You people have drank too much of the Apple Juice. $2,000 for a out of the box 14 inch MacBook Pro with no frills, no add ons, no anything is insane!!! That’s ludicrous!!!!!
3 posts. Wonder who’s hiding behind a new tag. I don’t believe you understand what we’re looking at. The $2k model is by no means a stripped down laptop. It has multiple ports, doesn’t need add-ons (although there’s room for whatever you want to add on) and definitely has more than nothing. Show me a windows or Linux laptop that comes anywhere near the power of these MBPs for the same price. You’re being ludicrous if you think you can find a comparable laptop without special ordering a top of the line PC. Actually ludicrous could have been used instead of M1 Max following Tesla’s designation for absolutely crazy fast.
Not sure how the summaries listed correlate to the opinion that Intel is “under fire.”
Also, Intel is ramping Alder Lake-S which probably will exceed M1 Max performance (albeit while consuming much more power). Also alder lake will have up to 8 golden cove performance cores and 8 gracemont efficiency cores. Raptor Lake is rumored to launch in 2022 and double the efficiency cores to 16, for a total of 8 + 16 = 24 cores and 32 threads. Intel is still selling a metric ton of processors to the ecosystem. 80 percent market share. Microsoft just announced that it updated the windows 11 kernel thread scheduler to schedule threads in a manner that takes advantage of the hybrid design. Intel might be coming back.
Intel and AMD will be in trouble if and when ecosystem partners like Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Razer, Microsoft etc. introduce non-x86 designs.
I don’t see x86 being in trouble until two things happen.
First, An ARM vendor emerges that sells an ARM processor to the mass market with performance characteristics on par with Apple silicon or the upcoming x86 designs (or the ecosystem partners develop their own in house designs). Qualcomm can’t compete with Alder Lake or Zen 4. And as good as Apple silicon is, it can’t run windows natively… and not only that, Dell, Lenovo, Asus can’t put an Apple silicon processor inside of their laptops because Apple doesn’t sell to other people. So for the billions of users out there who don’t use macOS, Apple silicon is not relevant to them. Now if Apple got into the processor supplier game (it won’t) then that would spell serious trouble for AMD and Intel.
Second, windows on arm needs to be licensed for broader non-OEM use, and it also has to seamlessly run the applications that people want to use like games, office suite software, content creation software, and so on.
Until those two things happen, Intel and AMD will be fine. But Apple’s innovations could spur other laptop manufacturers to follow suit and ultimately press Microsoft for a windows on arm solution. Intel and AMD need to tread carefully, and continue to ramp x86 core design production on smaller nodes. ASAP.
A very dated perspective. 1) Nobody cares about cores, it’s about work done. Let’s see what the workflow reviews say once MBPs hit decent reviewers (giving the trolls another chance to brush up their tactics). 2) Vendors are badging their own silicon with MS leading the way (more like AMD customising for Playstation) so I don’t see an ARM champion emerging as it’s just a supervisory ISA. When Lenovo & HP announce their chips, it’s over for Intel. 3) Intel isn’t even close. When you look at the products which match Apple’s meagre CPU benchmarks (Cinebench is optimised for x86 AVX2 only - the Embree renderer is Intel’s code) the TDP is 125W with 250W peak.
The majority of applications for non-server uses that use more than 2 threads/cores at any given time, let alone effectively, is a very small number and percentage: writing software that isn’t inherently readily parallel and making practical use of more cores is usually far more effort than it’s worth, on a good day. As such, processors like AMD’s ThreadRipper is silly for most uses and users for average software, as most cores will sit idle unless you’re running a lot of other software in the background. A smaller number of faster single cores is the sweet spot for cost/performance of a system, and thus, having a bunch of efficiency cores AND a bunch of performance cores doesn’t seem probable to get great overall results. Most background tasks that aren’t your main active process usually aren’t running constantly, as they’re waiting for data: a lot of background processes can be running on efficient cores, slower, and not affect their effectiveness. As such, most of the time, in practice, a couple efficiency cores can effectively provide more than enough system throughput to provide a responsive GUI on your foreground application AND all the background stuff, too: this is how Apple can get such crazy battery life.
But most people aren’t aware of this reality. The one place where throwing lots of cores at something everyone will notice is the GPU, because its task is embarrassingly parallel in nature.
