What I have been saying about ARM servers for years. Once a company makes the leap, they are now in a situation where they might consider a different ARM hardware vendor. Going back to a x86 platform is a huge hurdle. I know some people write off the market penetration of ARM in datacetners and servers. I think ARM is over 25% market share in datacenter now. They are shrinking the customer base potential for the x86 companies.
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NVIDIA "Vera" CPU Benchmarked: Beating Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC
- Thread starter erek
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If anyone can push the transition it is Nvidia. They are heavily investing into partners to push it. The problem is it won't be cheap.
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I would LOVE to have a highly performant arm cpu as my main linux pc.
Most stuff runs just fine on Windows Arm. As for motherboards, I would kind of expect them to come with soldered CPUs and the equivalent of custom UEFI at first, because every vendor does their own thing outside the CPU cores, so standardization would be sold until and unless it's hashed out.
There is arm device tree and other standard outthere now:
https://www.arm.com/architecture/system-architectures/systemready-compliance-program
That why standard Linux for arm work for the new Nvidia Vera cpu system, Nvidia usually use UEFI like x86 cpus:
https://docs.nvidia.com/dgx/dgx-spark/uefi-settings.html
Ampere and Nvidia are both fully compliant to be systemready I think, so you can install the same vanilla ISO of an ubuntu or others and simply install it on them or windows for arm.
Many arm motherboard have regular socket for ram and cpu, for example ASrock Ampere altra micro-atx server board:
Nvidia grace cpu in the DGX station will be soldered too, the amount of CPU-GPU bandwith they have with NV-link could be hard to achieve with sockets, quite the direct and super fast-wide connexion and it is not like cpu options exist for that socket to ever change it for something else, but standard uefi and any armlinux-windows should work, they probably have some special version for the drivers and handling the unified memory system and NVLInk stuff the best too, at least they work on the spark with a very similar SOC.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVIDIA-RTX-Spark
NVIDIA's Computex keynote around the RTX Spark was heavily promoting RTX Spark with Microsoft Windows 11. But, fear not, the NVIDIA RTX Spark will still work great on Linux.
DukenukemX
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Every CPU has been extended. CPU's age if they don't.
One can say the same thing about ARM. ARM isn't exactly new either. The 3DO has an ARM CPU in it.
AVX was mainly created for servers. It's one of the reasons why AVX-512 was left in limbo as Linus Torvalds had not good things to say about it. Intel wanted it for servers while desktop users had no use for it. Now we're finding uses for it, and it's coming back. SVE is also hardly implemented in ARM chips, but x86's AVX-512 has a good head start over SVE2.
x86's future depends on what AMD and Intel will do. I doubt x86 is going anywhere in 10 years, let alone 20 years. As long as AMD and Intel keep advancing x86 then there's no reason to believe ARM will take over the desktop market. As much as people want to believe Panther Lake was a massive leap forward, it really wasn't. Panther Lake is very much behind AMD's Zen5, let alone Apple's M4's and M5's. I don't expect Nova lake to be all that different. The real x86 leader is likely to be AMD's Zen6, which is said to be using TSMC 2nm. That is going to be a massive game changer for x86. We might see AMD beat Apple to using TSMC's latest manufacturing. It's stupid that AMD has been using TSMC 4nm for such a long time.
I'm not suggesting ARM is perfect. Just that it is 100% a viable solution, and as capable as x86 today. Frankly more capable in the future. ARM doesn't have just two companies and a Chinese knockoff company working on it. ARM does require a license... but seeing as x86 isn't being licensed to anyone new. x86 days are numbered. ARM may be imperfect, but any new player willing to spend the money required to get in the game can. Intel allowed ARM to happen, they could have killed it in the crib anytime they wanted. They instead tried to protect their fiefdom. Now 25% of datacenters are no longer using x86... and as we have talked about in this thread. The chances those outfits EVER go back to x86 are pretty much zero. The market has gotten smaller for x86 and that is mostly on Intel. Its hard to blame AMD, mostly as they have been irreverent to the conversation as well. They got their house in order and started making inroads in server parts, and within a few years Intels choices are going to bite them as well.
All of the new server ARM chips support SVE2... 128 bit hardware, software works 128-2048 bit. Performance is much the same as AVX... with the advantage of being easier to work with on the software side, and being future proof in a way AVX just isn't. I mean software work needs to be done regardless. But yes for inference work which is what Nvidia is pushing SVE for... it works quite well. (and of course being NV they are sure to mention their SVE2 implementations supports FP8 lol AI AI AI) The 128 bit hardware sounds like a limitation but the way it has been implemented on those chips it doesn't seem to be. It is every bit as effective as AVX-512.
