
iMac Pro's T2 chip - lumisota
https://www.macworld.com/article/3245764/macs/the-t2-chip-makes-the-imac-pro-the-start-of-a-mac-revolution.html
======
gigatexal
I know I trust Apple[1] and all that but I (tin-foil hats on) don't like the
system on a system stuff going on. I don't like closed systems that I have no
oversight into, into what they might be logging, etc. The industry will likely
follow Apple here and it's not too much of an issue given how low volume that
iMac Pro is going to be but this could trickle down into macbooks and that'd
be sketchy. I should just go hide in my bunker and build linux from scratch on
a fully GNU open laptop -- alas that's not practical.

[1] more so than Google because Google uses my data and habits to sell me ads
and sell that data to their customers, Apple wants to sell me gadgets and
songs and movies, if that changes I'll drop Apple

~~~
dkonofalski
I agree with you entirely, except in the case of Apple. I don't like closed
systems either, especially when it comes to security, but, for some reason, I
trust that when Apple closes a system, it's for security reasons. Their
history with the Secure Enclave on iOS devices has given me a track record of
security that I trust and, although it's still a closed system, the fact that
they release white papers on every secure system gives me far more confidence
than closed systems distributed by other companies.

I won't trust the industry when this becomes the norm but, until Apple does
something to violate my trust, they've made it a point to earn trust when it
comes to privacy and security.

~~~
ghostcluster
I think Apple uses 'security reasons' as a cover to advance their monopolistic
business models, in a way to keep their platforms locked down, and a way to
extract a minimum 30% transaction osst and yearly fee for access to their
walled gardens.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
_monopolistic business models_

Apple are far from a monopoly, they don't even have a majority of the phone
market, their PC share is still in single digits.

~~~
dragonwriter
Monopoly isn't defined by share of whatever market description you find
convenient, it's defined by pricing power: whether the seller can raise prices
over some range without losing sales to competitors. There's lots of times
when things in what intuitively descriptively are the same market by some
product description are different markets in practice because people don't, in
practice, substitute between them in response to price movement.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
From Wikipedia:

A monopoly (from Greek μόνος mónos ["alone" or "single"] and πωλεῖν pōleîn
["to sell"]) exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier
of a particular commodity.

------
nimbius
if youd like to cut past the fanboy fluff...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_mobile_application_proce...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_mobile_application_processors#Apple_T2)

The Apple T2 chip is a SoC from Apple mainly serving as a secure enclave for
encrypted keys in the iMac Pro 2017. It gives users the ability to lock down
the computer's boot process. It also handles system functions like the camera
and audio control, and manages the solid-state drive.

~~~
djsumdog
So it's basically SecureBoot + lets remove the SATA controller, the audio
chip, the H264 chip and roll them into one chip.

It feels like horizontal integration; similar to what Elon Musk does with
SpaceX by integrating the pipeline and producing everything internally to save
costs.

The article doesn't sound very revolutionary. They're saving money, maybe a
little space, by producing all those subsystems themselves. So long as they
don't lock down the hardware so you can run Linux or other operating systems
on it, I guess that's okay.

Still, it sounds very non-upgradable. The article mentions the memory comes in
two banks. Is it replaceable, or is it soldered to the board? nvme ssd cards
are super tiny, super fast and super standardized. I can upgrade the ones in
most laptops. I can replace a dying battery. Apple seems more geared to people
who don't like to fix things or work on their own machines.

~~~
btian
This is called vertical integration, same for SpaceX.

Horizontal integration is like making computers, and also making elevators
(e.g., Samsung)

EDIT: that wasn't a correct example. Horizontal integration would be company
making mobile phone SoC, then make server SoC like Qualcomm (since both use
the same supply chain).

~~~
scarface74
That's called no integration. It's a conglomerate.

------
swozey
> For security reasons, the T2 is the iMac Pro hardware’s “root of trust,” and
> it validates the entire boot process when the power comes on. The T2 starts
> up, checks things out, loads its bootloader, verifies that it’s legitimate
> and cryptographically signed by Apple, and then moves on to the next part of
> the boot process.

