jdb8167

winston2010 said:

borps said:

So they have a CISC architecture that requires more transistors than a RISC design like the M1 and they are using a 10nm process while Apple is already at 5nm. Sounds like a plan. 

If I remembered correctly, Intel had a RISC-like core with CICS translation in "micro-code" to translate x86 instructions.  That was how Intel was able to increase frequencies so quickly back in the 90's

This is true. They translate x86 instructions into macro-ops that are closer to RISC than the original x86 opcodes. This is fine as far as it goes and served Intel and AMD well for the last 10-15 years. The problem is that Apple has shown that a true RISC architecture with a fixed length instruction length and a massive buffer to reorder instructions can now bring a substantial increase in instructions per cycle that wasn't feasible before. Apple is taking advantage of a huge transistor budget and a consistent ISA to create a very wide instruction decode step and an out of order architecture that is much more efficient than anything else in the industry.

This unique architecture allows Apple's M1 to have the fastest single thread execution while also sipping power. Where Intel and AMD need to clock up to 5 GHz to get good performance, the M1 clocks at just 3.2 GHz and is faster than the top of the line x86_64 (AMD64)  CPUs. This is relatively new and is enabled by using TSMC's fabrication to supply a very large number of transistors relatively inexpensively. Intel is going to have a very hard time replicating Apple's approach because the x86_64 architecture is not amenable to it.

I don't count Intel or AMD out of the race though. They both have very good engineers and Intel's semiconductor process engineers were the world's best until just recently when TSMC eclipsed them. It seems possible that Intel will rally. But they are going to have to do something very clever to get around the limitations of their preferred ISA. Going wide like Apple has in the A14/M1 is probably not a viable solution.

indieshack said:

...Apple won't make an iPad Mini Pro because they know that's what the bulk of users want and it would dent profits. What happened to "the customer is always right"? It's always about $$$$ with Apple.

What makes you say that? I wouldn’t find an iPad mini Pro as useful as the 11” iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard.

It’s resolved. 

I think the $60 billion is explanation enough. Apple has never done any acquisition close to that. And knowing Musk, he likely pitched it higher. No point in discussion if the price starts out way out of range.

Mike Wuerthele said:

jdb8167 said:

Isn't the App Store download equivalent to a combo updater? Maybe I'm missing something. Once you download the installer you can save a copy and reuse it. Along with the content caching, it doesn't seem like this is that big of a deal unless I'm missing something. You can also use the App Store download to create a bootable recovery disk if you need to distribute to users to update on their own. The real problem is for those users who have very slow or severely expensive internet. I don't see any way to avoid downloading the 12 GB installer.

The App Store download is a full, 12GB install. The one you get through software update is 2-3ish GB. The former can take over an hour to install, the latter can take as little as five minutes, depending on a number of factors, obviously.

Multiply this by a dozen machines, and it's a lot of time.

It isn't the end of the world. But, it is a big deal for enterprise and other rollouts, particularly ones that have air-gapped installs and the like. The DoD isn't pleased about it, for instance.

Thanks, that was the information that I was looking for.