The desktop market is irrelevant.
Frankly in a decade there very well may not be a desktop market anymore.
If you haven't noticed every move for the past 5-8 years or so has been to end the entire idea of desktop computing.
x86 imo is doomed. AMD also won't go down with the ship. Its not exactly a well kept secret that they have both lightweight and NON lightweight versions of soundwave developed.
I'm sure the next gen that is already well tapped and in production is safe. But retail PC sales are going to continue shrinking. Unless the AI thing completely explodes not just deflate a little, I don't see much changing either. Desktop compute will continue to decline to a point where it just isn't important. We have a future of cheap APUs, over priced APUs... and probably not much else consumer grade to look forward to. Not to be a Debbie downer.
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Maybe but now all modern arm phone cpu (mandatory for those) and AWS Graviton, google server cpu, AmpereOne, Snapdragon X2 and Nvidia N1X has both (SVE and SVE2), Apple going for SME-SME2 (or arm going into Apple AMX and calling it SME...) only do throw a bit of a wrench here but they have such a big and wide NEON units they can do arm to arm translation into those, which probably defeat the efficacy-performance gain wanted anyway.
But those devices tend to already media engines, npu and a gpu on the soc doing what people would do with SVE2... so it could stay a niche cpu usage, specially with Apple large influence. Like wide AVX has been on x86 side of things for personal computers.
Except at least 3 moves industry made or was pushed into that can promote large stationary box with big PSU and cooling capacity, discrete GPU power usage and size has been going up not down, the explosion of popularity of PC gaming worldwide (with the * that chinese market is almost all of that growth and gaming laptop heavy apparently) and recently local AI network machines and how much power you can want in them and for those you have no need for it to move-or for it to have a monitor, making mac-mini type box and the upcoming bigger one from Nvidia, not sure Nvidia would have launch big desktop workstation in 2026 without that last one.
That said, desktop cpu more and more are a mix of made for laptop first tech cpu (next Intel desktop CPU will have an lower power islands core for an extreme example of that) boosted up or past down server core (zen5 cores did seem to be that a lot), that is true.
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And what if AMD and Intel decide that licensing the instruction set is in their best long-term interest? And if that new licensee is innovative enough to propose new instructions?
On what basis do you say this? IF X86 processors were improved enough, no doubt some datacenters would choose x86 in their upgrade/refresh cycle.
How can you be so confident? Will we all be using server CPUs in our desktop systems?
Who is behind these moves? People with the best interest of desktop users? Or greedy SOBs who want to squeeze more $$$ out of us every month.
Perhaps you are shillling for ARM?Not to be a Debbie downer.
Which implies that there is a low switching cost for datacenters from ARM-based processors back to x86, really x64
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Y'all are cute. You think that this will actually be sold to the public with Jensen out there like "you'll get to RENT your own compute power"?
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Well they're still targeting edge computing. I do use my jetson as a desktop for somethings
My bet is it's all solder in junk if x86 dies
Intel has long ago shut the door on licensing the ISA. At this point as they have allowed the competition to grow, they would have to agree to terms they will simply NEVER agree to. Having 2 players in any license talk is a huge issue as well. Getting both Intel and AMD to agree on what markets they are going to allow others to compete with them directly? Ya good luck. They would both want compensation, and both would want to protect their core markets. Why would say Samsung license x86 and pay 40-50% in royalties to satisfy both players... and or agree to a whole bunch of fine print. They can just deal with ARM. Or go open source with RiscV, or heck even Power which IBM open sourced in 2017.
I say this because software is a larger expense for most companies then hardware is. The biggest reasons companies didn't jump on ARM years ago, when x86 server parts were sucking even more power. Was simple their software ran on x86. In the last decade the tools to create ARM software have greatly expanded. Still most companies with larger server installs that swapped to ARM spent a LOT of money converting their software to run on ARM. The tools have made it easier but its still a lot of work even with the best tools. Maybe AI makes it easier to swap back but it would still be a mine field of issues, and costs.
When a company swaps from x86->ARM hardware is only half the cost. The other half is switching/adapting/converting software stacks to ARM. Once a company has spent 10s of millions of dollars converting all their software to ARM. That means they have made the decision to LEAVE x86. To go back to x86 would mean reversing all of that and likely incurring all those costs again. Never mind that that added expense would have to come with an admission that a mistake (a costly one) was made.
It isn't IMPOSSIBLE to swap back, it is just very difficult.
