x64 vs ARM is irrelevant. Apple has a smaller production process. You keep talking about x64 vs ARM when it has nothing to do with anything. Apple can produce CPUs with much smaller transistors than Intel. They can produce big CPUs with small transistors. They can produce small CPUs with small transistors. ARM has nothing to do with performance here.
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MP 7,1 What does Apple's switch to ARM based processors mean for the future of the Mac Pro
- Thread starter Korican100
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x64 vs ARM is irrelevant. Apple has a smaller production process. You keep talking about x64 vs ARM when it has nothing to do with anything. Apple can produce CPUs with much smaller transistors than Intel. They can produce big CPUs with small transistors. They can produce small CPUs with small transistors. ARM has nothing to do with performance here.
I accept this. I merely ask that you please point me to a desktop ARM processor which Apple has produced.
Apple doesn't produce the processors. TSMC does. And if you want an example TSMC also produces all of AMD's current desktop CPUs on the same process as Apple's current 7nm CPUs.
Show me the Apple designed and TMSC manufactured desktop ARM CPU upon which your statements are based.
I think this is a straw man argument. Again, the instruction set is irrelevant. Apple and TSMC can produce 5 nm CPUs, Intel can't. Whether or not that's ARM isn't relevant. It's a new argument that has absolutely nothing to do with why Apple has better performance than Intel right now, CPU class for CPU class.
I'd guess if Intel had 5 nm production, they'd be doing better than Apple/ARM. But they don't. You're trying to have an argument about a match up that doesn't exist.
Nothing straw man about it. Either point to production silicon or stop with the speculation. After all we know Intels super duper frozen lake processors will blow anything out of the water. It will be the be all and end all of processors. Prove me wrong.
It's not speculation that TSMC's 5 nm process producers faster and more power efficient CPUs than Intel's 14 nm process. That's the laws of physics. It's also not speculation that TSMC can build desktop CPUs, they can. It's also not speculation that ARM desktop CPUs can exist. They do exist.
You're trying to turn it into ARM vs x86, which isn't relevant to the performance difference or why Apple's doing this. That's the straw man.
Take your pick:
ARM architecture family - Wikipedia
As I mentioned, the first ARM CPUs were desktop only.
No, I am not going to take my pick. Please provide the exact desktop processor you're using as the basis for your position.Take your pick:
ARM architecture family - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
As I mentioned, the first ARM CPUs were desktop only.
Yes, you’re right here.
How many processors do you you think Apple needs to produce? Consider, for a family of current generation iPhones and iPads, they only use two processors at slightly different clock rates.
I don’t think so. Apple’s made it clear that they see their future in iOS type products. If anything, they would grow iOS, but, in that case, they have an iPad that’s cheaper than any Mac.
That’s the opinion only of people that use Windows on their Macintosh.
The number of Macintoshes being sold today that EVER run Windows is minuscule.Most likely correct.
Translating an ARM iOS App to Intel macOS Using Bitcode
www.highcaffeinecontent.com
I've supplied a whole Wikipedia article of them. ARM started in 1983 and didn't even produce a mobile CPU until 1992. So there's a pretty big selection to choose from there. Whatever sort of ARM desktop example you're look for, I'm sure you can find it on the list in that article.
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Most likely correct.
Translating an ARM iOS App to Intel macOS Using Bitcode
www.highcaffeinecontent.com
Bitcode can't be reliably recompiled. The author of that article is uhhh... out ahead of his skis. Bitcode contains a lot of processor dependent code, including assembly.
If you couple Bitcode translation with JIT emulation than maybe you'd have something there.
I don't care. Please provide a reference to the exact desktop processor you're referencing. I feel I have been patient in my requests and, if you fail to do so in your response, I have no choice but to conclude you are unable to do so and therefore your statements are meaningless.
Again, we're in straw man territory. An exact CPU isn't relevant. I'm not even sure a desktop CPU is relevant to begin with. All you're doing is proving die sizes can get bigger, which no surprise, there is no reason they can't.
Ok, lets try this. I will give you an exact ARM CPU model if you can tell me what it is you would like that ARM CPU model to prove. Is it just that you don't think that ARM dies can be larger? Cause I'm not spending all my time shuffling through ARM CPUs just so you can shoot them down because you won't put forward your thesis.
