Apple adding ARM coprocessor to future Macs

[jpiniero]

Apple already has an ARM based chip that handles the Touch Bar on the current Macbook Pros, but it sounds like future models might have an ARM chip which handles more responsibility. Of course this could also be the beginning of the transition to ARM, soo....

Apple engineers are planning to offload the Mac’s low-power mode, a feature marketed as "Power Nap," to the next-generation ARM-based chip. This function allows Mac laptops to retrieve e-mails, install software updates, and synchronize calendar appointments with the display shut and not in use. The feature currently uses little battery life while run on the Intel chip, but the move to ARM would conserve even more power, according to one of the people.

The current ARM-based chip for Macs is independent from the computer’s other components, focusing on the Touch Bar’s functionality itself. The new version in development would go further by connecting to other parts of a Mac’s system, including storage and wireless components, in order to take on the additional responsibilities. Given that a low-power mode already exists, Apple may choose to not highlight the advancement, much like it has not marketed the significance of its current Mac chip, one of the people said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ng-new-mac-chip-in-test-of-intel-independence

 

[DrMrLordX]

That's just weird. And somewhat interesting. But mostly weird.

 

[.vodka]

Well, they've already got a kickass ARM core that considering the prices they ask for their products, it's not that much of a problem to get it in there to do some tasks, initially.

Next step, moving the entire platform to ARM (MS already has full fat Windows 10 running on ARM...) Apple did it before with Rosetta in the PPC -> x86 transition, they can do it again.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think Apple is unimpressed with Kaby Lake. They see the same thing happening with Intel, stagnating performance, that they saw with PPC, and they want an out (ARM).

 

[Doom2pro]

If Apple is positioning a move out of the x86 space, it will be interesting to see what effect (if any) the Zen architecture has on that decision.

 

[lopri]

It seems like a logical next step to me. Apple have been running co-processors in their A- line SOCs for quite a long time. Recently they also adopted big.LITTLE. It should be rather easy for them to tap these low-power ARM cores as a MMC (Management Core), and grow it from there.

 

[CHADBOGA]

I think Apple is unimpressed with Kaby Lake. They see the same thing happening with Intel, stagnating performance, that they saw with PPC, and they want an out (ARM).

When I see someone like clown Francois Piednoel on Twitter profusely posting his inane political views, I question how much he has his mind on the job of improving Intel technology.

Intel needs a good clean out.

 

[SPBHM]

sounds like the PS4, I think.

 

[John Carmack]

I think Apple is unimpressed with Kaby Lake. They see the same thing happening with Intel, stagnating performance, that they saw with PPC, and they want an out (ARM).

Or maybe they want to leverage their chip investments in their phone and tablet business to keep for themselves some of those fat margins they're currently sending to Intel.

 

[superstition]

Apple engineers are planning to offload the Mac’s low-power mode, a feature marketed as "Power Nap," to the next-generation ARM-based chip. This function allows Mac laptops to retrieve e-mails, install software updates, and synchronize calendar appointments with the display shut and not in use. The feature currently uses little battery life while run on the Intel chip, but the move to ARM would conserve even more power, according to one of the people.

Can't let sleep or device power off get in the way of telemetry gathering.

 

[Rngwn]

This may or may not backfire for Apple as the owners of ARM macs will not be able to use bootcamp to run windows, at least until Microsoft adds ARM processor support for Windows. Though, Microsoft has begin working on it.

 

[lopri]

^ I am not sure if this will affect boot camp? I suppose it can be ignored by Windows. It is up to Apple to maintain boot camp and Mac users are aware that Apple can change its policy with or without regard to these rumored ARM cores.

 

[Yakk]

Sounds very feasible.

Plus it gives the possibility of having full OSX & iOS running on separate processors in one super-"PRO" machine. Imagine the premium price Apple could charge for that!

... before eventually merging them.

From a financial standpoint it makes a lot of cents.

