Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

Eug · Nov 10, 2020

M1
5 nm
Unified memory architecture - LP-DDR4
16 billion transistors

8-core CPU

4 high-performance cores
192 KB instruction cache
128 KB data cache
Shared 12 MB L2 cache

4 high-efficiency cores
128 KB instruction cache
64 KB data cache
Shared 4 MB L2 cache
(Apple claims the 4 high-effiency cores alone perform like a dual-core Intel MacBook Air)

8-core iGPU (but there is a 7-core variant, likely with one inactive core)
128 execution units
Up to 24576 concurrent threads
2.6 Teraflops
82 Gigatexels/s
41 gigapixels/s

16-core neural engine
Secure Enclave
USB 4

Products:
$999 ($899 edu) 13" MacBook Air (fanless) - 18 hour video playback battery life
$699 Mac mini (with fan)
$1299 ($1199 edu) 13" MacBook Pro (with fan) - 20 hour video playback battery life

Memory options 8 GB and 16 GB. No 32 GB option (unless you go Intel).

It should be noted that the M1 chip in these three Macs is the same (aside from GPU core number). Basically, Apple is taking the same approach which these chips as they do the iPhones and iPads. Just one SKU (excluding the X variants), which is the same across all iDevices (aside from maybe slight clock speed differences occasionally).

EDIT:

M1 Pro 8-core CPU (6+2), 14-core GPU
M1 Pro 10-core CPU (8+2), 14-core GPU
M1 Pro 10-core CPU (8+2), 16-core GPU
M1 Max 10-core CPU (8+2), 24-core GPU
M1 Max 10-core CPU (8+2), 32-core GPU

M1 Pro and M1 Max discussion here:

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M1 Ultra discussion here:

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M2 discussion here:

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Second Generation 5 nm
Unified memory architecture - LPDDR5, up to 24 GB and 100 GB/s
20 billion transistors

8-core CPU

4 high-performance cores
192 KB instruction cache
128 KB data cache
Shared 16 MB L2 cache

4 high-efficiency cores
128 KB instruction cache
64 KB data cache
Shared 4 MB L2 cache

10-core iGPU (but there is an 8-core variant)
3.6 Teraflops

16-core neural engine
Secure Enclave
USB 4

Hardware acceleration for 8K h.264, h.264, ProRes

M3 Family discussion here:

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M4 Family discussion here:

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amrnuke · Nov 14, 2020

insertcarehere said:
I agree that including/excluding caches can make measurements very fuzzy either way, but with all these comparisons there's still no evidence that the lower-clocked, wider Apple cores take more space than the higher-clocked, narrower Zen 2/3 cores on equivalent process, and ultimately, die space is what TSMC charges for, not transistor count.

You have my full 100% agreement on this.
While A13 core is smaller in area, it's more densely packed and by most estimates I've seen the core + L1$ has more transistors than Zen2 core.
This is largely possible because of the lower clock speeds on ARM. By making a wider, slower core they don't have many of the same technical issues with maximizing density, and they get energy efficiency to boot.
If you're paying for die space, there are a lot of economic advantages to a slower, wider core, and A13/A14 maximize that.

yuri69 · Nov 14, 2020

tempestglen said:
In 2005, their masterpiece, PA6T chipset demonstrated 100% integer & 50% float point performance of intel Core with ONLY 10% power consumption! In 2008 when Apple merged PA Semi, the best RISC & SoC belonged to Apple and that's why A series/M1 have been so outstanding.

This doesn't explain why even pieces of their tech haven't been adopted industry wide even 15 years after the demonstration.

name99 · Nov 14, 2020

MarkizSchnitzel said:
@Eug
Can you name a few usecases from your work where ipad would be the preferable form?
I am not imaginative enough to think of any by myself. My work is mostly with CAD and excel, and multitasking. I can't possibly imagine a workflow where a tablet form factor could be anywhere near. By tablet, I mean iOS.

As long as you to use an app + email + chat app + browser, multitasking and switching windows is so incredibly slower. Not to mention managing files, possibly from network locations.

I just can't imagine any task to be more efficiently done without a pointer and a file manager and robust multitasking.

If your "work" consists of reading a large number of technical PDFs, as does mine, the iPad Pro is vastly superior. Reading for hours on my iPad Pro is a joy, better than a book. Reading anything long on a laptop or my iMac is a PITA.

