Author Topic: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...  (Read 5750 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline edy

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2392
  • Country: ca
    • DevHackMod Channel
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #25 on: June 23, 2020, 02:44:47 pm »
maybe just to make phones, tablets and laptops all a variation of the same platform  and I guess gain some battery life

There could be some logic to convergence of all of these types of hardware into one base. Perhaps even the operating systems will merge and they will find a way to make developers use a common base code that will work across all device resolutions? I don't know why a company would want to put all their eggs in one basket, but it would give Apple more control of their supply-chain and perhaps allow them to incorporate some of their "magic" keywords into the chips like they did with iPhone, like "bionic" and "neural engine", etc.

At the end of the day, average users care only about the experience. They couldn't care less what's inside. If an Apple user continues to be productive on their device, what does it matter? The question will be what kind of speed/performance will they be able to squeeze out of these devices, especially for extended periods of graphics-intensive applications, VR, gaming, rendering, video editing, etc.

My understanding is that RaspBerry PI uses ARM based SoCs, as do many Chromebooks, and there are lots of all-in-one PC-boards (BeagleBoard, etc) that do the same (running variations of Linux). So many people already are using ARM devices without even knowing and nobody complains as long as it does what it is supposed to smoothly and reliably. I'm curious to see what Apple can develop out of this. It may help push the development of more powerful cheap mini-PC's as well that will run Linux.
YouTube: www.devhackmod.com LBRY: https://lbry.tv/@winegaming:b Bandcamp Music Link
"Ye cannae change the laws of physics, captain" - Scotty
 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #26 on: June 23, 2020, 02:49:12 pm »
If Apple doesn't want to use the serious chips, have they given up making serious hardware (unlike some of their machines in the past, which were awesome)?
Maybe wait until you've actually seen the devices before passing judgement?

If Apple is planning a workstation level ARM processor with tons of cores, they might be on to something.   Why is it I get the feeling they are more interested in the exterior styling, I wonder?
 

Offline David Hess

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 17502
  • Country: us
  • DavidH
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #27 on: June 23, 2020, 02:59:21 pm »
I disagree, it's not so much about workstation workloads but bad code workloads. Bad code workloads are mostly just a question of cache architecture at this point, speculative execution to push up IPC absent cache stalls is so far into diminishing return territory it's silly.

So they just need to add on a big L3 cache, so trash code can run better.

It takes more then just large L3 cache to ameliorate corner cases which result in poor performance.  For ARM, TLB, page table, and unaligned access comes to mind.

There could be some logic to convergence of all of these types of hardware into one base. Perhaps even the operating systems will merge and they will find a way to make developers use a common base code that will work across all device resolutions?

I think the killer application would have been being able to transfer running applications between machines but over the past 20 years, Apple and Microsoft have worked to limit this capability in favor of running applications in the cloud so it will never happen now.  They would rather enforce the extraction of rents than improve the usability of their products.

 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #28 on: June 23, 2020, 03:29:34 pm »
So they just need to add on a big L3 cache, so trash code can run better.

It can't be that easy. A chip that I'm working with, K210, has 8MB of on-die SRAM running at CPU frequency (up to 800MHz, not bad for 28nm LP process), and the entire chip, also packed with a few thousands of multiply-and-accumulators (400GOPS at 8-bit*16-bit, 400MHz), 2 RV64 cores and all digital IO peripherals you can imagine, is mere 25mm2 in die size and costs ~4 dollars at one-off quantity.

If it is really that easy to pack a few MB of SRAM, why don't CPU manufacturers pack at least 4MB of cache in every ARM SoC? With 7nm process, that takes around 10mm2 of space and a few bucks, not bad at all if it brings the performance per MHz on par with x86.

Also it doesn't explain why even Pentium/Celeron chips with 2MB cache perform so well on CPU-only (no hardware accelerators, no GPUs) tasks even compared with the fasest ARM SoCs.

I think ARM architecture still has a long way to go, but for many casual applications (where you'd be served well with a MacBook or a MacBook Air or a comparable PC like a Surface Go), ARM has a chance. It is not at x86's level yet, but it at least has a chance to win in the future.

