
Apple, ARM, and Intel - jonbaer
https://stratechery.com/2020/apple-arm-and-intel/?href=
======
throwawaygh
The most important paragraph in this piece is last one, which plugs a $22.8
billion bill to support domestic semiconductor manufacturing in the USA and
suggests the need for new entrants.

Semiconductor manufacturing is truly one of the few remaining manufacturing
industries in which the USA has a competitive advantage (albeit quite eroded
by TSMC over the past few years).

Especially with US aviation circling the drain, this is an industry we can't
afford to lose. Removing semiconductors from US manufacturing statistics makes
US manufacturing statistics go from "stagnating" to "extraordinary decline".

And it's not just the manufacturing sector. Semiconductors power some of
America's most valuable companies (including but not limited to the FAANGs).

US economic and actual security absolutely depends on a robust supply of
world-class semi-conductors manufactured on-shore.

Congress should take the advice in this piece and avoid making the same
mistake with Intel that it made with Boeing (piling the bulk of all federal
and state support for an entire sector into a single clearly dysfunctional
company)

~~~
greedo
US manufacturing has been growing steadily for decades. The US concentrates
this in sectors that are high tech, expensive, and profitable. Low margin, low
profit manufacturing has been offshored, but manufacturing hasn't been
stagnant at all.

As a percentage of GDP, manufacturing has been on a downward trend, but that's
because of the growth of service industry.

[https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
states/manu...](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-
states/manufacturing-output)

~~~
api
Genuinely curious then: where do we actually excel?

The only examples I can think of right now where we are genuinely number one
is high priced low volume boutique aerospace (SpaceX and other new space
companies, satellites, experimental military aircraft, electric planes, etc.)
and of course weapons.

We can manufacture decent cars, but at least half of this is under the
direction and management of overseas companies like Toyota and Nissan. US car
companies have been on the ropes for decades.

We seem to be losing the bulk of aerospace, generation turbines, electronics,
chips, medical devices, power equipment, materials, ... ?

Seeing graphs like this makes me wonder if I am living in the late days of the
USSR when I'm sure many optimistic graphs were published by Pravda.

~~~
mardifoufs
What? Turbines? Materials? Only the US and Europe can actually build
functional jet engines and most of the bleeding edge materials. Even semi
functional jet engines are still a distant dream for China. Same thing goes
for chips, where only Taiwan and the US can manufacture current gen nodes. If
anything, the US offloaded commodity manufacturing that is easily
reproductible to build a very very high moat around key technologies instead
of fighting to the bottom for scraps of old industries.

As for medical devices and tech, the US probably creates more new drugs and
treatments than the rest of the world combined. when's the last time china,
india or russia made a break through in medecine? When's the last time the US
did? Last year?

~~~
pinkfoot
> when [was] the last time china, india or russia made a break through in
> [medicine]?

2015.

[https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2015/tu/facts/](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2015/tu/facts/)

(PS. This took less than 30 seconds to find and confirm).

~~~
samatman
The prize was awarded for work done in the 1970s, fwiw.

(PS. This took me most of a minute of reading the link you provided).

~~~
pinkfoot
Sure, any to answer the more general question in the OP:

Russia invented and built and then sold to the USA the RD-180 rocket engines
that are used for the first stage of the American Atlas V launch vehicle.

Which the USA will no doubt "reverse engineer" soon :)

The OP needs to get out more often.

~~~
samatman
I feel weird playing the jingoism game, because it doesn't even vaguely
reflect my feelings on the subject, but here we go:

SpaceX, a privately-held American company, is the only source of innovation in
rocketry at the present time. Their reusable launch platform plays in its own
league; everything else is steam power, Falcon is internal combustion.

That's just a fact. Unlike insisting that China, Russia, India are incapable
of innovation more generally, which is risible.

My vague impression, in fact, is that jet turbines are quite a bit more
difficult to manufacture than rocket engines, even if the latter are thought
of as 'higher tech'.

I'm fairly certain we'll discover, in the next ten years, that China is quite
capable of making cutting-edge computer chips, and just hadn't gotten around
to it yet.

I've never shared my countrymen's obsession with insisting on being 'the
greatest'. This country is great in its own right, along many dimensions; it
is, in fact, right at the cutting edge for medicine and CPUs; denigrating the
work of other nations only detracts from this.

~~~
tatersolid
> My vague impression, in fact, is that jet turbines are quite a bit more
> difficult to manufacture than rocket engines, even if the latter are thought
> of as 'higher tech'.

My impression is that “real” rocket engines _include a jet engine just to pump
fuel_. They have many other pieces as well.

Not that a modern high-bypass turbofan is simple, but don’t discount the
complexity of rocket science.

------
eric_khun
On a related note, TSMC is based in Taiwan. Ben Thompson (who wrote this
article) chose to live there. It's cheap/friendly/modern/safe/connected to all
asia/awesome healthcare system/amazing food/surrounded by nature.

Taiwan now puts effort trying to attract new talents. The "gold card visa"[1]
is quite easy to get, just earn more than usd5.5k/month at your last/current
job, or work in a "trendy" field (AI/big data/energy/biotech...) and you get
an "open visa" for 3 years without restrictions for ~300USD. If you're looking
for change, I highly recommend her Taiwan! Happy to reply to any questions

[1] [https://taiwangoldcard.com](https://taiwangoldcard.com)

~~~
joaogui1
How hard is it to live in Taiwan speaking only English? Is their official
language Mandarin or is it some different Chinese dialect? How safe are Taiwan
streets?