If your work involves tactile manipulation of material (think graphic design, a lot of music, even a lot of video editing) the immediacy of the iPad Pro screen seems to be preferable to many people over the one-step-removed of a track pad.

But I wouldn't do any professional writing on an iPad, not the writing I do that requires a fully-featured keyboard and frequent referencing between windows.

The thing I keep trying to stress is that you will not understand Apple (and where computing is headed) if you keep asking this question of "which is better, PC or tablet". That's like asking which is better, a hammer or a screwdriver. They are both tools, and you use the appropriate tool for a given task. You can go through life hammering every screw you see, but life is easier if you use a screwdriver.

(However I suspect you are not completely familiar and comfortable with the iPadOS slideover support. It's an adequate solution for many lightweight multi-task interactions, like music and chat. The heavyweight window support is, yeah, something that needs a totally rethought UI.
My PDF reader app supports is own multiple tabs and split screen (implemented before Apple, so uses its own code and UI, and I find that a good match to the "PDF reading" task.)

name99 · Nov 14, 2020

iwulff said:
The Ryzen processors are more aimed towards server like workloads and this reflects in the Geekbench score details. And the A14 is aiming for consumers and does everything to speed this up by use of their neural co-processors and accelerators and having memory more close by. Performance of the individual processors is good enough to catch up to anything that can't be accelerated this way, while Apple will just look for ways to enhance this along the way most likely or in future iterations. Still it's wierd to see the A14 doing so well in clang (which seems the exception) for example and AMD is probably scoring really high on the AES due to their own accelerator in this regard (as far as I know they use one?).

In my opinion, this benchmark is getting 'fluked' by AMD on AES (and probably some other parts) and by Apple on various workloads by how their architecture works. Is that a bad thing? Not necessairly, but I can understand why an architecture that's quite different (more accelerators, neural engine, on-die ram, etc...) is hard to compare to more traditional setups like that of Intel and AMD. The M1 is a smarter and 'dumber' design at the same time and I assume it's very specific on how to handle a certain workload, much more then a traditional design, and sometimes needs to fallback to raw performance, which is very good and good enough in most cases but not as good as that of Zen 3 for example. That's also the reason why Apple won't use this for their servers without some big changes to the arch. Their igpu is something that's unclear to me in regards to performance, but it's most likely tuned for compute only and gaming will perform just reasonable. A bit like the older AMD Radeon setup's.

I will have to see more benchmarks and real world performance results to really form an opinion of how good the M1 really is. But anything that can't be handled by Apple in an accelerator/neural/on die memory option is probably going to be slower then an Zen 3, but still more energy efficient. Perhaps this is the future of processors?

I'm impressed by the M1 max boost score with such a wide arch and having such a seemingly high perf/watt peformance. I do know when downclocking a bit and optimizing v-core and other settings for both Intel and AMD the perf/watt increases by a lot, but it does seem that they don't get close to the M1. The processnode is of course critical in this regard, and hand in hand with a strong/smart energy efficient architecture you have a deadly set-up. I'm sure AMD and Intel will show a lot of improvements when going to 5nm together with the current focus on energy efficiency, but they are behind Apple by at least 1-2 years for AMD and who knows what for Intel. And even when they will deliver, it probably won't be as energy efficient.

You are being too kind. Look at how Graviton2 (a substantially inferior core compared to M1) does on many server benchmarks. And Graviton2 is ARM/AMZ just getting started, the equivalent of the Apple A7 or so -- they know perfectly well everything they're not doing optimally and have a plan to improve this aggressively every year over the next few years.

Bottom line is that team x86 bet on the wrong horse (getting performance via raw frequency rather than smarts) and every year they are finding fewer and fewer niches where that bet pays off. Obviously mobile was the first thing the lost, then IoT. Graviton2 showed where data warehouses are headed over the next few years, Apple where PCs are headed.

It is astonishing the denial Team x86 is in about this. Make all the excuses they like about process, but Apple was close to as good with A13 on 7nm, Graviton2 is on 7nm, presumably Graviton3 will be as well. Even statements like "anything that can't be handled by Apple in an accelerator/neural/on die memory option" show an astonishing either cluelessness or willful denial of reality.

There is a multi-year history trail of Apple performance across a wide range of functionality; to pretend that none of this exists is unimpressive (though not surprising) behavior.