But for really heavy lifting tasks, x86 will dominate for the foreseeable future.

So my opinion is while I think ARM has the potential and has some momentum, I just don't think x86 is going to be dead any time soon.

Not only is x86 not dead,  it is also evolving.  The ARM stuff has a chance in the low end.   Perhaps we just have to admit that many Apple customers are really low-end users of a high end looking product?
 

Offline Marco

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7089
  • Country: nl
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #29 on: June 23, 2020, 03:45:55 pm »
Also it doesn't explain why even Pentium/Celeron chips with 2MB cache perform so well on CPU-only (no hardware accelerators, no GPUs) tasks even compared with the fasest ARM SoCs.

Fastest ARM cores minus Apple's ... their core does just fine in SPECint, even ignoring the one or two performance outliers.

As for why other ARM developers can't compete, I think it's mostly because Apple has hoovered up talent both by acquisitions and employee poaching.
 

Offline Marco

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7089
  • Country: nl
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #30 on: June 23, 2020, 04:53:23 pm »
When regulators wake up to the fact that cornering most of the profits in a market is not much different from cornering the market period, they will get anti-trust law thrown at them sooner or later. If they took over the server market as well and killed AMD&Intel in the process it would come a lot sooner.

It's better to leave some crumbs for the competition. Apple is so rich at the moment they can cripple any competitor through employee poaching alone long before they can become dangerous (like they did to Imagination, partly to get a sweeter deal on patent licensing). I think Apple is a more dangerous monopolist than Intel and Microsoft ever were.
« Last Edit: June 23, 2020, 05:00:22 pm by Marco »
 

Offline james_s

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 21611
  • Country: us
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #31 on: June 23, 2020, 05:15:57 pm »
Or gain a few hours by adding a couple millimeters to the thickness of the battery which is beyond Apple's marketing capability.  CPU power draw is not the primary limitation of operating time on ARM or x86.

That's one of my major gripes. For the most part I've been happy with the Macbook Pro I have for work, but the battery life is not spectacular by any stretch and it annoys me that they sacrificed that in addition to sacrificing keyboard quality to make it much thinner than it needs to be. It's so thin that it's uncomfortable wrap my hands around to carry, it could easily be 50% thicker and still be thin. If they were to license the OS to clone makers it could have been the dominant consumer OS by now but being locked to such a narrow choice of hardware is severely limiting.
 

Offline Tomorokoshi

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1212
  • Country: us
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #32 on: June 23, 2020, 05:44:03 pm »
I just upgraded computers. I use a USB to DVI adapter for an external display. The old computer was fast enough to operate smoothly. On the new one, there is a distinct delay.

A large percentage of the compute power and bandwidth on my new computer was dedicated to graphics baubles such as transparent windows, fading this and that, animationeering, and other things that I haven't been able to track down and turn off yet.

Apple will be able to make an ARM-based machine work. They've made the transition several times in the past, and they also did well by porting over to Unix.

There are those who get quite flustered and concerned about Apple's styling and marketing approach. A more practical issue with most Apple products is the relative rate at which support for products is dropped, rendering them incompatible or unable to be upgraded.
 

Online langwadt

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 4891
  • Country: dk
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #33 on: June 23, 2020, 05:47:07 pm »
Or gain a few hours by adding a couple millimeters to the thickness of the battery which is beyond Apple's marketing capability.  CPU power draw is not the primary limitation of operating time on ARM or x86.

That's one of my major gripes. For the most part I've been happy with the Macbook Pro I have for work, but the battery life is not spectacular by any stretch and it annoys me that they sacrificed that in addition to sacrificing keyboard quality to make it much thinner than it needs to be. It's so thin that it's uncomfortable wrap my hands around to carry, it could easily be 50% thicker and still be thin. If they were to license the OS to clone makers it could have been the dominant consumer OS by now but being locked to such a narrow choice of hardware is severely limiting.

but it also means they only have to make it work for a limited choice of hardware and unlike MS they won't get the blame for crappy performance caused by hardware they had nothing to do with
 

Offline james_s

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 21611
  • Country: us
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #34 on: June 23, 2020, 06:27:24 pm »
I just upgraded computers. I use a USB to DVI adapter for an external display. The old computer was fast enough to operate smoothly. On the new one, there is a distinct delay.