~~~
hellofunk
The main problem, when I was there, as with many places throughout Asia, is
the poor air quality. You’ll definitely notice it, my eyes were burning to get
through the adjustment period.

~~~
komali2
Really? I found air quality even within Taipei to be comparable to San
Francisco or even better, at least according to my nose, sinuses, and tear
ducts.

~~~
hellofunk
Perhaps you were there during a weather pattern that minimized the effects.
Unless you are saying you had a long-term low pollution experience there,
which I think is impossible.

~~~
komali2
> Unless you are saying you had a long-term low pollution experience there,
> which I think is impossible.

Over a year of anecdotal data using my own senses, which I consider extremely
sensitive to allergens.

Maybe some pollution data will indicate otherwise? It's certainly no rural
Kansas, and I bet industrial hot spots in Taiwan suffer (like near TPE), but
yea I felt great in Taipei. Far better than most Asian cities, perhaps
comparable to Tokyo.

~~~
hellofunk
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_Taiwan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_Taiwan)

> based on reports by the World Health Organization, that the air quality in
> Taiwan is generally the worst of all of the Four Asian Tigers, in
> particularly drawing attention to the annual mean PM10 level of Taiwan (54
> micrograms per cubic meter). The annual mean PM10 level of the country's
> capital Taipei (47.1 micrograms per cubic meter) made the city rank only
> 1,089 among 1,600 included cities around the world. Based on 2004 data by
> Taiwan's Department of Environmental Protection, the annual mean PM10 level
> for Taiwan had, for the last decade, been worse than the European Union
> limit value (40 micrograms per cubic meter) every year.

------
Wowfunhappy
> Notably, one thing Apple does not need to give up is Windows support:
> Windows has run on ARM for the last decade, and I expect Boot Camp to
> continue.

I brought up the possibility of Bootcamp supporting ARM Windows on HN
yesterday, and others responded with some rightful criticisms.

From mrkstu:

> _The problem is that Apple has moved to a home-grown stack for it graphics
> and deprecated OpenGL and moved wholly to Metal. [...] There is no way Apple
> would create a Windows driver for that custom silicon—it has always relied
> on AMD or Nvidia for those drivers in the past, it has no in house code base
> or expertise to write the requisite code in Windows and none of the silicon
> has been optimized for it._

And from pavlov:

> _I don 't think there is a standard BIOS for ARM like there is for x86, so
> multi-boot would probably require Microsoft to support Macs explicitly in
> Windows on ARM._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23528066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23528066)

~~~
deergomoo
The other issue is that Windows for ARM is not a product you can just buy off
the shelf right now.

~~~
rrss
i thought the surface pro x runs windows on arm? or do you mean you can't get
a copy of the OS without the product?

~~~
Kipters
Yep, WoA is only sold preinstalled in devices, you can't buy a copy (but you
can install it yourself: [https://github.com/WOA-
Project](https://github.com/WOA-Project))

------
DC-3
The unseating of x86 as the de facto standard for laptops, workstations, and
servers would be a net benefit for both performance and security.
Unfortunately, though Apple will likely find very great success with their ARM
Macs, it does not necessarily follow that the architecture will gain
significant ground outside the Apple-sphere. I would love for my next laptop
to be ARM-based, but I can't see Apple happily flogging chips to Dell or
Lenovo, and I'm not sure if anyone else's ARM processors are up to the
necessary standard.

~~~
dijit
I mean, ARM is 'there' in most cases, the issue tends to be perceived latency
of RISC vs CISC CPU's on desktop, not overall performance.

There are decent quality laptops shipping with ARM already, like the Thinkpad
Yoga: [https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/6/21050758/lenovo-
yoga-5g-sn...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/6/21050758/lenovo-
yoga-5g-snapdragon-qualcomm-8cx-x55-arm-windows-laptop-ces-2020)

There's also the obvious: Pinebook pro.

~~~
simias
What do you mean by latency here exactly?

~~~
dijit
I'm not exactly sure what I mean and that's part of the issue, when using an
ARM CPU with desktop software which has not been optimised to hide UI "lag"
there's something that feels like it just.. lags.

You can feel it on a rpi if you use it for a day, it's not that it's
underpowered, you can grab a 15yo celeron that is much slower and single core
and it will have less perceptable latency. The Celeron will "feel" as if it's
working, the ARM chip will "feel" as if it's laggy.

I can't quantify this behaviour, but it's consistent across all ARM CPU's I've
ever used with traditional desktop software.

Notably these issues don't seem to exist on Android or iOS, someone once told
me this is due to the UI elements having a higher priority than anything else
on the system.

~~~
DCKing
If your experience with "desktop UI on ARM" is based on the RPi and other ARM
SBCs, the overwhelmingly likely explanation for this perceived lag is lacking
I/O performance. Running a Raspberry Pi (or any system) from any cheap flash
storage setup like SD cards or cheap eMMCs degrades desktop responsivity a
lot. The ARM desktop hardware most of us have experience with has significant
I/O problems, but that's due to them being cheap hardware, and not due to ARM.

I/O is actually the real prevalent bottleneck for desktop interactivity on all
modern hardware. Even older x86 systems with spinning platter hard drives are
set up for a more responsive desktop experience due to the I/O performance
being suited for the desktop. Modern Android phones and iPhones also have much
better I/O setups for interactive use (UFS for high end Android, Apple
actually uses NVME because responsiveness is so crucial) .

Certainly CISC vs RISC has nothing to do with it as that discussion really has
no bearing on the situation anymore on discussions about modern ARM and Intel
(see my other post).

