MP 7,1 What does Apple's switch to ARM based processors mean for the future of the Mac Pro

[dspdoc]

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.

You sound extremely bitter and angry. Why are you even here if you loathe Apple so much? Is MR just your punching bag to take out all your frustrations in life and with Apple? Love and hate is a very fine line. I think deep down you really love Apple and that you're just upset that they aren't following your vision. I suggest you find a hobby or a better way to expel that rage. It will get you!

 

[goMac]

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?

Yep. Exactly why I didn't play the "pick a CPU" game. Desktop CPU doesn't have a firm definition. Does it mean a large CPU? Does it mean it sits in a case that sits on your desk? Does it mean a CPU with a higher clock? You could play games all day about what a desktop CPU is if you want to keep dodging a point. The iPad Pro outperforms most consumer desktops. Does that make it a desktop CPU?

 

[ssgbryan]

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?

Apple notebook or desktop ARM is vaporware - show me an OSX ARM system running a 3d creation suite and get back with me. Show me Blender performance metrics, show me Maya performance metrics, Cinema3d, well you get the idea.

How does that A12X perform under continuous load? Normally, my single image still bake anywhere from 1 to 12 hours, depending on the lighting and how much is going on in the scene.

8 cores, 8 threads? - In 2007, that would be pretty good - it would almost match my maxed out 1,1. The A12X won't even match one of the upcoming gaming consoles.

Qualities of a Desktop CPU? Cores, threads, & ram - all of my software will take whatever I can throw at it and ask for more. If I was doing this professionally, I'd be on a 32 core Threadripper system with 256Gb of ram.

I am doing 3d art as a hobby - so I am on a maxed out Ryzen 3950 system (16 cores/32 threads, 128Gb of ram).

It isn't rocket science.......

A mobile CPU is thermally throttled, low powered, or both. They have a very limited amount of RAM in comparison to their desktop brethren.

A workstation has better binned parts, because the system is usually under a continuous heavy load. Parts are validated for software and they have a much longer warranty (AMD workstation GPU cards have a 10 year warranty for instance).

It tends to need more ram ECC ram preferred, because nothing is more irritating that having a render screw up because of a memory error (Another advantage to AMD - all of their CPUs can use ECC ram)

 

[goMac]

Apple notebook or desktop ARM is vaporware - show me an OSX ARM system running a 3d creation suite and get back with me. Show me Blender performance metrics, show me Maya performance metrics, Cinema3d, well you get the idea.

ARM Macs are happening. If you don't trust Apple's assessment that they perform better, and you won't take anything but an actual ARM Mac Pro running Maya as evidence, then go buy a Windows box.

If you aren't impressed by an A12X that is literally only cooled by the open air behind it compared to your Mac Pro stuffed with fans then I don't know what to tell you. All evidence is that if Apple put one of their ARM CPUs in your Mac Pro case it would be a screamer.

But if you don't want to talk theoretically then this thread probably isn't for you because this thread is all about talking about a theoretical product that doesn't exist yet based on what we already know.
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A mobile CPU is thermally throttled, low powered, or both.

All CPUs are thermally throttled. Desktop, laptop, or otherwise. Even Xeons are thermally throttled.

If you took an A12X and put a fan on it, it wouldn't be as thermally throttled. Thermal throttling is usually determined by the case design and fan setup.

 

[Quu]

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.

This is all completely wrong. I don't know where to even begin literally everything you said is incorrect in this post, literally everything.

 

[ssgbryan]

You sound extremely bitter and angry. Why are you even here if you loathe Apple so much? Is MR just your punching bag to take out all your frustrations in life and with Apple? Love and hate is a very fine line. I think deep down you really love Apple and that you're just upset that they aren't following your vision. I suggest you find a hobby or a better way to expel that rage. It will get you!

I am neither bitter nor angry. I am irritated.