Imagine yourself a Intel sales exec. You go into an office where a company 2 years ago replaced 100million in Intel servers with AMD servers. Your swap back pitch can 100% be based on price alone, or availability of new tech. Whatever the company can really just flip your hardware on and turn off their AMD hardware. All the same compiled software on this fictional data centers storage would just be hot swapped from one system to the other.
Now Imagine your that same Intel Sales exec. You go into an office where the company 2 years ago replaced 100million in Intel servers with ARM servers. You can try to under cut ARM hardware costs... you can try. You can try to pitch the latest greatest. BUT your customer is now going to have to factor in an crazy cost/time cost of recompiling everything back to run on x86. Also your $ pitch is going to be laughed out of the room... cause lets face it 2 years ago you already lost on price. Your also a Intel sales rep, you can't really sell under cost. As someone who worked in sales for a lot of years. I gotta say I'm not even taking that meeting. To close that sale I would have to give away all the profit and probably make ZERO for my efforts. lol
We are already there. How many people use Google docs? Microsoft also wants you to use online office products. Adobe isn't running photoshop AI on your desktop, they are running it on their servers. You don't need a crazy high end desktop to use photoshop AI.... it runs the same on a potato. You can open those google doc files on your phone.
Arguing desktop computers are not dying. In a world where EVERYONE you know is doing 95% of their computing on their phone, means your just not paying attention.
The average person doesn't even own a desktop anymore. Laptop ownership is also down. For many people a phone is all they need. All heavy compute stuff they might do is done yes on a server somewhere. The low power ARM chip in their hand is good enough. In the laptop market... Apple isn't even pretending anymore they are now selling the Neo a Phone chip powered laptop. And you know what ya its good enough for 90% of computer users.
As to who is behind the moves. Yes the entire industry is. They all would prefer you own nothing. Pay for subscriptions. AI for a company like Adobe was the ultimate tie in. They moved to subscriptions but the ultimate is relying on them to do the heavy processing externally. Gaming industry has been trying as well... they keep trying different payment models that result in you owning nothing and paying and paying and paying. There has been multiple game streaming plays. They aren't going to give up on that idea either. In fact game streaming is going to get very attractive in the next few years. Already is really. Expect the average gamer to start just going with it over the next couple years. I mean if a decent mid range gaming PC starts costing 3k and bragging rights territory doesn't kick in till you have spent 5k. The streaming services start looking more and more like a very viable alternative.
Am I shilling for ARM. No I'm just being truthful. CPU compute is too big a business for it to be controlled by TWO companies. Of course Apple dumped Intel. No company likes to be beholden to a single source for anything let alone the core (pun intended) of your product. I remember before they switch and the rumors Apple was talking to AMD. I am sure Apple realized if they engaged AMD for some products Intel would retaliate with pricing and maybe even availability. They had no choice really. ARM isn't the perfect option for the industry either, its just a less shit one compared to x86. Apple with their forever low cost ARM license is set. ARM terms for other players are not as ideal. It isn't a bed of roses, still other companies have no choice. I mean does Nvidia have any choice to go x86? Of course they don't... and Jensen DID try to get a license. Don't forget their was a time when Jensen made x86 chipsets. He was angling hard for a CPU license, Intel told him to fuck off and he hasn't forgotten. I would love to one day see the no doubt very smug messages he must have sent to Intel the last few years as he bought up chunks of Intel and got Intel to agree to making Intel+NV graphics parts.
I mean that is another little caveat for the future of x86 now that Nvidia owns 5% or so of Intel. Essentially their largest rival now owns a say in their future plans.
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One thing is for sure. An open ISA fight is exactly the competition we need. The intel vs amd fight is incremental jumps. And arm ISA with Nvidia et al going to x86 market share will force innovation on all sides, and im for it.
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They will move it more and more on customer machine to save money, the version they made for Nvida machine will use local power quite a bit would be my guess, the era of cheap subsidized AI is almost over.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/tech...napshotKey=GM04E3337C-snapshot-12&uxmode=ruby
Premiere takes advantage of RTX Spark's unified memory, Blackwell GPU, and TensorRT, resulting in faster rendering. Photoshop has been "reimaged with GPU-accelerated compositing at its core," which helps with the performance of live filters, HDR, and other effects. AI features get a boost from TensorRT.
There is a bit of chicken and egg and history rewritting that can occur and how much it is pushed-forced by consummer. Take the music and movies industry, their peak in revenues was the 90s CD and the 00s dvd era, by far, both tried and obstined themselve trying to keep the sell you a CD or a DVD for the same price of many months of Netflix/spotify and would have love for things to never change, they were forced into subscriptions models by consumer and tech change.
