Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, Flying Fox, morphine
JustAnEngineer wrote:When Apple used MOS 6502, was that the end of x86?
Aranarth wrote:x86 is not going away any time soon but it does have more competition than it sued to have.
setaG_lliB wrote:"The Pentium Killer"
"Is this the end of x86?"
That's all you heard back in '94 when the PowerPC first came out. Even Microsoft was dabbling in non x86 versions of WinNT, just as they are now with Win10 on ARM. And for several years, PPC was faster than x86, especially at floating point. But, by the time the PIII and Athlon hit a GHz and gained SIMD support, x86 had easily caught up with the PPC G4 in overall performance. To make matters worse for the PPC alliance, Intel and AMD were rolling out higher clocked CPUs on a near daily basis. By the time the G5 was out, PPC was so hopelessly behind that Apple had no choice but to switch ISAs.
My prediction: In 10-12 years Intel and AMD will have x86 CPUs so far ahead of any ARM based CPU that Apple will have no choice but to switch back.
blastdoor wrote:setaG_lliB wrote:"The Pentium Killer"
"Is this the end of x86?"
That's all you heard back in '94 when the PowerPC first came out. Even Microsoft was dabbling in non x86 versions of WinNT, just as they are now with Win10 on ARM. And for several years, PPC was faster than x86, especially at floating point. But, by the time the PIII and Athlon hit a GHz and gained SIMD support, x86 had easily caught up with the PPC G4 in overall performance. To make matters worse for the PPC alliance, Intel and AMD were rolling out higher clocked CPUs on a near daily basis. By the time the G5 was out, PPC was so hopelessly behind that Apple had no choice but to switch ISAs.
My prediction: In 10-12 years Intel and AMD will have x86 CPUs so far ahead of any ARM based CPU that Apple will have no choice but to switch back.
I predict you will be wrong
A few key differences between now and then:
Apple market cap and cash on hand
The relative size of the market for Apple Silicon compared to x86 today vs PPC compared to x86 back then.
In a nutshell, back then intel had more money and better economies of scale. Now both are flipped.
Aranarth wrote:Now when Apple starts making chips for its competitors THEN start to worry about x86 being at the beginning of the end.
Would apple ever make chips for other people? I highly doubt it. I don't think they have ever made technology of any type for anyone but themselves.
Aranarth wrote:I don't think they have ever made technology of any type for anyone but themselves.
Buub wrote:Microsoft might have the resources to do this, though it's not something have expertise with (they've only done small silicon, not full-blow processors). Being Microsoft, they'll probably throw money and engineers at it, but it may take them some time to get it right.
blastdoor wrote:Buub wrote:Microsoft might have the resources to do this, though it's not something have expertise with (they've only done small silicon, not full-blow processors). Being Microsoft, they'll probably throw money and engineers at it, but it may take them some time to get it right.
Well, that's what Apple did.
This formula almost always holds, at least asymptotically as $ and/or time -> Infinity:
Money + patience = success.
tfp wrote:I don't think Microsoft is interested in producing thier own PC hardware.
blastdoor wrote:So, if you want to buy a computer running on Apple Silicon but don't want to run macOS, Apple isn't stopping you.
Yes, this isn't quite the same thing as Apple selling SOCs to Dell. But how much does that really matter to anybody other than Dell?
I think the bottom line for computer buyers is that Apple is not requiring you to join the Apple ecosystem of software and services in order to use Apple Silicon. They are just requiring you to buy a computer from Apple.
blastdoor wrote:The devil is in the details. I can imagine Apple’s price points will remain the same, but there might be a big uplift in performance and performance/ watt. The question is — how big is that uplift?
Given the process advantage and apples excellent design team, it could be big.
Xolore wrote:blastdoor wrote:The devil is in the details. I can imagine Apple’s price points will remain the same, but there might be a big uplift in performance and performance/ watt. The question is — how big is that uplift?
Given the process advantage and apples excellent design team, it could be big.
Apple does not manufacture chips. Any belief that they have any form of process advantage is absolutely false because they don't have a process at all. Don't mistake TSMC for Apple and don't think nobody else has access the the same processes.
Xolore wrote:Regardless, Apple doesn't play in servers. They don't actually have a traditional desktop product either.