What will be the PC response to Apple's M1 ?

[jz0309]

Who will manufacture the MS ARM chips? And the MS ARM-based servers?

It could be somewhat awkward for people like HP and Dell having to build servers using chips MS supply (whoever actually manufactures them).

I agree that power usage is a major factor.

Even in a single-server office environment, some clever engineering could produce a server which can keep running, albeit in some special low-power mode, with very modest UPS capacity. E.g. switch off the higher power cores completely. Especially with SSD storage. At present a UPS that can keep an x86 server running through even a pretty short power outage is expensive, fairly big, heavy and often noisy.

PS I also see ARM-based PCs (of whatever sort) being the natural result of people seeing Apple machines and MS ARM-based servers. Why wouldn't people choose ARM over x86 if they have even some of the advantages we are already seeing in M1 machines?

most likely TSMC, GF is now too far behind process node-wise ... The HP and Dell would be happy to build the servers, keeps their assembly lines busy ...

I agree that some will want to see Arm-based PCs, but for the average user, Intel is a household brand, that now 25 year old chime of "intel inside" still humms on every PC ad that runs on TV, average user is loyal from that perspective and does not care about the performance improvement, so a transition would start but it'll be a slow one

 

[polyphenol]

most likely TSMC, GF is now too far behind process node-wise ... The HP and Dell would be happy to build the servers, keeps their assembly lines busy ...

I agree that some will want to see Arm-based PCs, but for the average user, Intel is a household brand, that now 25 year old chime of "intel inside" still humms on every PC ad that runs on TV, average user is loyal from that perspective and does not care about the performance improvement, so a transition would start but it'll be a slow one

I think Intel Inside is rather dead now. Yes - some will still respond to it. But how many years ago did AMD start to get ahead of Intel? Over 20 years ago the Athlon was looking good. (Yes, Intel fought back, etc.)

Ryzen processors are everywhere. Often the graphics card is billed more obviously than the processor.

 

[matrix07]

It seems the production facility/line of Apple runs on Windows computers and Tim does not even appears shocked.

Why would Apple waste their time writing some software specific for the tasks to build Mac Pro while there're already available tools? Apple has its hands quite full at the moment with macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and how many more OS I couldn't count.

 

[AndyMacAndMic]

Why would Apple waste their time writing some software specific for the tasks to build Mac Pro while there're already available tools? Apple has its hands quite full at the moment with macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and how many more OS I couldn't count.

And your point is?

 

[matrix07]

And your point is?

..that I don't know what you point is in your post. Do you think Apple should waste their time writing some software that they wouldn't sell to public? A software that they might not have an expertise on?

 

[jz0309]

I think Intel Inside is rather dead now. Yes - some will still respond to it. But how many years ago did AMD start to get ahead of Intel? Over 20 years ago the Athlon was looking good. (Yes, Intel fought back, etc.)

Ryzen processors are everywhere. Often the graphics card is billed more obviously than the processor.

sure AMD is biting into Intel's share, but Intel is going to fight back on them harder than before, they do know that they lost Apple, they do realize that Apple is likely going to gain market share, they ar going to do whatever they can to keep AMD at arms length ...

 

[AndyMacAndMic]

..that I don't know what you point is in your post.

Maybe if you read the posts I reacted to you see it in the right context?

 

[matrix07]

Maybe if you read the posts I reacted to you see it in the right context?

I had read it, before quoting you. He said there are some environments that Windows is needed. You posted an environment that Windows software is needed. So what's your point?

 

[richinaus]

Perhaps this is a game of differing expectations? Mac users expect full power unplugged, then get salty about a 10% hit. Wintel laptop users are so used to a power limited state while on battery that they don't care.

on my recently purchased and about to be returned HP Zbook studio G7, I couldn't believe how bad it was on battery power. It came as a bit of a shock.

Also the fans and heat far exceed the MBP 16".

We Mac users seem to like complaining about everything, but once you experience the competition you come running back with gratitude that Apple exists.

