Apple's iPad Pro & powerful A9X CPU pose threat to Intel, Cowen says

135678

Comments

  • Reply 41 of 155
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by NolaMacGuy View Post





    yeah i think Gruber nailed it, again. which is ironic considering the trolls who accuse him of being a suck-up who never says anything bad about apple stuff.



    hopefully apple leadership will take those crits seriously and fix it up. I'm sure they will; some of the issues just sound like bugs (ex: safari spacebar-page-down moving too far down and skipping lines)



    With one or two more iterations of iOS, iPads will be a direct threat to the Intel PC. The hardware is clearly there.  It's just a matter of Apple software catching up with Apple hardware.

    edited February 2016
  • Reply 42 of 155
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member

    And the A9X is not. Anandtech thinks, and I agree, that the tri-core setup was done as a compromise, not because Apple really wanted to.

    You can just as easily reverse that and say that A9X is a compromise because they needed the die space for an enhanced GPU. Basically Anandtech is spewing garbage again that people take as fact. The only way one would know for sure what happened would be to talk to someone on the development team. That isn't easy to do these days. However given that it should be pretty obvious to anyone that Apple put a lot of focus on the GPU in this chip to give then performance delta they needed to drive the screen properly.
  • Reply 43 of 155
    mj webmj web Posts: 918member
    It mystifies me why INTC can't crack the mobile code. They really should be ashamed of themselves! Their only job is making great chips and they suck at mobile. Go figure? To me IOS is a kiddie OS compared to OS X and I prefer applications, not apps. But if Intel doesn't get it's act together, another architecture will render them obsolete someday.
  • Reply 44 of 155
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post



    "While the iPad Pro is not a PC replacement yet, AAPL and ARM are coming and the hardware is certainly a threat to INTC mobile CPU business once the software developers catch up," Arcuri said.

     

    "Catch up"???

    Who creates software for Win32 nowadays besides Microsoft? Seriously? 

  • Reply 45 of 155
    knowitallknowitall Posts: 1,648member
    So, the Macs of the future will be $300 cheaper, that's nice to know.
  • Reply 46 of 155
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    mstone wrote: »
    Rosetta déjà vu all over again.

    It is highly unlikely they will go that route again. If you look at what they are doing with LLVM and XCode, most likely we will see Apple requiring at least two binaries to download. One for ARM and one for X 86.
  • Reply 47 of 155
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    bkkcanuck wrote: »
    NO, the foundations are already being laid so that applications / app store is seamless whether it is ARM based on Intel based.  There will be no need for Rosetta.
    Exactly! The foundation is being laid anyone following what Apple has been doing and saying at its developers conferences would realize that. How far they will go with this in the Mac is an open question
     The difference is the whole development environment was moved to work on top of LLVM and the compilers generate a portable "binary code / assembly code" which then is made runnable on an ARM or Intel.   What Apple does not want to do is confuse users using Macs like Microsoft did with Windows RT.  
    Yep proper executable selection would be completely transparent to the user. This is initially being put in place to support the various generations of ARM processors on iOS but there is nothing to stop them from extending the system to Mac OS.
    Once all the pieces are in place the user will not have to be aware or care if they are running intel or arm.  Developers will submit their applications to the app store in bitcode (LLVM transportable) and then the user buys the application and installs it and it is "compiled/assembled down" to Intel or ARM native executables.... all nice and slim.  

    This is the only part I'm not sure about as I would expect them to simply demand that developers submit both ARM and Intel variants, resources if you will with their app. Even home brew gave up on compiling everything with each download, it is just inefficient. As you note they are putting the infrastructure in place to do this seamlessly.
  • Reply 48 of 155
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    crowley wrote: »
    That's not true at all.  QWERTY was designed to place the commonly used keys far apart, so as to prevent typewriter jamming, but that's a big difference from intentionally making the typist as slow as possible.

    They kept the keys from jamming by slowing the typist down. Back in the day mechanical type writers where in fact very slow.
  • Reply 49 of 155
    bkkcanuck wrote: »
    mstone wrote: »
     
    There are a lot of major third party apps that do not use the Mac app store or Xcode exclusively for development such as Adobe CC. Apple can't leave all those people out in the cold. I know the majority of the people on this forum do not use that suite but it is the most popular graphics application suite for Mac. There are many others such as Firefox and Chrome, 1password, littleSnitch, Skype, Transmission, VLC, Google Earth, Mathmatica, R, Dropbox, Spotify, HandBrake, TextMate, and Plex. I'm sure there are others.

