I've been hearing the ARMada for so long now about how they will come to rise and corner the market.
I don't speak for them. I didn't think this would happen until I saw that ARM was *actually* finally performant in single core compared to modern desktop processors (basically the last 1-2 years). Before then, I think it was very much a pipe dream, but right now it's a bit early. The benchmarks we *do* have seem to speak very favorably for ARM (Spec and SpecInt, and Geekbench 5, flawed as they all might be). But we literally cannot get any other information, until at least *some* ARM devices that run macOS or Windows hit the market... The upcoming Qualcomm 8cx is one such ARM chip. The A14 variant that goes in the MacBook Air might be next... Then we can play around with real world performance numbers, and see what's happening.
I also think there are changes coming in how products are made at a fundamental level, that will lead to ARM gaining a stronger foothold (custom silicon is a winning strategy) but that's a discussion for another day.
Everybody knew jets were going to be the big new thing, at least anyone paying attention. There were working on jets before the war started.
Exactly... and we're just now starting to see arm reach that level, and some companies are starting to quietly plan for this transition, while others are hedging their bets by deciding how much/how little time and resources and energy they dedicate to planning for it.
So according to you, Apple is going to dump x86-64 and go all in on ARM in roughly 5 years. How are they going to tackle compatibility with all of the x86 software?
They will pave the way with first party apps of their own, and developers who see an opportunity will follow through. furthermore, Apple's app development environment is about having very well optimized APIs for developers to hook into, and they've spent a lot of time unifying (feature-wise) their APIs between x86/64 and ARM, to where it's now relatively easy to port apps from iOS to macOS. They further streamlined this by giving people SwiftUI as the "future" of how UI is written on the mac, but also the watch, iPhone, and iPad...
We can expect future apps to be written with the same core functionality calling on similar/the same APIs for all these devices. The only thing different will be the UI that's written specifically for every particular form factor, so the app can adapt to the device it's being used on, with certain features or APIs being limited or disabled, if necessary.
Apple just dropped ALL 32 bit legacy apps on macOS. I don't expect they'll have any issues dropping x86/64 after emulating them for a little bit. Windows for ARM already has an x86 emulator, so if someone runs Bootcamp on an ARM mac, they can use that emulator for legacy software if they choose. Apple will likely write their own emulator, just like they wrote for the PPC >> Intel transition. No performance won't be great, and Apple will tell developers to update their apps, and notify people that the app is not performing well because developers haven't updated it (they did this for the 32bit >> 64bit transition on iPhone/iPad). Then, they will remove the noncompliant apps from the app store.
1) Low target clock speeds and massive caches, which enhances IPC due to less waiting on memory
2) Ultra wide microarchitecture which specifically targets low power mobile platforms which favor burst performance
3) Total control over the software and not having to worry about breaking backward compatibility
4) Process node advantage, which Intel enjoyed for many years
You're absolutely right about these things... and how they pertain to the wider market.
For 1 and 2, Apple has an in-house chip design team... they can adjust these things as necessary when targeting higher performance chips, or keep to this philosophy. Only lack of active cooling prevents these wide cores from bursting constantly. The large amounts of cache, and some data pipelining enhancements will allow the cores to remain fed, even when scaled up (for example, they could do quad channel memory in their wide desktop chip designs)
3 actually remains a major advantage for Apple. They have never been worried about backwards compatibility, and they won't start worrying now. Also, this is the major business advantage of ARM macs -- having total control of the product from silicon to ecosystem will allow apple to optimize far beyond what their competitors are able to do.
4. Yeah, process node advantage is something that Intel squandered, but even AMD doesn't have the preferential treatment Apple gets from TSMC. Apple is going to be the first to ship 5nm silicon, just like they were with 7nm... the sheer volume of their operation, and war chest of cash means they can buy out capacity at TSMC, Samsung, or wherever else, as they see fit...
This is completely different from what Intel and AMD are doing. Both Intel and AMD design CPUs to preserve backward compatibility from both a hardware and software aspect, and also target multiple platforms with the same architecture.
Yes, it's different, but Apple also has a reputation as a trend setter in the market... when they do something, and the experience is markedly better, many others follow suit. Apple needs to release one ARM laptop that has unbelievable performance and battery life, at a price that's just too tempting for its customers, and for the "wider swaths" of the general public. An excellent example of the last time this happened was the wedge-shaped MacBook Air in 2010. It was an affordable thin/light everyday laptop with amazing battery life, and one of the first mass market devices with an SSD as the standard configuration. It had a massive ripple effect in the laptop industry, and helped define the market for the last decade. One stellar ARM MacBook form Apple could be the rock that shifts a river, because consumers will start wondering why other devices can't have 24 hours of battery life in such a thin package, while being so cheap and fast, and OEMs will have to respond somehow.
I think that moment is coming. Some do not, and right now we're both quite rational and understand that there are going to be some caveats and tradeoffs if Apple pushes to arm - mainly that they *will* break compatibility, and it will upset some of their users. But if the software remains macOS, in that I can still have a CLI and full access to the file system, I'm personally okay with It.