IvanKaramazov · Nov 14, 2020

For my work there are also a lot of uses for which an iPad Pro is superior to a Macbook. I'm an academic and prefer my research to be digital when possible, so I read a bajillion PDFs for research. Plenty of studies suggest reading while taking notes by hand has cognitive advantages over typing, plus I just like scribbling in the margins. I also work with physical objects (cuneiform tablets), and manipulating photographs or 3D scans of such objects on a tablet is preferable to a laptop or desktop. The iPad makes it easy as well to quickly scan physical pages or a book with the back camera and immediately annotate it.

iPad also has advantages for university teaching. In addition to the traditional projected slides or whatever, I use mine as a digital whiteboard. One useful trick is to plug an Apple TV into a projector and mirror to it (or better, Airplay to a TV), at which point the iPad can be passed around to students for them to write on as well. Faster and more natural than "coming up to the board" to work through exercises. Carrying an iPad with one's lecture notes is also pleasant, as it's unobtrusive for students and frees one from the lectern.

I have a good friend who is an architect, and his specialized software is still not on the iPad but he uses it for all sketching, etc. Any job where a pencil is still relevant is low hanging fruit for tablet use, obviously.

For a lot of jobs an iPad won't cut it. But for my uses (and I'm sure for at least some others), the iPad is preferable for probably 80-90% of my needs, as it can do things that a laptop simply can't, or else that a laptop does worse. At the moment it would significantly hamper me to have just an iPad or just a Macbook. But if the iPad ever gains enough ground in the areas where it lags a Macbook (external screen support, etc), it would be the iPad rather than the laptop that best meets my needs as a single device. Worth noting that with robust keyboard and mouse support, I can stream instances of macOS or Windows to my iPad that are functionally equivalent to a laptop, but with better hardware.

Regarding multi-tasking... in most ways it's worse, in some ways it's better. I seldom need more than two "spaces" for any workflow (as, again, someone with limited needs). Typically I've got a PDF and a writing app open side-by-side, a research database in another space, and a slideover window with tabs for email, chat, etc. Nothing is ever more than a single swipe away.

beginner99 · Nov 14, 2020

name99 said:
Look at how Graviton2 (a substantially inferior core compared to M1) does on many server benchmarks.

It craps out completely as soon as you stress it a bit. This might not be core related but interconnect related which Apple doesn't have but then they don't need it for the consumer space. Look at Graviton2 compiling benchmarks. It's a lot slower than any x86. So yeah, graviton2 pretty much is a useless comparison to either x86 or M1.

name99 · Nov 14, 2020

beginner99 said:
It craps out completely as soon as you stress it a bit. This might not be core related but interconnect related which Apple doesn't have but then they don't need it for the consumer space. Look at Graviton2 compiling benchmarks. It's a lot slower than any x86. So yeah, graviton2 pretty much is a useless comparison to either x86 or M1.

How about you focus less on scoring points and more on whether Graviton is gaining traction in the environments for which it is targeted? Your friends might be impressed with your linux compile-time anecdote, but it ain't gonna stop the migration of actual businesses (who understand the actual job of a data warehouse SoC) to the platform. Names that matter are things like Redis, KeyDB, Honeycomb.

Or you think everyone on this page is delusional?

Amazon EC2 M6g Instances - Amazon Web Services

Amazon EC2 M6g Instances provide the best price/performance for general purpose workloads with balanced compute, memory, and networking.

aws.amazon.com

Honestly I am really excited to see what numbers AMZ is willing to release at re:invent.

tempestglen · Nov 14, 2020

yuri69 said:
This doesn't explain why even pieces of their tech haven't been adopted industry wide even 15 years after the demonstration.

1) Intel /AMD dare not replace x86 ISA, Intel tried once but failed. Going to SoC is quite radical for PC world.

2)Other parties such as Broadcom and US army bought their MIPS/PPC products.

3)As Dan’s obituary says
He led design of the first commercial Multi-Core System on a Chip at SiByte, Inc. with the most talented team in Silicon Valley and later at P.A. Semi led the design of the PWRficient architecture which was the underpinning for SOC processors used in Apple iPhones and iPads.

In 2005, Jobs understood PA6T’s meaning, and that chipset costed most budget of PA Semi because Jobs had implied Dan that he would choose PA semi as next generation PPC chipset for Mac. Finally Dan was very unhappy about Jobs’ betray——turning to intel. I don’t know whether Jobs played trick while PA semi financial status became very poor and acquired by apple 3 years later.