If they start putting this in every machine going forward I wonder if this
will be the end of the hackintosh

~~~
thinkythought
Well, beginning of the end. It would be 3 years from whatever date they
release a new version that locks it to a chip like this _and_ drop support for
old models without it. So lets say, 4-5 years. Actually, probably longer since
they've been supporting old systems for as long as 8 years(2007 imac, others)
with some macbook pros approaching 9-10 even.

How long you think it would take for them to do this depends on whether you
really think they'd just decide to cut off a ton of machines at once and
reverse course on really long support windows. And long windows really seems
to be a roadmap, if you look at how the ipad 2 was supported as well.

I think they care more about "look at how we support our products!" than
hackintoshes. What i _could_ easily imagine though is way more features than
just imessage and such being gate-kept into "only systems with our secure chip
are allowed to run this"

~~~
whywhywhywhy
I understand the security benefits but I can't help but just look at this as
yet another piece of disposability on an already very "disposable" piece of
5K+ (starting) hardware.

How many iPhones are now in landfills because you couldn't downgrade the OS to
an old version that would be usable.

~~~
1123581321
I agree with your main point about disposability. There shouldn’t be many
iPhones in landfills, though. Apple recycles 100% of the materials, so as long
as the old phone can be traded in or dropped off in an electronics bin, it
won’t be wasted even though the owner will have been out the money by rebuying
prematurely.

~~~
kalleboo
> Apple recycles 100% of the materials

Do you have a source for that? It sounds hard to believe

~~~
Fezzik
If Apple gets its hands on the phone they have an impressive system for
recycling: [http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-liam-iphone-
recycling-r...](http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-liam-iphone-recycling-
robot-photos-video-2017-4)

I could not find a reliable source for what portion of each phone is recycled,
but Apple is certainly not slacking on the recycling front.

~~~
kalleboo
As far as I can tell, Liam is just an R&D project - it's not something they've
put into actual production.

E.g. from the 2017 environmental report

> _For example, we’ve melted down iPhone 6 aluminum enclosures recovered from
> Liam to make Mac mini computers for use in our factories_

It's only recovered enough aluminum to build a couple of Mac minis for their
own internal use

------
qubex
This is slightly off-topic, but developments such as these really make me look
forward to when Apple will finally get around to releasing their new Mac Pro
(coyly quasi-announced as not being due for release in 2017, but in
development supposedly for a late 2018 or early 2019). This kind of technology
might not be revolutionary per se, but makes for a very solid technological
basis to build a system on. If the Mac Pro turns out to be an iMac Pro
divorced from the screen and with some internal expandability in a suitably
fancy-looking case, I'll be very content.

~~~
vbezhenar
I hope that Mac Pro would be good old case with standard components without
extra price. I really like macOS but all Apple's computers are just terrible
for me. Mac Pro is my last hope to stay in Apple ecosystem.

~~~
qubex
Considering how long it is taking them to develop it, and considering the
direction they have taken with their Emoji-keyboard MacBookPros with custom
chips and now the architecture of the iMac Pro, the Mac Pro is going to be
anything but standard.

~~~
gurkendoktor
But they _have_ already developed a non-standard Mac Pro in 2013, and it is
widely considered a failure. I'm not sure if they'll really make the same
mistake twice?

~~~
scarface74
Its not just widely considered a failure, they publicly admitted it was a
failure.

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/06/transcript-phil-
schiller-c...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/06/transcript-phil-schiller-
craig-federighi-and-john-ternus-on-the-state-of-apples-pro-macs/)

 _Craig Federighi: I think it’s fair to say, part of why we’re talking today,
is that the Mac Pro — the current vintage that we introduced — we wanted to do
something bold and different. In retrospect, it didn’t well suit some of the
people we were trying to reach. It’s good for some; it’s an amazingly quiet
machine, it’s a beautiful machine. But it does not address the full range of
customers we wanna reach with Mac Pro._

 _But I think we designed ourselves into a bit of a thermal corner, if you
will. We designed a system that we thought with the kind of GPUs that at the
time we thought we needed, and that we thought we could well serve with a two
GPU architecture… that that was the thermal limit we needed, or the thermal
capacity we needed. But workloads didn’t materialize to fit that as broadly as
we hoped._

------
_ph_
Good to read something positive about CPU technology today :). Beyond the
obvious improvements for securing the computer, it is very interesting to see
how the T2 chip not only operates the camera but most of all also works as a
hard disk controller. So the "CPU" of the computer might be Intel still, but
it is a bit of a guest in a system that is in fact controlled by the T2 chip.

As the T2 seems to basically the iPhone CPU it also shows how great a hardware
is in current phones now, if using that chip creates a faster flash memory
controller for the biggest Intel CPUs.