~~~
zozbot234
> Running a Raspberry Pi (or any system) from any cheap flash storage setup
> like SD cards or cheap eMMCs degrades desktop responsivity a lot.

Not really, if the system has enough free RAM to use as disk cache. For many
scenarios, that suffices to run quite acceptably.

~~~
DCKing
RAM as disk cache is only useful for things you have already loaded. It
doesn't help your boot times, new program launches, or loading new content in
your program.

I'm not saying SBCs are "unusable" for desktop use cases, I'm saying I/O is
the likely explanation for desktop responsiveness issues they encounter on
SBCs.

~~~
dijit
Nobody here is talking about boot times, I was talking about responsiveness..
it's easy to test your theory, you can boot USB on the new RPI, and USB3.0 has
quite a high bandwidth, definitely comparable to SATA2, nearly SATA3

~~~
DCKing
There's a good reason that they're making it more possible to boot a Raspberry
Pi from USB. It's more reliable storage and has better performance for many
use cases :)

------
ogre_codes
> It is not out of the question that Apple, within a year or two, has by far
> the best performing laptops and desktop computers on the market, just as
> they do in mobile.

This quote from the article is the big takeaway. Apple isn't going to make a
lateral move here. A processor transition that nets Apple merely _comparable_
performance would destroy the Mac brand. Apple needs a CPU that runs native
code significantly faster than Intel on every device and it needs to be able
to emulate Intel chips at reasonable speeds.

I suspect Apple knows this and that their chips are going to hit the mark. But
we'll see.

~~~
aneutron
My money is not only on the performance, but also an adjustable thermal
envelope, which means perhaps even 5 times the battery life of normal windows
laptops.

~~~
dr_zoidberg
With some Ryzen Renoir machines hitting 9-10hs of battery (when paired with a
decent 80+ watt-hour battery, that is), would you expect a mac hitting 50hs of
battery life?

I mean I could see that happening when pairing a current A13 with a much
bigger battery like a notebook has, but as others have said, the performance
will have to be superb, so maybe we'll be seeing half the power efficiency?
Were you thinkg 50+ hours or more in the lines of 20+ hours?

~~~
bradlys
Considering a laptop can be at most 100Wh for US air travel - I doubt you'll
see 50 hours anytime soon. That would mean the display is drawing less than 2
watts of energy while the rest of the system is near 0. Typical displays
apparently use 2 watts - [https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-low-
power-disp...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/intel-low-power-
display-technology/) If Intel released a 1-watt display then we might see the
50-hour level reached but that's going to only be on really light workloads.
(Light text editing? Playing back a special low-power-codec video?)

~~~
dr_zoidberg
Right on point with your considerations, both on maximum battery capacity and
the display being a large factor un notebook battery life. Battery capacity
can't be expanded, since it's regulation and we're tied to it. Don't really
know what drives display power consumption and how it could be improved to get
better battery life.

------
pier25
It all makes sense on paper but I'm still skeptical.

For the last couple of years every time Apple has tried to do some acrobatics
on the Mac platform it has failed miserably.

\- Yosemite

\- Butterfly keyboard

\- Touchbar

\- Catalina

I'm not much of a CPU guru but a switch to ARM seems like the most ambitious
and risky of all these, by far.

~~~
radicaldreamer
You’re forgetting the most underrated piece of hardware to come from Apple in
the last couple of years, the 12” MacBook. The weight to capability ratio of
that machine is off the charts and it’s the perfect encapsulation of what a
portable Mac should be.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I'm glad you like that machine, but I would not put it in the success camp. It
was the start of the butterfly keyboard, and Apple ended up discontinuing it
after just a few years.

~~~
machello13
It's not really correct to say they discontinued it. They basically just
started selling it under the MacBook Air brand.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
The new Macbook Air is a very different computer. Much larger and thicker,
even compared to the 11" Air that was discontinued.

------
onli
I don't really understand the positive opinion around this. Isn't the break
from the Windows and Linux default architecture and thus software too high
here? Like in gaming - are Apple users really okay with not having access to a
single Steam game?

Okay, the ones using this only for ~~work~~ office work, the browser and
Netflix won't mind, but for the rest this presents a huge separation from what
is available elsewhere. I must miss something.

~~~
_bxg1
Very few people use Macs for gaming, and many of those that do probably just
play Apple Arcade games (which I'm sure will have a smooth upgrade path). And
most of the games people play that _are_ on Steam are (these days) built with
either Unity or Unreal, which will no doubt have 1-click-rebuilds for the new
architecture. In Unity your game logic doesn't even need to compile to native
code.

Even beyond games, the thing is that nearly every development platform these
days is an abstraction above the hardware - be it the JVM, the web browser,
etc - and the rest (of the new ones coming out) are built to be cross-platform
from the get go. Just look at how smoothly Rust/Cargo can target different
architectures. I'm sure the same is true for Go.

~~~
simion314
Just giving you some data points, there are many people that play older games
on their laptops, one such community is the Sims3 players, they got screwed
when 32 bits support was dropped, some still hope EA will make a 64 bit soon
(IMO it makes no sense for the devs to do the work for free for this old
game).

So the people the play games on Mac are not the same group that play latest
AAA shooters or arcade games, they are people that play some casual games or
retro games on their laptops so no "hardcore gamers"

~~~
_bxg1
The story is admittedly different when we're talking about legacy games that
are no longer supported. Even if pushing the button is easy, if there's nobody
there to do it, that doesn't help.