Apple has made full use of low power RISC SOC technology for more than 10 years, firstly on mobile device, then for PC.

mikegg · Nov 14, 2020

MarkizSchnitzel said:
You have articulated well the exact reason why I, a layman and a newb, have posted here in the 1st place.
I despise walled garden approach, and apple by extension, with every fiber of my being.
That said, if most of what is written on this chip and battery life pans out, and the price does drop to what you suspect it might (and the service based model does seem plausible), it would be stupid NOT to get this. Especially since I just need a browser and a file manager. I suspect many consumers are like this.

Yes, no one is buying $500-$700 PC laptops to do professional work anyway. People who buy them are students and people who use it for casual work.

A $700 Macbook with a one-generation behind ARM chip is going to dominate this market. It will still be the best laptop in that range.

I can totally see Apple making this laptop as soon as next year. Or they just drop the price of M1 Air to $700 and keep M2 Air $999.

mikegg · Nov 14, 2020

coercitiv said:
I am disagreeing, as it should have been transparent from the $1100 price tag they put on an AIO with an antiquated 2c CPU, 8GB of 2133mHZ RAM, 256GB of storage and FHD screen. The price of this AIO is not about BOM alone.

The $700 Windows laptop you mention comes with a decent FHD IPS screen, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD and a 6 core CPU. The equivalent on the MBA side right now is not the $1000 part, but the $1400 part with upgraded RAM and storage. It's a beautiful, premium device with excellent performance and autonomy, but it's not just $200-300 more expensive relative to the current offering in the PC market. It's 100% more expensive.

Lol no. I just checked Best Buy and the vast majority of laptops in the $700 range come with slow Intel cpus, garbage battery life, 8gb of ram, and 256gb ssd.

The cheapest non open box and non refurbished laptop with 16gb of ram starts at $900 at Best Buy, which is where typical people shop.

A MacBook Air with M1, 8gb, 17hr battery life, ultra small size, and a Retina screen is significantly better than any of the garbage you get for a typical $700 Windows laptop.

Maybe you can get what you said if you hunt for a sale on an older generation of laptops. But it’s not the norm for $700.

Eug · Nov 14, 2020

senttoschool said:
Yes, no one is buying $500-$700 PC laptops to do professional work anyway. People who buy them are students and people who use it for casual work.

A $700 Macbook with a one-generation behind ARM chip is going to dominate this market. It will still be the best laptop in that range.

I can totally see Apple making this laptop as soon as next year. Or they just drop the price of M1 Air to $700 and keep M2 Air $999.

Not going to happen.

Basically the closest you're going to get is Apple selling old stock as refurbs, and retail stores having sales later on in their product cycle and eventually putting them on clearance once new replacement models are released.

It should be noted that the refurbs usually don't come in the regular retail box and they also don't qualify for the various incentives Apple provides, like Black Friday gift cards and back-to-school free AirPods.

mikegg · Nov 14, 2020

Eug said:
Not going to happen.

Basically the closest you're going to get is Apple selling old stock as refurbs, and retail stores having sales later on in their product cycle and eventually putting them on clearance once new replacement models are released.

It should be noted that the refurbs usually don't come in the regular retail box and they also don't qualify for the various incentives Apple provides, like Black Friday gift cards and back-to-school free AirPods.

People said a $400 iPhone would never happen either. This isn’t the 2010 Apple anymore. This is 2020 and Apple has clearly stated that they intend to become a service oriented company.

Carfax83 · Nov 14, 2020

tempestglen said:
1) Intel /AMD dare not replace x86 ISA, Intel tried once but failed. Going to SoC is quite radical for PC world.

Maybe not outright replacement, but what about a renewal similar to what x86-64 did, but more ambitious?

Eventually I think they should remove the really old legacy stuff from the ISA, and maybe add some more general purpose registers.

Heartbreaker · Nov 14, 2020

senttoschool said:
People said a $400 iPhone would never happen either. This isn’t the 2010 Apple anymore. This is 2020 and Apple has clearly stated that they intend to become a service oriented company.

Yes, It's the end of 2020, and the cheapest Macbook you can buy is still $1000. That should tell you something.

And that's after the big event that everyone thought would lower prices: Switching to ARM.

The problem is where do the next savings come from? ARM APUs are said to cost less than $100, so using an old one isn't going to save much on the BOM.

