mjtomlin

I don't understand the concern about whether Apple Silicon Macs will support it? Doesn't this article mention,

"Intel will also make new 8000-series controller chips available to computer and accessory makers."

Why wouldn't Apple just add the controller chip on their motherboards? (And that goes for TB3 as well.)

People REALLY need to stop assuming the Dev Kit mini is what the new Apple Silicon based Macs will be like.

Good lord! Apple really needs to be much more clear about this stuff - or people start flying off the rails with speculation.

What the chart is showing, is target GPUs for each platform. Apple (and developers) currently have to target for three different GPU architectures. On Apple Silicon based Macs, Apple and developers can always count on there being an Apple GPU, and thus, will only need to support it if desired. This does not imply the limitation of expansion to other GPU architectures should the developer choose to support them.

What I read from that table is that the "Metal GPU Family Mac 2" APIs will target ALL GPU architectures and the "Metal GPU Family Apple" APIs will only support Apple GPUs.


Update after watching the dev session...
It is specifically mentioned that Apple Silicon based Macs can and will support discrete GPUs. That slide image was taken out of context. The session is mainly about optimizing your code when running on Apple Silicon GPUs.

It is also mentioned that the GPUs on Mac SoCs are not the same as those found on the A-series - they will be much more powerful.

KITA said:

anonymouse said:

KITA said:

anonymouse said:

KITA said:

canukstorm said:

Rayz2016 said:

At the moment, this is little more than a loss of prestige for Intel. 

The problem will come if Microsoft decides to put some effort into its own ARM strategy.

Apple doesn't have close to the silicon team that Apple has to pull this off.  What we saw yesterday was how central Apple's silicon team is to Apple's competitive advantage.  MS would have to buy a major silicon company to pull this off.  Who knows, maybe they'll buy AMD (*sarcasm*).

Microsoft can participate in ARM's Cortex X program, or work with a company that is...

Apple's A series processors aren't just about energy efficiency and flops. In large part it's about integrating all these other things,



into the processor and being able to customize it precisely to meet your needs. The graphic above represents years of R&D, customizing everything for exactly what Apple wants it to do. You can't have this overnight.

Of course it's more than that. You've just posted their image of what makes up their SoC. These components already exist, not only as ARM reference designs, but as components that have been worked on for years by various manufacturers.

Here's a block diagram from Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865 for example:



Even Microsoft has done custom silicon work alongside Qualcomm to fit their needs. In the HoloLens 2, Microsoft created a custom multiprocessor the HPU (Holographic Processing Unit) to accompany the Snapdragon 850. In the Surface Pro X, they branded the Microsoft SQ1 - going even further to take a Snapdragon 8cx and build onto it with a higher CPU clock, faster GPU (2.1 TFLOPS) and custom AI engine (9 TOPS).

Compare the diagrams, and the actual capabilities, and I think you've simply reinforced my point.

"Advanced silicon packaging" "high bandwitch caches" etc.?

No, you just need to do a better job in understanding what all of the components in the Qualcomm diagram actually do and their functions.

You seem to be missing the point of having custom logic that you’ve spent years optimizing for your own needs. Yes, all the parts of Apple’s SoC can be found elsewhere, but Apple has designed, and redesigned them to squeeze all the performance from them by being able to customize everything for EXACTLY what they need. As an example, their GPU’s directly support Metal calls, which removes a layer of overhead. They’re free to extend and customize ARM’s ISA as well, as there’s no need for their own silicon to be compatible with anything outside their own ecosystem.

aderutter said:

In the short and medium terms ahead, we will likely have a choice of Intel or ARM.
People that need to run Bootcamp or Windows under emulation can still buy an Intel Mac.

In time, it will ultimately become a choice of better performance or Windows support.
I'll be buying ARM for better performance.

The demos shown running on that A12Z were pretty impressive, I especially liked the Maya demo.
The A12Z is a tweaked version of the 2-year-old silicon, so what chip will the first ARM Mac launch with?
My guess is it will be an A13Z

What happens if they can release a MacPro with multiple A14Z processors in two years' time?

I've upgraded with Apple the first generation of each move; first-gen PowerPC, and first-gen Intel.
Apple has always got it right.
My first day bought Intel MacBook Pro lasted me over 7 years with not a single fault.

The next few years are gonna be exciting!

Intel has no-one to blame but themselves for not advancing. I wouldn't be buying Intel stock right now...

They will not use A-series SoCs for Macs. They said they created a new SoC series specifically for Macs.

saarek said:

Had a discussion with someone today who flat out refuses to accept that Apple chips based on RISC could ever match or exceed Intel Chips based on CISC for Pro users in multi core processing.

It will be interesting to see the benchmarks and what Apple comes up with.

That's a weird argument since Intel's chips are RISC. Intel twitched from fully CISC to RISC cores with a CISC front end many years ago. Their CPUs have the overhead of breaking down CISC instructions into RISC instructions. However, that overhead is basically insignificant since it all happens on the chip.