But the good news it that game life cycles have gotten much longer; where in
the past a game was seen as a fire-and-forget project, these days a game may
get active updates for five or more years after launch. And not just AAA, but
indies too.

~~~
simion314
Sometimes we do not need updates, we need existing old games to continue to
work. Ubuntu tried also to drop 32bit support but the community responded
strongly with use cases like games and some other old apps, then
Canonical/Ubuntu listen and 32 bit support was partially dropped, 32 libraries
needed for games and different apps are still supported.

Meanwhile I see Mac players upset their 32 bit games no longer work (like the
Sims3 players and I also see some Mac users in r/winegaming ). Again Apple can
do whatever they make them more money but for example gamers voice was heard
in Ubuntu/Linux and Canonical did the work (for free) to continue supporting
gamers.

------
hellofunk
> Overall, in terms of performance, the A13 and the Lightning cores are
> extremely fast. In the mobile space, there’s really no competition as the
> A13 posts almost double the performance of the next best non-Apple SoC. This
> year, the A13 has essentially matched best that AMD and Intel have to offer.

Wow.

~~~
dannyw
You can thank Intel for that. Single thread performance has stagnated since
2016. Some say 2014.

~~~
fomine3
Skylake was released in 2015.

------
mschuster91
Hmm. Random question here... what prevents Apple from building in an x86-to-
uops decoder stage into their desktop ARM CPUs?

That way they could run old code simultaneously with new code - x86 apps get
their memory flagged (by the MMU perhaps?) that all code from this memory
region gets executed with the x86 decoder stage, and code in normal memory
gets executed with the ARM decoder stage.

And to be honest this is entirely what I'm expecting of Apple - yes they are
not concerned with backwards compatibility but no one is going to buy a multi-
ten-thousands-dollars Mac Pro or even a multi-thousands MacBook Pro if it
can't run Photoshop or their favorite sound editing/DJ suite.

~~~
danaris
Photoshop is already running on ARM—specifically, on Apple's A-series
chips.[0]

Unless you're doing something at least moderately esoteric, if you have an
actively-developed macOS application today, you'll be able to produce an ARM
version of it tomorrow (or, y'know, whenever Apple actually activates this
capability) by ticking the right box in Xcode.

There might very well be a compatibility layer available for a transition
period (there was for 68k->PPC, Classic->OS X, and PPC->Intel), but that's not
at all the same thing as saying Apple will build in hardware-level x86 support
in perpetuity.

[0]
[https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/ipad.html](https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/ipad.html)

~~~
mschuster91
> if you have an actively-developed macOS application today, you'll be able to
> produce an ARM version of it tomorrow (or, y'know, whenever Apple actually
> activates this capability) by ticking the right box in Xcode.

Will this also take care of existing _low level_ optimizations? I can easily
imagine Adobe and everyone in the sound/3D area to run custom specific x86
Assembler code in hot paths.

~~~
danaris
I think I covered that with my "doing something esoteric"...

------
tiffanyh
What are the chances TSMC announced the plans to build a fab in Arizona
because Apple wants to say their chips are produced in the USA?

[https://www.tsmc.com/tsmcdotcom/PRListingNewsAction.do?actio...](https://www.tsmc.com/tsmcdotcom/PRListingNewsAction.do?action=detail&language=E&newsid=THGOANPGTH)

~~~
chrisjc
I was wondering the same. Also wondering if a new fab was required in order to
scale up for the potential new demand from Apple.

------
fabianmg
Ha!!, man, the end of that sentence made me laugh so hard...

"Intel, by integrating design and manufacturing, earned very large profit
margins on its chips; Apple could leverage TSMC for manufacturing and keep
that margin for itself _and its customers._ "

~~~
sutterbomb
Have you seen the iPhone pricing strategy? Yes they’ve moved up asp for the
high end but are also now selling a $400 phone with chips that outperform
anything else in the Android market. It’s very likely some of this margin will
be shifted to consumers

~~~
dannyw
Apple’s pricing in the services world: extraordinarily competitive low end to
lure you in. Excessively-margined high end halo products. High margin, but
attractive in comparison middle tier.

------
Jonnax
"the i3-1000NG4 Intel processor that is the cheapest option for the MacBook
Air is not yet for public sale; it probably costs around $150, with far worse
performance than the A13"

In so curious so see this. Unless I missed it we haven't seen consumer high
end ARM chips that are readily available running a general purpose OS.

Like the Raspberry Pi is cool, but it's still trash in comparison to an
average x86 laptop.

Let's see if those really high geekbench scores translate to an excellent
computing experience.

~~~
jagger27
I mean, is the iPad Pro not evidence enough? The A13 is much, much better than
the chips in RPis.

~~~
jcelerier
I'd really like to see an iPad Pro crunch through as many VSTs as my old 2600k
did in its 2 millisecond budget

~~~
em500
As highlighted in the article, Apple's A13 is on par with Intel's i9-9900K in
SPECint2006 and only 15% behind in SPECfp2006.

~~~
jcelerier
those are benchmarks, but to restate my comment I'd really like to see that
hold up in actual real-world use cases

------
sradman
The irony in the narrative surrounding the ascendence of ARM is that the key
innovation occurred in the Apple Newton. [1] History rhymes, they say. If I
remember correctly, it was Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) silicon team
that transformed ARM into a performance-per-watt powerhouse (no pun intended)
to meet the requirements of the Newton.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers#ARM_Ltd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers#ARM_Ltd).

