similar to the iPhone.
I'm assuming that this will let Apple add more custom features to be integrated in the SoC, rather than a separate chips like the T2. I guess it will create more margins for them to profit on similar to the iPhone.
I'll try my best to address this.
AMD has recently started releasing some incredibly competitive chips as of late. Some are just plain beastly, such as the Threadripper, and the SOC for the Xbox Series X.
The problem that AMD hasn't really addressed yet though is Machine Learning. Sure, you can just throw that on the GPU, but there's better ways to do it.
AMD definitely could have been a short term solution, but in doing so Apple would have needed to build out for support for Thunderbolt, and work around optimizing the full stack to take into account system level design quirks around.
Apple has been designing around Intels anemic processors for a long time. The current MacBook Pros are design compromised due to Intels thermal obstacles.
Apple designed Silicon gives Apple the ability to build everything around a set of technologies that they fully know inside and out.
Optimization? It is pretty likely that 7,1 Mac Pro that is being lamented on has an Afterburner card in it. It is this specific corner case hardware decoding that is the difference there. The FPGA in the Afterburner card is more than capable of doing the work if it was programmed to do this specific case. Apple didn't do the work so it doesn't. That isn't an optimization, that is just lack of putting in the effort.
Apple wants folks to transcode into ProRES RAW .
Very similar issues around Apple putting in work (an/dor explicitly contracting for the work to be done) around the hardware en/decode of the AMD ( and Nvidia ) GPUs that is present.
Apple picked 4K 4:4:2 probably in part to record higher gamut color video without incurring the cost of storage that 4:4:4 would. H.265 (HEVC) version 2 has seven profiles 4:2:0 (1) 4:2:2 (2) , 4:4:4 ( 4 ) . Most of the hardware implementations aimed at high end video skipped the middle 2. For the "princess and the pea" colorists 4:4:4 is more likely a pressing issue and for economic "good enough" the 4:2:0 works better.
Apple picking what Canon picked isn't so much of an optimization and as the two happen to pick the same narrow range "landing spot".
Great if happen to pick the Cannon R5 and have an iPad Pro . Not so great (and far closer to average ) if happen to pick from a much wider array of cameras out there. if recording where Apple is herding folks too ( ProRes RAW) it isn't much a gap at all.
Probably dreaming on that.
Apple in 2011 Considered Collecting a 40% Fee From Some Subscription Apps
Apple once considered taking a 40 percent cut from some subscription apps, according to documents shared today by the House Judiciary Committee (via...
www.macrumors.com
Any CPU package bill of materials (BOM) cost reduction Apple will likely shuffle either into some other component of higher BOM or just pocket it. So perhaps larger SSD capacity (at same Apple $400/TB rate) , micro-LED screens , etc.
At the higher end of the Mac product line up the volume of Macs is low enough that there my not be a drop in BOM costs for the CPU packages. A-series are cheaper in part because Apple selling 10's of millions per year of them. 27" iMac , iMac Pro , Mac Pro are probably 2 , if not 3 , orders of magnitude lower in volume. That isn't going to reduce BOM costs at all (fixed costs up and volume cost spread over much smaller number of units ).
Same thing on the iPhones when Apple drops Qualcomm later. Probably going to cost just as much.
Performance per Watt, even if the CPU core is slower will work well for laptops but I wonder about the Mac Pro. No one who owns an MP cares about Watts, they just want performance. Will Apple Silicon outperform a 16-core Xeon in absolute terms?
Or maybe Apple drops the mac pro and maybe even drops Final Cut. Look at what happened with Aperture. So yes they are willing to abandon professional users if they are not making money on them
Or maybe Apple drops the mac pro and maybe even drops Final Cut. Look at what happened with Aperture. So yes they are willing to abandon professional users if they are not making money on them
Don't necessarily need physically unified memory to do that. Especially in the narrow corner case of video decode.
Apple's Afterburner card sits on a discrete PCI-e add-in card and does four 4K HDR decode streams. The PCI-e bus in a Mac Pro is not "narrow" in any sensible characterization. Perhaps the MBP 16" and its dGPU.
A GPU that can deal with a virtual memory mapping can just just map in the video data and pull it in through the hardware decode. Doesn't necessarily have to be copied to VRAM at all except to the video out framebuffer post decoding.
That more a matter of what Apple hasn't worked on as opposed can't be done.
I just throw this here: with apple silicon, macOS will eventually reach iOS state, completely locked down to Mac App Store (or a universal App Store). Users will unable to install anything outside App Store. All power user features will be gone or completely hidden behind Xcode or advanced apps. I just cannot believe Apple will maintain the semi-openness of current macOS in the near future despite apple’s words.