Tuesday, June 9th 2020
Apple to Announce its own Mac Processor at WWDC (Late June)
Apple is planning to launch its own high-performance processors designed for Macs at the 2020 WWDC, held in the week of 22 June, 2020. This would be the the first step among many toward the replacement of Intel processors and the x86 machine architecture from the Apple Mac ecosystem, in the same fashion as the company replaced PowerPC with x86 last decade. Apple has codenamed the process of graduating to the new machine architecture "Kalamata," and besides detailing the new processor and its architecture, the company could announce a large-scale developer support initiative to help Mac software vendors to transition to the new architecture in time for the first Macs with the new processors to roll out in 2021.
A Bloomberg report on the new processors states that the chips will be based on the "same technology" as the company's A-series SoCs for iOS devices, meaning that Apple will leverage the Arm machine architecture, and has probably developed a high performance CPU core that can match Intel's x64 cores in IPC and efficiency. Macs based on the new processors, will however run MacOS and not iOS, which means much of the clean-break transition woes between PPC and x86 Macs are bound to return, but probably better managed by software vendors. It also remains to be seen how Apple handles graphics. The company could scale up the Metal-optimized iGPU found in its A-series SoCs on its new Mac processor, while also giving them the platform I/O capability to support discrete graphics from companies such as AMD.
Source:
Bloomberg
A Bloomberg report on the new processors states that the chips will be based on the "same technology" as the company's A-series SoCs for iOS devices, meaning that Apple will leverage the Arm machine architecture, and has probably developed a high performance CPU core that can match Intel's x64 cores in IPC and efficiency. Macs based on the new processors, will however run MacOS and not iOS, which means much of the clean-break transition woes between PPC and x86 Macs are bound to return, but probably better managed by software vendors. It also remains to be seen how Apple handles graphics. The company could scale up the Metal-optimized iGPU found in its A-series SoCs on its new Mac processor, while also giving them the platform I/O capability to support discrete graphics from companies such as AMD.
79 Comments on Apple to Announce its own Mac Processor at WWDC (Late June)
I seriously doubt that this will work.
x86 is/will be the main platform to do complex instructions.
we only use Kalamata btw, C is used for words that sound like hel·lo (/hɛˈloʊ/)
www.macworld.com/article/2013606/apple-not-likely-to-ditch-intel-chips-for-macs-in-near-future.html
^ article from 2012 ^
www.macrumors.com/2020/06/09/arm-based-macs-wwdc/
and he writes "So if you just bought a MacBook Pro, you shouldn’t worry about your Mac becoming obsolete anytime soon. However, you might feel a little envious. According to Bloomberg, “tests of new Macs with the Arm-based chips have shown sizable improvements over Intel-powered versions, specifically in graphics performance and apps using artificial intelligence.” And a new chip will likely mean new designs as well, with thinner enclosures thanks to advanced power efficiency."
either I miss something and something goes really wrong while I put a break to my CPU's.
ARM won't / can't be faster than X86 only if the whole set of instruction simplified and process done differently and even if, this is not going to happen... its not a Phone or a Watch.
Microsoft is next... that little surface go experiment with the SQ1 - is just the start. There is going to be a major Microsoft CPU announcement soon for portable devices/surface, as well as major support from MS for ARM ISA compatibility.
If Apple makes this move, they have a plan. And I don’t doubt that the big software companies will be ready to migrate. Many already have an iPad version of their MacOS app, which often has feature parity. I can tell you iPads handle RAW image formats natively, with ease, with little to no lag when adjusting sliders. The performance rivals that of more powerful x86 machines from not that long ago. The iPad won the tablet sector, and that likely had a lot to do with developers actually supporting the system. Android suffered from more blown up phone apps, and MS, well, we know about thier complete failure in their own mobile space and UWP. Apple customers are proven to open their wallets, so support will not be lacking. If anything, this might help MacOS, as for a time, it was being neglected by Apple and consequently the market. The movement, money, and activity in Apple’s world has been on the mobile front, so this move would give developers one architecture to target. Also, they typically support a hardware product for at least 7 years, so ARM today won’t mean dead x86 tomorrow. They surely have a plan, cause they keep launching updated hardware.
The ingredients for a desktop-class SOC have already been developed by Apple. It's not a stretch of the imagination to think Apple will add some cores, increase the TDP, widen the GPU and memory bus and have a competitive product.
Apple's cloned ARM-based SoC is only for its own products.
Prices, I don't think will change much, though profit will likely increase since they don't have to pay Intel a premium for their chips. Considering that Intel is so willing to produce custom cores for Apple every year, I don't think the contract between the 2 is going to be a budget one.
At the end of the day, Intel will be on the losing end. With a few announcements this year of companies moving from x86 to in house ARM chips, Amazon, Apple, etc, looks like this trend will continue further eroding Intel's market share.
Anandtech SPEC is useless as a whiskers on a cat, that ARM processor in an iPhone cannot do anything that an Android 8 phone does (not calling 9 and 10 because they started to copy that Scoped Storage BS which is shutdown filesystem, like UWP), all that processing power is used for iMessage, IG, Snapchat and other social media garbage with some stupid Pubg and other mobile trash games by Tencent. And that iPad got a downloads button very recently so did it's new Control Center and all. Plus their iPhones lost to OnePlus and Samsungs in the applicaiton loading, and other real world usage tasks with Throttling as well on load (GFX usage) and their famous Batterygate, Butterflygate, Touch Disease, and other ton of issues carefully thrown under rug due to their deep pockets. Their Catalina gatekeeper is hard to allow other apps not signed and then their 64bit hammer. People who are using that Hackintosh will be nuked as well, I thought that time would come when their security through obscurity masterplan T series chips in the Macs with handling all the I/O tasks, making an x86 just a slave processor for the execution.
Anyways I think this will be new Mac Air, a shame that AMD is still wanting their money for those rebadged trash GPUs. Glad that Apple failed in gaming, their AR is useless. So ultimately their Software will be made to work properly because they pay Adobe a ton to make the software optimized like First Party solutions. So that's also an expected thing. All in all it's just going to make Apple keep more money, the more greed the better for them.
x86 is not going anywhere and it shouldn't as well, the garbage ARM is always custom, look at that SQ1 garbage in Surface (full BGA trash boook with no 3.5mm jack either and nothing can be serviced in that garbage, not even LTS release), Server side also Graviton loses to EPYC7742 in many tasks that is also an Amazon's internal cost effective solution, the fact that x86 processors are going to innovate (thanks to AMD) we can enjoy Win32 more with choice.
Honestly I’m not that familiar with the market — maybe Apple is already winning the ultraportable game with the MacBook, but I doubt it? I’m not sure who would buy the air at this point — I’m surprised they refreshed it.
We can both agree that the readers here aren’t going to buy it (well, maybe me), but we were never Apple’s market (just read the post above yours :)). College students, the hip olds, content producers, people who like the ecosystem, people who like the aesthetic, etc.
Another, or should I say sole reason moving away from Apple is good riddance.I don't deny they offer convenient and simplicity, but its cost is just astonishingly high.Does anyone think that replace failing hard drive on iMac or failing battery on MacBook is just easy as it should ? To add insult to your misery, their warranty is pretty much non existent.Yeah their software support is good, 8+ years iMac 5+ years Macbook still receiving Mojave or Catalina updates, but from hardware and TCO perspective they still the worst.
As for the MS announcement, it'd be more helpful if you'd reveal if this was a (inhouse?) custom chip or just some initiative to push for Windows on ARM?