There are a number of use-cases where all cores can and will be used to good effect, and the people that use those applications (hopefully!) know what they are. But for Apple’s office suite? More than 2 CPU cores is wasted hardware.
I have to agree about the single threaded vs multi-threaded performance. I tend to focus on the single threaded benchmarks to set my expectations about the raw performance of a CPU/SoC in typical business/productivity apps. Yes, having a larger pool of cores and threads available for the OS to schedule things out can be a very good thing, just as long as there isn't anything in the code execution that causes serialization or serious contention for serialized system resources. Even what sounds like a tiny amount of serialization in app execution can put a very serious ceiling on the speedup potential of having more cores, like everything being flat above 4 cores. It really is that bad.
I'm also not as familiar with Apple's compiler to know what kind of optimization Apple's compiler does automatically or even how programmers flag code for parallelization consideration. Most of the newer high level languages with automatic thread management, reference counting, and garbage collection are at such an abstract level that many (most?) programmers these days probably don't even know a whole lot about how efficiently and effectively their apps are running versus what is actually possible. There's never been more pressure on compiler developers to deliver on the promises of these modern architectures than there is today. In the past, at least in the Intel world, the broad-audience compilers for commercial operating systems and architectures have been lagging way behind the raw potential of the systems (CPU, memory, IO, chipsets, etc.) they are targeting. Hopefully, Apple's compiler team is a few notches above the average and is delivering more bang for investing in all these cores, at least beyond power efficiency.
Not sure how the summaries listed correlate to the opinion that Intel is “under fire.”
Also, Intel is ramping Alder Lake-S which probably will exceed M1 Max performance (albeit while consuming much more power). Also alder lake will have up to 8 golden cove performance cores and 8 gracemont efficiency cores. Raptor Lake is rumored to launch in 2022 and double the efficiency cores to 16, for a total of 8 + 16 = 24 cores and 32 threads. Intel is still selling a metric ton of processors to the ecosystem. 80 percent market share. Microsoft just announced that it updated the windows 11 kernel thread scheduler to schedule threads in a manner that takes advantage of the hybrid design. Intel might be coming back.
Intel and AMD will be in trouble if and when ecosystem partners like Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Razer, Microsoft etc. introduce non-x86 designs.
I don’t see x86 being in trouble until two things happen.
First, An ARM vendor emerges that sells an ARM processor to the mass market with performance characteristics on par with Apple silicon or the upcoming x86 designs (or the ecosystem partners develop their own in house designs). Qualcomm can’t compete with Alder Lake or Zen 4. And as good as Apple silicon is, it can’t run windows natively… and not only that, Dell, Lenovo, Asus can’t put an Apple silicon processor inside of their laptops because Apple doesn’t sell to other people. So for the billions of users out there who don’t use macOS, Apple silicon is not relevant to them. Now if Apple got into the processor supplier game (it won’t) then that would spell serious trouble for AMD and Intel.
Second, windows on arm needs to be licensed for broader non-OEM use, and it also has to seamlessly run the applications that people want to use like games, office suite software, content creation software, and so on.
Until those two things happen, Intel and AMD will be fine. But Apple’s innovations could spur other laptop manufacturers to follow suit and ultimately press Microsoft for a windows on arm solution. Intel and AMD need to tread carefully, and continue to ramp x86 core design production on smaller nodes. ASAP.
You hit the nail on the head with that paragraph. Unless there's a mass exodus of users switching from Windows to macOS (or iPadOS) or Qualcomm releases an SoC that's on par with Apple's M1 series, Intel is not going anywhere.
Intel seems awful rattled for some reason. They are terrified.
The Mac represented less than 10% of their business. So losing Apple's business isn't a big hit to them. If they're rattled it's because of the potential threat Qualcomm, AMD and the NVidia's ARM acquisition represent with respect to the Windows / Linux desktop and server market. Right now, AMD is Intel's most serious competitor.
I think Intel are doing the PR rounds because they are trying to repair and maintain its brand because that which makes them Intel: leading edge fabs, failed them. Not having competitive fabs to TSMC and Samsung is an existential threat. If they can't get 7nm, whatever they are calling it now, they are done. They can have TSMC and Samsung fab chips for them, but that's not the same company people have grown to love and hate.
It's a race. They have to produce with 7nm minimally on time with the new schedule. Then, they have to produce with 5nm after that. So, Gelsinger is trying to put confidence back into investors and into the company itself.