I am irritated that I wasted 3 years nursing my 4,1 (see sig) while waiting on Apple to get their act together with respect to the Mac Pro. I could have just moved to a Ryzen 1700 based system at the time. I wasted 6 months preparing to transition away from OSX after Timmy showed off the 7,1.

Had Timmy just come out and told the Prosumers that Apple didn't want us as customers anymore, I could have moved on. I would have been ok with that - but that isn't what happened, now is it?

Unlike a LOT of folks around here - I never drank the Apple Kool-aid. I didn't move to Apple because I didn't like Windows - I moved here because IBM had completely dropped support of OS/2. Moving to a Power Mac meant I got rock solid hardware along with Unix based software - as an OS/2 user, I had been spoiled by uptimes that were measured in YEARS, not days or weeks. Wasn't getting that with Windows at the time, so Apple it was.

As a final note - I have a hobby - 3d art. If you are on OSX, you are only doing it on a Mac Pro, because none of the other desktops are really capable of it.

For 15 years I did that on a series of Mac Pros. Now that I have transitioned away - I have much better performance at a much lower price. Unlike OSX users, I now have a clear path forward, I can easily plan upgrades, and never have to worry if I will suddenly have to replace all of my hardware and software.

It is a good feeling - and one Apple users will never have......

I still like my iPad and iPhone though - best product for Kindle.
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This is all completely wrong. I don't know where to even begin literally everything you said is incorrect in this post, literally everything.

Fire up Poser Pro and get back with me.

 

[Quu]

Fire up Poser Pro and get back with me.

I understand you like this 3D software but it has nothing to do with what I quoted you about where you're making incorrect remarks about Apple's relationship with TSMC and the porting of PowerPC code to x86 losing multithreading. I'm a developer, it's simply not true and is in-fact completely false and made up.

 

[goMac]

Had Timmy just come out and told the Prosumers that Apple didn't want us as customers anymore, I could have moved on. I would have been ok with that - but that isn't what happened, now is it?

If only Apple had a CPU that was much cheaper than a Xeon, fast, easy to add multiple cores to, and it's specialty was 3D performance...

Fire up Poser Pro and get back with me.

I think that's already been done.

 

[dspdoc]

I am neither bitter nor angry. I am irritated.

I am irritated that I wasted 3 years nursing my 4,1 (see sig) while waiting on Apple to get their act together with respect to the Mac Pro. I could have just moved to a Ryzen 1700 based system at the time. I wasted 6 months preparing to transition away from OSX after Timmy showed off the 7,1.

Had Timmy just come out and told the Prosumers that Apple didn't want us as customers anymore, I could have moved on. I would have been ok with that - but that isn't what happened, now is it?

Unlike a LOT of folks around here - I never drank the Apple Kool-aid. I didn't move to Apple because I didn't like Windows - I moved here because IBM had completely dropped support of OS/2. Moving to a Power Mac meant I got rock solid hardware along with Unix based software - as an OS/2 user, I had been spoiled by uptimes that were measured in YEARS, not days or weeks. Wasn't getting that with Windows at the time, so Apple it was.

As a final note - I have a hobby - 3d art. If you are on OSX, you are only doing it on a Mac Pro, because none of the other desktops are really capable of it.

For 15 years I did that on a series of Mac Pros. Now that I have transitioned away - I have much better performance at a much lower price. Unlike OSX users, I now have a clear path forward, I can easily plan upgrades, and never have to worry if I will suddenly have to replace all of my hardware and software.

It is a good feeling - and one Apple users will never have......

I still like my iPad and iPhone though - best product for Kindle.
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Fire up Poser Pro and get back with me.

You have some valid points and I too have frustrations with Apple. My main frustration is that they can't seem to leave well enough alone. They are the 1000 lb. gorilla that keeps breaking things for devs just because they are Apple. They demand that you follow them or get left behind.

