melgross said:It used to be, a long time ago, that Apple upgraded its Mac every quarter as slightly faster chips came out. Then it was 6 months, then once a year. It stayed that way, along with pretty much every other computer manufacturer, until Intel had problems with new chips that Apple was designing around. So Apple slowed its iterations to match the chip. They’re not happy about that.
A lie, of course. When Apple switched to Intel chips, there was a great deal of promise that Apple would, since Macs were essentially Intel reference designs, be moving to a more frequent release schedule.
It never happened. Intel released chips, Apple ignored them. Intel released another generation of chips, Apple ignored them. Intel kept releasing, Apple kept ignoring. Apple would occasionally drop some almost out of date hardware, but Apple never lived up to the promise of frequent releases based on new Intel chips.
Intel promised a number of chips that either never made it into production, or were delayed by a year, and sometimes two. That’s fact, like it or not. Apple, like other companies, designs it devices around what’s expected over a year out, often, two years out. Dell, Hp and others have very extensive computer lines, offering dozens of machines. Apple doesn’t. It’s much easier for those companies to have a “new” machine with a chip that’s a tiny bit better than the last. Or a chip that’s a power hog, used in a 6 pound laptop.
Apple doesn’t make those types of machines. Apple is more concerned with size, weight and battery life. If a promised chip offering improved characteristics that Apple designed around, doesn’t come out on time, Apple can’t release that new machine. This is a major reason Apple is leaving. An Intel engineer even said Apple’s frustration with Intel’s failures was the impetus for this.
If you don’t understand any of this, instead of just making up statements based on nothing, you can look it up.
There is no way Apple is going to use an A-series SoC in a Mac - not even a low-end MacBook. Those SoCs were designed specifically for iOS and the need to be highly efficient. There's a reason Apple said they were designing a new family of SoCs for the Mac - different needs. Using an A14X for both the iPad Pro and a MacBook, means one of those is not as optimized as Apple usually prefers.
They will use an A series chip regardless of name. That’s whats In the developers kit. The macs will get some kind of improved versions of the A12z which is just an A series chip.
Not exactly. The A12z was a regular iPad A series chip. It has an extra graphics core, a slightly higher speed, and that’s it.
apple said (and I’m getting tired of having to repeat it!) that Macs will use a series of chips designed JUST for them. Will they be called A series chips? I suppose so, since all the A stands for is—Apple.
possibly, if the rumormongers are correct, the first machine this year will be a redone 12” Macbook. It may get a chip closely related to the chip a new iPad Pro will get. An interim machine, essentially, or it can be thought of as a placeholder for the brand new lines for next year with more advanced chips.
There’s a lot of confusion by what’s meant by a “new” series of chips just for Macs, which is what Apple said they were doing.
the way some of you are writing here, you don’t seem to understand that Apple can have all of its chips based on the same cores, but be different chips. Neither AMD or Intel label their chips with x86 in the name of the particular chip itself. But they’re all x86 chips. Apple will be the same. These are not A14 chips and more than they were A6 chips. That’s just the generational indicator, and that’s how Apple labels it’s chips. So there can easily be four or even five A14 chips out there, all having different features. Don’t get caught up by the fact that they may all be called A14 something or other.
x86 (and x84-x64) are ISAs, they are not core designs. ARMv8 Is an ISA as well and yes, all of Apple's CPU cores are base off this ISA, but they are all also different designs. (Hell, they could even move to ARMv9 for their Mac SoCs.) If they weren't, Apple wouldn't need different names for each - A Thunderbolt CPU core is a Thunderbolt core regardless of what generation of SoC it's on. The same goes for every other logical unit on the SoC.
Also, I am not getting "caught up" in the naming... some people are saying that Apple is going to use the exact same chip in both the Mac and iPad and that's where they're wrong, that's where Apple's statement of making and designing a new family of SoCs specifically for the Mac comes in. Because if they're just going to use the exact same A14 and A14X in the Mac, why bother making that statement? Furthermore they also said they're making bigger and more performant GPU cores for the Mac. And those SoCs will support virtualization. They will also support Thunderbolt (PCI). Not to mention they will need to support disparate RAM as RAM requirements for macOS is much different than iOS and putting all that RAM onto the SoC is probably not reasonable. I have a feeling all Mac SoCs will have 8GB RAM "on chip", and the rest "off chip".
And as far as naming goes... current Macs don't use an "A10T", they use a "T2", even though that SoC is just a variant of the A10. So it stands to reason that even though Mac SoCs will share a lot of the same logical units, there will be enough differences to use a different name - just to differentiate their use.
You’ve basically what I said. That is why these chips are not all the same. Even though they are designated x86, or A series, because the designs are different.
I concur, and I also concur with your implication that the Mac SoC will need a new name. I had been thinking that Apple would use "M-Series" nomenclature for "Mac SoCs", but they have been using "M" for their Motion Coprocessor names since 2013. They also are using the letters A, S, T, W, H and U for other chips. That leaves 19 available letters to work with. The letters "X" and "I" are probably out since they are associated with Intel chips. AMD used "K" for a long time. That leaves BCDEFGJLNOPQRVYZ. I would pick "D" for "Desktop."
Well they aren’t gonna use G either... remember G3, G4, G5? Haha.
They dropped the “X” out of Mac OS X a while ago and replaced it with just macOS. I’m guessing that happened just after they decided to move the Mac to ASi. So X-series makes the most sense.
I assume YZ are so out they will be the chip grades as the final part of the name as reserve V just in case.
Will the Mac chips even be SOC in the traditional sense in that they could well still have a platform chip which we assume will keep being part of the Tseries?
Plus I assume there will be grades of Mac chips so that would become a nightmare of naming. Maybe it will be 2 lines. L for Laptop that has all the platform functions built-in and D for desktops that work with a Tchip for platform. Then the x at the end for pro models
My guess is all of you are 100% wrong. Some of the logic here is just... /gun to head gesture
Comments
Intel promised a number of chips that either never made it into production, or were delayed by a year, and sometimes two. That’s fact, like it or not. Apple, like other companies, designs it devices around what’s expected over a year out, often, two years out. Dell, Hp and others have very extensive computer lines, offering dozens of machines. Apple doesn’t. It’s much easier for those companies to have a “new” machine with a chip that’s a tiny bit better than the last. Or a chip that’s a power hog, used in a 6 pound laptop.
If you don’t understand any of this, instead of just making up statements based on nothing, you can look it up.
apple said (and I’m getting tired of having to repeat it!) that Macs will use a series of chips designed JUST for them. Will they be called A series chips? I suppose so, since all the A stands for is—Apple.
possibly, if the rumormongers are correct, the first machine this year will be a redone 12” Macbook. It may get a chip closely related to the chip a new iPad Pro will get. An interim machine, essentially, or it can be thought of as a placeholder for the brand new lines for next year with more advanced chips.