It is going to be a long time before the PC market can be able to directly compete with Apple, if ever. I simply cannot see it happening as the M1 and macOS integration is very special.
Unfortunately I will keep my clunky PC's for certain apps not available [or any good] on a Mac, but for general computer work the Mac is going to get more and more popular, once customers realise.

Give it a year for the general public to realise. Its like the iPad, watch and phone.

 

[Argon_]

We Mac users seem to like complaining about everything, but once you experience the competition you come running back with gratitude that Apple exists.

It is going to be a long time before the PC market can be able to directly compete with Apple, if ever. I simply cannot see it happening as the M1 and macOS integration is very special.
Unfortunately I will keep my clunky PC's for certain apps not available [or any good] on a Mac, but for general computer work the Mac is going to get more and more popular, once customers realise.

This reminds me. A friend of mine with a speced out Dell G7 likes to multitask and tabspam. He took the computer out; the cursor moved in an abject slideshow until he plugged the machine in. It was throttled to quad core Intel MBA levels of lag without AC power.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

they don't need to catch up, their Surface line is a niche, a small percentage of Apple's share of the PC market ... their interest in Arm is the server business ...

It should be pointed out that this discussion thread is about the (flawed) premise of PC [sic] vs. Apple, not Microsoft vs. Amazon vs. Google vs. [whatever cloud service you wish to fill in here].

My response was regarding this thread's discussion topic, not Microsoft's overall strategy in all of the market segments they compete in.

Apple is basically a consumer software & services company whose software and services run best on their proprietary hardware. That's paraphrasing Steve.

 

[richinaus]

This reminds me. A friend of mine with a speced out Dell G7 likes to multitask and tabspam. He took the computer out; the cursor moved in an abject slideshow until he plugged the machine in. It was throttled to quad core Intel MBA levels of lag without AC power.

Yeah mate, it is pretty bad on the battery. I changed the settings to ‘performance’ and it improved, but still not close to my 16” MBP.

My desktop PC on the other hand smashes mac desktops in terms of value and what I use it for.

It should be pointed out that this discussion thread is about the (flawed) premise of PC [sic] vs. Apple, not Microsoft vs. Amazon vs. Google vs. [whatever cloud service you wish to fill in here].

My response was regarding this thread's discussion topic, not Microsoft's overall strategy in all of the market segments they compete in.

Apple is basically a consumer software & services company whose software and services run best on their proprietary hardware. That's paraphrasing Steve.

Yes, this last paragraph nails it, in what Apple is and what they should be used for. M1 with MacOS and mac apps is simply amazing.
Move away from these apps and things are not as amazing.

 

[Abazigal]

I doubt we will see the various stakeholders in the PC market put aside their differences long enough to be able to collaborate on anything meaningful enough in the next few years.

 

[JouniS]

It is going to be a long time before the PC market can be able to directly compete with Apple, if ever. I simply cannot see it happening as the M1 and macOS integration is very special.

I wouldn't exaggerate the advantage Apple has over PCs. A large part of it is the advantage TSMC has over Intel, which has nothing to do with Apple. If Intel decides that the old political/business reasons against outsourcing production no longer apply, it can catch up pretty quickly.

Tighter integration is not an advantage. It's a compromise. The integrated system runs more efficiently and more smoothly, but it's rarely the exact system you wanted. You bought the closest match the manufacturer was willing to sell, but you probably had to pay extra for features you didn't need. Or maybe you got a less capable system than you wanted because you didn't want to pay the price for the unnecessary features.

 

[JMacHack]

Ryzen processors are everywhere. Often the graphics card is billed more obviously than the processor.

Ryzen is everywhere in the DIY market. They still are having an uphill battle getting into the prebuilt market, and that's where the sales/profit is. Intel can provide more discounts (or kickbacks, they've been caught before), and more chips (they still have bigger capacity than AMD) to the PC brands than AMD can.

If Intel decides that the old political/business reasons against outsourcing production no longer apply, it can catch up pretty quickly.