The truth is I have built 4 stellar PCs that were incredibly powerful and stable in the past 2 years (trying to divorce Apple) and yet I keep coming back. Why? I hate Windows. It's cumbersome, bloated, ugly and just plain frustrating. I could go on and on why I hate Windows, but I will leave you with one specific example. As someone with a severe case of perfectionism and OCD, Windows plain wrecks me. Let's say I install an app on my Mac that I have decided I want to vaporize. I can do it. I can completely remove every trace that it ever existed on my machine. I can dig deep into macOS and scrub every residual file related. Try that simply in Windows. It can't be done. Applications that get installed on Windows get "married" in a way to the OS. I hate it. I also hate all the bizarre underpinnings of Windows that are archaic and make no sense. Anyway, I hear you loud and clear.

 

[pasamio]

Apple notebook or desktop ARM is vaporware - show me an OSX ARM system running a 3d creation suite and get back with me. Show me Blender performance metrics, show me Maya performance metrics, Cinema3d, well you get the idea.

Fully agree that they haven't been released yet. The question was if the performance is comparable to a desktop computer and my response is that on benchmarks that the mobile CPUs can have more than comparable performance to desktop CPUs. Now your definition of desktop CPU seems to exclude many desktop CPU's.

How does that A12X perform under continuous load? Normally, my single image still bake anywhere from 1 to 12 hours, depending on the lighting and how much is going on in the scene.

I've not personally tried it and I haven't seen anything on the web that pushes it towards the 12 hours.

8 cores, 8 threads? - In 2007, that would be pretty good - it would almost match my maxed out 1,1. The A12X won't even match one of the upcoming gaming consoles.

Is the supposition then that anything less is not a desktop CPU? There are plenty of desktop CPU's that don't meet that bar and the upcoming gaming consoles yet unreleased are also vaporware as well in addition to being two or three years later.

Qualities of a Desktop CPU? Cores, threads, & ram - all of my software will take whatever I can throw at it and ask for more. If I was doing this professionally, I'd be on a 32 core Threadripper system with 256Gb of ram.

What you're talking about seems more in line with a workstation or server class CPU than what I'd personally consider a desktop CPU. I think I've consistently mentioned that I don't think it's comparable to the high end CPU from what we've seen thus far.

I am doing 3d art as a hobby - so I am on a maxed out Ryzen 3950 system (16 cores/32 threads, 128Gb of ram).

That would jive to me more as a workstation build rather than a desktop build. Desktop spans a much greater scale down to 4GB, 4 core machines one can buy from the likes of Dell which I would still consider a desktop with a desktop CPU.

It isn't rocket science.......

I agree, it's computers. I don't know why anyone would think this is rocket science. All that stuff is a lot of hot air.

A mobile CPU is thermally throttled, low powered, or both. They have a very limited amount of RAM in comparison to their desktop brethren.

Thermal throttling is a generic CPU feature in modern CPUs and certainly not limited to mobile CPUs. Certainly a feature of mobile CPUs is generally their lower power consumption but even many desktop CPUs exist at the lower end of the power scale (I think Intel's line goes down to 35W; not quite mobile levels but also not high end workstation draw either). I see RAM as a configuration option more than anything, my understanding is that ARM supports ECC RAM though none of the Apple mobile devices have used it because it doesn't make sense for that market.

A workstation has better binned parts, because the system is usually under a continuous heavy load. Parts are validated for software and they have a much longer warranty (AMD workstation GPU cards have a 10 year warranty for instance).

It tends to need more ram ECC ram preferred, because nothing is more irritating that having a render screw up because of a memory error (Another advantage to AMD - all of their CPUs can use ECC ram)

I agree workstation CPU's do generally have better quality (and higher cost) over their desktop CPU counterparts.

I'm with you in sharing the frustration that Apple have decided they are going to leave the Mac behind for a while now. The trashcan was an abomination that never made sense, they seem to have thrown a bone out but it feels short of the mark. I still have a fond spot for the old PowerMac G5 but I wish Apple would at least feign interest with routine CPU/memory updates for their Mac lines instead of just selling hardware that often isn't even competitive at launch and then stagnates for years.