Eug · Nov 14, 2020

guidryp said:
Yes, It's the end of 2020, and the cheapest Macbook you can buy is still $1000. That should tell you something.

And that's after the big event that everyone thought would lower prices: Switching to ARM.

The problem is where do the next savings come from? ARM APUs are said to cost less than $100, so using an old one isn't going to save much on the BOM.

Well, to be fair, they did drop the price of the Mac mini.

And I could see them dropping the price of the MacBook Air too eventually... but just not to anywhere near $700.

Heartbreaker · Nov 14, 2020

Eug said:
Well, to be fair, they did drop the price of the Mac mini.

And I could see them dropping the price of the MacBook Air too eventually... but just not to anywhere near $700.

Yeah, this is the second time this came up in this thread that I noticed. First time, I said $100 off...

Roland00Address · Nov 14, 2020

If you have not listened to exponent they have a good episode about intel over 40 years and Apple with the last 20.

guidryp said:
Yes, It's the end of 2020, and the cheapest Macbook you can buy is still $1000. That should tell you something.

And that's after the big event that everyone thought would lower prices: Switching to ARM.

The problem is where do the next savings come from? ARM APUs are said to cost less than $100, so using an old one isn't going to save much on the BOM.

Apple May go into lower price laptops for other reasons than their previous strategies. Companies pivot all the time when the old ways are no longer working, but also to recognize they have advantages their competitors do not so even if this is new terrain to them pivot to those new soils to build your hyper efficient “trains” with which you will make money via the value chain you can create.

————

Fact 1 ) Apple is switching to subscriptions for Reasons. Two reasons.
Reason A) it is a more reliable revenue stream. But also for other reasons. Wall Street prioritizes not just revenue but revenue along certain metrics. For example projecting your earnings out and getting it exactly right and doing this several times in a row, quarter after quarter boosts your stock price more than just having good earnings. This in the past for the first 6 years of the iPhone made it very easy for Apple to predict sales numbers for they pre sold phones to carriers, and when introducing new carriers such as a Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Europe, Asia, etc they required the carriers to buy a specific number of phones as part of said contract. This in turn created a very reliable revenue stream that was easy to predict in projected earnings giving Apple a stock boost.

Reason B) Likewise Wall Street will give you a 2x to 3x stock premium if X dollars comes from subscription revenue instead of year revenue of X for supposedly subscription revenues are more predictable and consistent. Once again like A Wall Street rewards consistency as much as it rewards profit.

Fact 2 ) We are seeing a move away from the web, and a move away from lockdown apps sold in stores, towards a more universal “web app” framework. The goal is to code once and work on many platforms. This is not because of actions Apple is doing it is because of dozens of factors besides what the various Hardware OEMs and OS makers want. (Of course the web will still be important, as will lockdown apps in individualized stores, it is just changing the various mixes in these software market.)

Those two facts may cause Apple to want to reconsider its strategy, for the factors based around the old strategy are changing. No matter what Apple does there is risk but also profit.

————

Thus Apple may move into the $700 pc market gradually (via laptops or iPads with some software changes) for it will help Apple push both subscriptions and hardware.

Likewise the key way Apple gets to say it is special may be changing. It may not be saying I have the best OS like the late 00s with Mac and early 10s, or I have the best phone Apps of the late 10s and great hardware. It may be emphasizing it has the best performing hardware in general with all day battery life, and best performance per dollar in various price points for Apple Silicon is outcompeting by a wide margin Intel Ultrabook hardware.

Of course phones will remain Apple dominant play but Apple is trying to expand into new markets, see Apple Watch and earbuds, why not sell a 2 year old Mac which is faster than intel for $700 while the latest M3 is $1000, and the M3X (the big pro) is $1500, and this is before add one like more ssd, more ram on the M3X, and built in 5G modem?

Why not do this?

Eug · Nov 14, 2020

Roland00Address said:
Thus Apple may move into the $700 pc market gradually (via laptops or iPads with some software changes) for it will help Apple push both subscriptions and hardware.

Likewise the key way Apple gets to say it is special may be changing. It may not be saying I have the best OS like the late 00s with Mac and early 10s, or I have the best phone Apps of the late 10s and great hardware. It may be emphasizing it has the best performing hardware in general with all day battery life, and best performance per dollar in various price points for Apple Silicon is outcompeting by a wide margin Intel Ultrabook hardware.