From the articles I've read, the writing is on the wall for x86 as a whole, as it would be impossible to replicate the 2 major architectural improvements of Apple Silicon (out-of-order execution comes to mind). Intel even less so, as their problems run deeper than just not being able to get nodes smaller than 14nm up to snuff. Reminder: there's both a culture war going on between contracted and non-contracted employees and power struggles at the top. That's a monumental effort to fix, for any company, let alone one that relies on being on the cutting edge of tech.

 

[satcomer]

All I know according to several gaming places AMD chips seem to of major steam of the PC gaming World! So Intel is out because their processors all seem to generate to much heat these days!

I tend think innPC gaming world AMD chips are talking over! Now with Apple M1 basic chips doing so well with hard core programs without much heat! I can’t wait for the 1X in more Pro Macs!

 

[s66]

I can’t wait for the 1X in more Pro Macs!

I think the ones to wait for are due in a bit less than 2 years (Those for whatever comes in the next MP)
That will be when we hopefully really see the long term plans for their high-end solution as they'll have to show their hand at least a little bit when it comes to large, expandable memory capacities, expandable machines where one can chose and adapt GPU style performance, how they'll deal with a bus to connect those GPU style systems to the SOC, etc.
That's also where they'll have to support massive amounts of I/O to PCIe busses etc, more cores than ever before, etc. All interesting to see where they go. I'm sure those working on this inside Apple already have a one or more roadmap(s) ready. As they've been planning this for long enough already.
Still I'm very interested to see what the next MP will feature once it's ready for production. [Although having a few MP7,1s it's not the most reassuring thing that those will be the last Intel based MPs ever even if they're now not even one year old]

 

[s66]

I have rented racks in colocation sites around the world and in the last decade they all are far more limiting on power usage than on physical space you get.
Power usage in any data center is in today's world a huge deal and a huge cost as the facility needs to scale multiple times to the power used by the devices inside:
- They need their redundant power feeds to each scale to it so that in an N+1 or N+2 situation they still get enough without overloading anything. These things cost a small fortune.
- They need their onsite backups (batteries, generators, power switches, ...) to scale to what the facility uses (again the costs are non-negligible just for having these things, and the bigger they are the more they cost to maintain and keep in good condition)
- They need to distribute that power to the racks (not the worst cost, but in big facilities this eats a lot of copper - something that's far from cheap)
- They need to COOL the very same amount again (actively or passively, but every watt used needs to get out again) and as even cooling is used in N+1 or N+2 setups: it does add up. It also means the cooling needs to be powered, and esp. active cooling is not very efficient in itself: it uses a lot of power.
- The cooling also absolutely needs to be available during longer power outages, so the backup power supplies need to scale for this as well in addition to the direct power use.

All things considered: there are few existing locations that can currently be used at their physical capacity and they all are struggling with their power limits. Increasing those in an existing building that's operational is very, very hard. As you often don't have the room to put more power equipment once the facility is operational at it's design limits. Adding additional cooling is even harder in many cases.

Those running such data centers will for sure have an eye out for a machine that can do the same computational work while using a fraction of the electricity than an Intel based machine currently can.

Just imagine taking out a mere 100Watt per CPU in a data center were you can have let's say 42 in a rack, and have hundreds of those racks. Small towns use less electricity than what you just saved.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

There's nothing new about this.

When Apple builds a new datacenter, it's in a place that has cheap (and green) power, like hydroelectric.

There's no surprise why the bitcoin miners set up shop in Iceland years ago: geothermal energy (from active volcanos) provides cheap electricity.

And back in June, Johny Sroudji repeatedly pounded the "performance per watt" focus of Apple Silicon.

Hell, if you run BOINC on your computer, you are essentially donating electricity. The world has tons of idle CPUs available at its disposal. What distributed computing efforts really need is electricity.

My guess is that Apple will load up their own datacenters with Apple Silicon powered servers and save a ton on electricity costs. They won't sell their silicon to third parties and it will end up being a competitive advantage.

 

[spiderman0616]

There's nothing new about this.

