I still don't know why Apple doesn't look to using AMD right now. AMD is firing on all cylinders and Intel has their head up their asses. I would be perfectly happy with an AMD based Mac of any kind (desktop or laptop).
I hope MacOS always maintains x86 compatibility. Having Windows running on my iMac is a godsend and necessity.
That being said, I'd bet money that Apple has a roadmap to get away from x86. Intel really screwed themselves due to their ignorance during the beginning of the iPhone era when Apple chose Qualcomm for its chips. Now, history is beginning to repeat itself again with this time being the CPU's. I'm sure Apple is one of Intel's largest CPU customers and Intel stands to lose a huge amount of business if/when Apple decides to bring the CPU in-house.
I think within the next 5 years max, Apple will transition MacOS off of x86. They're doing something for sure.
My 2013 Mac Pro (trash can) just died. My main work computer. I have no idea what to replace it with. I am just staring at the Apple website in complete amazement.
iMac Pro
If Intel is screwing up even that could go on hold. Unless of course they go AMD which is an extremely appealing idea right now. There are many AMD systems now running neck and neck with Intel and doing so with less power draw. That is an amazing development.
And that is why Apple is going full scale on its ARM chips. It's not the first time Intel delayed... it's a repeated pattern and Apple's done. When IBM failed to deliver PowerPC as promised, Apple switched to Intel.
Not convinced anymore that Apple is doing an ARM-based Mac.
I'm convinced of one of two things. Either Apple goes ARM based Macs (eventually all machines) or they partner with somebody willing to do custom processors. They don't have much of a choice really if they want to being some of the same goodies we see in iPhone to the Mac.
Global Foundries just announced IBM Power solutions now using their 14nm FinFET solution.
Global has seemingly got their act together recently with new process announcements and customers other than AMD with very advanced chips. AMD is doing well with their Zen derived chips. The Zen based chips don't win every battle with Intel but the mix is good enough that AMD has nothing to fear from Intel for the moment.
For the longest time I wanted to see an AMD chip in the Mini or Mini like platform mainly to get the price down and offer up a solid GPU performer. At the time I really didn't think or expect Apple to design in AMD into the higher end machines where performance is so important. However those days are gone for now as Apple could easily slip an AMD based chip into any of its desktop machines no problem at all. The longer Intel continues to screw up the longer AMD has to come out with Zen2 and just maybe eclipse Intel.
I understand Xzu's issues, Apples reluctance to upgrade machines annually has resulted in many people leaving Apples desktop world. I realize that part of that is directly due to Intel basically shipping "new" processors that have basically zero improvements over previous units except may in specialized tasks. Personally I think the Mac unit needs a management shake up as they seem to have forgotten customer needs. Even the iMac has suffered from really questionable design decisions. In any event nobody wants to pay new money for old hardware, it is just shocking that Apple can't see the stupidity in their practices.
And that is why Apple is going full scale on its ARM chips. It's not the first time Intel delayed... it's a repeated pattern and Apple's done. When IBM failed to deliver PowerPC as promised, Apple switched to Intel.
Not convinced anymore that Apple is doing an ARM-based Mac.
Right, iOS 11+iCloud with BT5 and AirPlay draws into question the future of the MacBook, MacBookAir, MacMini and iMac.
Will there be enough users for macOS on just MBPs and iMacPros to keep third-party support strong or will the Pro-Mac users mainly be running Apple apps (like Logic, XCode, Numbers, etc.), Adobe or Windows?
" or will the Pro-Mac users mainly be running Apple apps (like Logic, XCode, Numbers, etc.), Adobe or Windows?"
I hope MacOS always maintains x86 compatibility. Having Windows running on my iMac is a godsend and necessity.
That being said, I'd bet money that Apple has a roadmap to get away from x86. Intel really screwed themselves due to their ignorance during the beginning of the iPhone era when Apple chose Qualcomm for its chips. Now, history is beginning to repeat itself again with this time being the CPU's. I'm sure Apple is one of Intel's largest CPU customers and Intel stands to lose a huge amount of business if/when Apple decides to bring the CPU in-house.
I think within the next 5 years max, Apple will transition MacOS off of x86. They're doing something for sure.
I haven't seen any evidence that Apple is transitioning macOS off of x86. Of course, their A11 Bionic SoC is a powerhouse, but that alone is not evidence.
And that is why Apple is going full scale on its ARM chips. It's not the first time Intel delayed... it's a repeated pattern and Apple's done. When IBM failed to deliver PowerPC as promised, Apple switched to Intel.
Not convinced anymore that Apple is doing an ARM-based Mac.
I'm convinced of one of two things. Either Apple goes ARM based Macs (eventually all machines) or they partner with somebody willing to do custom processors. They don't have much of a choice really if they want to being some of the same goodies we see in iPhone to the Mac.