~~~
the-dude
ARM has always been a performance-per-watt powerhouse. The story goes the
first processor was tested without a proper power connection and ran on the
IO-pins.

~~~
monocasa
> The story goes the first processor was tested without a proper power
> connection and ran on the IO-pins.

That's real common actually. The current from the diodes on the I/O pins has
to go somewhere.

~~~
the-dude
Then it is odd I have ever only read the story about ARM. Do Intel's/AMD's
proto's run on their I/O pins?

~~~
monocasa
It's not really a fair comparison, because it's not the same TDP niche.

I imagine Intel Quarks will though. Probably any of the SoC versions as well.

I've actually had to design around this in a board once. Had a chip where the
reset line didn't hook up to all the logic inside it. Originally just put FETs
on the power lines, but that wasn't enough and I had to gate off all the I/O
lines too.

~~~
the-dude
The first ARM was designed as a CPU for a desktop computer ( the Archimedes )

~~~
monocasa
Sure, and I bet a 486 (so a comparable processor for the time) can run off of
it's I/O pins. A quark is a 486 core.

------
andrewla
A while back Linus said something to the effect that x86 was the default for
servers because that's what people used on their desktops. I personally find
this news very exciting because the x86 architecture is just so messy and
filled with cruft from ages ago.

If ARM becomes the standard on the desktop for a significant portion of
machines, then I think that we'll probably start to see more ARM processors
making inroads in the server and workstation market, which I think will be a
huge win.

~~~
jeffbee
It seems a bit silly to discuss servers based on Apple's architecture before
they reveal something with several cores. Mainstream x86 processors have 64
cores per socket. These are the top contenders in SPEC performance-per-watt
benchmarks. Notably, nobody has ever even bothered submitting a SPEC result
for an ARM server, in particular not Ampere, whose product "provides industry
leading power efficiency/core" even though there is no evidence to back this
claim.

~~~
sergeykish
It is a lucrative market, they have money and followers. I would not believe
they could design smartphone processor but here we are. Lets check in five
years.

------
gspr
Stuff like this is one area where Debian and other GNU/Linux distros are so
valuable. The architecture doesn't matter much, and the flexible distros are
poised to adapt well to this heterogeneous world.

------
saagarjha
> Windows, particularly given the ability to run a full-on Linux environment
> without virtualization

An effort that Windows seems to be in the direction of abandoning. (Plus,
writing these kinds of compatibility layers is complicated but not _super_
complicated. What you really want is performance, and that’s hard.)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Are you referring to the fact that WSL2 is technically a VM?

You're not wrong, but the point seems a bit pedantic—Microsoft is clearly
investing a lot into making WSL2 _feel_ native, and it runs acceptably fast.

~~~
saagarjha
Yes, the VM approach won’t work if your underlying architecture changes. And
it’s hard to make it fast if you’re emulating, as I know firsthand from
working on this for iOS ;)

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> Yes, the VM approach won’t work if your underlying architecture changes.

Well, but that's Ben Thompson's point, I think. If it's true that developers
prefer to deploy to the same architecture they develop on, then one of two
things are possible:

1\. Developers largely abandon the Mac.

2\. ARM becomes more common on servers.

Apple is presumably betting on #1 (or is just willing to lose the developer
audience), but it's a gamble.

Lots of developers don't need to deploy code to servers, of course, but it's
easy to see a situation where the momentum is felt by all. macOS's UNIX
support has made it, well, I don't quite want to call it the "de-facto"
development platform, but something approaching that status.

------
annoyingnoob
Apples extends its ARM, gives Intel the finger.

~~~
kiplkipl
Hoping for a job with El Reg?

------
GiorgioG
And with Apple moving to ARM, any hope of serious gaming on a Mac will be
gone.

~~~
yborg
That ship sailed decades ago. Rightfully so, because everyone that has the
money for a Mac can easily buy a console, and much gaming has shifted to
mobile platforms. Unless you think rainbow colored keyboard backlighting is a
key innovation area for a computer company, the gaming market is a complete
waste of time except for driving graphics hardware, which Apple has always
lagged at even for their Pro products.

~~~
GiorgioG
Some of us can afford Macs and consoles, but still prefer a computer for
playing games (graphics, kb/mouse controller, load times, etc.)

------
wilsonfiifi
I’m not sure Apple’s goal is to replace their x86 line of products; that will
alienate too many users and would involve a huge number of software to be
ported to ARM. I think they’re probably going to release an iPadOS device in a
laptop form factor. Either foldable like the Lenovo Yoga or with a detachable
keyboard similar to what Brydge Pro has done [0]. They’re already heading down
that path with the new iPad Pro keyboard [1].

    
    
      [0] https://youtu.be/Kkn9CLppLkI
      [1] https://youtu.be/JLQAh6IHPc4

~~~
ogre_codes
Apple doesn't tend to do things by half measures. If they see Apple on ARM
significantly out-performing Intel across their product line, then they will
move. There will be frustrations and pain, but it will happen. As Ben hints,
this may cause a bigger industry shift as well. With Apple on ARM, it makes
Windows and Linux ARM more palatable, in particular this could give ARM
servers a significant boost.

