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Apple Says no to Intel: Future Products Will make Use of Their Own ARM-Based Processors
In case you read the press announcements from Apple, you might have noticed a pretty big shift in the silicon paradigm. Apple will no longer make use of Intel processors for their future products, but rather will move to their own developed SoCs based on ARM architecture.
We'd figure to take the press release towards a separated news-item, as it is really big news and a blow in the face for Intel. Apple has confirmed the rumor that has been going around for years, opting out on Intel CPUs and moving to its own custom processors. The company announced that it will have its first Macs with its own processors later this year. They will continue to launch products with Intel processors for a few years, but how many years that will be is not really known. In any case, the transition process will take at least 2 years to complete. The company has already shown one powered by an Apple A12Z Bionic chip to demonstrate performance. The new SoC is less powerful than the upcoming 5nm Apple A14, but Apple showed that it was capable of running Final Cut Pro and editing 4K video from 3 different sources simultaneously while moving an Apple screen.
Apple announced it has been working on a family of these Mac SoCs and that all of the demos shown earlier today were to showcase the features of macOS Big Sur, which were performed on that ARM-based Mac. The transition to Apple's own SoCs will give Macs industry-leading performance per watt and is also working on high-performance GPUs as well, confirming that the company will be moving away from Intel (and AMD) in the future. Macs with this new ARM Silicon will have access to the Neural Engine, which will allow developers to take advantage of machine learning performance at billions of instructions per second.
Apple aims to improve the performance per watt on its Mac processors with its custom silicon, something it has not been able to achieve with Intel processors. Although Apple did not show any graphs to compare the performance of its processor with Intel, it showed the following comparison during the event.
asturur
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Posts: 1025
Joined: 2010-05-12
Senior Member
Posts: 1025
Joined: 2010-05-12
#5802270 Posted on: 06/23/2020 11:51 AM
So is not X86-64 right? is something else.
I wonder if it makes sense at all, seems like wine won't be usable out of the box.
So is not X86-64 right? is something else.
I wonder if it makes sense at all, seems like wine won't be usable out of the box.
Fender178
Senior Member
Posts: 4184
Joined: 2004-09-28
Senior Member
Posts: 4184
Joined: 2004-09-28
#5802282 Posted on: 06/23/2020 12:46 PM
Good on Apple for allowing users to run their programs that haven't been updated once these chips drops. Also I am curious to see how powerful these chips are and if they can do the stuff that the Intel chips did such as Video editing in Final Cut and if Apple can solve the thermal issues that plague their laptops with these new chips.
Good on Apple for allowing users to run their programs that haven't been updated once these chips drops. Also I am curious to see how powerful these chips are and if they can do the stuff that the Intel chips did such as Video editing in Final Cut and if Apple can solve the thermal issues that plague their laptops with these new chips.
asturur
Senior Member
Posts: 1025
Joined: 2010-05-12
Senior Member
Posts: 1025
Joined: 2010-05-12
#5802289 Posted on: 06/23/2020 01:03 PM
I imagine the first round of notebooks with those new chips will be the AIR and the non pro MacBook.
They need to build momentum for the pro users to move away from the intel.
If they are doing the mac Pro ( starting 5000$ ) with intel for the foreseeable future, they will have to support intel for very long time.
Curious how the market and devs will react.
I imagine the first round of notebooks with those new chips will be the AIR and the non pro MacBook.
They need to build momentum for the pro users to move away from the intel.
If they are doing the mac Pro ( starting 5000$ ) with intel for the foreseeable future, they will have to support intel for very long time.
Curious how the market and devs will react.
schmidtbag
Senior Member
Posts: 5645
Joined: 2012-11-10
Senior Member
Posts: 5645
Joined: 2012-11-10
#5802312 Posted on: 06/23/2020 02:11 PM
Well... if it works and drivers aren't an issue... then good for them!
Apple is probably going to be shocked how much their app store purchases will plummet, because of all the Hackintosh users who can't switch.
Then there are the people who need to dual-boot with Windows and can't. ARM does have virtualization instructions, but lacks enough instructions where emulating x86 Windows will be far too slow. You could argue "what about the version of Windows 10 for ARM?" but that's "Windows for Snapdragon". It doesn't work on just any ARM platform.
So is not X86-64 right? is something else.
I wonder if it makes sense at all, seems like wine won't be usable out of the box.
It's ARM, but Apple's own flavor of it. Same kinda thing that's in iPhones and iPads.
Depends on what you mean by "out of the box". There has been an ARM version of wine in the works for years, but, it's meant to run Windows ARM programs, not x86. However, due to Rosetta 2, you should still be able to run x86 wine.
Also I am curious to see how powerful these chips are and if they can do the stuff that the Intel chips did such as Video editing in Final Cut and if Apple can solve the thermal issues that plague their laptops with these new chips.
I'm pretty confident there won't be any thermal issues with the CPUs. Apple will probably be pushing the limits of ARM, but it's still ARM. Since Apple has so much control over their ecosystem, they can have everything optimized for dozens of cores while staying within a small power envelope. I wouldn't be surprised if the first ARM-based Mac Pro would have a 64-core CPU, maybe even higher (since ARM doesn't have SMT).
lol I sound like an Apple fanboy but I swear I'm not; I've never bought an Apple product in my life. I just find this situation interesting.
Well... if it works and drivers aren't an issue... then good for them!
Apple is probably going to be shocked how much their app store purchases will plummet, because of all the Hackintosh users who can't switch.
Then there are the people who need to dual-boot with Windows and can't. ARM does have virtualization instructions, but lacks enough instructions where emulating x86 Windows will be far too slow. You could argue "what about the version of Windows 10 for ARM?" but that's "Windows for Snapdragon". It doesn't work on just any ARM platform.
So is not X86-64 right? is something else.
I wonder if it makes sense at all, seems like wine won't be usable out of the box.
It's ARM, but Apple's own flavor of it. Same kinda thing that's in iPhones and iPads.
Depends on what you mean by "out of the box". There has been an ARM version of wine in the works for years, but, it's meant to run Windows ARM programs, not x86. However, due to Rosetta 2, you should still be able to run x86 wine.
Also I am curious to see how powerful these chips are and if they can do the stuff that the Intel chips did such as Video editing in Final Cut and if Apple can solve the thermal issues that plague their laptops with these new chips.
I'm pretty confident there won't be any thermal issues with the CPUs. Apple will probably be pushing the limits of ARM, but it's still ARM. Since Apple has so much control over their ecosystem, they can have everything optimized for dozens of cores while staying within a small power envelope. I wouldn't be surprised if the first ARM-based Mac Pro would have a 64-core CPU, maybe even higher (since ARM doesn't have SMT).
lol I sound like an Apple fanboy but I swear I'm not; I've never bought an Apple product in my life. I just find this situation interesting.
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Well... if it works and drivers aren't an issue... then good for them!