Take this for an example, yes steam giant success (with is you own nothing business model)... was it soemthing the gaming industry was trying or something that consumer actively did choose versus going to bsetbuy to buy and own a game....and forced everyone into that model.
Maybe, but the ISA would have nothing to do with it, Strix Halo being soldered is for ram need with the large memory bus it has, x86 playstation has well, many arm are socket, many arm are soldered, many x86 are socket, many x86 are soldered, the soldered one tend to be for the same reason in both ISA, ISA is virtually irrelevant to any of this (at least I do not see any link), arm is maybe cheaper to make that way than a x86 for licensing reason ? but not really technical one.
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DukenukemX
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It was never two companies. AMD and Intel are just the most successful desktop CPU's. Every other CPU company that tried to fight AMD and Intel would eventually lose because they never felt like putting in the same amount of commitment as AMD and Intel do. ARM's been around as long as x86, but ARM was never a good choice until relatively recently. Windows RT has been around since 2012 which runs exclusively on ARM. To give you an idea, it took ARM a while to go 64-bit.
Apple had the choice to go with AMD and went against this. Nobody forced Apple to stick with Intel.
Apple's success with ARM is going to depend on Windows success with ARM. As long as Windows continues to be dominated by x86, then ARM on MacOS has an uncertain future. Most programs will still be made for Windows first.
I wonder if LPCAMM could be coupled (somehow) with physically smaller sockets (or maybe the memory modules go on the back of the motherboard) to get rid of the need for soldered-on ram?
need here will tend to be how much more people are ready to pay for sockets, Nvidia can do quite a lot with sockets on their AI system with LPCAMM type of connexion, people are ready to pay a lot for the ability to change one of those gpu if they fail to keep the 8 GPU rack going, the more complex routing created by socket can end up make motherboard that cost so much more than may has well put all the best ram the socket would support soldered instead for that price on it and gain the advantage at the same time as saving price.
Going 10-12 layer board down to 8 save a lot of money, not having socket save money, a lot of test-quality control made right away save money and so on. Maybe they will, but non-soldered ram on GPU never caught-on and if we start having soc that rival them with high bandwidth, could be the same that will happen, memory could end up on package like Apple do anyway....
An open ISA for x86 would accomplish a lot. Then the Samsungs of the world can support that market, innovate, etc.
DukenukemX
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CPU architecture doesn't really matter in this day in age, besides compatibility.
ARM is in a funny situation because yes anyone can license ARM, but not everyone will advance ARM's design. Not only that but ARM is now making their own chips, which can't sit will with everyone who licenses ARM. As far as I can tell, only Apple and Qualcomm have engineered their own ARM design, and at the detriment that ARM themselves could eventually improve and license a design that will outperform them. Nvidia's Vera is just an off the shelf ARMv9 with a boat load of bandwidth. As far as I'm concerned, Nvidia's Vera is just another Fujitsu A64FX processor.
That could easily change based on what AMD's and Intel's plans are for the future. If they don't license out x86 then they could start making small cell phone like chips that could be as power efficient as ARM. I have a feeling that AMD's Zen6 could finally be an x86 design that matches Apple's ARM CPU's in power efficiency. Notice I said Apple and not Qualcomm and Nvidia? There's a very good reason why Nvidia didn't allow Phoronix to have access to power consumption numbers, and I doubt it's because Nvidia didn't have power measuring ready. I really doubt Nvidia's Vera is power efficient, because they would have allowed Phoronix to test for it.
The same tools that allowed them to switch to ARM will also make it easy to switch back. I would think they'd want to switch back to Intel specifically since they're the gold standard when it comes to things like networking, storage, and etc.
AMD is just as guilty as Intel. AMD fucked up with Bulldozer and it still hurts them to this day.
Server stuff is whatever, but consumer stuff is just now getting it with Snapdragon X2's. Apple still hasn't adopted SVE.
Doubt it.
Past 5-8 years we've been dealing with Crypto and now AI. Eventually this insanity will stop and the market will correct itself.
If x86 is doomed because of a dead desktop market, then so is ARM.
Intel won't either. Remember that Intel tried to leave x86 with Itanium. You'd see x86 heavily retooled before AMD and Intel jump ship to ARM. ARM's done it, which is why ARM is improving fairly quickly.
If we're going to be a Debbie downer, then I'd bet on the AI data center market going to end up declining and not the retail PC market. You under estimate people's abilities to hold onto computers for years. You'd likely see people owning older and slower computers. You know, like I'm doing.I'm sure the next gen that is already well tapped and in production is safe. But retail PC sales are going to continue shrinking. Unless the AI thing completely explodes not just deflate a little, I don't see much changing either. Desktop compute will continue to decline to a point where it just isn't important. We have a future of cheap APUs, over priced APUs... and probably not much else consumer grade to look forward to. Not to be a Debbie downer.