Of course phones will remain Apple dominant play but Apple is trying to expand into new markets, see Apple Watch and earbuds, why not sell a 2 year old Mac which is faster than intel for $700 while the latest M3 is $1000, and the M3X (the big pro) is $1500, and this is before add one like more ssd, more ram on the M3X, and built in 5G modem?

Why not do this?

Apple has been in the $300 computer market for a long time now... just not with laptops. They don't need to. $700? They can get there with much, much cheaper to make iPads.

There really isn't any need for Apple to dumb down their laptops when they already have premium machines in that price range that aren't encumbered by keyboards and trackpads and such.

If you're really talking about web-based computing, Windows PCs aren't necessarily really all that either. Chrome has that locked down at the lower end. Just look at the edu market. Total dominance there.

name99 · Nov 14, 2020

Eug said:
Not going to happen.

Basically the closest you're going to get is Apple selling old stock as refurbs, and retail stores having sales later on in their product cycle and eventually putting them on clearance once new replacement models are released.

It should be noted that the refurbs usually don't come in the regular retail box and they also don't qualify for the various incentives Apple provides, like Black Friday gift cards and back-to-school free AirPods.

Why are you so convinced? EVERYTHING about how Apple has operated in the past ten years supports this conclusion.

Honestly, in my mind the ONLY uncertainty is whether it will happen as EXACTLY this year's MBA being price-dropped. The pattern so far has always been that there's a brief period (maybe a few years, maybe just one year) while Apple gets it right before they adopt this pattern. Whatever mistakes they made in gen 1, they don't want to have to support any longer than necessary going forward.
So look at say the Apple Watch. We got the gen 0 model, but the next year Apple presumably felt, even though they wanted to grow the market, that was just too low a set of specs to maintain, and so we got the cheaper Series 1 (essentially Series 0 with a better SoC) and the nicer Series 2 (same SoC, but better shell).

I could imagine, for example, as one possible trajectory, that next year the MBA comes in two versions.
- Maybe keep MBA as the more premium brand (like iPad Air). It comes with a new case, better camera, blah blah. and a shiny M2.
- Meanwhile MacBook brand gets reintroduced (like iPad). It's the exact same case as today's MBA, subject to all the same complaints about eg camera, but it also comes with the same shiny M2.

- Going forward, the pattern operates something like iPad and iPad Pro. MBA will be midrange, using a fairly modern M# chip, MacBook will use the older M# chip, but will slowly pick up some of the nicer features of the MBA as they drop in price.

This pattern of Apple wanting to maintain quality standards, but also provide that quality to as many people as possible has been seen through the iPhone, iPad, aWatch (even the two aTV models, and HomePod Mini vs HomePod). I can see zero reason to expect it to change.

name99 · Nov 14, 2020

guidryp said:
Yes, It's the end of 2020, and the cheapest Macbook you can buy is still $1000. That should tell you something.

And that's after the big event that everyone thought would lower prices: Switching to ARM.

The problem is where do the next savings come from? ARM APUs are said to cost less than $100, so using an old one isn't going to save much on the BOM.

What it tells you is that this is the FIRST year of the plan.
Your argument could have been stated about the first aWatch. It could have been stated about the first HomePod. You are just refusing to understand how Apple operates genericallu because, like I keep saying, so many of you people are locked in the PC paradigm of 2005, you just don't understand that the world is changing.

Where will the savings come from? Well, why should a low-end macbook cost much more than an iPad (not iPad generically, the device called iPad that sells for $330)? The minimum macbook has a larger (but lower quality, non-touch) screen, a little more flash, a little more RAM, a keyboard. Total BOM maybe $100?

For PC's, it's 2007. RIM can mock, MS can mock, but some of us can see the future. Google, for all their other issues, saw it immediately. (My brother worked at Google on the original Android phone at the time, and they basically switched overnight from their Blackberry like original conception to a touchscreen.)

My guess is that, when it comes to PCs, MS will say little (they have to live for many years in both worlds) but they will take their transition to ARM even more seriously now.
The real question is how will AMD react.
(Intel are hopeless. Buoyed up by a steady current of loud but ignorant fanboys telling them they are still the greatest, they don't need to change anything, they'll slip from relevance to become something like IBM. Sorta important for certain sectors, but uninteresting.)

shady28 · Nov 14, 2020

amrnuke said:
In 2005, Jobs understood PA6T’s meaning, and that chipset costed most budget of PA Semi because Jobs had implied Dan that he would choose PA semi as next generation PPC chipset for Mac. Finally Dan was very unhappy about Jobs’ betray——turning to intel. I don’t know whether Jobs played trick while PA semi financial status became very poor and acquired by apple 3 years later.