    They have to use something that uses the same foundations - whether there is an additional layer between them or not.  C, C++, Objective-C and Swift all compile through the C-Lang compiler which is built on top of the LLVM.  Areas that obviously would have problems is if someone used embedded x86 assembly language.  The UI components calls would be common to both platforms.  

    Even if the ARM processors were used they would be in part of the lineup (the lower end) which is why this type of architecture would have to be in place for.

    Google would probably be very happy with it since they have tried to push other browser companies to incorporate pNaCL support across their platforms - which is basically portable LLVM bitcode.  

    Linux platforms have been moving to LLVM.  

    Now even Microsoft has made a commitment to it.  

    Apple has claimed [suggested] that Swift code is more efficient and outperforms other languages.

    As I understand it, Clang is aware when it is compiling Swift source and transforms it into an intermediate code which is then compiled into a super-optimized LLVM bitcode. I may not have that exactly right, but something special is done with Swift source that is not done with other languages.

    Since Chris Lattner is integral in the design and implementation of Clang/LLVM and Swift, this seems plausible.

    If so, Mac app developers, especially developers of pro apps like Adobe -- could gain considerable performance advantages by repackaging and recoding some key modules of their existing apps in Swift.

    A by-product of this would be that these modules would perform well on either ARM or Intel platforms
  • Reply 50 of 155
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by wizard69 View Post





    It is highly unlikely they will go that route again. If you look at what they are doing with LLVM and XCode, most likely we will see Apple requiring at least two binaries to download. One for ARM and one for X 86.



    If they force all developers to participate in the Mac App Store and also to develop 100% in Xcode, then you can say goodbye to a lot of very important apps. I really can't see Adobe creating two different OS X CC suites, especially since they are said to have compiled code that they export from Windows in order to build the OS X versions. Who knows maybe they will if ARM based Macs start to overtake Intel based ones? Nonetheless it will be confusing for consumers if some Macbooks are ARM and others Intel. I'd rather see Rosetta. It simplifies things and gives legacy developers some breathing room and preserves migration assistant for new Mac purchases. At any rate it will not affect me for a long time because I only use the most powerful Macs which will likely stay Intel for several years.

  • Reply 51 of 155
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    bdkennedy wrote: »
    I'm willing to bet that Apple's ARM processors are even more powerful than the benchmarks show because they are in mobile units with no fans and probably under-clocked. Put a couple in an iMac and we would probably see Core i7 performance.

    This is one of the great unanswered questions of our time when it comes to Apple. Just how fast can these chips be if there is no thermal limit on them and you are free to adjust clock rate. Nobody knows of course because Apple doesn't have a platform we can over clock. The process they are using is a low power one so the clock rate might not increase to the same extent as is possible with other processes but I do believe there is head room here.

    Right now Apples primary focus isn't performance but yield. The normal distribution of chip performance isn't important to them as they don't sell chips on clock rate. Given this I suspect that there are many A9X's out there that can run much faster than 2.2 GHZ. This especially given a little extra cooling. The fact that people are having a hard time getting this chip to even throttle in testing kinda indicates that there is plenty of upside here.
  • Reply 52 of 155
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    mstone wrote: »
    There are a lot of major third party apps that do not use the Mac app store or Xcode exclusively for development such as Adobe CC. Apple can't leave all those people out in the cold.
    Sure they can. As a developer you either get with the program or you die.

    I know the majority of the people on this forum do not use that suite but it is the most popular graphics application suite for Mac.
    In this context we are talking a Mac Book replacement that wouldn't be running Adobe CC anyways. You seem to forget that the overwhelming majority of Mac Users could see Adobe die as a company and not be upset one bit because they simply don't use Adobe's products.
    There are many others such as Firefox and Chrome, 1password, littleSnitch, Skype, Transmission, VLC, Google Earth, Mathmatica, R, Dropbox, Spotify, HandBrake, TextMate, and Plex. I'm sure there are others.

    Do you understand anything about development. The vast majority of what you list above are already cross architecture and cross platform. I'm not sure why people have a hard time grasping this but code, be it Python, C++ or even Swift isn't tied normally to a specific architecture. Right now Apple is generating code for both ARM and Mac OS from its Swift compiler. Python code requires an interpreter which runs on a wide variety of hardware and operating systems. More so well written C++ code can be compiled on any number of confirming C++ compilers.