They were not power tuned yet being the reason given by phoronix/nvidia... tdp number, specially with lpddr5x/all cores on the same chiplet do point for to be a really power efficient platform, like grace was (https://www.phoronix.com/review/nvidia-grace-epyc-turin/2).
Grace was using more standard core off the shell with a boat load of bandwith, vera is a bit custom.
They have a license to do it and did do some custom stuff, a big one is to have SMT (fancy spatial kind.. that kind do quite a bit) to have 2 thread per core, it is a custom x925 not just the off the shelf design.
An other one, being nVidia in the AI moment, native FP8 support for matrix and others (first arm cpu with it apparently).
SVE2 support is bigger than usual when those core are in phones, with 6x128 bits I think, the fabric it sits on and what it mean for the L3 and cores to cores talk is a significant one, there is a reason they made a version of GCC/LLVM-clang for it.
must be a bit longer than that, big cortex-a710 had those, non-apple phone tend to had those for a while, any armv9 core since 2022 will tend to have it, phone will tend to be obligatory.
Switch2/Apple being on Neon is 2 big one for sure, neon stuff should run without problem on chips with SVE support at least
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x86 predates ARM by 8 years. ARM as designed by Acron was never really intended to be a big business compete with Intel in all things design. The 1980s arm chips were in no ways competition for x86.
The other CPU companies your talking about were generally not x86 companies. I mean Cyrix was essentially murdered by Intel, and lives on in China. Transmeta is the only other legit x86 play that has happened. They were simply too early. Had they come along just 4 or 5 years further down the road we could all be using x86 cell phones right now. They had great power efficient parts, the world just wasn't quite looking for that yet. It's too bad I mean some of their tech lives on in Intel after they bought longrun and a few other scraps.
For Apple no AMD was no option at all. The entire point of firing Intel was to not be beholden to another company for the main of their supply cost. AMD would have put them in a even worse position. They would have again been beholden to a single source supplier. Intel wasn't going to share... or at least they weren't going to make Apple any deals if they started dealing with AMD. (don't forget we are talking about the days when Intel would threaten companies like Dell and yes Apple... deal with those guys and your discounts are GONE) AMD was in no position to be trusted frankly. At the time AMD wasn't exactly in the best financial position. We all know they were hanging on barely. It would have been quite the gamble to swap Mac over to AMD. If AMD went over what is the option crawl back to Intel I guess. So their option was to stick with the x86 supplier that was poking them, and dangling discounts and trying to FORCE Them to buy ship parts... OR swap to their competition and shut that door but the competition could maybe or maybe not handle the business and might be forced out of business due to things out of your control. x86 became bad business for Apple.
ARM on Mac is set in stone. The future is anything but uncertain. Programs aren't made for anything anymore. They are made for Frameworks. The majority of which are cross platform. Software can be compiled for almost any OS these days trivially. Unless something seriously changes in the mobile space software companies are not doing shit to piss off Apple. What reason would Apple ever have to move away from ARM? Their license will never expire, they can essentially do whatever they want with the ARM ISA and pay pennies per chip to ARM. If everything else ARM went under tomorrow Apple would continue creating ARM chips for their devices. Apple I don't think much cares what windows does these days. Name a Windows only software of note. Not even Microsoft software is windows only these days.
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except expose directly to programmer or compiler non official ARM ISA extension... as long ARM play nice like they did with making SME or putting them on compressor-accelerator make sense on physical-technical sense instead.
But if ARM stop to play nice and want to open it and get much more than pennies for chip for an extension they want on the cpu pipeline, that could be a reason to leave and go RISC-5 and do everything they want as they want license free.
Apple is already deep in open cpu like risc-v, maybe just for an safety blanket-dealing with arm tool or just for all the custom chips they make that are not big cpu for phones-tablet-pc that are usually RISC cpus. I doubt they would go back into someone else control if they ever change, they would go with an existing open standard or full custom.
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I suspect if ARM ever got really stupid or went out of business. In the case of a closure firesale of patents Apple would just buy what they need. In the case of ARM trying to be stupid, and forget its Apple who made there current form possible all those years ago. They would just riff and extend out the ISA as they see fit call it AppleISA and dare ARM to sue if they want to go that route.
