TR Forums

ludi wrote:

Waco wrote:

It's a doorway to running on full ARM chips.  There's no other end-road to this.  They get the basics done for low-power active sleep, then start cranking on making the entire stack run fully on ARM.

I wouldn't make that assumption just yet.  Low power design features are often at direct odds with high performance, which is part of the reason why both Apple and Google implemented a coprocessor scheme in their recent phone designs.  Apple uses a Motion Coprocessor (iPhone 6 and up) to gather and interpret sensor data before deciding whether to bother the main CPU about it; Google's Sensor Hub (Nexus 5X/6P & Pixel) does that and also manages the camera and outbound radios.

Edit: For Apple, it's actually the iPhone 5S and up, along with various tablets and most iPads starting with the Air generation.  Also some Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung products, etc. have their own hub or integrate another vendor's solution.

Vhalidictes wrote:

My mistake, JBI - I had just read _Chrispy's post: "And of course DirectX 9/10/11/12 for, uh, Apple gaming."

You're right, people not planning on playing games can pretty much already virtualize anything needed.

Klickey wrote:

I heard the news. Apple is trying to reduce relying on their supplier for components. I thought they can do this long ago already, they're such a big company with talented employees and IT experts.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Klickey wrote:

I heard the news. Apple is trying to reduce relying on their supplier for components. I thought they can do this long ago already, they're such a big company with talented employees and IT experts.

They still don't fab their own stuff. Shifting to ARM means shifting away from relying on Intel and towards relying on TSMC/Samsung. Until Apple buys its own fabs, you don't have to worry about them going ARM-only in Macs.

The way they're doing it right now they're getting tiny chips from other suppliers, and that's fine. Building the Mac's CPU on ARM means much larger dies.

Super-risky, and 2017 Apple is very risk-averse.

just brew it! wrote:

Just because they're good at designing iDevices doesn't mean they know how to design/fab an entire CPU chip. Engineering skills in one area generally don't translate easily to another. That said, they did some of their own SoC design after their acquisition of PA Semi (which brought former AMD CPU designer Jim Keller to Apple); presumably in-house efforts like that are still ongoing, but I honestly have no idea.

just brew it! wrote:

It's still an ARM core (not a from-scratch design), and they rely on 3rd party fabs.

NTMBK wrote:

The Apple A9X was a 147mm^2 die, bigger than a Skylake quad core. They really aren't tiny any more.

derFunkenstein wrote:

They still don't fab their own stuff. Shifting to ARM means shifting away from relying on Intel and towards relying on TSMC/Samsung. Until Apple buys its own fabs, you don't have to worry about them going ARM-only in Macs.

The way they're doing it right now they're getting tiny chips from other suppliers, and that's fine. Building the Mac's CPU on ARM means much larger dies.

Super-risky, and 2017 Apple is very risk-averse.

End User wrote:

Why is a larger die size risky?

derFunkenstein wrote:

NTMBK wrote:

The Apple A9X was a 147mm^2 die, bigger than a Skylake quad core. They really aren't tiny any more.

The A9X is an iPad Pro chip. It didn't ship in nearly the same quantities that the regular A9 in the iPhone 6S family does, and it's slower than the Skylake quad, besides.

Also, it was a bigger die because it doesn't have the transistor density. We all know that there's a world of difference between TSMC/Samsung/GloFo "10nm" and Intel's "10nm" processes. Everyone else's manufacturing suffers from what can be kindly referred to as "marketing deflation" and more realistically termed "utter BS".

DancinJack wrote:

End User wrote:

Why is a larger die size risky?

I mean, you know the answer to this. A larger die just isn't going to yield at the same rate as a smaller die.

DancinJack wrote:

lol all hail Geekbench? C'mon End User.

DancinJack wrote:

If you think the A11 and its performance is comparable to Kaby Lake then I don't know how to help you.

derfunk wrote:

Apple's new iPad ads include a kid saying "what's a computer?" so I'm sure it won't be long before the Mac is dropped entirely

derFunkenstein wrote:

Apple's new iPad ads include a kid saying "what's a computer?" so I'm sure it won't be long before the Mac is dropped entirely.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

derFunkenstein wrote:

Apple's new iPad ads include a kid saying "what's a computer?" so I'm sure it won't be long before the Mac is dropped entirely.

Although you can now use an iPad as a 2nd screen for a Mac, which has now come full-circle.

Glorious wrote:

derfunk wrote:

Apple's new iPad ads include a kid saying "what's a computer?" so I'm sure it won't be long before the Mac is dropped entirely

"Introducing the REVOLUTIONARY, INNOVATIVE, ENTIRELY NEW, iOS SDK device!"

<CROWD GOES WILD. A PC is thrown into the rabid throng only to be torn apart in seconds by bare hands & teeth. End User drops dead instantly, croaking "....but it was USB 3.1 GEN 1?!" as he is fatally poisoned by a piece of an obsolete USB 3.0 port.>

derFunkenstein wrote:

Apple's new iPad ads include a kid saying "what's a computer?" so I'm sure it won't be long before the Mac is dropped entirely.

derFunkenstein wrote:

Apple marketing pushes Apple exec belief that the PC is dead? Shocking.

Waco wrote:

ludi wrote:

Waco wrote:

It's a doorway to running on full ARM chips.  There's no other end-road to this.  They get the basics done for low-power active sleep, then start cranking on making the entire stack run fully on ARM.

I wouldn't make that assumption just yet.  Low power design features are often at direct odds with high performance, which is part of the reason why both Apple and Google implemented a coprocessor scheme in their recent phone designs.  Apple uses a Motion Coprocessor (iPhone 6 and up) to gather and interpret sensor data before deciding whether to bother the main CPU about it; Google's Sensor Hub (Nexus 5X/6P & Pixel) does that and also manages the camera and outbound radios.

Edit: For Apple, it's actually the iPhone 5S and up, along with various tablets and most iPads starting with the Air generation.  Also some Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung products, etc. have their own hub or integrate another vendor's solution.

Sure, but I don't see any reason they couldn't do something similar in the non-Pro versions of the Mac. There are some high-performance ARM designs, and they could easily go with a BIG.little design for the new Mac once they figure these humps out.

“We want to be transparent and communicate openly with our pro community so we want them to know that the Mac Pro is a 2019 product. It’s not something for this year,” Tom Boger, Apple’s senior director of Mac hardware product marketing, told TechCrunch. “In addition to transparency for pro customers on an individual basis, there’s also a larger fiscal reasoning behind it.”

Apple understands that its new iMac Pro has a substantial crossover with the customer that might purchase the updated Mac Pro, and so the company wants to give some timeline clarity to help those pro users better grasp where the products stand in the pipeline. “We know that there’s a lot of customers today that are making purchase decisions on the iMac Pro and whether or not they should wait for the Mac Pro,” Boger added.