    In a nut shell I don't know what you are going on about here. Honestly you mentioned Firefox right off the bat but do you even realize how many platforms Firefox already runs on?
  • Reply 53 of 155
    mstone wrote: »
    There are a lot of major third party apps that do not use the Mac app store or Xcode exclusively for development such as Adobe CC. Apple can't leave all those people out in the cold. I know the majority of the people on this forum do not use that suite but it is the most popular graphics application suite for Mac. There are many others such as Firefox and Chrome, 1password, littleSnitch, Skype, Transmission, VLC, Google Earth, Mathmatica, R, Dropbox, Spotify, HandBrake, TextMate, and Plex. I'm sure there are others.

    This.

    I use the Adobe CC daily. It's an essential part of my career and I enjoy the software.

    I'm a die hard Mac guy.

    But the day Apple ditches people like me to focus on CE STUFF and dumb down the Mac is the day I ditch Apple.

    I took my time and paid my dues to become an MCSE.

    When you go through that process, you realize just how crap not only Microsoft software is, but how ridiculous the thinking behind structure organization and even terminology which is purposefully used to deceive people just to ensure there is an MCSE industry.

    Some of the things that attracted me to Apple:

    1) the MAC. There was no phone in 2005.

    2) the ease of use and an OS that simply didn't fight me.

    3) the ecosystem.

    4) cool looking hardware (not going to lie. Lol)

    5) cool looking software (ditto).

    6) a company ethos that cause honesty, simplicity, and transparency to result in great things. Not a confusing mess. Truly great, laser focused things that anyone can understand.

    7) Final Cut Pro.

    8) Adobe software. Yes I know it's on PC as well and depending on the version, it performs better on either. But the way it handles things in OS X is my preference. And I like testing out the artwork import on my MP3 edits as well as h.264 encodings, etc. and the retina screens I use ensure my designs are not turning blurry on those who have them.

    8) performance. Macs are about performance. Give me that.

    9) the fact that after all the years I heard you can't do things on the Mac that PC can do... Then finding out it was al a lie... Priceless.

    I'm all for taking iOS to the next level. I bought the first iPhone day one and I've been s happy customer ever since. I love my iPad too and will be getting the Pro before year end. I hope it gets crazy performance and gets to the point where most don't need anything else like another computer with keyboard and mouse.

    But... I know I will. And I really hope Apple is still there for me as the years go buy. The magic trackpad is nice. But it doesn't suit my needs. At all. The iOS screen keyboard is great too. When I'm not typing a lot. Or typing critical things that have a timely nature.

    I'll never want a Surgace type device as it diminishes both things it tries to be. It's neither a great tablet not a great laptop. So I'd rather have a great tablet and a great computer.
  • Reply 54 of 155
    Its all about software catching up...

    We need full fleged application ..Not watered down apps..

    Hope developers catch up fast!

    Apple should have thrown in a couple of powerful applications to inspire and get the ball rolling.

    But they did not!! Why? .. And pencil is delayed by 4-5 weeks...!! Grrrrrr

    Come on apple why ?
  • Reply 55 of 155
    maxit wrote: »
    It would have been interesting to see a MacBook with a A9XX SoC inside .... Surely better than the actual Core M configuration

    Wrong. It won't have the software nor OS X to even compare. IO S is not optimized for laptop use.
  • Reply 56 of 155
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    mstone wrote: »

    If they force all developers to participate in the Mac App Store and also to develop 100% in Xcode, then you can say goodbye to a lot of very important apps.
    I'm not sure what I said implied that, what I said is that if one looks at what they are doing withnXCode and LLVM you will get a good idea of what is possible when it comes to supporting an ARM based Mac. That has nothing to do with developers that use alternative tool Chains.
    I really can't see Adobe creating two different OS X CC suites,
    They wouldn't p, one app would have two different executables. It isn't a big deal really and support for this is already in iOS. I urge people to look into the public Developer videos that Apple has out out as a result of the last WWDC. What they are doing could easily be extended to the Mac to allow seamless support of ARM via App Store.
    especially since they are said to have compiled code that they export from Windows in order to build the OS X versions. Who knows maybe they will if ARM based Macs start to overtake Intel based ones? Nonetheless it will be confusing for consumers if some Macbooks are ARM and others Intel.
    The whole point of having App Store download machine specific versions of an Apps executables is to remove confusion from the consumer. The consumer doesn't have to worry about his iPhone being 32 bit nor worry about a specific 64 version of his hardware. The install process takes care of all of this.
    I'd rather see Rosetta.
    Never! You would saddle ARM with a huge performance penalty.
    It simplifies things and gives legacy developers some breathing room and preserves migration assistant for new Mac purchases.
    If Apples guidelines are followed building for a different architecture isn't a big issues. Developers do it all the time when they run their iOS apps in XCodes simulator.
    At any rate it will not affect me for a long time because I only use the most powerful Macs which will likely stay Intel for several years.