At this point though I don't think Apple cares at all what the ARM world does, it doesn't apply to them. They have their own tools and compilers. Developers using Xcode are already exposing all the extra bits of Silicon Apple includes like their NPU neural engine and other accelerators. I really don't see how anything in the ARM proper world could much effect Apple development. Apple development is its own little world. Apple provides developers everything they need with Xcode to expose all the Apple bits. IMO that is probably why Apple hasn't really adopted all the ARM world things like SVE. I don't think they see any reason to include any modern ARM bits. If they want to accelerate something they just include their own silicon and expose it to developers via Xcode. Apple doesn't see any reason to support SVE, and I can see why... they can included dedicated hardware as they control all the hardware. ARM needs to be a bit more universal in their approach.
At this point Apple is ARM with a *.
Its not, not ARM, but Apple silicon is also not just ARM either. So much is offloaded to 100% Apple hardware, GPU, NPU, image accelerators, hevc/x264/5 and apples prores format hardware encoders (they have hardware encoders for their own formats). Newer M chips have NPU cores within each ARM core, they don't operate as a separate unit on newer M chips.
Apple silicon at this point is only really half ARM. As you say if they ever needed to they could just swap the base ISA to RISCV or frankly just create a 100% in house solution. The entire reason ARM happened in the first place was the Acorn guys realized RISC ISAs aren't super complicated. I would expect if Apple ever abandoned ARMs base ISA, they start with RiscV and just create their own thing from it. Much as they did with OSX it started as BSD. I'm pretty sure the RiscV licence wouldn't preclude them from using it as a base that could be modified and made proprietary.
when it is not on the arm cpu, before SME you could not as non apple dev could not make call on their matrix engine (AMX), you had to use apple frameworks (a la core ML) to indirectly use them or hope that the cpu scheduler would happen to detect the workflow and use them, no assembly was available to you or compilers.
For something it make sense to be on a different chips (or does not matter much, like a media decoder-encoder we had those on gpu all along0, but for some things being directly on the CPU is nice.
Xcode is just a text editor with tools to call clang, cmake, etc.. for you , it does not really matter (would use notepad instead you would have the exact same binary at the end), clang/llvm on Mac is really good but cannot give you direct access to non ARM ISA, you need to use apple framework for indirect use when it come to the cpu stuff.
I feel it matter, it is the reason Apple influence the next ARM release, to be able to expose stuff.
Their hardware for regular old Arm Neon is extemelly good ans 128bits long enough for consummer level SIMD which make the decision to spend a lot more of quite complex silicon for the advantage of 128bits sve over neon a decision to make, higher than 128 bits stuff like avx256/512, sve2 1024,2028 is more for supercomputer stuff and they have SME for the matrix-tensor operation....
many decades of work on the compiler that target ARM and for apple arm isa silicon in particular since (RISK being so different with its fusing of simple instructions mentality, they would need to redesign the silicon and the compiler for it), it would be a lot of works (and for Apple dev) but possible, going with RISC give you at least a lot of base and tools on the many needed chain above the ISA.
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Presumably Apple could jump ship to RISC-V, too. The microcontroller and SBC worlds are dipping toes in that quite a bit in the last year or so; the new RP2350 microcontroller, for example, is nominally dual-core, but it actually contains two ARM and two RISC-V cores, and technically you can (more or less) pick any two you want at boot time.
DukenukemX
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When we're talking about CPU's created around 40 years ago, an 8 years difference isn't going to matter. ARM fell into a niche which was mobile devices, and x86 became the CPU of choice for desktop computers. This was how it stayed until ARM became good enough to displace x86 in desktop machines.
IBM also made x86 chips. Transmeta was also going to be able to run PowerPC and MIPS code.
View: https://youtu.be/U2aQTJDJwd8?t=136
AMD existence is to be a second source supplier for IBM. The fact that Apple stuck with Intel was just stupid and obviously worked against them. I get during bulldozer since those chips were inferior compared to Intel's SandyBridge, but by Ryzen there was no excuse.
Been around too long to know better. Apple's average time with a CPU architecture is 13 years, and I feel ARM won't be any different. We're talking about a company that went from Motorola 68K, to PowerPC, to Intel, and now ARM. I'm ignoring the time when Apple IIe's had MOS 6502's.
That is only true to a degree. Adobe for example took a while to port most of their applications over to Windows ARM, and even then there's still some programs that haven't been ported. If this were true then nobody should complain about not having their favorite programs on Linux.
