Yes, well, apple was also on m68k chips for about a decade, and then powerpc chips for a decade as well. But like I said, Apple doesn't focus on the mass-market, and never has, why do you think they never made a netbook? They focus on a specific niche the developed, which has found its way cross-architecture through history.
I believe you got it backward in terms of Performance per watt. In general, one has to aim for higher Performance per watt instead of lower. Apple switched to Intel in 2006 not just because Intel had higher performance per watt, but also in term of absolute performance as well. Performance per watts by itself doesn't mean too much without other parameters. By the time the transition was made, the Core 2 Duo featured iMac obliterated its G5 brothers in term of performance by 20% - 50%, depends on the benchmark, while with an 8% frequency advantage. Also, with emulation and virtualization, x86 softwares during that time can almost run at native speed. From this metric (and also in the eyes of consumers as well, because nobody wants performance regression just for the sake of "saving more powah"), in order for Apple make the switch to ARM, at least they have to achieve: 1. the absolute performance of the CPU must be significantly higher than what Intel currently offers, and while maintaining the equal or lower power requirement. 2. Since the current macs also enjoy x86 softwares with near-native performance and less compatibility issues, the emulation after the supposed transition is almost inevitable. This requires a relatively lean ISA (ARM) to emulate a much complex ISA (x86) at near-native speed, which is very, very hard. Normally the emulation is done from a powerful but relatively complex ISA, and there is no guarantee of performance. Overall, I don't see this transition would happen in the next few years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple's_transition_to_Intel_processors
http://barefeats.com/imcd3.html
Because the netbook niche was shortlived and in a way the MBA is a netbook? Just a really good one at that?
A decade is a decade. In the tech industry, that's a very long time. It's a very different situation Apple is in now than they were a decade ago. It's almost like you ignore that fact, continuously going on about how they made the switch almost a decade ago.
Yes, indeed, Apple is a very different company now, before, Apple would focus on education and professional markets during the 90s, and early 00s, yet now, they are almost entirely consumer focused. Hence, they saw no issues in giving up the xserve or the old mac pro, or making the famous modifications they did to FCP, with FCPX. So, there is actually less of an incentive for apple to keep a legacy architecture than in past times, because now those business customers are dead-last in priority for Apple. As Apple showed with the iphone (despite complaints about how a locked down approach wouldn't be good for business customers, etc.), consumers were targeted first, then businesses were forced to accept them, and now this is why you see idevices everywhere, while blackberrys are much more rare, even in business. By the way, I'm not saying apple will lock down potential arm macs, they probably won't, they'll allow modifications for developers, most likely, as they've done with powerpc and now intel.
Yeah, that was a typo. With regards to performance, the Apple A6 chip has already passed the Powerpc G5 in performance, for instance, so it's rapidly catching up to desktop system performance.
http://9to5mac.com/2012/09/16/first...pad-3-score-narrowly-beats-high-end-androids/
Red and white doesn't look quite as appealing as blue and white in my opinion For that reason alone that won't happen
Yeah but I'm just talking about using AMD's graphics/GPGPU tech since Apple already uses it in their Mac Pro and 5K iMac. AMD's CPU tech is just way to behind, except for their move towards HSA.
That's true, but only to an extent. To go completely consumer would mean to restrict even the most basic production tools; of which they haven't done and are actually putting a lot of effort into making their multimedia production tools the best there are in the market, which has gone lengths.
Windows is yet another basic production tool that Apple can leverage for both consumer and producer sales. All modern Macs can run Windows, but not the other way around. Consumers use both Mac's OS and Windows heavily, but not Linux distributions and other productivity/tech-related OSes. Getting rid of Windows capability is getting rid of a very basic tool Apple can use.
And Apple doesn't really care about Windows, maybe only slightly more than about they do Android. They keep their own ecosystem paramount. Like Steve Jobs said, when he was asked about itunes being a popular windows software, he claimed it was like giving a 'glass of ice water to someone in hell'. With regards to restrictions, complaints were made about that regards to FCPX, for instance. They're not going to go 'full-restricted', fundamentally because a PC is still a different product from an integrated device like a smartphone or a tablet, and has different requirements for users/developers. So, of course, macs, will always have developer options that allow more flexibility in using the system to make apps for either macs or ios, for instance.
The problem here: Ax series has to be significantly better in terms of absolute performance in a iMac system comparing to what Intel offers at the same era, and that has to be done not just in terms of geekbench, which leans its tests on mobile related tasks as far as I understand it.
Why would they not completely restrict dev access if they were consumer-only focused? A very large amount of consumers who do nothing more than social networking get by just fine with just an iPad, and wouldn't have any issue with Apple if they took the iPad, flipped it's native orientation, slapped on a nice keyboard with trackpad and added 500 or so $ to the price tag. They'd still buy it. It sounds obscene, but they would.
But Apple didn't go that direction. I never said Apple cares about Windows, I've been saying it from the beginning; I never said they cared about Windows, I'm saying they ability to use both ecosystems on an Apple is a very good tool that the Apple ecosystem can use.