    Exactly! We are talking about a machine to replace the Mac Book and maybe the Mini here.
  • Reply 57 of 155
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    9secondko wrote: »
    This.
    That was nonsense.
    I use the Adobe CC daily. It's an essential part of my career and I enjoy the software.
    So? First off we are talking Mac Book here, we aren't talking immediate replacement of the Mac Pro's CPUs with ARM based devices.
    I'm a die hard Mac guy.

    But the day Apple ditches people like me to focus on CE STUFF and dumb down the Mac is the day I ditch Apple.
    Give me a break here. We are taking about a processor that has more GPU performance than anything Intel offers up integrated. For OpenCL based apps competing on equipment with Integrated Intel GPUs this is already a better choice even for a professional. That is for professionals that can get by with integrated GPUs to begin with, if you can't then there is no reason to even enter this discussion because you are using significantly different hardware.
    I took my time and paid my dues to become an MCSE.

    When you go through that process, you realize just how crap not only Microsoft software is, but how ridiculous the thinking behind structure organization and even terminology which is purposefully used to deceive people just to ensure there is an MCSE industry.
    The MCSE industry is an interesting creation. It is one of those let's make people feel good services that really obscure real issues with the likes of Windows.
    Some of the things that attracted me to Apple:

    1) the MAC. There was no phone in 2005.

    2) the ease of use and an OS that simply didn't fight me.

    3) the ecosystem.

    4) cool looking hardware (not going to lie. Lol)

    5) cool looking software (ditto).

    6) a company ethos that cause honesty, simplicity, and transparency to result in great things. Not a confusing mess. Truly great, laser focused things that anyone can understand.

    7) Final Cut Pro.

    8) Adobe software. Yes I know it's on PC as well and depending on the version, it performs better on either. But the way it handles things in OS X is my preference. And I like testing out the artwork import on my MP3 edits as well as h.264 encodings, etc. and the retina screens I use ensure my designs are not turning blurry on those who have them.

    8) performance. Macs are about performance. Give me that.
    For the class of computers we are talking about here ARM in Apples A9X is demonstrating better performance.
    9) the fact that after all the years I heard you can't do things on the Mac that PC can do... Then finding out it was al a lie... Priceless.
    Likewise some of the comments seen in this thread are similarly misinformed. People are spending to much time looking at the past, at Rosetta and the like and not considering that there might be better ways to do things.
    I'm all for taking iOS to the next level. I bought the first iPhone day one and I've been s happy customer ever since. I love my iPad too and will be getting the Pro before year end. I hope it gets crazy performance and gets to the point where most don't need anything else like another computer with keyboard and mouse.
    I'm certain that this will happen. There are a lot of good things to be said about iPad for casual users. My concern is Apple push for professional users where I don't see iPad and more importantly iOS being ready.
    But... I know I will. And I really hope Apple is still there for me as the years go buy. The magic trackpad is nice. But it doesn't suit my needs. At all. The iOS screen keyboard is great too. When I'm not typing a lot. Or typing critical things that have a timely nature.

    I'll never want a Surgace type device as it diminishes both things it tries to be. It's neither a great tablet not a great laptop. So I'd rather have a great tablet and a great computer.

    I think most of us think the same way. I just don't get all the negativity with respect to ARM as the processor driving a Mac OS based machine. If it gets Apple off the Intel treadmill it could be a very good thing for Mac OS long term.
  • Reply 58 of 155
    Does anyone [I]still[/I] think it's impossible for Apple to ever use ARM for Mac OS X or a Mac OS X-like OS?
  • Reply 59 of 155
    wizard69 wrote: »

    I think most of us think the same way. I just don't get all the negativity with respect to ARM as the processor driving a Mac OS based machine. If it gets Apple off the Intel treadmill it could be a very good thing for Mac OS long term.

    Would there be significant advantage to hardware running multiple ARM Ax chips?
  • Reply 60 of 155
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by NolaMacGuy View Post





    except when they drop their prices, which they do.



    They don't.  Look how expensive iPhones are.

Sign In or Register to comment.