------
jimbokun
Will LLVM IR allow developers to deliver binaries that will run on both Intel
and ARM?

I see the Swift compiler can output LLVM IR, can you do the same thing with
Objective C code bases?

~~~
zozbot234
Not really. LLVM is not a single interoperable IR, it's more like a family of
IR's with many arch-specific details. WASM+WASI could work though.

------
kaiby
I'm not a business guy, but if Apple's going all-in on ARM processors, and
then they expand into the server market (which the article speculates on),
could we potentially see Apple opening a new product branch devoted to
competing in the Cloud space with AWS, Azure, and GCP?

Imagine developing apps on an ARM-powered macbook, deploying onto ARM-powered
servers owned by Apple, specifically for applications to be used on MacOS &
iOS devices.

------
samwillis
Would it be possible for Apple to have an optional dual processor system, an
ARM main processor and an optional Intel coprocessor? That way for people who
need support for “legacy” x86 apps or for development they could get it.

Could you have an external Intel coprocessor like we have external GPUs?

(I know nothing about how this would work, obviously the traditional way would
be to just have an remote x86 server for running those tasks)

~~~
pornel
I expect Apple to do something smarter, e.g. extend the ARM instruction set
with operations that speed up x86 emulation.

For example, emulation of x86 on ARM is expensive due to subtle differences in
memory model. Why not make an ARM chip that can operate with x86's memory
model?

------
ksec
I am beginning to think if it make sense to segment the Mac into two Category.

The Pro model will use x86. And retain the compatibility of all macOS apps,
some of them may likely never made the move to ARM. They just keep patching it
to run on latest macOS. Along with Windows Bootcamp option. That will be Mac
Pro, iMac Pro and MacBook Pro.

The Non-Pro model will use ARM. You will end up with a 12" Macbook that is
priced at $799. With a possible 14" Macbook at $899 ( The BOM cost of an iPad
Pro 11" would be the same as 12" Macbook, you are essentially swapping the
cost of back camera modules to additional 128GB NAND, the Touch Screen And
Glass Panel to Track Pad and Keyboard. ) It will be like the Macbook 2015,
except it doesn't cost that ridiculous $1299. And $799 might have been the
cheapest portable Mac in recent history as far as I could remember. Even the
11" MacBook Air was priced at $899.

It would greatly expand the macOS market shares. Which has very much stagnated
for the past few years. Out of 1.4B PC market, Apple has 100M macOS users, 7%
marketshare. Compare this to 4.5B Smartphone Apple has 1B iOS users, 22%
marketshare. And the most important thing to me would be that Apple also
accept / admit Tablet computing will never take over the Desktop / Notebook,
or keyboard / trackpad paradigm. It is good enough for large enough of a
market to worth continuing the investment into Mac other than trying to get
iPad / Tablet to kill it.

The only problem with this hypothesises is that the software would be very
messy. Would Xcode force all Apps by default to compile with Fat binary? Is
Apple going to tell its user the different ? ( Not that I think it would
matter to Non-Pro user )

Anyway, this will be an interesting WWDC. ( Or may be everyone got it wrong
Apple isn't doing anyway to the Mac )

------
jagger27
I wonder what an alternate timeline would look like where Apple went for AMD
semi-custom x86 chips instead of Arm. The Mac Pro would have 64 cores,
MacBooks would have great APUs, and Apple would be able to segment their
products at their own discretion–not Intel's.

I also wonder if any chiplet designs will find their way into Apple's Arm-
based lineup.

~~~
larkost
At the time Intel was pushing on performance-per-watt, AMD was not. So AOM was
significantly further away from getting the iPhone contract than Intel was.

And Apple is already extensively using multiple small chips put together to
form their A13 APUs, so they are not far from the full "chiplet" already (they
just are not using silicon wafers as the interface yet).

Right now I think that the main barrier to the Mac Pro already being on AMD
CPUs is the lack of Thunderbolt. Already there is 1 Thunderbolt AMD
motherboard, and with Thunderbolt becoming part of USB 4, that barrier will
fall next year. So it will be an interesting race: is Apple pushing for AMD
Mac Pros, or ARM ones?

------
komali2
> and a company from a territory claimed by China was.

A company from a _sovereign country_ claimed by China.

------
staycoolboy
I'm both excited and troubled, mostly because I fear the loss of LTS on
x86-64: how long will Xcode, macports, and even brew support both
architectures. Apple isn't one for backwards compatibility so this might be
rough few years.

I shudder to think about how long it will take to debug all of the Python3
wheels and Node packages macOS devs are accustomed to. I already have issues
with versions of both language's packages failing to install with other
versions, and that's on the same platform, OS and CPU architecture.

Still, I'm excited. Intel is way overpriced compared to Arm at similar
performance and power.

~~~
saagarjha
I should note that Xcode supports ARM perfectly well and MacPorts does the
same for PowerPC. I'm sure they'll be fine.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Note that Brew doesn't even support macOS Sierra[1]. It doesn't outright
refuse to run, but there's a big warning message that stuff will break and
maintainers won't care—and lots of stuff does indeed break.

Macports's support for legacy versions of OS X is unique, and dare-I-say
incredible.

1: [https://docs.brew.sh/Installation#macos-
requirements](https://docs.brew.sh/Installation#macos-requirements)

------
gumby
He big reason to move production offshore was labor cost (straight comparative
advantage); now it’s path dependency as the whole supply chain has migrated.
This was the US’s big advantage 1890s-1980s but that time has passed.

