Apple Previews macOS 11.0 Big Sur - Available Fall 2020

randall.svancara said:

I think it will take Apple a while to kill off Intel systems
1. It is more than just a CPU, you also need a graphics card and for high-end performance a lot of processing is offloaded to the graphics card. SOC architecture is great, but I don't see them embedding an AMD Radeon 580 into an ARM SOC. Also consider if this was the case, they would still need to write ARM-compatible drivers.
2. They just released the new cheese grater! It is based on an Intel Xeon platform. While there are ARM "servers" that do have many cores, there are things that you have to consider with multi-core architectures like interconnects which facilitate communication between CPUs which both Intel and AMD have figured out.

So in my opinion, Apple will attempt to build ARM SoC systems which will initially debut in their lower-end systems and probably hit a performance wall when they attempt to ramp up to higher-end systems which will take them a few more years of R&D, and company acquisitions to get it right. I think what you are seeing is a company announcing a strategic direction but the journey is long, a lot longer than simply migrating away from PowerPC. They had to do that, PowerPC was going nowhere. Intel-based systems are still going strong and the impetus to migrate is not there, especially if Intel concedes and gives Apple a bit more flexibility, which will probably happen or lose an incredible amount of the market.

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randall.svancara said:

I think it will take Apple a while to kill off Intel systems
1. It is more than just a CPU, you also need a graphics card and for high-end performance a lot of processing is offloaded to the graphics card. SOC architecture is great, but I don't see them embedding an AMD Radeon 580 into an ARM SOC. Also consider if this was the case, they would still need to write ARM-compatible drivers.
2. They just released the new cheese grater! It is based on an Intel Xeon platform. While there are ARM "servers" that do have many cores, there are things that you have to consider with multi-core architectures like interconnects which facilitate communication between CPUs which both Intel and AMD have figured out.

So in my opinion, Apple will attempt to build ARM SoC systems which will initially debut in their lower-end systems and probably hit a performance wall when they attempt to ramp up to higher-end systems which will take them a few more years of R&D, and company acquisitions to get it right. I think what you are seeing is a company announcing a strategic direction but the journey is long, a lot longer than simply migrating away from PowerPC. They had to do that, PowerPC was going nowhere. Intel-based systems are still going strong and the impetus to migrate is not there, especially if Intel concedes and gives Apple a bit more flexibility, which will probably happen or lose an incredible amount of the market.

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Bustycat said:

Just a reference: A12Z’s Geekbench 5 Metal Score is already significantly higher than Intel Iris’.

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randall.svancara said:

Then maybe it is not far off. Is it higher than the AMD Radeon 5600?

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Azimuth1 said:

if this is true:
New ARM-MACs

probably it'd be convenient to wait until the mid of 2021 to change the MBP ...

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mattystonnie said:

Bye bye 3rd party apps from the web, bye bye AAA games, bye bye bootcamp windows.

I see only one reason for the ARM processor, you will be stuck with the apps from the App Store, like the iOS.

I predict that it will be a fail and everyone will move to windows.

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