I enjoy MacOS compared to either Linux or Windows, I got sucked in ages ago when I found Mac OS X on laptops where the hardware worked (including suspend/resume), Unix support and a built in X11 server. The platform had reasonably broad support for technologies including items like OpenGL. I'm disappointed that there was a time when MacOS X was the ultimate software engineering platform and that has slowly fallen away. If I was in the 3D graphics space, I'm not sure I'd want to do that on the Mac either and would definitely be looking elsewhere. I still feel there is still a lot of power in MacOS that is either missing from Windows or not as smoothly implemented in Linux but Apple at the same time keep taking away from the platform.

I think at the bottom end of the space the AX chips will do well, I am curious to see how far up the stack they go in the short term. I think a much broader problem is even if Apple ships amazing CPUs capable of matching top tier Xeon CPUs, the marketshare won't be enough for software developers to invest in making existing apps work with that.

 

[alex0002]

On the Ampere processor referenced upstream. Apparently only Lenovo released a server line based on that processor, and it was discontinued in what looks like a really quick timeline. The HR330A and HR350A were a one and two U server that only ran CentOS 7.5, Oracle Linux 7.5. Yeah, HUGE business OS's I'm sure. So what were those servers aimed at? What market? Education? Research? Those servers might have been available over a longer period of time, but they appear to have popped up, and disappeared quickly. Odd...

And the only source for propaganda on them is Ampere! Lenovo has scrubbed them from their site.

Lenovo HR330A Server

Lenovo HR350A Server

You forgot to mention RHEL 7.6 (not to mention that if you can run RHEL and CentOS, you can run the KVM Hypervisor and Openstack). But if we are going to talk about Ampere, let's talk about their latest Ampere Altra 64 bit ARM with up to 80 cores.

Ampere® Altra® – Industry’s First 80-Core Server Processor Unveiled – Ampere Computing

amperecomputing.com

Next Generation Arm Server: Ampere’s Altra 80-core N1 SoC for Hyperscalers against Rome and Xeon

www.anandtech.com

Stacking Up Arm Server Chips Against X86

It is pretty clear at this point that there is going to be a global recession thanks to the coronavirus outbreak. Maybe it will be a V-shaped recession

www.nextplatform.com

The point here is not what Ampere can do with their 80 core CPU today, it's that we now know that 64 bit Arm systems can offer better performance per dollar and better performance per watt than Intel Xeon and AMD Epyc.

One reason that Intel CPUs have had such a successful reign as leaders in the server and high end workstation market, is the R&D that has been funded by millions of x86 pc purchases. In 2020, a large share of the CPU R&D funding is coming from iPhone and other smartphone users.

The main downsides of an Arm 64 Mac Pro that I can see are (1) in the short term, some programs written for Intel CPUs will not be available and (2) the wheels will still cost $700.

I've used VMware fusion for creating and testing VMs that are now running (or have been running) in VMware vSphere clusters, so the lack of Intel CPU support could be a negative for me. But with VMware working on Arm based cloud solutions, and Amazon AWS running Arm we might need both architectures in the short to medium term.

 

[zephonic]

...never mind...

 

[OkiRun]

Does anyone really think Apple wants to go through another 7,1 type iteration even with a change to ARM?
It's such a niche machine... and it doesn't seem to be Job's passion product.

 

[th0masp]

Does anyone really think Apple wants to go through another 7,1 type iteration even with a change to ARM?
It's such a niche machine... and it doesn't seem to be Job's passion product.

That's a concern, yes. Even if a new platform has the potential to be all sorts of faster and less power hungry at the same time, hard to imagine that Apple will suddenly put more attention into desktop computers. I don't think it's Intel that caused those erratic Mac Pro updates over the years nor the four year break for the Mini. And whatever is going on with the iMac Pro....? Looking like a one-off to me.

Their last platform switch happened when they were a computer company, competing against the PC. Which is also where the motivation for Bootcamp must have come from.