A few pages back I posted this comparison of the A13 versus the Intel CPU used for MBA. Technically neither that i5 nor the ARM chip is a "desktop CPU" but the comparison is instructive in the sense that it demonstrates CPUs build for comparable workloads with comparable TDP:
Processor Comparison - Head 2 Head
Apple A13 Bionic vs Intel Core i5-8210Y vs Apple A12 Bionic - Benchmarks, Tests and Comparisons
As I noted will the currently visible set of ARM chips outperform the top of the line Intel chips for single thread raw clock speed? Most likely not but the approach we see Apple taking with the iPad Pro's is to ship specialised cores for handling different tasks including video processing or neural networking. The iPad Pro has been receiving rather favourable reviews for it's use as a desktop replacement with even Linus Tech Tips commenting that they felt the RAM was more the limiting factor on the device in addition to iPadOS' UI quirks.
Moving to the desktop gives Apple the ability to leverage a much high TDP and pack in more cores. Single threaded clock speed likely won't eclipse Intel for a while (even AMD aren't there yet) but depending on your work load the other processing cores that Apple ships today could accelerate those workloads or even go down the FPGA pathway like they did with the Afterburner card.
I don't think out of the gate they will nail the high end CPU market but for a significant segment of their product line up they can likely ship equivalent performance processors to their current generation Intel chips (and in a sense already do today) with the space to add more innovative hardware options. One has to reflect that Apple have been using mobile style builds for the Mac Mini and the iMac for a while now, so those moving to ARM isn't dissimilar to their portables moving to ARM.
Howard Oakley talking much sense, as ever....
eclecticlight.co
Mind continues to boggle at all these people insisting an ARM CPU that exists on retail sale today, let alone what is about to be launched or in development is somehow incapable of running macOS. My (not top spec, 2015) phone is considerably more powerful than the 2009 MacBook I'm typing this on. Oh, and I used desktop ARM systems thirty years ago.....
What would an ARM-based Mac mean to us?
Will they be locked down completely, or run iPadOS? How could they run existing Mac apps? Some potential answers.
eclecticlight.co
Mind continues to boggle at all these people insisting an ARM CPU that exists on retail sale today, let alone what is about to be launched or in development is somehow incapable of running macOS. My (not top spec, 2015) phone is considerably more powerful than the 2009 MacBook I'm typing this on. Oh, and I used desktop ARM systems thirty years ago.....
So I'm not saying Apple will use iPad CPUs in iMacs... But this is why this conversation about if Apple can scale up is mostly irrelevant. They could build iMacs with iPad CPUs today and it would still be faster than what Intel can produce for an iMac. And the iPad CPU could run with no fans.
It really doesn't have anything to do with ARM vs x86 and completely to do with Intel being stalled.
Apple has been doing a half-baked job with every OS since 10.7.
My comment has everything to do with whether or not people stay with OSX. I am not the only person that has walked away after 20 years with OSX. How many different fields are going to stay with Apple?
For the last transition, I stayed on 10.6.8 until the release of 10.10. That was how long it took for a majority of my software to make the transition to Intel, and for me to find suitable replacements for the software that never made the move.
It only took me 1 day to move to Windows - and by doing so, not only did I get a lot of important software back (Adobe CS), I now have more software and much, much more powerful hardware than I did staying with Apple. I get more done, at a faster pace.
I don't see the video people moving to an ARM based Mac - too much software depends on Intel instruction sets. After that, who is left?
For the companies that make their living with Adobe CS - do you really think they will take a chance on ARM, when they can just move the remaining Apple holdouts to Windows? Version 1 Hardware and Version 1 Software - what could possibly go wrong?
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Apple doesn't build CPUs - they design them and TSMC actually builds them.
In 2020, Intel builds on 14nm - in 2021 they will be on 10nm. Golden Cove will have a 50%IPC increase over Skylake.
In 2020 AMD builds on 7nm - in 2021 they will be on 5nm. AMD already thumps Intel on IPC & we will see another 10 - 15% IPC increase with Zen 3 this fall. AMD is currently holding off on releasing 4 way SMT to give the software time to catch up.
Any idea on how long it will take those ARM apps to gain the ability to use multiple cores & threads? Because the iPhones & iPads can't do much with those right now.
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A few pages back I posted this comparison of the A13 versus the Intel CPU used for MBA. Technically neither that i5 nor the ARM chip is a "desktop CPU" but the comparison is instructive in the sense that it demonstrates CPUs build for comparable workloads with comparable TDP:
Processor Comparison - Head 2 Head
Apple A13 Bionic vs Intel Core i5-8210Y vs Apple A12 Bionic - Benchmarks, Tests and Comparisonswww.notebookcheck.net
As I noted will the currently visible set of ARM chips outperform the top of the line Intel chips for single thread raw clock speed? Most likely not but the approach we see Apple taking with the iPad Pro's is to ship specialised cores for handling different tasks including video processing or neural networking. The iPad Pro has been receiving rather favourable reviews for it's use as a desktop replacement with even Linus Tech Tips commenting that they felt the RAM was more the limiting factor on the device in addition to iPadOS' UI quirks.
