Reports from Bloomberg and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is Apple will announce the first ARM processor at WWDC, and that the first Mac models to feature ARM CPUs will be a next-generation 13.3-inch MacBook Pro and a new redesigned iMac. The Mac models will offer performance improvements of 50-100% over Intel predecessors. The transition timeline proposed by Kuo is aggressive, and faster than some other reports. With Kuo’s bold claim that all new Macs will be equipped with Apple processors starting in 2021.
SOURCES- Bloomberg, MacRumors
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
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You aren’t running legacy software on a supercomputer. Now admittedly, Graviton2 and similar Neoverse-esqe chips have somewhat approached Intel on the top end, but again, that’s likely with highly multithreaded modern workloads, not legacy single threaded apps. You’re only going to see real parity there on scripted languages using updated runtimes for single threaded because of the runtime fixes, not old precompiled stuff. Apple is doing x86 emulation, which will hurt, even with on-die acceleration.
It remains to be seen what the die area for this laptop/desktop ARM chip from Apple will be. Most Macbook innards, baring the GPU, were already approaching the size of tablet/smartphone motherboards as is, so you aren’t going to have physically huge ARM chips, which probably caps the number of cores as well as the amount of cache memory. Apple could cure a lot of sins with interesting use of cache memory, especially if they can pull in most of their work on their iOS chips to keep cache power consumption low.
That’s not true. Do you realize that the fastest supercomputer in the world is a pure-CPU (no GPU accelerators) ARM supercomputer ?.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/23/21300097/fugaku-supercomputer-worlds-fastest-top500-riken-fujitsu-arm
Also on the server space you have the Neoverse cores that reaches parity on most single-threaded tasks with the best Intel and AMD cores at half of the power consumption.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-graviton2-arm-against-intel-and-amd/10
Personally, I’d rather have a brainless laptop sleeve with an iphone sized hole right where the trackpad goes on the laptop keyboard…so that when you plug your iphone into this the laptop sleeve…the iphone touch screen becomes the trackpad….and the OS automatically switches to the Mac Desktop operating system…
ARM only ever really won in the low power regime, that Intel could never quite do with x86. Once you start cranking up the clock/cache/memory, Intel tends to do better, especially with legacy software that is single threaded. It’s that fine line between casual laptop usage and serious power user where the balance gets murky. Google found that for basic web browser based usage, chromebooks are enough, though many are x86 based. With the iPad Pro’s now able to use external keyboard/mouse HID devices, the line gets fuzzier.
There’s something to be said for application specific APU usage though, such as certain kinds of offload, much how the fancier ARM chips have a mix of core types, allowing various psuedo-sleep modes.