Now they are a gadget design shop transitioning to content provider, run by a certain Tim Apple who is convinced you should really think outside the box a little and go with the times - and do your job on an iPad.

 

[OkiRun]

That's a concern, yes. Even if a new platform has the potential to be all sorts of faster and less power hungry at the same time, hard to imagine that Apple will suddenly put more attention into desktop computers. I don't think it's Intel that caused those erratic Mac Pro updates over the years nor the four year break for the Mini. And whatever is going on with the iMac Pro....? Looking like a one-off to me.

Their last platform switch happened when they were a computer company, competing against the PC. Which is also where the motivation for Bootcamp must have come from.

Now they are a gadget design shop transitioning to content provider, run by a certain Tim Apple who is convinced you should really think outside the box a little and go with the times - and do your job on an iPad.

The 7,1 is a great computer. I've had no issues with the BTO options and it's been doing its job 24/7 with only a hiccup from a faulty Pixel Studios plugin. I like its 'modularity' and am looking forward to any new MPX modules that show up; which is why I went with the Pro Vega Duo - leaving an open MPX slot. I just find it hard to believe Jobs wants to go through another Mac Pro iteration any time soon even if a better CPU is available next year. Would he be upset if this is the last rodeo for the desktop Mac Pro line...

[edit] I just think the next 'mac pro' is going to be something radically different than the 7,1

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

You forgot to mention RHEL 7.6 (not to mention that if you can run RHEL and CentOS, you can run the KVM Hypervisor and Openstack). But if we are going to talk about Ampere, let's talk about their latest Ampere Altra 64 bit ARM with up to 80 cores.

Ampere® Altra® – Industry’s First 80-Core Server Processor Unveiled – Ampere Computing

amperecomputing.com

Next Generation Arm Server: Ampere’s Altra 80-core N1 SoC for Hyperscalers against Rome and Xeon

www.anandtech.com

Stacking Up Arm Server Chips Against X86

It is pretty clear at this point that there is going to be a global recession thanks to the coronavirus outbreak. Maybe it will be a V-shaped recession

www.nextplatform.com

The point here is not what Ampere can do with their 80 core CPU today, it's that we now know that 64 bit Arm systems can offer better performance per dollar and better performance per watt than Intel Xeon and AMD Epyc.

One reason that Intel CPUs have had such a successful reign as leaders in the server and high end workstation market, is the R&D that has been funded by millions of x86 pc purchases. In 2020, a large share of the CPU R&D funding is coming from iPhone and other smartphone users.

The main downsides of an Arm 64 Mac Pro that I can see are (1) in the short term, some programs written for Intel CPUs will not be available and (2) the wheels will still cost $700.

I've used VMware fusion for creating and testing VMs that are now running (or have been running) in VMware vSphere clusters, so the lack of Intel CPU support could be a negative for me. But with VMware working on Arm based cloud solutions, and Amazon AWS running Arm we might need both architectures in the short to medium term.

Yes, in a subsequent post, I found a reference to other OSes that were supported. RHEL was specifically mentioned.

One reason Intel processors have such a successful reign is because of Windows as well. Microsoft broke many laws, and agreements to become the top of the OS heap. They tried everything they could to limit the choices of the industry, and stop any possible competition. They even thought of buying Apple, early on, and were able to be talked out of it. Their ruthlessness in the internet browser wars were epic and leaving much carnage.

I was disappointed to see that Lenovo didn't have those servers available. The way to get your third option processor into the spotlight is having it alive and pumping data in real products. Getting buy-in by a manufacturer is hard to do. From everything that I was able to access, I can't prove that Lenovo actual sold those servers. (That isn't actually unheard of. One of our clients found a system from HP that we tried to order from them. I can't remember the details, but it sounded good for them, and we tried to order it. We were told it 'hadn't shipped yet', but our name was on the list when it did. We got occasional updates, promising shipping 'real soon now'. And it never shipped. It disappeared from their website, and finally our rep admitted that the system was discontinued. It never shipped. If it was never 'born', how can it be discontinued. There was no continue to stop!)