------
jhiska
So... I read the article and I still don't know what, exactly, is the T2 chip
or what, exactly, makes it different from other ARM / Intel hybrids, other
than several different ways of expressing "it's incredibly, totally great" and
"Intel is untrustworthy, so let's trust Apple instead" and "this changes
everything all over again".

(It doesn't, unless you arbitrarily consider small, incremental changes
exclusive to Apple products as the opposite of small and incremental just
because of the size of Apple.)

~~~
jacobolus
It’s a chip which replaces the controllers (previously several of them, from
different vendors, that Apple didn’t have control over) for disk and network
I/O, speakers, microphone, camera, cooling system, etc. with a single Apple-
designed chip. This lets Apple add features to their hardware unsupported by
other controllers, move some features from the CPU to this new chip which can
reduce attack surface area and free up CPU cycles for something else, save
space on the motherboard, and maybe save money.

------
zapt02
This just sound like the Intel Management Engine story waiting to happen
again. A controller that handles camera, networking and is the "root of
trust"? No thank you.

~~~
r00fus
> This just sound like the Intel Management Engine story waiting to happen
> again

Excuse me, implementation details matter. Outcomes matter. Apple has deployed
10x more devices with no known breach or defect.

~~~
nopreserveroot
Are you implying that Apple has deployed 10x more devices than Intel?

~~~
toasterlovin
Yeah, this is all technology from iOS devices.

~~~
oblio
Even so, I somehow doubt that 15 years of iOS devices equals 30+ years of x86
devices.

~~~
toasterlovin
You're right.

I was assuming the parent was thinking about Macs vs. Intel processors. Was
just pointing out that the comparison of scale is iOS devices vs. Intel
processors.

~~~
dingaling
> iOS devices vs. Intel processors

There's no way there are 10x more iOS devices in circulation than Intel-based
PCs

Annual PC shipments ( laptops + desktops ) are still above 250 million per
year. No tablets haven't killed the market, they've killed growth.

Apple sells about 220 million iPhones per year. I don't know how many iPads;
say half as many again?

------
bsharitt
I find it interesting that Apple is back to high levels of customization in
its PCs. If I'm remembering correctly, one of the big motivators to move to
x86 was to be able to use more commodity stuff through out the system, rather
than the all the custom work required to design PowerPC system. I recall
initial speculation that Apple's x86 machines would be pretty much fully
custom chipsets and designs that just happened to have an x86 CPU, but then
when the release systems came out, they used Intel chipsets and were pretty
ordinary from a PC hardware standpoint.

~~~
newscracker
The biggest motivator to move to Intel, as stated by Steve Jobs in 2005
(paraphrasing from what I remember), was that the power to performance ratio
was bad on PowerPC. All the lead that PowerPC had had over Intel vanished.

And given that IBM wasn’t interested in servicing Apple’s needs for consumer
level chips (and Motorola, the other company in the PowerPC consortium, was
struggling to scale up manufacturing), Apple’s pro machines like the PowerMac
were struggling to keep up and improve. One PowerMac model with PowerPC G5
(IIRC) was even released with liquid cooling and had some customers
complaining about leaks.

The driver for the processor switch was actually Apple’s inability to get the
right kind of chips it wanted on scale. As others have mentioned, the in-house
design and the ability to get its chips manufactured for iPhones on a large
scale triggered a big wave (of competitive advantage) for Apple. We’ll only
see more of this as time passes.

~~~
remir
Yeah, I remember Jobs saying they wanted to put a G5 in the Powerbook but
couldn't do it because the chip was too power hungry.

------
sspiff
> For security reasons, the T2 is the iMac Pro hardware’s “root of trust,” and
> it validates the entire boot process when the power comes on. The T2 starts
> up, checks things out, loads its bootloader, verifies that it’s legitimate
> and cryptographically signed by Apple, and then moves on to the next part of
> the boot process.

How is this more secure from a locked down system using "standard" UEFI secure
boot powered by any other TPM implementation?

I understand that this is not an in-depth technical analysis, mainly catering
to the Mac-loving audience of the site and getting them to feel better about
their platform of choice.

But I'd be interested to hear why I would trust this Apple T2 chip more than a
workstation motherboard with a TPM on it, and secure boot on and loaded only
with the keys of myself (in case I were to build my own kernel/bootloader and
sign it) or a vendor I trust. I could be missing something, but the process
outlined in the article sounds exactly like secure boot.

------
perfmode
Is this basically an integrated south bridge?

~~~
ZenoArrow
Sounds like it to me.