Not sure how the summaries listed correlate to the opinion that Intel is “under fire.”
Also, Intel is ramping Alder Lake-S which probably will exceed M1 Max performance (albeit while consuming much more power). Also alder lake will have up to 8 golden cove performance cores and 8 gracemont efficiency cores. Raptor Lake is rumored to launch in 2022 and double the efficiency cores to 16, for a total of 8 + 16 = 24 cores and 32 threads. Intel is still selling a metric ton of processors to the ecosystem. 80 percent market share. Microsoft just announced that it updated the windows 11 kernel thread scheduler to schedule threads in a manner that takes advantage of the hybrid design. Intel might be coming back.
Intel and AMD will be in trouble if and when ecosystem partners like Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Razer, Microsoft etc. introduce non-x86 designs.
I don’t see x86 being in trouble until two things happen.
First, An ARM vendor emerges that sells an ARM processor to the mass market with performance characteristics on par with Apple silicon or the upcoming x86 designs (or the ecosystem partners develop their own in house designs). Qualcomm can’t compete with Alder Lake or Zen 4. And as good as Apple silicon is, it can’t run windows natively… and not only that, Dell, Lenovo, Asus can’t put an Apple silicon processor inside of their laptops because Apple doesn’t sell to other people. So for the billions of users out there who don’t use macOS, Apple silicon is not relevant to them. Now if Apple got into the processor supplier game (it won’t) then that would spell serious trouble for AMD and Intel.
Second, windows on arm needs to be licensed for broader non-OEM use, and it also has to seamlessly run the applications that people want to use like games, office suite software, content creation software, and so on.
Until those two things happen, Intel and AMD will be fine. But Apple’s innovations could spur other laptop manufacturers to follow suit and ultimately press Microsoft for a windows on arm solution. Intel and AMD need to tread carefully, and continue to ramp x86 core design production on smaller nodes. ASAP.
Always a bad idea to have a complex microarchitecture in one house and low level dispatching algorithms in another.
Look at how glitchy Microsoft is about changes to their own kernel - now add new complex microarchitecture dispatching algorithms for each new successive chip and you have a recipe for disaster. Now increase that for every kernel that runs on your platform - for example the linux kernel or the Solaris x86 kernel.
Apple's A and M series SoCs have hardware dispatching, placing the dispatching logic in the microarchitecture itself.
Intel and Microsoft are acting like they're divisions of Apple, and Apple's designing their stuff like they are a CPU vendor.
None of these quoted analysts sound terribly concerned for Intel. However, the fact that Intel is running competitive advertising against Apple makes it clear Intel is running scared. Apple selling high-end laptops with $1000 to $2000 profit margin is worth more than selling a dozen Chromebooks for $250. Intel can retain its gamer audience (or share it with AMD), but board members and executives won't embarrass themselves carrying Intel laptops -- they'll want MacBook Pros.
In other product categories such as iPad and iPod where Apple has dominated, Apple eventually introduced products at every $50 price point -- for iPods it was from $50 to $500; for iPads from $300 to $1200; for iPhones from $300 to $1200. I imagine Apple will eventually sell laptops at price points from around $500 (a MacBook or iBook targeting schools) to $6000. You'll go into an Apple Store with a specific budget looking for a laptop, and Apple will have something at your exact price point. And if at every price point, Apple's laptop is better than an Intel laptop, it's hard to justify buying the Intel. Except for gamers.
Here are some games Andrew Tsai has tested on his 8 GB 8 GPU MacBook Air:
They run the gamut from native ARM, Mac games running under Rosetta 2, x86 PC games running under Parallels and an ARM Win client, and x86 PC games running under Crossover.
Imagine how these things will run under my MacBook Pro M1 Max, 32 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD.
Full cooling system vs. passive, up to 1000 NIT brightness - 1600 NIT HDR Peak Brightness @ 120 hz display vs. 400 NITs non-HDR @ 60 hz, 8/2 CPU cores vs. 4/4, 32 GPU cores vs. 8, 32 GB RAM vs. 8.