But anyway, it's still a Windows world predominantly. If there was a way to run multiple Windows servers and domains as VMs on a beefy Ampere server, and it could be proven that it saves money, and is rock stable, it would go a long way to make people see the need, and think different, and dump wasteful Intel servers.

But in reality, maybe AMD has a better chance of knocking, and keeping Intel in second place. But it's also possible that Ampere will be a niche market player, like SPARC, and never make it to the big time.

 

[ssgbryan]

The 7,1 is a great computer. I've had no issues with the BTO options and it's been doing its job 24/7 with only a hiccup from a faulty Pixel Studios plugin. I like its 'modularity' and am looking forward to any new MPX modules that show up; which is why I went with the Pro Vega Duo - leaving an open MPX slot. I just find it hard to believe Jobs wants to go through another Mac Pro iteration any time soon even if a better CPU is available next year. Would he be upset if this is the last rodeo for the desktop Mac Pro line...

[edit] I just think the next 'mac pro' is going to be something radically different than the 7,1

The 7,1 is not a great computer.

Every single subsystem was obsolete the day it was released.
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I understand you like this 3D software but it has nothing to do with what I quoted you about where you're making incorrect remarks about Apple's relationship with TSMC and the porting of PowerPC code to x86 losing multithreading. I'm a developer, it's simply not true and is in-fact completely false and made up.

Were you part of the Poser development team at the time? Have you used the software? If you havent - then you are the one that doesn't know what they are talking about.

Poser is the benchmark for 3d at the hobbyist level.

Fire the program up and get back with me.

You will get the opportunity to be as surprised as I was.

 

[Quu]

Were you part of the Poser development team at the time? Have you used the software? If you havent - then you are the one that doesn't know what they are talking about.

Poser is the benchmark for 3d at the hobbyist level.

Fire the program up and get back with me.

You will get the opportunity to be as surprised as I was.

You made a generalised statement that Apple moving their Macs from PowerPC to x86 made all multi-threaded PowerPC apps become single threaded. This is completely false. What poser did with their app is on them and has nothing to do with the architecture switch, just their own poor development practices.

Go back and read your own post you made no mention of Poser at all in that post, period.

Here is what you said in-case you forgot.

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.

This is false. PPC multi-threaded apps (implying apps other than Poser) did not become single threaded. There were no threading changes in the switch, I should know I write software using the stack and I had a G4 PowerBook at the time when I switched to Intel. I was using XCode at the time. Maybe Poser was a Carbon app at the time or didn't use XCode and so their development was behind the standards expected of the platform.

 

[th0masp]

I just think the next 'mac pro' is going to be something radically different than the 7,1

Teaser image ...? ?

 

[pollycat]

For those who know a lot more about these things than I do (and I realise we're all just speculating here):

Would it be possible for Apple to offer an ARM MPX module for the current Intel Mac Pros and some way of then dual-booting the system, choosing ARM or Intel as desired? Or is that impossible in current Intel Mac Pros?

(Similarly, could they later sell ARM Mac Pros with the option to buy an Intel MPX card?)

 

[Pressure]

AFA TSMC - AMD is their best friend, not Apple.

Apple is TSMCs largest 7nm customer.

 

[Quu]

For those who know a lot more about these things than I do (and I realise we're all just speculating here):

Would it be possible for Apple to offer an ARM MPX module for the current Intel Mac Pros and some way of then dual-booting the system, choosing ARM or Intel as desired? Or is that impossible in current Intel Mac Pros?

(Similarly, could they later sell ARM Mac Pros with the option to buy an Intel MPX card?

They could provide an ARM co-processor on a PCIe card that gave you a bootable environment. The chances of them doing that though are in my opinion zero. It is a lot of work for a very small portion of their overall Mac install base. I don't think they would ever even come close to breaking even on such a venture.

