Reading this makes it very clear why Apple would be moving towards using its own chips in laptops.
So they went to Intel. They’re now on the same treadmill as everyone else. Can’t do better, can’t be totally stuck. But Intel isn’t progressing very fast, and they don’t seem to be focusing on the things Apple wants like ultra-low power.
But Apple’s chip division is kicking ass. The 10.5” iPad Pro is a monster, and could easily power a MacBook faster than an Intel chip. The real question is what to do on the MBP and iMac Pro.
Apple has never been keen on AMD for some reason, not sure if they have a chance on the high end. My impression is they don’t compete on low end/low power but I don’t know how accurate that is.
The iPhone 8 CPU is competitive with a Core i5
"Geekbench comparisons between phones and laptops used to be pretty meaningless, as the tests were not directly comparable, but that hasn’t been the case for some time now. Founder John Poole confirmed that it is legitimate to directly compare scores across platforms"
Look at these workloads[0] and tell me what doesn't look comparable across platforms? Parsing a 1.5MB HTML page, running SQLite queries, compiling code using LLVM, running Dijkstra's algorithm on a huge graph, repeatedly rendering PDFs, etc, etc.
[0] https://www.geekbench.com/doc/geekbench4-cpu-workloads.pdf
For such a claim to be true, you would have to expect that the phone CPU is somehow 10 times more efficient per Watt, while having the same kind of architecture (general CPU, not GPU/TPU/...).
Intel has not been optimizing for TDP/power draw as aggressively as Apple has. Apple started from that position and went up in performance. Intel started more in performance and had tried to keep TDP in check.
Apple A11 has 297 GFlops CPU performance. (1)
That “7th gen i5” is apparently i5-7360U. 32 FLOPs/cycle/core (2) * 2 cores * 3.50 GHz (=max turbo) = 224 GFlops.
> the phone CPU is somehow 10 times more efficient per Watt
Not 10 times. The i5’s TDP is just 15W. I don’t know about A11 but high-end Qualcomm chips can be up to 5-6W, just 3 times difference.
> while having the same kind of architecture (general CPU, not GPU/TPU).
That’s a continuum. They both CPUs, they both have SIMD that’s how they achieve that high flop/cycle, but the architecture can be quite different. A11 has 6 cores. Intel spends many transistors, and therefore energy, doing very complicated things: branch prediction, indirect branch prediction, cache synchronization between cores, speculative execution… Apple has full control over OS and software, they can probably get away with not doing some of these. Intel and AMD have to maintain compatibility with all software (including single threaded), built by all compilers and languages, that’s why they have fewer tradeoffs available to them.
What happens is that people see a benchmark and they see low power consumption and now conclude that it must have 10 times better performance per watt. x86 is bad, ARM is good
But the thing is you cannot have your cake and eat it too. The ARM SoC is clearly more efficient but only during standby or low intensity workloads and because everything is integrated into a single chip. As soon as you use a constant CPU/GPU intensive workload like servers or video games or even just google maps [1] you will have the same energy efficiency as intel chips.
[1] My phone battery barely lasts 2 hours with google maps
Very true. I have that exact iPad Pro (10.5") and the MacBook 12" and I can tell you that the iPad Pro is much stronger. The damn thing never stops for breath. Even trendy games with very very detailed graphics take 10 seconds to start on a bad day (usually 5-6) and they run at 60+ FPS at all times.
If we are talking about everyday apps and Safari, the iPad Pro is the last tablet you will ever need in your life. It's simply perfect.
> The real question is what to do on the MBP and iMac Pro.
My only complaint about my other MacBook (Pro 15", 2015) are the loud fan noises, to be fair. I know Apple's thin and beautiful laptops are what people love but I'd buy some slightly bulkier MacBook if it was quiet.
Speaking of which, the iMac Pro is the quietest machine of its class out there. Definitely gonna gather some cash and buy it. I don't think I'll need another desktop machine for at least 7 years, if not 10-12...
Never been a fanboy in my life but I honestly can't wait to see Apple chip exclusive iPhones and MacBook. (I am mentioning iPhones because they still use Qualcomm's or Intel's radios and chips for their signals stack.)
But wow does it look like it will pay off.
Apple's mobile CPUs are several years ahead of all the competition in terms of single core performance.
1. Well that's stupid. Why would they do that? Nobody needs this.
Within a few months...
2. Huh. This is actually really sweet. Nobody else has this technology.
And then a few years pass...
3. It's really nothing groundbreaking.
I think it's more likely that Apple will make iOS more flexible on the iPad and make it a true laptop alternative.
From a software side, WatchOS is a trimmed down version of iOS and share many of the same frameworks. The HomePod is an even further trimmed down version of iOS.
"Designing x86 based hardware" is relatively easy. Intel does all of the heavy lifting with designing and integrating the components. Apple has shown any expertise in designing chips that are a match for Intel's on the high end.
Every other processor transition that Apple has done - 68K -> PPC -> Intel involved a massive CPU advantage that made emulation viable. That wouldn't be the case with x86 -> ARM. On the other hand, Apple had to migrate processors just to stay competitive with Wintel each time. If they stay with Intel, they don't have to worry about not having competitive performance with other PC manufacturers.
Finally, Apple has shown no expertise in delivering chips that are competitive with Intel on the high end. I'm sure they could do it, but they don't get the benefit of spreading their engineering fixed costs across almost a quarter billion devices a year if they develop a high end ARM desktop chip like they do with iOS devices.
So? The iPhone was part of the pc ecosystem, for years you needed a pc to even set it up. That says nothing about its architecture or the resources required to develop it.
The Mac doesn't benefit enough from the iPhone tie-in to make it worthwhile as an adjunct to the iPhone.
I don't think they are though. The current ARM chips in the high-end iphones and ipads are too powerful for mobile. They don't make sense from an investment standpoint (why not spend that hardware effort on rejuvenating the mac line which can make more money?). They make a lot of sense as a midway point to a performance tier where the A series can serve as a laptop chip.
But I think Tony’s point was it would be nice for Apple to not have to pay the tax. It would help their bottom line.
If they don’t do it, expect Microsoft to perfect a future version of the Surface.
MS is beating apple at their own game.
The iPad pro is a great example of how out of touch apple is.
FTFY. The first time a colleague requested an iPad pro with a keyboard and got it, I was blown away by how much origami apple expects you to do to properly use it.
Not to mention it's impossible to use the Smart Cover in portrait mode so holding recipes while I'm cooking means propping it up against the toaster.
I still can’t get windows 10 to stop turning down the brightness on my screen or keep my ssh sessions open if I undock with a closed lid though, and this is on two different laptops.
As for use outside of an enterprise setup, I really dislike how it auto installs installers for free2play Facebook styled games. I don’t want my operation system to do anything remotely like that.
My W10 Pro copies surely don't.
And people say that Linux is the OS that requires bizarre incantations to do basic things.
Do your W10 Pro copies also include a way to disable Bing in the start menu search bar without multiple registry edits? I would love that. It was by far the most obnoxious change in the 1803 update.
I just removed all the tiles from the status bar, reverting to a plain old start menu.
Also I only use standard Windows accounts, with a special one for testing UWP and store related stuff.
As Apple tells it, they do not foresee merging MacOS and iOS, as the user interface is to different.
Microsoft is more willing to ship products with bad UX, and power through based on their market position, and willingness to stick with it until they get it right.
I cannot see Apple, as it is, releasing something like Windows 8.
The other thing is that iOS is the money maker. Even if iPad doesn’t sell as much as it might, it supports the critical mass of the iOS ecosystem, which is a vulnerability for Apple, due to much smaller market share.