anonconformist

80s_Apple_Guy said:

Shortsighted on Apple’s part. They need these companies. They have the experience and expertise in making their products. If they do away Apple has a big problem. Have to treat your vendors right. 

If Apple is doing their part correctly, they’ve got all the hardware, software, procedures fully documented so they can move manufacturing to anyone, anywhere and set it up efficiently.

eightzero said:

I have a hard time believing a Nov 17 announcement. Apple is very careful not to release new product information until it is ready to ship something that will replace existing products for obvious reasons. Announcing replacement hardware right before the lucrative holiday season makes little sense.

Arguably Apple Silicon is less of a threat to do this, but it would still have an effect. Sure - they aren't "announcing" release of new hardware, perhaps just "giving an update" but Macs are long lived devices (I'm typing this on a 2009 iMac that works just fine.) While everyone knows this is coming, knowing the timeline make people more comfortable extending their purchases, something Apple wishes to avoid. They would like customers to buy now (Intel) and then buy again later (Apple) rather than just the latter.

It seems to me the primary advantage of Apple Silicon is the power advantages, and that would seem to indicate that MacBooks would certainly be up first. IIRC from WWDC though, Apple released Apple Silicon based MacMinis to developers, so there has to be a production facility for that model already in place - albeit one that likely has a limited, but scalable, production capability.

I wouldn't count on the MacMini production line being around with that developer kit Mac ASi because it was exactly that a short-run one-off batch of machines for the temporary transitional purpose of a small number of Mac developers to get hardware for special hands-on needs.  They're under strict NDA about everything regarding that hardware, as it is not representative of what will actually ship for performance.  Once the hardware lease is up, I'd expect Apple to destroy every one of those machines, at least the motherboards.

Now, there is a non-zero chance that a new ASi Mac CPU would have a pin-compatible SOC, but again, short-run prototype machines are often meaningfully-different from production runs, as I saw working an Intel contract for a tablet under development in the Windows 8 timeframe.

melgross said:

anonconformist said:

wizard69 said:

jdb8167 said:

Apple has already stated for the record that they are going to use their own GPU. Why is this written as speculation?

They have also stated that they are designing Mac specific SoCs. So no, it won’t be an A14X. Though it might use the same core design but the number of CPU and GPU cores are going to be Mac specific. 

Because they haven't said that at least in the context of discreet GPU's.    Some information was deciphered to suggest that that was the case but it can be seen that the information can be interpreted in more than one way.   The discussion is a bit ridiculous anyways as every A series Apple SoC comes with a GPU, so all Macs using an A series chip will have an Apple GPU even if a discreet is included.   So the question becomes does Apple use a discreet Apple GPU in addition to its integrated GPU in the initial Macs and frankly we can't say.  There are still good reasons to stick with AMD at the high end, mainly because of performance, but even here Apple has options to mix AMD with Apple GPU's. 

With respect to the A14X in a Mac Book revival; that is easy to understand and has no impact on the idea that Mac specific SoC's are coming.   The very nature of Macs will require very different chips for the various classes of machines.   Personally if Apple doesn't implement SMT they will need a 24 core laptop machine by the end of 2021 to remain competitive.     On the Mac Pro they are screwed if they can't match what AMD is already offering which means offering at least 64 cores and 128 cores will be needed if they can't get SMT working.   AMD has some of the most compelling workstation offerings on the market right now so a Mac Pro is going to really stretch Apples capabilities.

Your assertion that Apple will need 24 cores in the main CPU in 2021 (without SMT, perhaps 12 with) in a laptop to remain competitive in 2021 is laughable.  In a Mac Pro it can make sense to need that many main CPU cores, because they’re going to be expensive non-portable machines used for dedicated server/workstation tasks that can reasonably make use of all those cores, but if and only if it isn’t constrained by running off of low power or a battery.  Very few applications these days come close to using 4 cores in any meaningful sense short of the special types of applications you run on dedicated workstations and servers: most of the time most of the 24 (or even 8 cores now with Intel) will remain idle.  If they weren’t idle most of the time, with that many cores going full-tilt, you’d be lucky to get more than an hour or so of battery life on a 16” MacBook Pro: it’s not rational to expect much different regardless of CPU architecture.