I see Apple doing what they're currently doing with the MBP (Touch Bar & TouchID) => complementing Intel's processors with their own ARM-based solutions.
I hope MacOS always maintains x86 compatibility. Having Windows running on my iMac is a godsend and necessity.
That being said, I'd bet money that Apple has a roadmap to get away from x86. Intel really screwed themselves due to their ignorance during the beginning of the iPhone era when Apple chose Qualcomm for its chips. Now, history is beginning to repeat itself again with this time being the CPU's. I'm sure Apple is one of Intel's largest CPU customers and Intel stands to lose a huge amount of business if/when Apple decides to bring the CPU in-house.
I think within the next 5 years max, Apple will transition MacOS off of x86. They're doing something for sure.
I haven't seen any evidence that Apple is transitioning macOS off of x86. Of course, their A11 Bionic SoC is a powerhouse, but that alone is not evidence.
You didn’t see any evidence of Apple transitioning from PowerPC to Intel either.
I’m hoping for a MacMini using an AMD Ryzen APU. A Mac Pro with Threadripper and Vega would be great too.
Mac mini I think will go to Apple's own A Series type CPU's. This is the perfect testbed for how everything will work. Its a very low volume Mac and they could keep the costs down for the pricing of the Mac mini. Apple is making significant strides in their CPU's, basically doubling the performance every single year. Who knows if they're secretly working on a chip for the Mac. I think we'll know sooner rather than later.
I still don't know why Apple doesn't look to using AMD right now. AMD is firing on all cylinders and Intel has their head up their asses. I would be perfectly happy with an AMD based Mac of any kind (desktop or laptop).
IMHO Intel is always offering better mobile chips. Unlike desktop counterparts, you have to consider techs such as power saving or lowering TDP, which in the past decade or longer, an area that AMD constantly fell behind from Intel. Even AMD had been able to present Ryzen, and start another flame war against Intel, their APUs still doesn’t seems competitive to the top-tier mobile i7s.
Let me make a wild guess. If Vega mobile graphics chip does include options for HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), and it promises to save almost half of the power from traditional GDDR5, as well freeing up board space. Which means the MacBook Pro can adopt more LPDDR3 chips to make it 32GB. Not only that, it also means you have four “groups” of RAMs, which maxes out what the processor can support, so whenever the chips starting to support LPDDR4s, it can have 64GB fully loaded.
the only thing left is to see whether it’s possible to do.
1) Quad core 15-28W '8th gen' parts (even if they're 7th gen cores) are still available for the 13", even though they were late to Skylake and Kaby lake I hope that update isn't far, to get back on the fast track. 2) Oof, Intel. I can't wait for things to go fully in house with Apple ARM chips.
Let me make a wild guess. If Vega mobile graphics chip does include options for HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), and it promises to save almost half of the power from traditional GDDR5, as well freeing up board space. Which means the MacBook Pro can adopt more LPDDR3 chips to make it 32GB. Not only that, it also means you have four “groups” of RAMs, which maxes out what the processor can support, so whenever the chips starting to support LPDDR4s, it can have 64GB fully loaded.
the only thing left is to see whether it’s possible to do.
It is not. LPDDR3 is limited by spec to 16GB. It's not about chip density or motherboard room, it's about addressing limits. LPDDR3 and DDR3 share almost no commonality from an engineering and limitation perspective.
Let me make a wild guess. If Vega mobile graphics chip does include options for HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), and it promises to save almost half of the power from traditional GDDR5, as well freeing up board space. Which means the MacBook Pro can adopt more LPDDR3 chips to make it 32GB. Not only that, it also means you have four “groups” of RAMs, which maxes out what the processor can support, so whenever the chips starting to support LPDDR4s, it can have 64GB fully loaded.
the only thing left is to see whether it’s possible to do.
It is not. LPDDR3 is limited by spec to 16GB. It's not about chip density or motherboard room, it's about addressing limits. LPDDR3 and DDR3 share almost no commonality from an engineering and limitation perspective.
Actually I’m not talking about chip density, but adding more RAM chips inside the laptop. MacBook Pros are always having two groups of RAM, which is the same way as two RAM sticks for other PCs (4 maximum). If next year MacBook Pros uses the Vega mobile graphics, which adopted HBM instead GDDR5s, it will free up the space for RAM chips.
Let me make a wild guess. If Vega mobile graphics chip does include options for HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), and it promises to save almost half of the power from traditional GDDR5, as well freeing up board space. Which means the MacBook Pro can adopt more LPDDR3 chips to make it 32GB. Not only that, it also means you have four “groups” of RAMs, which maxes out what the processor can support, so whenever the chips starting to support LPDDR4s, it can have 64GB fully loaded.
the only thing left is to see whether it’s possible to do.
It is not. LPDDR3 is limited by spec to 16GB. It's not about chip density or motherboard room, it's about addressing limits. LPDDR3 and DDR3 share almost no commonality from an engineering and limitation perspective.