Because, Apple regards the PC and the Tablet/Smartphone markets are 2 different things. They are 2 different markets with 2 different requirements, which is why they never went the way of attempting to merge the 2 like Microsoft has tried. Steve Jobs had likened PCs to trucks, they still will be around, but they will be less numerous in absolute numbers compared to embedded devices like tablets/smartphones.
Well Apple most definitely has never been ever about the absolute best in terms of raw performance, never was & never will be, it's always been Windows say if you want a 5960x. They can do with 70~80% perf of an i7 especially since most of that performance is wasted due to lack of proper multithreaded applications, a highly optimized system (OS) will do them just fine & likewise for their small(ish) user base.The problem here: Ax series has to be significantly better in terms of absolute performance in a iMac system comparing to what Intel offers at the same era, and that has to be done not just in terms of geekbench, which leans its tests on mobile related tasks as far as I understand it.
As mentioned several times already, the product I've been talking about is a new iPad - a 12" iPad Pro hybrid.
NOT a MacBook.
Well Apple most definitely has never been ever about the absolute best in terms of raw performance, never was & never will be, it's always been Windows say if you want a 5960x. They can do with 70~80% perf of an i7 especially since most of that performance is wasted due to lack of proper multithreaded applications, a highly optimized system (OS) will do them just fine & likewise for their small(ish) user base.
Intel Atoms make horrible compromises with regards to performance and energy consumption.
similarly sized ARM chips beat the intel chips in performance-per watt.
That is so 2012...
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_baytrail_preview&num=1
Granted the Freescale chip is on 40nm and BayTrail is on 22nm. But I think that myth was debunked some time ago, isn't it?
Also I find these Edison benchmarks very interesting, I know the RPi is an ancient SoC but check the comments for the ODROID-XU results. Also Edison is using less than 1W
http://www.davidhunt.ie/raspberry-pi-beaglebone-black-intel-edison-benchmarked/
That;s the thing how do you quantify enough, that's because you don't & the reason is Apple does that for you & you choose what fits best in your budget &/or if the performance is worth that price. Why do you think Apple's never offered the top bins in desktop & mobile (Intel) parts on their platform when they can easily charge you ~1.5x its price, the answer being obviously the restrictive form factor & heat i.e. lack of efficiency.On the other hand they've always been about enough raw performance to give the experience of speed they look to deliver. It's not an accident that they're making their own mobile chips and it's not an accident that they've gone to great lengths to make them very fast by mobile standards. Just because their focus is UX doesn't mean performance doesn't matter or that they won't cheerfully spend money to get the snappy performance they feel they need.
Why do you think Apple's never offered the top bins in desktop & mobile (Intel) parts on their platform when they can easily charge you ~1.5x its price, the answer being obviously the restrictive form factor & heat i.e. lack of efficiency.
Devil's canyon isn't the top dog in the desktop arena, it's the 5960x surely you must know that :whiste:You can configure your Mac with a Devil's Canyon part. As far as I know that's the top desktop SKU.
This couldn't be further from the truth. People buy Apple in large part because of performance. They know that no matter what, they're not going to get a slow piece of crap. If Apple were selling poorly performing pieces of garbage, like the other PC OEMs, they'd lose their market share in record time.I am not, the apple bussiness is not based on the best absolute performance, but in creating the need of differentiation in their user base. Absolute performance only matters to the dorky hardware enthusiast that lurks technical forums. I can assure our mindset cant be further away from the typical apple product consumer.
It does matter. They have the performance lead, and can afford to focus in other areas.Absolute performance doesnt even matter to intel, who went the perf/watt route a while ago. So that argument doesnt even make sense coming from the intel cheerleader group.
It is likely that Apple will eventually be independent of Intel. Now is not that time.Apple will be absolutely fine with their own socs, it was long overdue. From start they were a company that refused to settle with an processor and gpu provider, you cant be coasting thinking they will keep needing your products forever, this was proven so many times in their history that is pretty much a vox populi.
The Ax SoC's are getting dangerously close to the most efficient Intel chips, now I mentioned previously that an efficient architecture can always scale & that is true mostly except that when you scale it upwards &/or increase the clock speeds you lose a certain level of efficiency. So while the A8X in a laptop may not be as efficient as the one in a tablet, say with an additional core & higher clocks, it'll still be pretty close to it e.g. see the 750Ti & the GTX 980 ~
Sure not the most apt comparison but what it does show you that something like this can certainly be done, you just have to plan for it wisely.
Somewhat differently, it's not like there's a gap of night & day between the two besides if you see the A8X it already has the Baytrail beat in quite a few benches with one less core.GPUs scale completely differently than CPUs.
Er, yeah, there kind of is. CPUs hit quite the scaling wall almost a decade or more ago... GPUs have been doubling every two years, essentially.Somewhat differently, it's not like there's a gap of night & day between the two