When Apple builds a new datacenter, it's in a place that has cheap (and green) power, like hydroelectric.

There's no surprise why the bitcoin miners set up shop in Iceland years ago: geothermal energy (from active volcanos) provides cheap electricity.

And back in June, Johny Sroudji repeatedly pounded the "performance per watt" focus of Apple Silicon.

Hell, if you run BOINC on your computer, you are essentially donating electricity. The world has tons of idle CPUs available at its disposal. What distributed computing efforts really need is electricity.

My guess is that Apple will load up their own datacenters with Apple Silicon powered servers and save a ton on electricity costs. They won't sell their silicon to third parties and it will end up being a competitive advantage.

That's super interesting and makes total sense.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

The power-efficient quad-core Core i7-1165G7 hit some average 1450-1550 points on Geekbench 5 single-core tests

By "power efficient" I assume you mean just under 30W in terms of Max TDP-up? The M1 in the MBA M1 maxes out at just over 10W and 1.3W when using just the Icestorm efficiency cores when at idle idle/for background tasks.

Intel will never get close to Apple with their current architecture and in terms of thermal performance, and Apple hasn't even begun to scale vertically (clock count) or horizontally (core count) to reach their raw power potential.

Apple are literally years ahead of Intel.

Looking more broadly, there are two main areas where energy efficiency and thermals are absolutely paramount - battery powered mobile devices, and in the datacenter. Since the vast majority of datacenter OS/software does not rely on Microsoft, I think Intel is in a world of trouble in this space as well.

AMD is in a much better position in the consumer space (both at the high end and power-efficiency end) and I agree it will be really interesting to see what NVIDIA can do with the IP that comes with the purchase of ARM.

But all of this change in the non-Apple consumer space will be dictated by what Microsoft decides to do with Windows in terms of how much they go in on ARM which in turn will determine which CPU/SoC manufacturers become relevant and dominant.

The only way I see Intel making the kinds of generational leaps needed to catch up is to swallow their pride and divest out of fabrication and outsource this like everyone else does. The problem is they are a huge ship to steer and this would go against their founding principles from 50 years ago which I imagine are ingrained deeply in their culture.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

My guess is that Apple will load up their own datacenters with Apple Silicon powered servers and save a ton on electricity costs. They won't sell their silicon to third parties and it will end up being a competitive advantage.

100% agree with this. I don't think it's just Apple that will be moving to ARM based servers though, I think intel is in a lot of trouble in this space as well.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

That being said, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE the higher end Air. It fits all of my needs, but the price needs to drop. Until then, the used/refurb market is still my best friend.

I would argue that the base M1 MBA at its current price, with it's retina screen, raw performance and battery life easily represents the best value laptop in its market segment and price range.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

Once Intel is running on 5nm then the performance advantage will evaporate. We live in a Windows centric world so it’s great for Apple to have a lead but the incompatibilities of these ARM machines mean they’re not useful to most normal users. Mac OS X will continue to be a niche product, even more so due to its inability to run Windows x64 too.

I think you totally misunderstand what most "normal" users primary use their computers for.

Email
Web
MS Office
Messaging/video calls
Basic photo viewing/minor editing
Document viewing (Eg PDF)

All of these tasks can be accomplished using either exactly the same apps as under x64 Windows, or highly capable alternative applications.

Hint: most "normal" users are not hardcore PC gamers.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

they also show that Anandtech graph of the performance increase of Apple chips vs Intel... doesn’t seem to be like a exhaustion race and more like a steady marathonist at a constant speed pace slowly increasing the ground gained over a very long period of time whose training and chosen pace was prepared before... it’s too constant.

It IS too constant isn't it? In fact it's almost perfectly linear. I believe the reason for this is because Apple was actually holding back the performance gains on their A series chips purposefully for the sake of battery life and the thermal constraints in their mobile devices.

Once Apple starts releasing their iMacs and Mac Pros with much more efficient active cooling and mains power, I think we will see exponential power gains for a number of years at the top end of their chips until they start to plateau back to more incremental gains.