Advanced robotics will offer a chance of a fundamental restructuring as labor
costs continue to contribute a declining proportion of COGS. The factories and
supply chains could be completely distributed and resilient. But the example
of the Internet is discouraging: the ultimate end-to-end system ended up
highly centralized too.

------
Rafuino
Oof, fun times at Intel right now. There are pockets of Intel not forgetting
what made it successful, but they're usually the most difficult places to grow
a career as they get snuffed out pretty quick

------
phlo
Duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23538826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23538826)
(which was posted a few minutes earlier).

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Rightfully or not, I think this is the version of record at this point, given
that it's sitting at the top of HN right now. They will probably get merged
later.

------
bgorman
Intel has lost its manufacturing lead, but these changes are not permanent.
There is a good chance TSMC stumbles as transistors shrink. Intel has a chance
to catch up, but it seems like Intel has structural problems that prevent it
from winning deals to manufacture third party designs. Relying on complete
vertical integration doesn't seem like a winning business model anymore.

Perhaps Intel should buy GlobalFoundries or license Samsung technology to
develop competency in building designs for other customers.

------
coreai
The problem, as explained here, is also what Linus and recently GKH have
mentioned is that the lack of any consumer ARM hardware like laptops and
desktops mean that kernel developers or app developers are basically not able
to develop and test their code easily to be able to deploy it in the cloud ...
if Apple was able to sell their macs with ARM and not only that but also
provide instances of the same platform then they might be essentially at the
core of architecture revolution

~~~
saagarjha
I doubt many kernel developers would like to develop on the Mac, considering
that as of late it’s been a bit problematic to get Linux to work on.

------
dep_b
Apple having a really fast ARM chip is both an advantage and a disadvantage.
If no Windows or Linux box will run on ARM for the same typical workloads a
lot of stuff never gets ported. It would help Apple if there would be powerful
ARM Windows or Linux PC's.

People say Qualcomm is catching up but I'm not sure what kind of performance
we'll get from the first ARM PC processor from Apple. It will probably run
circles around the 8cx.

------
magwa101
It is a misstatement to say that developers develop on Macs. They don't, they
use Mac as a convenient environment from which to do Linux/cloud development.
If it's MS/cloud development, they're running MS. The 3rd party app world on
Mac is dying. Apple will be happy with their end to end commercially
controlled device. That they put up with 3rd party apps at all was just a
convenient anomaly.

------
Amicius
The article mentions that while the Apple ARM chips are faster per core, the
Intel chips are faster at multi-core operations. How is that possible?

~~~
ascagnel_
I think a big chunk of that is power thermals -- Apple's ARM chips are only
used currently in passively-cooled, handheld, power-restricted chassis (phones
& tablets). Intel's chips are generally actively cooled and run on mains
power, so they can run hotter and draw more power, so they can make up the
difference by stuffing more hot cores onto the chip compared to what Apple has
been doing.

------
api
> Third, the PC market is in the midst of its long decline. Is it really worth
> all of the effort and upheaval to move to a new architecture for a product
> that is fading in importance? Intel may be expensive and may be slow, but it
> is surely good enough for a product that represents the past, not the
> future.

This is one of the key things they got wrong.

Mobile and tablet devices are not real computers. I can't run any software I
want on them. They're locked down, managed, console type devices. There are
other weaknesses at the OS and hardware level too, but the lack of flexibility
and control is the most fundamental and hardest to change.

If you opened up the OS to versatility and user control you could easily scale
up an iPad with a bigger battery, more cores, and cooling, and you'd have a
fantastic laptop. The UI would need some work too to make it suitable for more
complex tasks, but that's an area where Apple excels when they want to.

The locked down nerfed nature of mobile OSes is hard to change though because
it exists for good reason. It addresses a primary need in their market niche.
These devices are marketed to non-technical users, and in today's constant war
zone environment a non-technical user without those controls will be inundated
by malware and spyware.

Still, this keeps them from being viable replacements for desktop/laptop
systems in the professional market. For that reason desktop is not going away.

We have two markets here that really do seem to demand two solutions.

The desktop market decline wasn't the death of desktop. It was the loss of the
low-end of the market, with non-technical and casual users migrating to phones
and tablets. That transition is nearly complete, and the desktop/laptop market
that remains is likely to remain until and unless something appears that truly
does address that market niche.

It's not a growing market but it is probably a stable one. Having a strong
presence in that market is important for Apple because it's the market where
developers live, and without developers who is going to make software and
ecosystems for the rest of their devices? Who will ensure that these devices
reach their full potential and thus are maximally appealing to consumers?

No, doing everything in cloud is not that thing. I want to actually own my
data, and broadband is still far too slow to make that workable for a wide
range of tasks anyway.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
> Third, the PC market is in the midst of its long decline. Is it really worth
> all of the effort and upheaval to move to a new architecture for a product
> that is fading in importance?

Yeah this is just an Apple journalist bubble belief that doesn't really
reflect the real world in any way and is starting to get tiring.

We keep hearing from them how iPad Pro is a computer and how it's so much more
powerful than a real laptop yet we still never see it do anything more than
tweeting, writing articles, extremely basic video editing and a painting app.

Yet I look around every workplace and its still just a sea of laptops doing
incredibly varied work across multiple applications and systems most of which
still just isn't possible on iPads.