Moving to the desktop gives Apple the ability to leverage a much high TDP and pack in more cores. Single threaded clock speed likely won't eclipse Intel for a while (even AMD aren't there yet) but depending on your work load the other processing cores that Apple ships today could accelerate those workloads or even go down the FPGA pathway like they did with the Afterburner card.
I don't think out of the gate they will nail the high end CPU market but for a significant segment of their product line up they can likely ship equivalent performance processors to their current generation Intel chips (and in a sense already do today) with the space to add more innovative hardware options. One has to reflect that Apple have been using mobile style builds for the Mac Mini and the iMac for a while now, so those moving to ARM isn't dissimilar to their portables moving to ARM.
Single threaded Apps?
What is this, 1986?
Taking multi-threaded software back to single threaded isn't getting any one better performance. IPC is what matters, not core clocks - those only matter for gaming - yet another multi-billion dollar area that Apple has no presence in.
People that actually do real stuff with their computers aren't moving to ARM.
Look at my sig. It is woefully inadequate for a 3d artist at the hobbyist level.
Not professional - hobbyist. Using bottom of the stack software.
When your workflow is built around cores, threads, and ram, a phone CPU isn't going to cut it.
Yep. I've made that point repeatedly in this thread.
10 nm won't be competitive enough. Especially with 3 nm coming from TSMC in 2022. How many years will Intel be stuck on 10 nm this time? Unless 7nm-ish is coming from Intel in 2022, they'll be left holding the bag again. Which I would guess is why Apple is abandoning them.
I think AMD vs Apple is the only interesting matchup, but I'd give Apple the edge for two reasons:
- I think Apple is worse than Intel at design, but better than AMD. That's not a dig at Apple as much as it's a compliment for Intel, Intel just has a lot of smart engineers always pushing the envelope. Intel is just stuck with production issues.
- Apple has preferred status with TSMC. That means they'll always have access to TSMC's most advanced fabrication lines before AMD. Apple will get 5 nm/3 nm/etc before AMD does.
Huh? iOS and iOS apps are completely multithreaded, and Mac apps on ARM would continue using pthreads just like they do today. Mac apps on ARM don't suddenly lose their threading just because of ARM. That's an OS feature.
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Adding cores is a relatively easy thing to do in CPU design.
Then your compassion is meaningless.
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Then your posts are meaningless.
You might want to share that information with IBM, Intel, and AMD.
I'd remind you that when Apple moved to Intel - PPC multi-threaded apps became single threaded Intel apps. It is a major reason I didn't upgrade my OS for 4 years.
AFA TSMC - AMD is their best friend, not Apple.
Apple is approaching irrelevence in the computer marketspace - just like they were in the 1990's. They aren't bringing anything to the table that will entice either Windows or Linux users, and they have made it quite clear that they are dropping interest in entire computing fields.
And that is ok - they are a luxury phone company that dabbles poorly in PC hardware and software. Best that they focus on what they can be good at - improving their hardware for Candy Crush.
Which was in part my point, Intel do win on a very specific area but that isn't the overall picture and has relevance in only a few situations.
No true Scotsman would ever use an ARM computer for real work either.
The A12X variant CPU has 8 cores (4 high performance and 4 low performance), 7 GPU cores (8 on the A12Z), an 8 core neural processing engine for AI/ML tasks as well as dedicated image processing and video encoding/decoding hardware. This is a 2018 generation processor so it will be interesting to see if they announce something more than this for the desktop in the next year.
You point out a much more interesting challenge in that the software vendors are more a limiting factor than the hardware itself even if it has all of the capabilities in the world to leverage.
Aww I thought my compassion was great! To be honest I perhaps miss the distinction, if I use the CPU in a desktop does that make it a desktop CPU? What are the qualities of a desktop CPU? When does a mobile CPU stop being a mobile CPU and become a desktop CPU? When does a desktop CPU stop being a desktop CPU and become a server or workstation CPU?
I was a developer during the PPC to Intel transition and I don't know where you got that because it is 100% not true. Threading stayed the same between PowerPC and Intel. All my threading worked exactly the same with no code changes.