Apple has made full use of low power RISC SOC technology for more than 10 years, firstly on mobile device, then for PC.

Actually in 2005 Jobs / Apple asked Intel to make their iPhone chips, but Intel said no / not going to try. So then they went with ARM.

"But, oh, what could have been! Even Otellini betrayed a profound sense of disappointment over a decision he made about a then-unreleased product that became the iPhone. Shortly after winning Apple's Mac business, he decided against doing what it took to be the chip in Apple's paradigm-shifting product."

Paul Otellini's Intel: Can the Company That Built the Future Survive It?

As the CEO steps down, he leaves the Intel machine poised to take on the swarming ecosystem of competitors who make smartphone chips.

www.theatlantic.com

Eug · Nov 15, 2020

Got the iPhone 12 Pro Max on Friday. Man, this thing flies! I knew it was much faster on paper, esp. considering my 7 Plus is so old now, but I’m a little surprised it still feels so much faster even just for basic OS navigation and light mobile websites. And it’s nice to see my iPhone doesn’t appear to throttle significantly. FWIW, this is what I got the one and only time I’ve run Geekbench on this phone.

mikegg · Nov 15, 2020

guidryp said:
Yes, It's the end of 2020, and the cheapest Macbook you can buy is still $1000. That should tell you something.

And that's after the big event that everyone thought would lower prices: Switching to ARM.

The problem is where do the next savings come from? ARM APUs are said to cost less than $100, so using an old one isn't going to save much on the BOM.

Why wouldn't using an older SoC save on BoM? Right now the M1 is using the most expensive node in the world(5nm). Next year, 5nm will be cheaper. The year after that, 3nm will take over and 5nm will be even cheaper. All the while, 256GB SSDs, 8GB RAM should also get cheaper.

I could definitely see Apple shaving off $300 in 1 or 2 years and also willingly lower the margin in order to promote their services. If they can lower price of components by $150 in 2 years and then also take $150 lower profit margin, they can release a $700 Macbook.

tempestglen · Nov 15, 2020

shady28 said:
Actually in 2005 Jobs / Apple asked Intel to make their iPhone chips, but Intel said no / not going to try. So then they went with ARM.

"But, oh, what could have been! Even Otellini betrayed a profound sense of disappointment over a decision he made about a then-unreleased product that became the iPhone. Shortly after winning Apple's Mac business, he decided against doing what it took to be the chip in Apple's paradigm-shifting product."

Paul Otellini's Intel: Can the Company That Built the Future Survive It?

As the CEO steps down, he leaves the Intel machine poised to take on the swarming ecosystem of competitors who make smartphone chips.

www.theatlantic.com

According to Jobs autobiography, he was inclined to Intel but the project manager strongly opposed it and chose ARM for mobile platform. Perphas initially Jobs preferred Atom for iPad/iPhone and PWRfficienct PA6T for Mac but in the end both didn't take place.It is said that in 2008 Jobs arranged PA semi team to design SoC for iPhone.

coercitiv · Nov 15, 2020

Roland00Address said:
Fact 1 ) Apple is switching to subscriptions for Reasons.

Fact 2 ) We are seeing a move away from the web, and a move away from lockdown apps sold in stores, towards a more universal “web app” framework. The goal is to code once and work on many platforms.

So you expect Apple to leave their working high margin strategy behind and allow competing subscription based services to fight for the same TAM?

How does it work out well for Apple if consumer buys cheap Apple hardware and then opts for subscriptions from Spotify, Netflix, Disney, HBO, Dropbox, Microsoft, Google, Amazon? You're talking about universal app frameworks, but that's just the technical solution. The real hot potato is the appstore tax (on both iOS and Android), and we're nowhere near the point of having the facts straight on what will happen with this in the next years. All we know so far is the giants won't stand for that 30% fee, and without that fee Apple would essentially facilitate the success of the competition. (they build the low margin hardware, the low margin marketplace, and combined competiton gets big chunk of subscriptions)

Subscription model does wonders when your customers are captive or when you get a big slice of the pie no matter who sells the subscription. If any of that changes you better make sure your cloud services are THE best.

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