Let’s say Apple paid any attention to know-nothings claiming they needed that many cores in a laptop to be competitive: Apple would be pissing away power efficiency to even have all those cores exist even with them not running code most of the time.  After all these years, it seems you’ve pointedly ignored Apple’s practical strategy in iOS devices of fewer but faster cores in comparison to Android devices.  Sure, Android device makers could claim they had more cores, but that had no practical value beyond advertising copy.  Anyone that has enough software development experience knows this.

Will Intel be selling any 12 core with SMT mobile-targeted chips? Perhaps they’d get sales from enthusiasts and those that think having that many cores will improve their game performance, but even that is dubious.  It’s really hard to justify that due to what I mentioned above.  The way it’d make sense to have that many cores is using the BIG/little strategy purely for power efficiency with (usually) only one half (all same type) being active, but not likely to use both types at the same time.  Even then, Windows and typical applications you use in a laptop very rarely, all combined, will saturate that many cores.

I was watching Twit, the tech blog. And it was said by one of thev guests, and the others agreed, that most people don’t need more than 4 cores, and that 8 was the most almost anyone did need. I agree. Apple got away with just two cores for years, and very successfully. I’m not even counting the Efficiency cores, because all of those put together just barely equal one Performance core. 

I can see 8 cores, maybe even the twelve we’ve been hearing about. But more than that for most computers is a laughable waste of real estate and power. Those extra cores will likely never be used properly.

I assume everyone here knows how to use Apple’s Activity Monitor? Open it up and strip out the core indicator. Then run software and do a lot of different things while that’s on the screen. You’ll notice that even when a lot of cores are being used, they’re just blips most of the time. Multitasking, encryption, unpacking, all of them just use cores for a fraction of the time, and usually only at a low usage. Read the CPU numbers for “user”. You’ll see what I mean. My Mac has 8 hardware cores, and 8 virtual cores. It’s amazing how rare it is for software to take advantage of it. Video rendering is where it matters most. even Fusion 360 doesn’t use all the cores most of the time.

my old Mac Pro from 2012 had two CPUs, each with 12 hardware cores and 12 virtual cores. It was even worse then. What mattered most was how fast an individual core is.

the problem is that we see synthetic tests that show multi core use, and give numbers. But that’s not the way the computer works normally.

That’s the typical usage model in most user environments.

Spinning up a lot of threads that you keep around and not actively use is just horribly inefficient, and most applications are waiting on the user more than 99% of their wall time.  If browsers are using up the CPU cores with a large number of threads, that’s likely because of ads more than anything else, over a lot of pages opened at the same time. The more cores that are running different code and processing different data, the less efficient the entire system gets for effective CPU throughput and energy efficiency as a result of blowing away CPU caches and waiting for main memory accesses.  Again, very wasteful to do it that way.  I’ve found it makes sense to do most of my web references via iPad and use Xcode without Safari open to maximize battery life when not plugged in.  All having more cores beyond a certain modest point for a laptop will do for you is eat the battery alive when they’re being used, and still waste power by merely existing when they aren’t.

wizard69 said:

jdb8167 said:

Apple has already stated for the record that they are going to use their own GPU. Why is this written as speculation?

They have also stated that they are designing Mac specific SoCs. So no, it won’t be an A14X. Though it might use the same core design but the number of CPU and GPU cores are going to be Mac specific. 

Because they haven't said that at least in the context of discreet GPU's.    Some information was deciphered to suggest that that was the case but it can be seen that the information can be interpreted in more than one way.   The discussion is a bit ridiculous anyways as every A series Apple SoC comes with a GPU, so all Macs using an A series chip will have an Apple GPU even if a discreet is included.   So the question becomes does Apple use a discreet Apple GPU in addition to its integrated GPU in the initial Macs and frankly we can't say.  There are still good reasons to stick with AMD at the high end, mainly because of performance, but even here Apple has options to mix AMD with Apple GPU's. 