A large percentage of the compute power and bandwidth on my new computer was dedicated to graphics baubles such as transparent windows, fading this and that, animationeering, and other things that I haven't been able to track down and turn off yet.

What did you upgrade from and to? "Graphics baubles" such as transparent windows have been around for ~15 years and shouldn't cause any measurable delays. Windows 7 has about the richest GUI of any operating system and it is smooth and snappy on my 5 year old i7 and I've run it on much less powerful hardware without issues. I never did like the animation and artificial delays that are often the default settings but that's a separate issue.
 

Offline rrinker

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2046
  • Country: us
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #35 on: June 23, 2020, 07:00:32 pm »
 Apple's current ARM cores are highly optimized versions - they are not using ARM IP off the shelf and stuffing it in a design. The operating systems are already somewhat converged. The big powerful ARM-based CPUs are there - AWS offers ARM instances. Check out the Ampere Altra line, right now up to 80 cores with 128 coming, and at certain core counts, manage to blow away any X86 in terms of performance per watt.
 
 What even IS x86 any more? So many instructions just keep getting added. Extension this, extension that. Some tiny incremental IPC improvements with each generation, some, like Intel constantly requiring a new socket, AMD at least holding on to the same socket through a few generations. PCs are ALREADY faster than most typical users need. The outlier high performance cases will always need specialized hardware to optimize their tasks, but there's nothing preventing ARM architecture from supporting large floating point or fast integer calculation optimizations.

 Apple already builds phone and tablet SOCs that regularly outperform the competition. And not just by a little bit. They have a rather talented team assembled that does this design work, easily on par with what the others have. There's no reason why, freed of the ultra low power envelope of a phone and put in a larger laptop or desktop where active cooling is possible, the performance won't be there. 

 It's mostly a given without an official word, that the real high end stuff like the Mac Pro will probably be the last to transition to an ARM system. But they blew it on that one from the beginning, simply not wanting to get into certifying the OS for a different CPU - an AMD Epyc in that thing would both double the cores AND be significantly cheaper. And this is where it all comes together - control of the hardware means a much tighter integration with the OS. Windows issues STILL are more with drivers and strange hardware than anything. That Windows can run on Apple hardware doesn't say as much about Apple's hardware as it does about Windows' flexibility. That flexibility, and requirement that Windows needs to run on any crazy combination of hardware you can think of, remains the Achilles heel of Windows. Excluding discontinued and used items - just look on a well-stocked PC hardware site and see how many combinations of CPUs, chipsets, motherboards, and video cards there are. Windows has to work on whatever electrically compatible combination of that stuff you can come up with. Mac OS doesn't have to deal with that. It's far easier to write something to work on a few dozen hardware combinations - all of which are actually somewhat similar - than it is to write something that can work on millions of combinations.

 
The following users thanked this post: tooki

Offline Tomorokoshi

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1212
  • Country: us
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #36 on: June 23, 2020, 07:03:56 pm »
I just upgraded computers. I use a USB to DVI adapter for an external display. The old computer was fast enough to operate smoothly. On the new one, there is a distinct delay.

A large percentage of the compute power and bandwidth on my new computer was dedicated to graphics baubles such as transparent windows, fading this and that, animationeering, and other things that I haven't been able to track down and turn off yet.

What did you upgrade from and to? "Graphics baubles" such as transparent windows have been around for ~15 years and shouldn't cause any measurable delays. Windows 7 has about the richest GUI of any operating system and it is smooth and snappy on my 5 year old i7 and I've run it on much less powerful hardware without issues. I never did like the animation and artificial delays that are often the default settings but that's a separate issue.

Windows 7 Pro SP1 Core i5 vPro to Windows 10 Pro V1909 Core i7 vPro 9th Gen (According to the intel stickers on the machines). 16 GB each.