 

[knutinh]

So how much better performance:watt does a state of the art ARM core offer vs a state of the art x86 core, say at an operating point of 0.5W? My gut-feeling is that they should be quite similar, and that other factors are more relevant. Such as:
1. Does Apple like to have a credible bargaining point against Intel? (give us the chips we want at the price we are saying, or we'll make our own)
2. Asking Intel to introduce an ultra-low compute mode in their cpus using x86 seems like a lott simpler technically and politically than combining ARM and x86

-k

 

[superstition]

So how much better performance:watt does a state of the art ARM core offer vs a state of the art x86 core, say at an operating point of 0.5W? My gut-feeling is that they should be quite similar, and that other factors are more relevant. Such as:
1. Does Apple like to have a credible bargaining point against Intel? (give us the chips we want at the price we are saying, or we'll make our own)
2. Asking Intel to introduce an ultra-low compute mode in their cpus using x86 seems like a lott simpler technically and politically than combining ARM and x86

-k

Given how padded Apple's margins are they could just throw in an Atom or something.

As far as bargaining power, I think using Zen against Intel is going to be more potent.

 

[jpiniero]

2. Asking Intel to introduce an ultra-low compute mode in their cpus using x86 seems like a lott simpler technically and politically than combining ARM and x86

I sort of agree, which is why I think this is really just a stepping stone in transitioning to ARM.

 

[jhu]

From some Anonymous coward at Slashdot

Posting as AC for a damned good reason.

Apple already has several ARM powered laptops drifting around internally. I've seen several of them with my own eyes. There's at least five different prototypes, all constructed in plastic cases with varying degrees of complexity (some are literally just a clear acrylic box, others look more like 3D printed or milled parts designed to look like a chunky MBA or iBook). There's a few that literally recycled the chassis and case from an MBA, just with a different logic board (which was coloured red for some reason), and others sporting a radically different design than anything Apple currently sells (not going anywhere near the details on those because of NDA).

All of them boot encrypted and signed OS images, which are fully recoverable over the internet so long as you've got WiFi access (similar to how their Intel powered systems do it). You cannot chose a version of the OS to load, you get whatever the latest greatest one is and that's it. They've completely ported OS X to ARM (including all of Cocoa and Aqua), however a ton of utilities that normally come with OS X are missing (there's no Disk Utility, Terminal, ColorSync, Grapher, X11, Audio/MIDI setup, etc). A lot of that functionality has been merged into a new app called "Settings" (presumably to match the iOS counterpart), which takes the place of System Preferences.

Likewise, App Store distribution appeared to be mandatory. I didn't see any mention of Gatekeeper or any way to side load (unsigned) binaries, presumably because Gatekeeper is simply part of the system now. The systems I saw could all access an internal version of the MAS that was specifically designed for the ARM systems (and under heavy WIP, judging by the broken page formatting and placeholder elements). The filesystem seemed a bit... peculiar, to say the least. Everything was stored in the root of the disk drive- that is to say, the OS didn't support multiple users at all, and everything that you'd normally see in your home directory was presented as / instead. I don't think the physical filesystem was actually laid out like this, it's just that the Finder and everything else had been modified to make you believe that's the way the computer worked. There was no /Applications folder anymore, your only option for launching and deleting apps was through Launchpad. Drivers (now called "System Extensions") were handled 100% automatically by the OS. If you plugged anything into the computer that it didn't support, it would automatically launch the MAS and take you to a page where you could download and install the relevant stuff. Those things would show up in Settings.app where you could manage them by way of customized preference panels or uninstall them completely. The rest of it more or less looked like a modern day version of 10.12 without some of the historical features accumulated over the years (for example, Dashboard was nowhere to be found).

From what I was told, there's a huge push to get this stuff out the door as soon as they think the market will accept it. That might be in a year, or two years, or three or four, but that's where Apple is inevitably heading. Custom hardware, custom software, total vendor and user lock in. They want to own everything, everywhere, at all times, and ARM is going to let them do exactly that. They're not stupid though and they're not going to commit suicide by releasing this stuff tomorrow, but they will sometime in the future. I guess in that regard the summary is correct- they don't have any "near term" plans to abandon Apple, but they've sure as shit got some long term ones, and I'm assuming Intel knows about it since a lot of the chips on the transparent prototypes had Intel marketings on them.

