Apple Mac goes ARM with BIG SUR

Found some really interesting news today:

Fighting Fragmentation: Vulkan Portability Extension Released and Implementations Shipping

Finally some good news for us Apple users :slight_smile:

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I seem to recall apple and nvidia hating each other about a decade ago. If so, how do you think they feel about nvidia buying arm?

Business is business.
Details of Apple’s ARM IS agreement is not known, but for sure it wont affect short and medium term products.

If invidia is not lying about keeping arm open, then it shouldn’t afect long term neither.

I don’t believe it’ll matter for Apple either way. From what I’ve read, they’re grandfathered into an unlimited license granting them the right to use the ARM instruction set in perpetuum.

…and hell if I can find the link detailing such. Guess you’ll just have to take my word for it. :stuck_out_tongue:

Hi! I hate Macs and I wouldn’t want to have one, even if they wanted to give me one for free. Hahahaa. But I believe that the move to ARM architecture is an interesting evolution, the x86 has endured. Enough, don’t you think?

What the tests show (and at least from a theoretical point of view) ARM processors have a way to evolve much faster and much further. I think it is a smart move by Apple and I believe that the processing power in the next 2 or 3 years will knock out Intel and AMD.

Software development will definitely have a drastic transition dilemma that should take at least 10 years … In which we will have a lot of problems to reconcile legacy x86 architecture emulation and a lot of software will get stuck in the past, will need to rewrite from scratch and they may not have the power to release new features for a long time :frowning:

Now tell me: stop evolution, you can’t stop it, right? We have to deal with it!

Actually I am quite sure that this platform transition will be easier than the PPC to Intel and Apple did a fantastic job at providing a sound platform for that.

Honestly it is a genius strike - while iOS apps on a mac to me is like running android apps in an emulator on my PC.

But I predict that there will be UI changes made also addressing the navigation difference between a touch interface and a mouse.

For the hardware yes Apples options are indeed good. How this will work with GPUs I am not so sure.

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I was irked with my current TV box, so bought myself an ARM based Raspberry PI, my interest being piqued when the 8GB version was announced. I am impressed by how far Linux on ARM has come. I installed Ubuntu server, headless no less and ran a curled github script called Desktopify and I ended up with a full, surprisingly usable Ubuntu Gnome desktop with just about every piece of software I use in the repos. Note, these are all natively compiled for ARM binaries, no emulation needed. Considering that the SOC can generously be called mediocre at best, compared to the top of the line available from Samsung, Apple etc., I reckon a decently specced board would make a fine desktop PC. Also bodes well for Linux on RiscV…

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ARM announced a 128 core for a server CPU

To my understanding macOS and WinOS cannot support even that amount of cores.

But from what I can gather also observing the past years is that the x86 cpu design seems to have hit a limit.

What industry will do with ARM and SoC will be interesting.

what limit?

Windows 7 onwards supports up to 256 cores (depending on SKU): https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/10737/windows-7-system-requirements

Some of the more recent Datacenter-oriented SKUs support many more: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-kernel-internals/one-windows-kernel/ba-p/267142

wasnt there a big surprise with the new AMD cpus and windows 10 not being able to utilize them as one would have expected?

If Apple brings something Apple Silicon or multi socket AS with tons of
(CPU) cores I would expect them to make macOS supporting that
many cores …

Intel has problems since years to finally offer their promised 10 nm process.
Meanwhile there are some CPUs available in 10 nm in homeopathic doses,
while TSMC starts delivering 5 nm soon.
What Intel currently does is just factory overclocking their 14 nm ++++ desktop
CPUs and needing more and more TDP.

Yes, Windows had problems (scheduler ?) with the first AMD Threadripper
many core CPUs. AFAIK that isn’t an issue anymore with TR4 socket chips
and latest Windows. (They may still be faster on Linux though)

Doesn’t Windows max Core Support depend on Windows 10 Version ?
Like for more than e.g. 16 cores you will need Pro or even Enterprise ?
(Or was it just for more than 1 CPU socket)

Current rumors show another big performance boost for AMD’s Zen3 chips (which is technically another generation on the x86/64 design).

In fact, the architecture hasn’t seen a performance advance this fast for over 10 years, any perceived limit was likely due to Intel not needing a lot of R&D to remain the market leader, that and the fact that the majority of users did not need big power boosts (as it doesn’t take a lot to run office apps, internet, and email).

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This is so true !!! for many tasks today honestly an iOS or Android tablet is sufficient.

We’re nearing the limits of how much efficiency we can squeeze out of silicon, since there’s only so far we can shrink processor dies before its physically impossible to go any further.

Once we hit that point, which I believe is around 3nm, we’ll have to start looking at alternative processor architectures to hope for any gains in performance.

or like with ARM rethink how a CPU should be designed.

arm is affected by the same physical limits.

let’s see how this 128 core arm server cpu will compete with a 128 thread amd server cpu. :slight_smile:

RISC vs CISC has been a long running debate it’s not a new thing.

ARM are just the most recognisable chip designers in the field, RISC has been used by many others in the past like MIPS and IBM PowerPC.

The only thing that matters is performance. You can get great CISC CPUs and great RISC CPUs it shouldn’t matter one iota to the end user what the architecture is.

Both architectures face a battle against physics as transistor sizes shrink.

When you run out of space on the ground, you reach for the sky.




Source: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2020/09/tsmc-hits-major-milestone-in-2nm-technology-development.html

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no one talks about this ARM cpu, the Fujitsu A64FX which is both a unique cpu and gpu, and has no memory, or rather the memory is included in the cpu itself … (a total new architecture) and it seems to be the most powerful processor in existence, at least arm, isn’t Apple made the decision to switch to ARM for this? (or inspired by this type of processor?)