For those that are unfamiliar:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southbridge_(computing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southbridge_\(computing\))

------
microcolonel
> _On most Macs, there are discrete controllers for audio, system management
> and disk drives. But the T2 handles all these taks. The T2 is responsible
> for controlling the iMac Pro’s stereo speakers, internal microphones, and
> dual cooling fans, all by itself._

Translation: T2 is a southbridge, but this time with a camera controller, and
a TPM in addition to the normal disk, audio codec, peripheral bus, and GPIO
functionality.

~~~
stuff4ben
Or T2 is like the Fat Agnus, Denise, and Paula chips all rolled into one,
similar to the Amiga. Everything new is just recycled from the past.

~~~
bch
Came to say the same thing (or see if someone else said it). This looks like
classic multiprocessing, and looks like computing, like music and clothing, is
also subject to ~20-year fashion cycles for some things.

------
ksec
I am wondering on the cost benefits this has with Apple. While it is
insignificant with the iMac Pro, it will be important once it is filter down
to entry level.

Apple now basically have its own IP in everything. Instead of sourcing and
paying IP or chips, they can now mix and match their own and build with TSMC.
All with the help of iPhone's R&D. I am pretty sure the next one on the list
is WiFi and Bluetooth.

This a potential saving of up to $50 in BOM cost. If you tell most PC vendor a
extra $50 profits per machine they would have their eyes wide open.

This roughly translate to a $100 cheaper Retail pricing, but given it is Apple
they will likely use this saving to put YET another silly features on the
Macbook to sell it at the same price.

------
amckinlay
I'm glad they allow you to completely disable the "secure boot" functionality
so that other OSes like Linux can be installed. Glad Apple didn't pull a
Microsoft here. I would be delighted, however, if the secure boot
functionality was programmable with custom certificates!

------
monocasa
> This version requires a network connection when you attempt to install any
> OS software updates, because it needs to verify with Apple that the updates
> are legitimate.

They can't just verify the signatures?

~~~
pwinnski
By _default_ , they start out at the highest level of security, assuming an
always-on network connection. It can be adjusted downward, which those of us
reading HN are likely to prefer.

Signature verification alone may confirm that a release is from Apple, but it
doesn't confirm that the release hasn't been superseded due to security
issues. (Or marketing, if you're conspiracy-minded.)

The "Medium" setting allows older versions of MacOS, so although the article
doesn't say, I suspect that is doing signature-verification alone, and does
not require a network connection.

~~~
monocasa
> Signature verification alone may confirm that a release is from Apple, but
> it doesn't confirm that the release hasn't been superseded due to security
> issues. (Or marketing, if you're conspiracy-minded.)

But fuse sets will. Thus is how downgrade attacks are generally protected
against in high integrity consumer electronics.

That way your device continues to work when you reboot and Comcast is down
again.

~~~
eridius
I'm sure the T2 doesn't verify the OS against the network at boot time, but
rather when you're installing the OS update. Once it's been installed, it's
trusted.

The trivial proof here is if it did anything else, ignoring an OS update would
brick your device, which is obviously not desired behavior.

~~~
willstrafach
> I'm sure the T2 doesn't verify the OS against the network at boot time, but
> rather when you're installing the OS update. Once it's been installed, it's
> trusted.

This is correct. Network is only needed for re-install on the high security
setting. When already installed, the only verification is to ensure signatures
are valid, similar to how iOS devices function (You cannot re-flash/downgrade
to an older OS, but if you have an older OS installed, the device will not
prevent you from booting).

------
itomato
I am surprised it has taken this long.

In the Marklar days, this was something we speculated about as a Clone-defeat
mechanism. Essentially a hackintosh blocker.

I look forward to following the discoveries made in this subsystem.

------
Chaebixi
What is old is new again:

[https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Five_Different_M...](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Five_Different_Macs.txt)

------
danellis
> Before the iMac Pro was released, there was a lot of speculation that it was
> part of a trend toward creating a “hybrid Mac” that is driven by both an
> Intel processor and an Apple-designed ARM chip like those found in other
> Apple devices. The iMac Pro is definitely a hybrid of a sort, but probably
> not the one people were expecting.