For starters, ARM themselves. It's no secret that ARM wants to start selling chips, and that's going to be a conflict of interest. Arm Holdings is now publicly traded and they're trading at $400 per share, which gives them incentives to be dicks to companies like Apple. Not an immediate problem for Apple, but eventually ARM will covet their best designs. Not to forget that currently Apple has the best ARM CPU, and not ARM themselves. Eventually, ARM will make a CPU design that will compete against Apple, and that's going to be a problem for Apple. Gotta remember that the best ARM chips are not based entirely on ARM's design. Apple and Qualcomm both make their own designs, along with Nvidia and their Olympus cores.
Having the best ARM CPU design does not come cheap, which is Apple's second problem. Apple spends over $30 billion annually on R&D, while Intel spends $16.5 billion which a lot are saying is high. Nvidia spends $13 billion annually, with AMD spending the least at $6.5 billion. I believe Qualcomm spends $9 Billion annually. If Apple gained market share then this wouldn't be a problem, but all statistics show that Apple hasn't gained any market share. This amount of spending on R&D from Apple isn't sustainable without massive growth. This is why I've said that Apple's ARM CPU's have a Time To Live, because when AMD and Intel catch up to Apple in terms of power efficiency, then it's game over.
As things stand right now, Intel's Panther Lake chips are around M3 levels of performance and power efficiency, but a little worse when it comes to power efficiency. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2's are actually pretty close to Apple's M5's, but with horrible GPU performance. AMD's Zen5's like Strix Halo are very close to Apple's M4 chips. Whatever laptop chip Nvidia comes up with, it won't be competing against Apple's M5's. I thought by now Intel would have caught up to Apple, but that's clearly not the case. AMD is holding off on releasing Zen6 which could compete nicely against Apple's M5's. AMD and Intel won't truly be a problem for Apple until they've adopted APX, which is probably a few years from now.
Another thing to consider is Windows itself. If Windows continues to use x86 as it's primary CPU, then this will be a problem for ARM on Apple. Like it or not, we're living in a Windows world when it comes to desktop. If there's software then it will exist on Windows first. One of the reasons why Linux gaming is getting away with murder is because Windows runs x86, which is very well established on Linux. To give you an idea, Arch doesn't have official support for ARM yet. If Windows applications ran ARM then things would be easier for ARM Mac users. Besides virtual machines, it does make it easier to port software when both platforms use the same CPU.
Whatever the situation, there are a number of scenarios that could happen to Apple's ARM chips for the future.
- They go with another company for ARM chips and quit designing their own.
- They reduce R&D spending and lag behind their competition.
- Move onto RISC.
- Go back to Intel x86.
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30 billions for a company that make 195 billions of gross profit, 112 billion of net income, 100 billion of free cash flow, of course it is sustainable (not only sustainable, 1:2.85 R&D to free cash flow ratio is on the low side, AMD last year was 1:1, Intel was burning money and in the negative)
Market share without being irrelevant.... are not the actual goal of a company, money is, going for pre 2020 7-7.5% global share to now around 9.5%, without a cheap offer is not bad at all. When it come to money their PC division made 25 billions in 2019, in 2025 they were at 33.7 billions, 35% raw, +7% adjusted for inflation in a declining outside a hickup for the work and play from home bonenza world, Dell was +11% raw, -11.5% adjusted for inflation for a direct comp, not sure about market share but money share they are probably up versus their main competitors.
Instead of paying for Intel-AMD R&D, they make their own, that also part of the equation, it could be a win at equal sales level, their product gross margin went up, not just the company gross margin because of the growth in software-service sales and because a lot of the R&D is shared for the similar or actual chips used in phone, tablets future project attempt it is spread out... it is not a pure Mac play.
Not sure why, Intel chips had very similar power efficiacy with Intel chips used in windows laptop it is not game over.. .in the phone world android chips seem pretty much close to apple in the most recent generations, the OS and environment will still be a big deal, the custom accelerator around the CPU has well.
DukenukemX
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You try explaining that to investors. Apple spends more than it's competition and isn't growing. Intel is spending more because Intel has nearly a decades wroth of CPU design they need to catch up. To an investor, it would be better if Apple spent money like Intel or even Nvidia. Of course, Intel investors would like Intel to be like AMD in spending money on R&D.
Whatever the case, Apple's goal isn't to continue to spend $30 billion on R&D. They want market share and then do what Intel did and slowly improve CPU designs while staying dominant in the market.
Even as things stand right now, there's not much value going after ARM on Windows and MacOS. Qualcomm's X2 chips are much better in CPU, but the GPU is still trash. Apple's overall hardware is good, but still runs MacOS which means you're limited to what software you could run on it. An AMD Strix Point or Intel Panther Lake running Windows is still going to be a safer computing experience then trying your luck at ARM Windows roulette, and ARM MacOS/2 Warp. Despite that Ryzen AI 370's are no better than an Apple M4 machine, and that Panther Lake chips can't touch Apple's M5 Pro. Nobody wants to deal with the compatibility problems.