None of these quoted analysts sound terribly concerned for Intel. However, the fact that Intel is running competitive advertising against Apple makes it clear Intel is running scared. Apple selling high-end laptops with $1000 to $2000 profit margin is worth more than selling a dozen Chromebooks for $250. Intel can retain its gamer audience (or share it with AMD), but board members and executives won't embarrass themselves carrying Intel laptops -- they'll want MacBook Pros.
In other product categories such as iPad and iPod where Apple has dominated, Apple eventually introduced products at every $50 price point -- for iPods it was from $50 to $500; for iPads from $300 to $1200; for iPhones from $300 to $1200. I imagine Apple will eventually sell laptops at price points from around $500 (a MacBook or iBook targeting schools) to $6000. You'll go into an Apple Store with a specific budget looking for a laptop, and Apple will have something at your exact price point. And if at every price point, Apple's laptop is better than an Intel laptop, it's hard to justify buying the Intel. Except for gamers.
Here are some games Andrew Tsai has tested on his 8 GB 8 GPU MacBook Air:
They run the gamut from native ARM, Mac games running under Rosetta 2, x86 PC games running under Parallels and an ARM Win client, and x86 PC games running under Crossover.
Imagine how these things will run under my MacBook Pro M1 Max, 32 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD.
Full cooling system vs. passive, up to 1000 NIT brightness - 1600 NIT HDR Peak Brightness @ 120 hz display vs. 400 NITs non-HDR @ 60 hz, 8/2 CPU cores vs. 4/4, 32 GPU cores vs. 8, 32 GB RAM vs. 8.
Gaming, it seems, is no longer a problem.
Some of the frame rates weren't brilliant, but yeah compatibility seem really good. The Crossover stuff in particular I think is really impressive. I found Crossover to be pretty fiddly last time I tried it, but make well take a look when my M1 Max MBP arrives.
None of these quoted analysts sound terribly concerned for Intel. However, the fact that Intel is running competitive advertising against Apple makes it clear Intel is running scared. Apple selling high-end laptops with $1000 to $2000 profit margin is worth more than selling a dozen Chromebooks for $250. Intel can retain its gamer audience (or share it with AMD), but board members and executives won't embarrass themselves carrying Intel laptops -- they'll want MacBook Pros.
In other product categories such as iPad and iPod where Apple has dominated, Apple eventually introduced products at every $50 price point -- for iPods it was from $50 to $500; for iPads from $300 to $1200; for iPhones from $300 to $1200. I imagine Apple will eventually sell laptops at price points from around $500 (a MacBook or iBook targeting schools) to $6000. You'll go into an Apple Store with a specific budget looking for a laptop, and Apple will have something at your exact price point. And if at every price point, Apple's laptop is better than an Intel laptop, it's hard to justify buying the Intel. Except for gamers.
Here are some games Andrew Tsai has tested on his 8 GB 8 GPU MacBook Air:
They run the gamut from native ARM, Mac games running under Rosetta 2, x86 PC games running under Parallels and an ARM Win client, and x86 PC games running under Crossover.
Imagine how these things will run under my MacBook Pro M1 Max, 32 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD.
Full cooling system vs. passive, up to 1000 NIT brightness - 1600 NIT HDR Peak Brightness @ 120 hz display vs. 400 NITs non-HDR @ 60 hz, 8/2 CPU cores vs. 4/4, 32 GPU cores vs. 8, 32 GB RAM vs. 8.
Gaming, it seems, is no longer a problem.
Some of the frame rates weren't brilliant, but yeah compatibility seem really good. The Crossover stuff in particular I think is really impressive. I found Crossover to be pretty fiddly last time I tried it, but make well take a look when my M1 Max MBP arrives.
It would be good to see a service that handles a Crossover style compatibility layer more transparently. The Crossover UI is terrible. The Steam Deck will use software called Proton from Valve based on the same software as Crossover to run Windows games under its Linux OS:
Even high-end games like Forza run under Linux ok:
Valve could integrate this into the Mac version of Steam:
None of these quoted analysts sound terribly concerned for Intel. However, the fact that Intel is running competitive advertising against Apple makes it clear Intel is running scared. Apple selling high-end laptops with $1000 to $2000 profit margin is worth more than selling a dozen Chromebooks for $250. Intel can retain its gamer audience (or share it with AMD), but board members and executives won't embarrass themselves carrying Intel laptops -- they'll want MacBook Pros.
