Apple Releases M1-Powered Apple Silicon Macs, macOS Big Sur Releasing This Week

[duby229]

Here is the basic x86 mindset. Only MY work is REAL compute work.

No....not by a long shot. Did Apple make the M1 to be a server chip? No. Yet...that is what is in most x86 consumer computers right now. De-tuned server chips. x86 was never designed and is STILL not designed for consumer products. They start as Server designs and then get detuned to meet lots of other markets like the consumer market. That is a losing game.

We have already seen that with both Intel and AMD exiting the mobile market, the switch market, the embedded market and most of the storage market. x86 can never ever be made into a viable mobile chip offering.

But....because ARM started out as an intrinsically power sipping design, based on RISC as opposed to CISC, they have an advantage whereby it is much easier to ADD to that design to meet more power compute task WHILE STILL meeting thermal and package constraints.

Plus the flexibility in design and in it being RISC means it can break out of the SoC paradigm and go BIG and go DISCREET much easier than x86.

This is why you are seeing ARM scale down, up and out to meet WAY more compute tasks on FAR MORE a variety of compute platforms than x86 has....or ever could.

You're not going to see x86 in earbuds.
You're not going to see x86 in smartspeakers
You're not going to see x86 in smartwatches
You're not going to see x86 in switches or routers
You're not going to see x86 in tablets
You're not going to see x86 in Smart Phones
You're not going to see x86 in Smart TVs
You're not going to see x86 in Cellular base stations
You're not going to see x86 in SBCs
You're not going to see x86 in Robots
You're not going to see x86 in Space Probes and Satellites
You're not going to see x86 in ANY Apple product going forward

You ARE going to see a DECLINE in x86 in Chromebooks
You ARE going to see a DECLINE in x86 in Microsoft products
You ARE going to see a DECLINE in x86 Windows based products from HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and ASUS
You ARE going to see an INCREASE in the number of HPC, SERVER and SUPERCOMPUTERS using ARM and even beating x86 not only in Perf per Watt but raw compute as well.
You ARE going to see an INCREASE in the number of University and even Continental HPC and Supercomputing initiatives that use ARM exclusively.

x86 is on the wane in the Consumer world. x86 is fast becoming a niche product. Because it always was. It's always been a server tech, that was shoehorned down to the consumer space. That 50 year legacy is now showing itself to be obvious.

For the VAST, VAST majority of people's daily compute tasks, there is absolutely no need for Server tech to be in their computing platform. In other words...no need for x86

I'm glad that x86 still serves you. But your work needs are the >1% of the daily compute needs for the rest of humanity. And even then...by the end of this decade, there will be an ARM chip or platform that you will find compelling enough to use even for the work you described above.

Even before then....you may want to jump ship as most folks as this decade progresses and certainly now after Apple's rollout of desktop ARMs will begin to program first for ARM and then x86.

Well, I don't mean to be a dick, because I do largely agree with you, but some of your points above are flat wrong. For example, you say X86 was designed to be a server platform and then gimped for consumer devices, but the real truth is thta for the vast majority of X86's history they -WERE- designed as consumer grade devices and then pushed to their very limits for server grade devices. Actual server grade X86 didn't even become a thing until like 2005 or so. Big Iron -dominated- servers until right about then.

EDIT: And also I just would like to point out that Apples little dinky 3% marketshare combined with their asinine vendor lock-in means essentially that Apple is totally incapable of dominating -ANY- software market, not even their own. Apples -ONLY- saving grace is that they get to charge a $1000 dollars for a $300 dollar machine. Any other company would need like 10% marketshare to achieve apples profits. Apple has built a cult for itself and that is what saves it.

[Setif]

You can quite easily run macOS as a virtual machine. Unless it's a big app that requires the best performance to compile and build.

Can you run an operating system built for Apple Silicon on Virtual Box.
you need qemu ( with its huge performance penalty ) to run an OS for a different architecture if it is supported ( I don't think Apple silicon will be easy to be supported ).

[vein]

Here is the basic x86 mindset. Only MY work is REAL compute work.

No....not by a long shot. Did Apple make the M1 to be a server chip? No. Yet...that is what is in most x86 consumer computers right now. De-tuned server chips. x86 was never designed and is STILL not designed for consumer products. They start as Server designs and then get detuned to meet lots of other markets like the consumer market. That is a losing game.

We have already seen that with both Intel and AMD exiting the mobile market, the switch market, the embedded market and most of the storage market. x86 can never ever be made into a viable mobile chip offering.

But....because ARM started out as an intrinsically power sipping design, based on RISC as opposed to CISC, they have an advantage whereby it is much easier to ADD to that design to meet more power compute task WHILE STILL meeting thermal and package constraints.

Plus the flexibility in design and in it being RISC means it can break out of the SoC paradigm and go BIG and go DISCREET much easier than x86.

This is why you are seeing ARM scale down, up and out to meet WAY more compute tasks on FAR MORE a variety of compute platforms than x86 has....or ever could.

You're not going to see x86 in earbuds.
You're not going to see x86 in smartspeakers
You're not going to see x86 in smartwatches
You're not going to see x86 in switches or routers
You're not going to see x86 in tablets
You're not going to see x86 in Smart Phones
You're not going to see x86 in Smart TVs
You're not going to see x86 in Cellular base stations
You're not going to see x86 in SBCs
You're not going to see x86 in Robots
You're not going to see x86 in Space Probes and Satellites
You're not going to see x86 in ANY Apple product going forward

You ARE going to see a DECLINE in x86 in Chromebooks
You ARE going to see a DECLINE in x86 in Microsoft products
You ARE going to see a DECLINE in x86 Windows based products from HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and ASUS
You ARE going to see an INCREASE in the number of HPC, SERVER and SUPERCOMPUTERS using ARM and even beating x86 not only in Perf per Watt but raw compute as well.
You ARE going to see an INCREASE in the number of University and even Continental HPC and Supercomputing initiatives that use ARM exclusively.

x86 is on the wane in the Consumer world. x86 is fast becoming a niche product. Because it always was. It's always been a server tech, that was shoehorned down to the consumer space. That 50 year legacy is now showing itself to be obvious.