Actually I’m not talking about chip density, but adding more RAM chips inside the laptop. MacBook Pros are always having two groups of RAM, which is the same way as two RAM sticks for other PCs (4 maximum). If next generation MacBook Pro uses the Vega mobile graphics, which adopted HBM instead GDDR5s, it will free up the space for RAM chips.
Like I said, LPDDR3 is limited by spec and addressing to 16GB. It's not about space. You can put in more chips if you really want, but only 16GB of LPDDR3 will be addressable.
Let me make a wild guess. If Vega mobile graphics chip does include options for HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), and it promises to save almost half of the power from traditional GDDR5, as well freeing up board space. Which means the MacBook Pro can adopt more LPDDR3 chips to make it 32GB. Not only that, it also means you have four “groups” of RAMs, which maxes out what the processor can support, so whenever the chips starting to support LPDDR4s, it can have 64GB fully loaded.
the only thing left is to see whether it’s possible to do.
It is not. LPDDR3 is limited by spec to 16GB. It's not about chip density or motherboard room, it's about addressing limits. LPDDR3 and DDR3 share almost no commonality from an engineering and limitation perspective.
Actually I’m not talking about chip density, but adding more RAM chips inside the laptop. MacBook Pros are always having two groups of RAM, which is the same way as two RAM sticks for other PCs (4 maximum). If next generation MacBook Pro uses the Vega mobile graphics, which adopted HBM instead GDDR5s, it will free up the space for RAM chips.
Like I said, LPDDR3 is limited by spec and addressing to 16GB. It's not about space. You can put in more chips if you really want, but only 16GB of LPDDR3 will be addressable.
Is there any specific documentation said that the Skylake only supports 16GB of LPDDR3s? Even Haswell can support 32GB Memory for the maximum.
You're right -- Haswell can support 32GB of DDR3. BUT, LPDDR3 is not the same as DDR3 despite the "DDR3" in the name.
It's not about the processor family. LPDDR3 as a technology is limited to 16GB max. Four banks of 32Gbit. It can't address more than four banks, and the address limit is 32Gbit per bank. LPDDR4 supports 32GB now, and 64GB in the future -- but won't be implemented until likely the beginning of 2018 with Cannon Lake.
Apple could choose to use DDR4 (note the lack of LP). However, not only is the RAM more power-hungry, but the related circuitry that would be needed for it is as well. Hard to tell what kind of impact we're talking on battery live -- maybe 30%.
We've done about four pieces on it. Here's some non-AI sources.
Comments
That being said, I'd bet money that Apple has a roadmap to get away from x86. Intel really screwed themselves due to their ignorance during the beginning of the iPhone era when Apple chose Qualcomm for its chips. Now, history is beginning to repeat itself again with this time being the CPU's. I'm sure Apple is one of Intel's largest CPU customers and Intel stands to lose a huge amount of business if/when Apple decides to bring the CPU in-house.
I think within the next 5 years max, Apple will transition MacOS off of x86. They're doing something for sure.
I'm convinced of one of two things. Either Apple goes ARM based Macs (eventually all machines) or they partner with somebody willing to do custom processors. They don't have much of a choice really if they want to being some of the same goodies we see in iPhone to the Mac.
Global has seemingly got their act together recently with new process announcements and customers other than AMD with very advanced chips. AMD is doing well with their Zen derived chips. The Zen based chips don't win every battle with Intel but the mix is good enough that AMD has nothing to fear from Intel for the moment.
For the longest time I wanted to see an AMD chip in the Mini or Mini like platform mainly to get the price down and offer up a solid GPU performer. At the time I really didn't think or expect Apple to design in AMD into the higher end machines where performance is so important. However those days are gone for now as Apple could easily slip an AMD based chip into any of its desktop machines no problem at all. The longer Intel continues to screw up the longer AMD has to come out with Zen2 and just maybe eclipse Intel.
I understand Xzu's issues, Apples reluctance to upgrade machines annually has resulted in many people leaving Apples desktop world. I realize that part of that is directly due to Intel basically shipping "new" processors that have basically zero improvements over previous units except may in specialized tasks. Personally I think the Mac unit needs a management shake up as they seem to have forgotten customer needs. Even the iMac has suffered from really questionable design decisions. In any event nobody wants to pay new money for old hardware, it is just shocking that Apple can't see the stupidity in their practices.
For the most part, I think this will be true.
the only thing left is to see whether it’s possible to do.
2) Oof, Intel. I can't wait for things to go fully in house with Apple ARM chips.
Apple could choose to use DDR4 (note the lack of LP). However, not only is the RAM more power-hungry, but the related circuitry that would be needed for it is as well. Hard to tell what kind of impact we're talking on battery live -- maybe 30%.
https://www.micron.com/products/dram/lpdram/32Gb#/