Apple Announces Its New M2 Processor

[sinepgib]

As ravyne explained earlier, you are unlikely going to see something in the same ballpark as M1 using x86/84. AMD at one point was experimenting with an ARM processor (not sure what happened to it?) so maybe we will something out of that.

Eh, works for me as long as it doesn't end up being a second citizen for mainstream distros, which I fear will be the case for Apple hardware (indeed, even Intel Macs have rather poor support in Linux). The actual ISA is more or less a secondary concern for me. The only proprietary programs I use are some games from time to time, so I can always get ARM builds of everything else if needed.

[mangeek]

If that was the case then Ampere, MediaTek, Qualcomm and Nvidia would have already made an ARM based chip with better performance.

I don't think so. They could have made one, but there would be no market for it. You can't just drop a processor/SoC out there that can only run Linux or some janky flavor of Windows and expect it to sell. There's no market for 'PC-class' ARM CPUs except for the one Apple made. Microsoft tried and failed, people use Windows to run x86 software, Android/ChromeOS aren't huge enough (and x86 meets their PC-class needs). My impression is that Apple was the only player big enough to make their own hardware/software ecosystem.

[sinepgib]

I don't think so. They could have made one, but there would be no market for it. You can't just drop a processor/SoC out there that can only run Linux or some janky flavor of Windows and expect it to sell. There's no market for 'PC-class' ARM CPUs except for the one Apple made. Microsoft tried and failed, people use Windows to run x86 software, Android/ChromeOS aren't huge enough (and x86 meets their PC-class needs). My impression is that Apple was the only player big enough to make their own hardware/software ecosystem.

That's a valid point. I didn't think of that enough. They could ship something like Rosetta tho.

[mangeek]

They could ship something like Rosetta tho.

AFAIK, Rosetta2 only falls back to CPU emulation when it has to, it mostly intercepts system calls and routes them to native ones. That's something that is much harder to do in the Windows ecosystem. Apple's been very aggressive about deprecating legacy runtimes/frameworks/APIs, while Microsoft has had to pile 20 years of compatibility libraries into Windows.

I wish Microsoft had rewritten Windows in .NET back in the Vista days, and pushed everything older off into a compatibility VM or container. That's the kind of break they'd need to do what Apple does today.

[sinepgib]

AFAIK, Rosetta2 only falls back to CPU emulation when it has to, it mostly intercepts system calls and routes them to native ones. That's something that is much harder to do in the Windows ecosystem.

Considering WINE does exactly that for Linux, I think it should be doable.

[Anux]

The definition of better I use is how well a product fulfills its mission, how it meets the requirements of the task at hand. This makes it intrinsically relative.

Agreed, I don't think we have much different views on that matter.

While horizontal integration definitely creates more revenue, isn't the fact the M1 is a commercial success enough evidence that it will have a market?

Since we don't know what an M1 would cost, we can only say that the MAC is a success, thats what I wanted to say with AMD sells CPUs and Apple sells end user products.

Intel already designs mainboards BTW, don't those count as (almost) complete devices?

They build those NUCs but those are more tuned for price than anything else.

Didn't Intel had the lead in term of process at the time? Why use the old one? If it was cost effective for ARM, what made it different for Intel?

Yes but their newest process was always pretty expensive and exclusivly reserved for their high margin chips.

The point of the comparison was that evidently the one size fits all didn't fit that market. In the particular case of ARM, what made it suitable is probably being just IP cores that made them flexible for use in higher level designs based on them (i.e. the ability to make the SoCs further down the chain) rather than being discrete units as most x86 are.

Thats essentialy what I think too.

My main point is that ARM, x86, MIPS or whatever, all are equal in the end if you put enough research power behind them. Maybe one workload performs slightly better on one or the other, but nothing that makes an instructionset inherently bad for low power or high performance.

[sinepgib]

Agreed, I don't think we have much different views on that matter.


Since we don't know what an M1 would cost, we can only say that the MAC is a success, thats what I wanted to say with AMD sells CPUs and Apple sells end user products.


They build those NUCs but those are more tuned for price than anything else.


Yes but their newest process was always pretty expensive and exclusivly reserved for their high margin chips.


Thats essentialy what I think too.

My main point is that ARM, x86, MIPS or whatever, all are equal in the end if you put enough research power behind them. Maybe one workload performs slightly better on one or the other, but nothing that makes an instructionset inherently bad for low power or high performance.

I agree with every word.

[WannaBeOCer]

I don't think so. They could have made one, but there would be no market for it. You can't just drop a processor/SoC out there that can only run Linux or some janky flavor of Windows and expect it to sell. There's no market for 'PC-class' ARM CPUs except for the one Apple made. Microsoft tried and failed, people use Windows to run x86 software, Android/ChromeOS aren't huge enough (and x86 meets their PC-class needs). My impression is that Apple was the only player big enough to make their own hardware/software ecosystem.

Ask any notebook user and I’d bet they all would prefer a lighter, quieter notebook with longer battery life. That’s the market that ARM could fill. Rumors are hinting Microsoft and AMD are creating an ARM chip.

There’s over 40 million ChromeOS devices used in the education system. Those kids are growing up and learning to use ChromeOS for their daily use. I know a decent amount of people that use their iPads/Android tablets as their PC. That market is small but it could grow if Google pushed to make a desktop experience. I bet if Google or Apple created a desktop experience similar to Samsung DeX they would easily take over the PC market.

Windows for ARM isn’t janky, the hardware available is though. It runs better on Apple’s M1 using Parallels than any current available ARM chip. Instead of releasing a proper dev kit to assist with the transition. They released notebooks with the Snapdragon 835. Ever since then we continued to have garbage from Qualcomm. Then Microsoft announced this utter disgrace of a dev kit called the QC710. Qualcomm had to shell out $1.4 billion to purchase Nuvia which was created by an ex-Apple engineer. Qualcomm already confirmed the Nuvia chips will be a PC computing first product released next year.

History of Qualcomm’s failures in the PC market: https://www.xda-developers.com/apple...-look-bad/amp/

[mdedetrich]

Windows for ARM isn’t janky, the hardware available is though. It runs better on Apple’s M1 using Parallels than any current available ARM chip. Instead of releasing a proper dev kit to assist with the transition. They released notebooks with the Snapdragon 835. Ever since then we continued to have garbage from Qualcomm. Then Microsoft announced this utter disgrace of a dev kit called the QC710. Qualcomm had to shell out $1.4 billion to purchase Nuvia which was created by an ex-Apple engineer. Qualcomm already confirmed the Nuvia chips will be a PC computing first product released next year.

To make it even worse from what I heard Microsoft has an exclusivity deal with Qualcomm which is the main reason why Windows ARM doesn't properly support Apple M1 (or any other ARM device). There is nothing technical to prevent Windows ARM from being installed on M1, they just put an artificial lock because Windows ARM is only meant to be installed on official Windows products hence why you need to use Parallels.

This is ironically even worse then how Apple treats Linux, which is they don't officially support it but from what I have seen there is groundwork to make it possible (otherwise Asahi Linux wouldn't even be a thing).

[Anux]

There is nothing technical to prevent Windows ARM from being installed on M1

By that theory, any Linux distro would have been installable on day one.
Windows must face atleast the same hurdles and additionally a lawsuit by Apple for reverse engineering.