Seems reasonable. Apple had Mac OS X running on x86 as a "sanity check" for half a decade before releasing x86 hardware.

 

[Mopetar]

From some Anonymous coward at Slashdot

Seems reasonable. Apple had Mac OS X running on x86 as a "sanity check" for half a decade before releasing x86 hardware.

Sounds pretty obviously fake to me. This person has a pretty in-depth knowledge of these things which would probably be highly guarded prototypes. This person would have to be on the team running the project in order to have the kind of access he'd need to know some of these things. A company as secretive as Apple isn't going to share these kinds of details with anyone who doesn't need to know.

 

[Greyguy1948]

That's just weird. And somewhat interesting. But mostly weird.

AMD has been using Trustzone for some time. It is also ARM but who cares?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Trustzone is not quite the same thing.

 

[Dave2150]

That's just weird. And somewhat interesting. But mostly weird.

Agreed, can't see the sense in this.

 

[IntelUser2000]

This may or may not backfire for Apple as the owners of ARM macs will not be able to use bootcamp to run windows, at least until Microsoft adds ARM processor support for Windows. Though, Microsoft has begin working on it.

It won't matter. As some posts have stated in other articles, Apple knows this.

The T310 they are talking about will provide secondary function to the currently Intel based Macs. As articles point out, Intel chips use too much power for their own liking when in Power Nap mode. We know that while Core chips improved a lot, their idle power use still leaves a lot to be desired. We would think when idle Core chips should use same power with similar specs as their Atom based platforms. It doesn't. Still uses about 50-70% more in idle.

Whatever the reason, Intel chips use too much power when doing nothing, and isn't improving at the rate Apple likes. For all I know, they should have been there 3 years ago.

Ultimately in the long term this may mean developers can slowly transition currently x86 code to the T310, and give another couple of years most light usage apps would be using the ARM core, with the highest end function needing the Intel one. Give another 5 years, and they can completely replace Intel with their A15 or whatever chip. x86 application compatibility may not even matter by then since even Microsoft is trying to wean their customers off Intel to ARM.

Back to the first sentence. Even if AMD does well enough that Apple uses them, I think transition to all Apple chips are inevitable in the longer term. You are used until you aren't up to their standards anymore.

 

[NTMBK]

Whatever the reason, Intel chips use too much power when doing nothing, and isn't improving at the rate Apple likes. For all I know, they should have been there 3 years ago.

There's one blindingly obvious way that Intel could have improved this years ago- integrate the PCH onto the same die as the CPU. This sort of almost-no-power work involves waking up the CPU, dealing with I/O which is coming through the PCH, then going back to sleep. A pretty decent part of the power consumption has to be passing data between CPU and PCH.

But Intel wants to keep the PCH on their older process to protect their profit margins, and Apple get an inferior product as a result.

 

[ultimatebob]

I think Apple is unimpressed with Kaby Lake. They see the same thing happening with Intel, stagnating performance, that they saw with PPC, and they want an out (ARM).

Yeah, but there are no existing ARM processors that are as nearly as fast as a Core i3 processor let alone a Core i7. By the time Apple jumped ship from IBM, Intel's processors were twice as fast as the best G5's available.

Unless ARM has some amazing skunkworks project for a revolutionary desktop processor, I don't think that Intel has much to worry about.

 

[dark zero]

Yeah, but there are no existing ARM processors that are as nearly as fast as a Core i3 processor let alone a Core i7. By the time Apple jumped ship from IBM, Intel's processors were twice as fast as the best G5's available.

Unless ARM has some amazing skunkworks project for a revolutionary desktop processor, I don't think that Intel has much to worry about.

Actually they are on Pentium tier levels. The problem is that is not scalling well.

And that is a job that AMD K12 could show up if they solves it or not.