What exactly is your argument? That Apple should be spending more or less on R&D? Investors have zero issues on their R&D spend as it is. I think most investors have zero issues. Investors see Apple as a market leader in silicon. I don't think anyone is serious AT all about anyone else being a threat. What Apple has been doing has been growing their marketshare. Unless Qualcom finds a way to sell their chips on Apple devices why the hell does Apple care about them? Investors get that Apple is its own thing. Apple has ZERO competition for MacOS. Once a customer is part of the MacOS eccsystem frankly that is where they are going to stay. Good luck getting someone using a macbook to swap to a windows arm or windows x86 device. haha Investors are aware of Apples retention numbers. They are 2x the closes PC OEM.
You keep going on about x86 being = in terms of power or whatever. IT is 100% irrelevant. I don't think you get that. IF Tomorrow Qcom releases a brand new chip that is 50% faster then Apple and 50% more power efficient. You know what that does to Apple sales? NOTHING. Absolutely NOTHING. Its not just about the silicon. Apple silicon needs to run MacOS well. It does.
As for software. You also keep bringing up BUT BUT Windows software. Windows runs things Windows software.
OK again NAME a software that is windows only. (games don't matter keep in mind... I'm sorry PC gaming is just not a factor for Apple market growth) That matters AT all. Just ONE package. Just name one thing. I mean its not Adobe, Its not Micosoft office. What exactly is this mythical windows only software that people need so bad?
DukenukemX
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In for a penny, in for a pound. Apple can't stop spending money on R&D because they can't afford to fall behind. Look at Apple's M5's and how they dramatically improved GPU performance? I guarantee you that's the result of AMD's Strix Halo and Intel's Arrow Lake where GPU performance is the driving factor for buying machines based on them. So of course, Apple had to improve GPU performance to not only match what AMD and Intel are doing, but go beyond it. Apple literally can't afford to stop.
I don't think anyone is worried about Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips. Maybe Microsoft because they only sell Surface devices with Qualcomm chips?
Not really according to stat counter. They did get a 2% boost recently, but that doesn't stick around for long.
It's important enough for Apple to be spending crazy amounts of R&D.
I just got an Audi and needed VCDS to diagnose it, and it only runs Windows. Same goes for Toyota's TechStream and BMW's INPA. Solidworks which is the industry standard for engineers is Windows only. Autodesk Revit is another one that's required for engineers and is only on Windows. Microsoft also keeps some software exclusive to Windows like Microsoft Access, as well as FULL XL. Even the cables that I use to communicate with my cars, need drivers that you most certainly won't find on MacOS. I got an EEPROM Reader Writer that most certainly won't work on MacOS. Lots of peripherals that just don't work on MacOS.
That's just the stuff I can think of. Like I said, we live in a Windows world. I use Linux, so my situation is worse.
Why would apple want to stop spending R&D money though. Apple I doubt has ever planned to stop spending on R&D. I mean they never have spent nothing on R&D why would they be looking to stop now. Even when they were Intel powered they spent billions on R&D.
I agree Qcom hasn't been doing much of anything in consumer PC. My point is x86 isn't competition for Apple. I don't think they actually view windows as competition. Nothing runs MacOS other then what they sell. No one using MacOS cares what runs on windows. The idea that people are comparing PC and Mac and deciding what to buy at this point is absurd. If your a Mac user when its time to upgrade or replace your device your buying another Apple device, your not looking at PC reviews. lol
I Knew you were going to bring up solid works. You do realize your talking about software that costs over a grand per quarter to use?
Also no one cares. Just run AutoCad... its better. Yes the french company that owns solidworks is windows only for whatever reason. They also make Catia and it always boggled my mind they never ported Catia to anything else, its painful to see companies like Boeing rock 1000s of terrible windows machines so they can run catia. Not that its heavily used outside the aerospace industry anyway.
The other stuff you mentioned... ya ok some niche car repair software. All the consumer car things that people not mechanics use runs on their iphones. Very few modern devices don't run fine on a Mac. In some industries support is just > anything audio there is really no comparison. Professional audio gear always just works with Mac, windows that is hardly the case.
As for MS access... ok don't think many people care either. Apple has filemaker pro... been around for 40 years. I would say filemaker is > regardless Apple still sells a windows version. I'm sure they both have fan bases, but bottom line is Apple sells a directly comparable software that isn't a less then product. (quite the opposite filemaker is often considered superior)
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