Yes, two separate issues: artificial delays due to animations, and bus/bandwidth delays due to something on the USB side of things. Part of the point being that when transparent windows first came out, it made for noticeable delays with the typical hardware at the time.

In this case, switching the window between "Normal" and "Maximized" takes around 1/3 second. Scrolling with the mouse wheel also has noticeable delays. Honestly, it's like using Windows 3.1 on an 80286. I expect there is something up in the USB drivers but I can't track it down.
 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #37 on: June 23, 2020, 07:06:27 pm »
Sounds like a possible graphics driver issue?  Those operations should be instantaneous.
 

Offline Tomorokoshi

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1212
  • Country: us
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #38 on: June 23, 2020, 07:14:02 pm »
Sounds like a possible graphics driver issue?  Those operations should be instantaneous.

While the drivers apparently up to date, that doesn't mean they are working properly anyway. For another task I ordered up a different USB to video adapter, so when that arrives I will try it instead.
 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #39 on: June 23, 2020, 07:27:33 pm »
Sounds like a possible graphics driver issue?  Those operations should be instantaneous.

While the drivers apparently up to date, that doesn't mean they are working properly anyway. For another task I ordered up a different USB to video adapter, so when that arrives I will try it instead.

USB to video?  -  that is probably the explanation right there...  Isn't there a way to get video from a higher bandwidth bus on that machine?
 

Offline Tomorokoshi

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1212
  • Country: us
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #40 on: June 23, 2020, 07:36:11 pm »
Sounds like a possible graphics driver issue?  Those operations should be instantaneous.

While the drivers apparently up to date, that doesn't mean they are working properly anyway. For another task I ordered up a different USB to video adapter, so when that arrives I will try it instead.

USB to video?  -  that is probably the explanation right there...  Isn't there a way to get video from a higher bandwidth bus on that machine?

That's the thing: the USB to video adapter worked just fine on the old computer.

Besides, the other 2 external screens are already using up the available direct ports in the external dock. They both are nice and fast.
 
The following users thanked this post: SilverSolder

Offline andersm

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1198
  • Country: fi
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #41 on: June 23, 2020, 11:26:36 pm »
Why is it I get the feeling they are more interested in the exterior styling, I wonder?
Because you're emotionally invested in disliking Apple?

Anyway, the first product launches can't be that far off. Since the announcements, the Osborne effect must be full force, and even with Apple's cash pile I can't imagine they want the situation to continue for too long.
 
The following users thanked this post: tooki

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #42 on: June 23, 2020, 11:42:20 pm »
Why is it I get the feeling they are more interested in the exterior styling, I wonder?
Because you're emotionally invested in disliking Apple?

Anyway, the first product launches can't be that far off. Since the announcements, the Osborne effect must be full force, and even with Apple's cash pile I can't imagine they want the situation to continue for too long.

I'm not a fanboy, but not a hater either.   It is fair to say, is it not, that Apple is the Bang & Olufsen of the computer industry - looks great, is expensive, but doesn't necessarily perform better (with some exceptions through the years).
 

Offline james_s

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 21611
  • Country: us
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #43 on: June 24, 2020, 01:54:12 am »
I'm neither one either. I like a lot of things about Apple computers (and phones), I also absolutely loathe a lot of things about them. I very much dislike a lot of things about Android as well, and I feel Windows has regressed into a steaming turd. There are only two viable mobile platforms and they're both terrible, and three mainstream PC platforms, two that it's really fair to call mainstream on the desktop and both have serious shortcomings that I consider deal breakers.
 

Offline Tomorokoshi

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1212
  • Country: us
Re: AAPL: Bye, bye Intel...
« Reply #44 on: July 11, 2020, 02:12:49 am »
I switched out the StarTech USB to DVI adapter with a cheap Monoprice 21607 USB-C to DVI/HDMI/VGA adapter. It only works on one of the three USB-C ports. It turns out it is a "passive adapter". Anyway, while it works in this case it doesn't work at all on another computer. Next time I'll track down an updated version of the StarTech.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf