Apple Announces "3rd Transition" for macOS: From Intel CPUs to Apple Silicon

[tabarus]

Yeah indeed , hopefully that leads to innovation. Who else is in teh ARM CPU business? Maybe they get a booth aswel ? Qualcomm ?

 

[nicksoph]

It can spark a revolution in the Windows universe to switch to ARM as well.

But who does it? With the advent of x86 there was a standard that all the manufacturers followed both in the chip and boards, others made things that may have been different but they worked with the standard.
Dell started off buying generic parts and we're missing this ability with ARM.

The need to make it run with Windows, might help enforce some standardisation but there's likely little advantage in making a motherboard with the only difference being an ARM CPU, ARM needs the other bits around the CPU to work effectively - who is going to design the 'PC silicon' that makes ARM effective? - will there be a standard that allows us to swap bits from different manufacturers or are we heading to something like phones where they all work on Android but with nothing that fits another manufacturer? My guess is that we will move to modular external upgrades connected to a pc which has limited or no internal upgrade options.

 

[pastrychef]

Yeah indeed , hopefully that leads to innovation. Who else is in teh ARM CPU business? Maybe they get a booth aswel ? Qualcomm ?

Quite a lot... Qualcomm... Samsung... Amazon...

 

[pastrychef]

But who does it? With the advent of x86 there was a standard that all the manufacturers followed both in the chip and boards, others made things that may have been different but they worked with the standard.
Dell started off buying generic parts and we're missing this ability with ARM.

The need to make it run with Windows, might help enforce some standardisation but there's likely little advantage in making a motherboard with the only difference being an ARM CPU, ARM needs the other bits around the CPU to work effectively - who is going to design the 'PC silicon' that makes ARM effective? - will there be a standard that allows us to swap bits from different manufacturers or are we heading to something like phones where they all work on Android but with nothing that fits another manufacturer? My guess is that we will move to modular external upgrades connected to a pc which has limited or no internal upgrade options.

You know that the Microsoft Surface Pro X uses an ARM CPU, right?

You know that Microsoft makes Windows on ARM, right?

 

[nicksoph]

You know that the Microsoft Surface Pro X uses an ARM CPU, right?

You know that Microsoft makes Windows on ARM, right?

Followed ARM for years (and once took a course led by Sophie Wilson) - Works for tablets - how does it work for desktops? What do the motherboards look like, which bits are in built - which bits are upgradable - the revolution will happen but how do we get a similar experience to the one we have nw, where we can mix and match?

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Followed ARM for years (and once took a course led by Sophie Wilson) - Works for tablets - how does it work for desktops? What do the motherboards look like, which bits are in built - which bits are upgradable - the revolution will happen but how do we get a similar experience to the one we have nw, where we can mix and match?

Well we need to go back to 1993 because there was a nifty line of beige desktop PCs running RISC processors. Outwardly just another PC clone.

As @pastrychef says, Windows is there already, just as OS X was on Intel a couple of years before the Power PC to Intel swap. We just don't "see" it until the business decides it's time to.

 

[pastrychef]

Followed ARM for years (and once took a course led by Sophie Wilson) - Works for tablets - how does it work for desktops?

If done correctly, the end user shouldn't even need to know whether the CPU is an ARM CPU or an Intel CPU or an AMD CPU or a PowerPC CPU. As long as it performs well, who cares what's under the hood?

For example, when I connect to a Synology NAS, I have no idea if it's running the DSM on X86 or ARM.

What do the motherboards look like, which bits are in built - which bits are upgradable - the revolution will happen but how do we get a similar experience to the one we have nw, where we can mix and match?

It can look kinda like this:

Source:https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Server-Motherboard/MP30-AR0-rev-11#ov

What's upgradable will depend on which system you're talking about, just like on X86 motherboards.

What do you want to mix and match?

 

[UtterDisbelief]

If done correctly, the end user shouldn't even need to know whether the CPU is an ARM CPU or an Intel CPU or an AMD CPU or a PowerPC CPU. As long as it performs well, who cares what's under the hood?

For example, when I connect to a Synology NAS, I have no idea if it's running the DSM on X86 or ARM.





It can look kinda like this:
View attachment 481588
Source:https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Server-Motherboard/MP30-AR0-rev-11#ov

What's upgradable will depend on which system you're talking about, just like on X86 motherboards.

What do you want to mix and match?

Just realised... they are all going to be third-party chipset USB. Nightmare!!!

 

[nicksoph]

It can look kinda like this:
View attachment 481588

You could just swap an ARM chip into a pretty standard motherboard just replacing ARM for Intel - but that seems like a mistake - its not just a better processor (if it is that) there's a whole set of advantages that relate to how it connects with the memory, network, gpu - and all external connects. The idea that we might have PCI 4.0 on ARM misses the point, ARM has faster ways of communicating and whilst the IBM standard architecture can be simply translated to ARM that ignores important differences between the two chip standards. What Apple have done is to create a new system with the best bits to go with the ARM core, simply putting ARM in a PC misses those advantages. What Im asking is - Where is the PC equivalent of Apples SoC going to come from and how will that be a standardised.

 

[pastrychef]

What Im asking is - Where is the PC equivalent of Apples SoC going to come from and how will that be a standardised.

If there's a market for it and there's profit to be made, someone will produce it and sell it.

Traditional car manufacturers didn't make electric cars until Tesla showed them that there's a market for them and it can be better than using combustion engines.