For the VAST, VAST majority of people's daily compute tasks, there is absolutely no need for Server tech to be in their computing platform. In other words...no need for x86

I'm glad that x86 still serves you. But your work needs are the >1% of the daily compute needs for the rest of humanity. And even then...by the end of this decade, there will be an ARM chip or platform that you will find compelling enough to use even for the work you described above.

Even before then....you may want to jump ship as most folks as this decade progresses and certainly now after Apple's rollout of desktop ARMs will begin to program first for ARM and then x86.

I never said that my workload was the only workload. I merely stated that the processor does not fit my type of workloads (which i can safely assume is the same type of workloads that most of the users of this forum face every day).

And I also point out that I think multithreaded workloads are actually more common than people think. There is a reason Renoir laptops are selling out very fast.

I also state that I do hope that the next generation of the M chip will feature more cores. Then it might fit into the 16" macbook pro.

I do believe that x86 will decline but in a slower paste than you believe. In 5 years we might be in a shared market situation.

[kpedersen]

In the long run, yes. But for now, Apple does provide Rosetta for running x86_64 binaries as a stop-gap.

Rosetta worked great in the PowerPC -> Intel days but there are two issues with it. The first is that it still didn't work with things like plugins. Running a PowerPC plugin in an Intel Maya was impossible for example.

Rosetta 2 will likely not solve this issue. This in itself wouldn't be a problem but unlike in 2006, macOS is ironically a lot *less* capable these days. The tools are weak and the flexibility is poor to drive people towards its DRM stores. This is all artificial of course but I think it will give developers many headaches and simply turn away from the mess.

Time will tell of course. Apple has a painfully delusional user-base so I am sure if Apple literally sold them a dog turd, they would polish it, cherish it and "make it work".

[labyrinth153]

Apple fanboys will be thrilled - gives them a new excuse not to do any real work, since they won't be able to with a cellphone chip.

The facts don't fit your narrative. When does a "cell phone chip" stop being slow to you? They already are faster than last generation core i7 cpus.

[domih]

...
You're not going to see x86 in earbuds.
You're not going to see x86 in smartspeakers
You're not going to see x86 in smartwatches
You're not going to see x86 in switches or routers
You're not going to see x86 in tablets
You're not going to see x86 in Smart Phones
You're not going to see x86 in Smart TVs
You're not going to see x86 in Cellular base stations
You're not going to see x86 in SBCs
You're not going to see x86 in Robots
You're not going to see x86 in Space Probes and Satellites
...

What a bunch of malarkey.

Here is a short list of SBCs using x86: Odroid H2/H2+, Seeedstudios Odyssey, Udoo X86, Udoo Bolt, etc are easily accessible to consumers. You can add to these the endless list of industrial, medical, signage SBCs using Intel or AMD x86 made by companies like Advantech, Aaeon, Axiomtek, Kontron, etc. Even ASRock has a few models. The inquiring mind will find news about all these boards on this site as well as sites such as cnxsoftware[dot]com, linuxgizmos[dot]com. All the companies, factories buying these boards don't give a damn about Apple Lithurgy.

Robots, Space Probes, Satellites: mmm... the ISS and Space X come to mind. The inquiring mind will find plenty of references by googling or binging.

Woof!

[NateHubbard]

It's great that Apple has this new processor which appears to be pretty competitive, but as long as it's locked inside an Apple product, it's useless to me.

Maybe now we'll finally start getting some decent Arm products that might be able to replace my current desktop, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Sonadow]

Said it before, and will say it again:

ARM is of no use to most us us until it has a stable 'PC platform' of sorts where:

• A standard Windows ARM installer can be used to install Windows across all ARM SoCs from all ARM vendors like AllWinner, Mediatek, Qualcomm, Huawei, etc
• A standard Linux distribution ARM installer can be used to install Linux across all ARM SoCs from all ARM vendors like AllWinner, Mediatek, Qualcomm, Huawei, etc
• An upstream vanilla kernel can be compiled with a simple 'make menuconfig, make rpm / make deb' and used to boot an ARM system, and replace the stock kernel provided by the ARM vendors or Linux distributions

These are things that we can take for granted in x64 and I;m not about to give those up that easily.

[vladpetric]

Perhaps the most immediate reason is going to be 3rd party software support. Photoshop plugins, Maya plugins, etc. If developers don't play ball because Apple makes the platform too much of a consumer shite-show, they simply will not get the software and the userbase will fall as a result.

This isn't the same thing as PowerPC. The reason why PowerPC was fairly successful with Macs before was because the OS was still fairly unrestricted and developers could easily port between x86 -> ppc. Generally barely any code needed to be changed if using a high level language like C or C++. macOS is much less capable these days due to the monetisation and DRM policies of 2020.

In this day and age, power isn't really king. Otherwise phones would not be so popular.

Computing power per Watt is king though.

[duby229]

Computing power per Watt is king though.

Except that this particular chip will only achieve those performance per watt numbers on very select workloads that can use that chips dedicated hardware. In almost all workloads it just simply will not compete with x86 in overall performance. I've been watching various comparisons and for most people it really is just another ARM chipset. And even then it's still limited strictly to Apple's OS, which as we all know and is very well documented, performs really bad.