They are much more likely to just release an ARM version of the Mac Pro and move forward that way. Any MPX modules you purchase for the current Intel based Mac Pro will likely work in the ARM based Mac Pro if they keep the form factor the same which I think they will as it's quite extensible and well thought out, no reason to abandon it with a processor switch.

Also you can buy today x86 processors that come on PCIe cards. These are the Xeon Phi range from Intel. But it's not the sort of thing you can just run any x86 software on, since it's a co-processor the software has to be written to take advantage of the co-processors existence.

 

[Macintosh IIcx]

They are much more likely to just release an ARM version of the Mac Pro and move forward that way. Any MPX modules you purchase for the current Intel based Mac Pro will likely work in the ARM based Mac Pro if they keep the form factor the same which I think they will as it's quite extensible and well thought out, no reason to abandon it with a processor switch.

Well, I don’t know whether that would happen. Using an Intel CPU means using an Intel chipset which in turn means being constrained to whatever the chipset provides. Maybe Apple wants to create their own super fast inter chip protocol saying goodbye to PCI-E and what not. Once the Intel CPU and the Intel chipset is gone, they can be pretty much do what they want. Ram, storage, GPU - everything could be interconnected in new ways. This is maybe the biggest change that could come out of this move. Get rid of any bottlenecks, but create their own USB-C controllers etc to keep the vanilla connections to other device, but it could be a completely clean sheet. Not sure Tim Cook is bold enough, but Jobs might have been.

 

[Quu]

Well, I don’t know whether that would happen. Using an Intel CPU means using an Intel chipset which in turn means being constrained to whatever the chipset provides. Maybe Apple wants to create their own super fast inter chip protocol saying goodbye to PCI-E and what not. Once the Intel CPU and the Intel chipset is gone, they can be pretty much do what they want. Ram, storage, GPU - everything could be interconnected in new ways. This is maybe the biggest change that could come out of this move. Get rid of any bottlenecks, but create their own USB-C controllers etc to keep the vanilla connections to other device, but it could be a completely clean sheet. Not sure Tim Cook is bold enough, but Jobs might have been.

PCIe is an industry standard and it's not tied to Intel. They don't even offer the latest version of PCIe on any of their products currently.

PCIe as a standard is supported on Intel processors and Apples own ARM processors as-well as SPARC, IBM Power, the Open RISCV processors, AMD processors etc

There would be literally no point at all for Apple to abandon it. Similarly Thunderbolt is no longer tied to Apple and third party host chips that support it are coming to market. Apple could integrate Thunderbolt into their own SoC designs going forward.

I get what you're saying regarding that Apple could go fully custom if they wanted but there really is no reason to do that with PCIe it has a very clear and concise roadmap and won't cause them any bottlenecks. The switch away from Intel solves real problems they are having by contrast.

 

[pasamio]

But anyway, it's still a Windows world predominantly. If there was a way to run multiple Windows servers and domains as VMs on a beefy Ampere server, and it could be proven that it saves money, and is rock stable, it would go a long way to make people see the need, and think different, and dump wasteful Intel servers.

In the server space Windows is an order of magnitude behind Linux. Even on Azure, Linux is the dominant deployment of instances. Both Amazon and Google have been heavy Linux deployers for their own stacks and their cloud offerings as well. The Chinese platforms are all Linux as well (Tencent, Alibaba) and their cloud offerings. Then you look to the top domains on the web and they are dominated by Linux.

At the smaller end of the scale and for some enterprise use cases, Windows is definitely there but when you scale up to environments with thousands of servers or look at the cloud then Linux servers are the winners there. Amazon are already offering ARM instances with some names in the testimonial section you might recognise. Amazon have been working on their own custom silicon for a while via Annapurna Labs.

That's not counting a lot of smaller devices running Linux or BSD derivatives for embedded hardware, networking gear, NAS and more.

It is by no means a Windows world predominantly in the server space.