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Apple Announces 'One More Thing' Event for November 10th

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The Raspberry Pis use older generations of the Arm architecture and is probably missing lots of features the latest generations have. It's like trying to use a Sandy Bridge CPU to emulate a Coffee Lake CPU.

I don't want to say it'll be impossible to emulate the GPU in the M1, but I would assume it's a pretty monumental endeavor that would most likely never happen.

I think it's even more difficult than that - as I understand, Apple bases its chips on ARM references as a starter and has licensed some specific version of the instruction set. If Apple stuck to just the instruction set used for that, and all the rest of the parts were off-the-rack (as many/most of the Intel chipsets are), that would perhaps be conceivable.

But Apple has put in significant extensions to that base ARM design including the T2, GPU, neural engine, power management, etc., etc. (Not sure but I think possible apple could extend that instruction set too)

Apple's software (notably the system software) can use that as a reference to always assume that these chips and functions are there. They've notably said the GPU and neural engine will 'work together'.

To me that precludes the likelihood of anyone coming up (without enormous effort anyway) of some kind of translation layer. The only way I can see is if for example the apple developer resources / compilers are sufficiently open or can be reverse engineered, but that does not sound like a trivial task - and it will get worse over time as the system is developed and uses more resources.

I just hope Apple keeps supproting the Intel systems for at least five years (even if reduced features). It's been a good run, but I don't see hackintoshing as viable for long. The one I built recently is probably my last. I really like having a box in which I can stick more ram or off-the-shelf components. But honestly not entirely clear it's entirely needed or the most efficient way for me, partly a fun project and partly no Macs available that appealed to me.

Frankly my only significant complaint for the computers announced is the paltry 8g ram/small SSDs and the prices to go to the next level. I'm impressed iwth the speed/performance but consistently, computer after computer, for me insufficient ram or a too-small system drive is the biggest constraint on speed in real world terms. (I can live with slightly slow systems if they're not choking on the disk swapping).

I don't even think these computers need to go above 16g for now - obviously the true pro models later will need.
 
I think it's even more difficult than that - as I understand, Apple bases its chips on ARM references as a starter and has licensed some specific version of the instruction set. If Apple stuck to just the instruction set used for that, and all the rest of the parts were off-the-rack (as many/most of the Intel chipsets are), that would perhaps be conceivable.

But Apple has put in significant extensions to that base ARM design including the T2, GPU, neural engine, power management, etc., etc. (Not sure but I think possible apple could extend that instruction set too)

Apple's software (notably the system software) can use that as a reference to always assume that these chips and functions are there. They've notably said the GPU and neural engine will 'work together'.

To me that precludes the likelihood of anyone coming up (without enormous effort anyway) of some kind of translation layer. The only way I can see is if for example the apple developer resources / compilers are sufficiently open or can be reverse engineered, but that does not sound like a trivial task - and it will get worse over time as the system is developed and uses more resources.

I just hope Apple keeps supproting the Intel systems for at least five years (even if reduced features). It's been a good run, but I don't see hackintoshing as viable for long. The one I built recently is probably my last. I really like having a box in which I can stick more ram or off-the-shelf components. But honestly not entirely clear it's entirely needed or the most efficient way for me, partly a fun project and partly no Macs available that appealed to me.

Frankly my only significant complaint for the computers announced is the paltry 8g ram/small SSDs and the prices to go to the next level. I'm impressed iwth the speed/performance but consistently, computer after computer, for me insufficient ram or a too-small system drive is the biggest constraint on speed in real world terms. (I can live with slightly slow systems if they're not choking on the disk swapping).

I don't even think these computers need to go above 16g for now - obviously the true pro models later will need.

Yes, my current hack is most likely my last as well. I don't think it would be wise to sink any more money in to a hackintosh knowing macOS on X86 is a dead end.

Yeah, I'm definitely looking for more RAM. I hate paging.
 
Yes, my current hack is most likely my last as well. I don't think it would be wise to sink any more money in to a hackintosh knowing macOS on X86 is a dead end.

Yeah, I'm definitely looking for more RAM. I hate paging.
Is paging really a big deal with NVME other than the wear on the drive? I understand hating it in the past with a spinning hard drive that was slow but in most cases today are we even using the full bandwidth of the drive?
 
Is paging really a big deal with NVME other than the wear on the drive? I understand hating it in the past with a spinning hard drive that was slow but in most cases today are we even using the full bandwidth of the drive?

I know that on my previous laptop (that was limited 16GB), I felt the lag from paging. But that only had a SATA SSD.

I don't know how much difference there is with NVMe...
 
Is paging really a big deal with NVME other than the wear on the drive? I understand hating it in the past with a spinning hard drive that was slow but in most cases today are we even using the full bandwidth of the drive?