In other product categories such as iPad and iPod where Apple has dominated, Apple eventually introduced products at every $50 price point -- for iPods it was from $50 to $500; for iPads from $300 to $1200; for iPhones from $300 to $1200. I imagine Apple will eventually sell laptops at price points from around $500 (a MacBook or iBook targeting schools) to $6000. You'll go into an Apple Store with a specific budget looking for a laptop, and Apple will have something at your exact price point. And if at every price point, Apple's laptop is better than an Intel laptop, it's hard to justify buying the Intel. Except for gamers.
Here are some games Andrew Tsai has tested on his 8 GB 8 GPU MacBook Air:
They run the gamut from native ARM, Mac games running under Rosetta 2, x86 PC games running under Parallels and an ARM Win client, and x86 PC games running under Crossover.
Imagine how these things will run under my MacBook Pro M1 Max, 32 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD.
Full cooling system vs. passive, up to 1000 NIT brightness - 1600 NIT HDR Peak Brightness @ 120 hz display vs. 400 NITs non-HDR @ 60 hz, 8/2 CPU cores vs. 4/4, 32 GPU cores vs. 8, 32 GB RAM vs. 8.
Gaming, it seems, is no longer a problem.
Some of the frame rates weren't brilliant, but yeah compatibility seem really good. The Crossover stuff in particular I think is really impressive. I found Crossover to be pretty fiddly last time I tried it, but make well take a look when my M1 Max MBP arrives.
It would be good to see a service that handles a Crossover style compatibility layer more transparently. The Crossover UI is terrible. The Steam Deck will use software called Proton from Valve based on the same software as Crossover to run Windows games under its Linux OS:
Even high-end games like Forza run under Linux ok:
Valve could integrate this into the Mac version of Steam:
There are over 5,000 games in the database ranked gold or above.
They could, but why would they? Valve are trying to sell their own SteamDeck, and SteamOS too, that’s why they’re putting the effort into Proton.
Compatibility for Mac is not going to be of much concern to Valve, and given the dicking around Apple does with regards gaming, I doubt they have much appetite to get involved. Not for 2% of the Steam user base.
They could, but why would they? Valve are trying to sell their own SteamDeck, and SteamOS too, that’s why they’re putting the effort into Proton.
Compatibility for Mac is not going to be of much concern to Valve, and given the dicking around Apple does with regards gaming, I doubt they have much appetite to get involved. Not for 2% of the Steam user base.
They are supporting Linux which is even lower. It's 2% just now because hardly any games are compatible and also up until now, hardly any of the high volume Macs were capable of running the games. Now the entire Mac lineup can run games well and that's over 20 million users per year. It could easily scale to 10% of Steam users if they did something like this. It wouldn't have to be Valve that does it, Crossover could just integrate better with Steam but it would be easier for Valve to do it. They'd probably make more money from this with the 30% cut of the game sales to new Mac users than their investments in VR and gaming hardware.
Comments
It's a race. They have to produce with 7nm minimally on time with the new schedule. Then, they have to produce with 5nm after that. So, Gelsinger is trying to put confidence back into investors and into the company itself.
Look at how glitchy Microsoft is about changes to their own kernel - now add new complex microarchitecture dispatching algorithms for each new successive chip and you have a recipe for disaster. Now increase that for every kernel that runs on your platform - for example the linux kernel or the Solaris x86 kernel.
Apple's A and M series SoCs have hardware dispatching, placing the dispatching logic in the microarchitecture itself.
Intel and Microsoft are acting like they're divisions of Apple, and Apple's designing their stuff like they are a CPU vendor.
The Wintel homogeny is in wild disarray.
They run the gamut from native ARM, Mac games running under Rosetta 2, x86 PC games running under Parallels and an ARM Win client, and x86 PC games running under Crossover.
Imagine how these things will run under my MacBook Pro M1 Max, 32 GPU cores, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD.
Full cooling system vs. passive, up to 1000 NIT brightness - 1600 NIT HDR Peak Brightness @ 120 hz display vs. 400 NITs non-HDR @ 60 hz, 8/2 CPU cores vs. 4/4, 32 GPU cores vs. 8, 32 GB RAM vs. 8.
Gaming, it seems, is no longer a problem.
Even high-end games like Forza run under Linux ok:
Valve could integrate this into the Mac version of Steam:
https://www.protondb.com
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/
There are over 5,000 games in the database ranked gold or above.