With respect to the A14X in a Mac Book revival; that is easy to understand and has no impact on the idea that Mac specific SoC's are coming.   The very nature of Macs will require very different chips for the various classes of machines.   Personally if Apple doesn't implement SMT they will need a 24 core laptop machine by the end of 2021 to remain competitive.     On the Mac Pro they are screwed if they can't match what AMD is already offering which means offering at least 64 cores and 128 cores will be needed if they can't get SMT working.   AMD has some of the most compelling workstation offerings on the market right now so a Mac Pro is going to really stretch Apples capabilities.

Your assertion that Apple will need 24 cores in the main CPU in 2021 (without SMT, perhaps 12 with) in a laptop to remain competitive in 2021 is laughable.  In a Mac Pro it can make sense to need that many main CPU cores, because they’re going to be expensive non-portable machines used for dedicated server/workstation tasks that can reasonably make use of all those cores, but if and only if it isn’t constrained by running off of low power or a battery.  Very few applications these days come close to using 4 cores in any meaningful sense short of the special types of applications you run on dedicated workstations and servers: most of the time most of the 24 (or even 8 cores now with Intel) will remain idle.  If they weren’t idle most of the time, with that many cores going full-tilt, you’d be lucky to get more than an hour or so of battery life on a 16” MacBook Pro: it’s not rational to expect much different regardless of CPU architecture.

Let’s say Apple paid any attention to know-nothings claiming they needed that many cores in a laptop to be competitive: Apple would be pissing away power efficiency to even have all those cores exist even with them not running code most of the time.  After all these years, it seems you’ve pointedly ignored Apple’s practical strategy in iOS devices of fewer but faster cores in comparison to Android devices.  Sure, Android device makers could claim they had more cores, but that had no practical value beyond advertising copy.  Anyone that has enough software development experience knows this.

Will Intel be selling any 12 core with SMT mobile-targeted chips? Perhaps they’d get sales from enthusiasts and those that think having that many cores will improve their game performance, but even that is dubious.  It’s really hard to justify that due to what I mentioned above.  The way it’d make sense to have that many cores is using the BIG/little strategy purely for power efficiency with (usually) only one half (all same type) being active, but not likely to use both types at the same time.  Even then, Windows and typical applications you use in a laptop very rarely, all combined, will saturate that many cores.

wizard69 said:

rob53 said:

verne arase said:

Good.

Let them make their own cake.

Totally agree. Why should Apple support other computer companies? All this would do is give Congress another reason to investigate their monopolistic activities. 

Actually congress could investigate them for not selling the processors.  Congress can investigate Apple for any imagined or real excuse they can come up with so Congress has nothing to do with this issue.

The best reason for Apple to start selling chips is to have a wider base to spread development expenses across.   Apple could literally get silicon customers to pay for the development process.

Your argument makes no business sense with Apple’s objectives: they could make money on the chips, but then the other competitor devices would be able to undercut them on cost on the total device and thus cost them profits on Apple devices, while also anchoring them to producing contracted amounts of chips for their competitors as a legal priority before fulfilling their own device needs, lest they befall the extreme danger of becoming a regulated monopoly.  The reasons Intel wants and needs AMD to survive and do well enough to be competitive at minimum are:

1. Many entities need to have a backup option for replacement hardware, even with a little hardware design change, that performs comparable to what they already have, should their main supplier have a problem.  Many government contracts have this.  Apple in some unknown number of parts has more than a single supplier for supplier diversification for this reason, even if their regular supplier can (normally) provide for all their needed parts.
2. If only a single Intel X86/AMD64 ISA chip provider existed, they’d become a monopoly and subject to all those regulatory and other encumbrances that result.
3. AMD hasn’t been truly competitive more years than they have been mediocre: Intel has become complacent as a result. Real technical competition is needed in the market to keep technology progressing.  If AMD didn’t exist, I believe other ISAs (more than ARM exists) would have eaten Intel’s lunch sooner, because of the Intel tax.