------
GiorgioG
I would be more open to this if the new machines had Intel and ARM chips in
them.

If Apple pulls any walled-garden nonsense around what apps I can and cannot
install on my Mac today, at the extreme I can install Windows/Linux and run
the majority of software that's available for those platforms.

If they move to ARM-only, I lose that choice.

------
Arcuru
Matching the Spec2k6 scores of a high end desktop does not mean that the A13
has similar real world single-core performance. I've done ARM vs Intel perf
comparisons in the past and we mostly ignored Spec2k6 because it looked
nothing like real world code.

I'm curious if there are any better benchmarks that will run on iOS.

------
abvdasker
I shudder to think of the huge number of applications this will break. This
has all happened before with PowerPC (ironically an RISC architecture Apple
abandoned ~15 years ago). It's probably necessary but nonetheless frustrating.

------
Shivetya
two ifs for me

If they pass on the savings to consumers, looking at the price escalation with
iPads I don't see why we should expect it to happen.

if they don't build that garden wall higher which can include no bootcamp
support

while TSMC is doing great they are sill in Taiwan, a country which China has
been making a lot of dangerous noise about and considering what is happening
in Hong Kong how long before Taiwan suffers a similar or worse fate. That is a
lot of manufacturing tied up in one area

~~~
akmarinov
It's very unlikely that they pass on savings to people by coming up with a
cheap ARM laptop, after all their whole thing is gouging people with
unrealistic prices for the hardware and huge margins on everything.

That said, if a laptop rolls around that doubles the 10 hour battery life on
existing configurations - they'll scoop up a ton of users regardless whether
it can run Windows or not.

I don't know how doable that would be, but the iPad Pro has a 28 watt hour
battery, the MBP 13 has a 59 watt hour battery, a theoretical Macbook without
a discrete GPU and a smaller motherboard footprint of an A13 chip, leaving
space for a bigger battery and providing about the same performance could
possibly hit 20 hours of battery in about the same space.

~~~
f6v
How are their prices on hardware unrealistic? Let's look at laptops: any other
manufacturer(razer, dell) charges comparable prices for unibody ultrabooks.

~~~
akmarinov
Their RAM upgrade and SSD pricing is off the charts though. 8 to 16 GB is $200
- which other manufacturer does that?

------
MangoCoffee
its sad to see a king (Intel) slowly dying. Microsoft got its groove back with
Satya Nadella and turn Microsoft into player two in the cloud computing and
unlock .Net.

AMD ryzen to EPYC with Lisa Su and TSMC became king of pure-play foundry under
Morris Chang.

i think there is a pattern here. a good engineer CEO have a vision of what a
company can be while a CFO turn CEO only see the bottom line.

i don't know how long Intel can keep squeezing 14+++++++++++++++ nm.

------
woodylondon
Is the issue here not the software who cares what he hardware is ? MacOS will
be ARM based, but if all the software out there needs to be rewritten for ARM
then we will lose a lot of great software. A lot of indie Mac software refuses
to use the AppStore for commercial reasons, and maybe now will be locked out
forever? I understand there will be an emulator but won't we end up with what
we had before when we moved from PowerPC > Intel where the old software was
slow and buggy and no one wanted to update as was not worth commercially worth
it

------
billpg
Will I be able to have an executable file with all of 68k, PPC, x86 and ARM
versions included?

~~~
larkost
Apple's .app system already has that ability, brought over from the NeXT
purchase. Those regularly had PPC and x86 binaries in the same package.

------
stevievee
(Speculation) Jim Keller to Apple soon?

------
robdachshund
This article has some issues. The author states that apple's best ARM chip is
comparable to one in a "top of the line" imac. This is utterly false.

They also state that the A13 trounces every other ARM chip by 2x yet uses a
chart that doesn't include the Qualcomm 865 which is in current flagship
android phones.

It doesn't really hurt the main point of the article but the logical appeal
falls flat when you don't seem to really understand what you are discussing at
a technical level.

~~~
messe
Here: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/15207/the-
snapdragon-865-perf...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/15207/the-
snapdragon-865-performance-preview-setting-the-stage-for-flagship-
android-2020/2)

A13 still comes out a fair bit ahead in performance, but not in energy usage.

------
acqq
> To that end, while I am encouraged by and fully support this bill by
> Congress to appropriate $22.8 billion in aid to semiconductor manufacturers

I fully don't agree. It appears as the exact opposite of what the rational use
of market forces should be.

~~~
tosers4
It's also about national defense, not just economy.

Republic of China is a big target of People's Republic of China. Sure, there
shouldn't be a war, but in the worst case scenario, USA is kinda screwed by
having all their chip manufacturing there. Notice that the new TSMC factory is
with big emphasis on military contracts.

~~~
acqq
> but in the worst case scenario, USA is kinda screwed by having all their
> chip manufacturing there.

Nobody should have any illusion: "in the worst case scenario" this "where" any
chips are manufactured will be simply totally irrelevant. It's obviously a
wrong model to plan for anything. The realistic model is the scenario which is
not the "worst case." And then, the question is just is the "aid" reasonable
or is it better compared to other existing or possible market forces.

Why giving away money "to spur the construction of chip factories in America"
when

1) the U.S. is anyway an immensely big customer and simply deciding on how it
buys what it needs can already influence the markets

2) the existing companies already have "chip factories" in America.

~~~
3JPLW
It's not just about blowing up factories with missiles. There's a much greater
persistent security threat.