It's a good point, it's less of a big deal than it used to be. When macs were mostly upgradeable, my go-to advice to friends for a long time was always "more ram." Then as long as ram wasn't stupidly small, it became "get an SSD" (or both) - partly because SSD just speeds everything up, and partly because yes, the hit from paging became less noticeable (not great but not system death like with an HDD).

It'd be interesting to see proper benchmarks of how bad memory swapping is between (for example) SATA and NVME SSD. I have had paging become a performance issue with my desktop with an NVME and it was really bad, but it was a runaway iconservices process (just filling up the memory continuously), but I don't think that's a real test as it wasn't swapping in and out of real programs.

But personally, I will still want to up the memory to at least 16g and a larger ssd since not upgradeable in future. Been burned before, just much better longevity / usable life out of laptops that have healthy memory.

I'm still using an 11" macbook air - great form factor - but because it has only 4gig, it pages a lot when pushed or too many programs open. Come to think of it I guess that's an nvme but not most recent generation/speed. Judging only from that, memory swapping is still a serious hit to performance/usability.
 
Is paging really a big deal with NVME other than the wear on the drive? I understand hating it in the past with a spinning hard drive that was slow but in most cases today are we even using the full bandwidth of the drive?

I've not had a problem with paging on my MacBook Pro with only 16GB, this includes running all kinds of things along with Windows VMs going. I could force it to, but not in actual use case have I ever run out of ram.

NVMe storage is much faster than SATA SSD, could be as much as 10X.

Apple controls the whole software stack, so they can be more efficient with memory and this is a completely different OS then macOS on Intel Macs. These are also the low end entry level parts.
 
I'm still using an 11" macbook air - great form factor - but because it has only 4gig, it pages a lot when pushed or too many programs open. Come to think of it I guess that's an nvme but not most recent generation/speed. Judging only from that, memory swapping is still a serious hit to performance/usability.
I know that on my previous laptop (that was limited 16GB), I felt the lag from paging. But that only had a SATA SSD.

I don't know how much difference there is with NVMe...
I've not had a problem with paging on my MacBook Pro with only 16GB, this includes running all kinds of things along with Windows VMs going. I could force it to, but not in actual use case have I ever run out of ram.

NVMe storage is much faster than SATA SSD, could be as much as 10X.

Apple controls the whole software stack, so they can be more efficient with memory and this is a completely different OS then macOS on Intel Macs. These are also the low end entry level parts.
It's been a really long time since I had a system that actually needed to page as I have always juiced the memory up since I could afford it. I am trying to figure out if I need to really wait for them to drop a chip that will support more memory or if 16gb will really be enough. I normally hover around 10-13 GB when only using Mac application so 16 might be ok but I would have to keep a second computer around running windows for work. Currently I have 64 gigs but that is mostly to accommodate my windows VM.
 
I've not had a problem with paging on my MacBook Pro with only 16GB, this includes running all kinds of things along with Windows VMs going. I could force it to, but not in actual use case have I ever run out of ram.

NVMe storage is much faster than SATA SSD, could be as much as 10X.

Apple controls the whole software stack, so they can be more efficient with memory and this is a completely different OS then macOS on Intel Macs. These are also the low end entry level parts.

I guess we'll have to wait and see how the memory works in practice (as with the rest of the ARM macs, of course) and how bad paging hits performance.

Still: personally I won't pull the trigger on a new laptop without 16gigs. Just experience since they moved to laptops you can't upgrade the memory on, you get much longer useful life with a bit extra memory at purchase time. Eight gigs is useful, but I go above eight in active use frequently, and memory demands almost always increase over time. (I don't even consider 16 'excessive' really).
 
It's been a really long time since I had a system that actually needed to page as I have always juiced the memory up since I could afford it. I am trying to figure out if I need to really wait for them to drop a chip that will support more memory or if 16gb will really be enough. I normally hover around 10-13 GB when only using Mac application so 16 might be ok but I would have to keep a second computer around running windows for work. Currently I have 64 gigs but that is mostly to accommodate my windows VM.

Maybe try pulling a few sticks of RAM and experience living with 16GB first hand...
 
Maybe try pulling a few sticks of RAM and experience living with 16GB first hand...
I more or less do live with 16 gigs when my VM is running and that is most of the time it is set to 48 gigs leaving only 16 for the host. I use the Mac side for all office work, internet/email use, the message app, and music/appletv. I also use the apple side for acrobat and some very light photoshop. The only time the VM is off is when I am working on renderings and that is because of a video card issue rather then a memory issue since the rendering app normally only needs 2GB of memory.
 
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