Not the thing people were expecting, but still, does anyone know if the T2 is
based around one of Apple's ARM cores?

~~~
wmf
The T2 is rumored to be a derivative of the A10.

------
irieblue
Apple has basically replaced the SMC architecture with a new architecture that
is the equivalent of an Apple watch. From an integration perspective, it makes
sense. Apple no longer has to source an SMC/arm chip from another supplier,
they use their own.

All Mac users have at some point had to reset the SMC on a Mac. The MacWorld
comment that the iMac pro because of the T2 chip is unlike another Mac, is
only half the story. The Functionality that was handled by the SMC (which was
an arm based architecture), is now handled by a more beefier arm chip T2.

It's a cost savings for Apple, and allows for more advanced functionality. In
the Interim , the T2 is doing exactly what the SMC used to do.

------
bcjordan
Slightly OT, Apple really needs to release a Macbook Pro or two with beefy
video cards -- it's becoming nearly untenable to develop games or for AR/VR
with their latest hardware. Their Intel-integrated cards are not up to the
task.

~~~
AlphaSite
Isn’t this why they added support for externals GPUs?

------
faragon
Where is the disk key? Is it stored in the main board, or in the flash disk
itself? E.g. if you have to replace the motherboard, do you lose the data, or
because of being in the flash disk it is OK? BTW, if being in the flash disk,
how secure it is the key handling?

------
woliveirajr
When all eyes are now looking to the future of branch prediction, this launch
will be a bit obfuscated. Does the Intel Xeon inside the iMac Pro also
vulnerable? If so, the impact of the T2 will not get attention as it should.

~~~
rodorgas
High Sierra fixed the KPTI issue without perfomance loss:
[https://twitter.com/aionescu/status/948609809540046849](https://twitter.com/aionescu/status/948609809540046849)

~~~
rsynnott
"Without performance loss" sounds optimistic, but most things that people
would be doing with a Mac likely aren't syscall-intensive enough to show major
effects, especially on modernish chips with PCID. Most of the more impressive
performance drops from the Linux patch are with things like heavy database
workloads.

------
saagarjha
> if you get the 1TB model, your iMac Pro has two 512MB NAND banks

Looks like you meant “GB” here.

------
b1gtuna
I love the level of integration with this chip. How big is their IC design
team?

~~~
newscracker
Not very big, is my understanding. The team mainly came from the PA Semi
acquisition several years ago, and there was some recent news about Google
hiring (“poaching”) a key senior person from this team.

------
nutbutter
It's impossible to read the article because of the ads.

~~~
lolsal
It is easily readable with Reader View in Safari.

------
znpy
Intel ME? Hold my beer. -- Apple.

------
j3097736
>The T2 is responsible for controlling the iMac Pro’s stereo speakers,
internal microphones, and dual cooling fans, all by itself.

So it's just a fancy Super I/O chip

------
kilon
"The iMac Pro isn’t running iOS apps"

I always find this kind of remarks funny because iOS is essentially a
specialised strip down version of MacOS. So basically any accusation of MacOS
copying iOS , however exaggerated, is an accusation that MacOS is copying
itself.

------
mschuster91
> Every bit of data stored on an iMac Pro’s SSD is encrypted on the fly by the
> T2, so that if a nefarious person tried to pull out the storage chips and
> read them later, they’d be out of luck.

What. The. Fuck. How am I supposed to recover my data e.g. if the mainboard
gets fried or the machine has to go to service?! With a SATA or NVMe SSD I can
plug them into another computer and either keep going (for Linux and macOS,
only Windows is a different beast...) or dump the data to somehere safe. With
this, Apple forces me to rely on TimeMachine working - which is not a bad idea
in itself, but not cool that this is not widely announced on the product page:
"BACK UP THE DATA YOURSELF OR IT WILL GET LOST IF ANYTHING GETS SCREWED UP".

There's already FileVault for encryption (or LUKS, VeraCrypt and Bitlocker),
and in addition some SSDs (and iirc also some expensive HDDs) implement native
on disk encryption via standardized SATA commands so one has encrypted storage
but still portability (and for native disk encryption, no loss due to CPU-
level encryption!).

Another reason to not buy anything modern from Apple. If one single problem
happens to your modern work machine you're straight out f...ed.

~~~
jonknee
What is your plan to access storage if your phone's motherboard gets fried?

~~~
ansible
I, personally love and hate the disappearance of micro-SD cards with phones.
Love, because many SD cards are crap, and will lose your data without much
notice. Hate, because then there is no recovery option other than "travel back
in time to backup your data", if you haven't already backed up your data.

I sort of give phones a pass these days because they are size and weight
constrained. Desktop PCs though????? I disagree with the decision not to use a
NVMe SSD card slot on this product.

~~~
scarface74
Backing up your iPhone to iCloud is turned on by default.

~~~
AlphaSite
So is backing up most of your Mac.

