NTMBK
Lifer
- Nov 14, 2011
- 10,232
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At least the Molten project exists, so you can run Vulkan code on top of Metal. Still damn annoying that Apple are ditching an industry standard for proprietary BS.
With the state of OpenGL on macOS (version, performance, ... ), I don't really see this as an annoyance but more of a deliverance
IntelUser2000
Elite Member
- Oct 14, 2003
- 8,686
- 3,785
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It's interesting why its much harder to drop legacy compatibility on the PC. The two quotes show the differences in mentality between the two ecosystems.
Apple Macs, have always been a small part of the market, and has done such drastic transitions few times before. That makes it easier to move away. Their products were always aimed at the premium end of the market and in some ways was more about capturing minds. In that light, I think its not surprising when technology advanced enough to put a powerful, multi-functional computing device in a phone form factor Apple succeeded immensely with it. Laptops and Desktops were and never to be their forte.
x86 was not only much bigger, but they gained/kept their marketshare on compatibility with hundreds of millions of applications built over a few decades. PC market has been commoditized over the years and purchases a little more practical and logical. That makes breaking compatibility an even bigger deal.
Arachnotronic
Lifer
- Mar 10, 2006
- 11,715
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No different than Microsoft trying to push DirectX on the Windows platform.
Tup3x
Senior member
- Dec 31, 2016
- 957
- 940
- 136
Not quite. Apple is more like forcing everyone to use their proprietary junk. Without alternatives.
Arachnotronic
Lifer
- Mar 10, 2006
- 11,715
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- 126
Microsoft used OpenGL, until they pushed people to their proprietary junk DirectX. ;-)
OpenGL as a platform has been stagnating for a long time now. sad to see it go, but it has been stuck in the mud for years.
What can you expect?
A12D -> 8 HP cores, 8 EE cores, No iGPU, 56G-112G Gen-Z 1C(Mobile)-2C(Desktop).
GPU -> Custom versions of 7nm Vega, Big Navi, Little Navi from AMD.
A12D or whatever it will be called will be after A12X, particularly 2H 2019. (In time for the new Mac Pros)
A12D -> 8 HP cores, 8 EE cores, No iGPU, 56G-112G Gen-Z 1C(Mobile)-2C(Desktop).
GPU -> Custom versions of 7nm Vega, Big Navi, Little Navi from AMD.
A12D or whatever it will be called will be after A12X, particularly 2H 2019. (In time for the new Mac Pros)
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Exactly. On Windows , only the GPU vendors continue to ship with it and Microsoft is perfectly fine with that.
There are lots of deprecated library in macOS that continue to be shipped years after it was announced.
And no, Vulkan is not OpenGL replacement. At least not at its current states.
I would have been pissed if OpenGL was still technically superior, but it is not. And hasn't been so for many many years. The progression of OpenGL and Khronos Group are just a bag of hurt. And in case you think Khronos Group did a good job of Vulkan, nope it was AMD with Mantle.
Backwards compatibility is not good for business. Apple has always tried their hardest to force people to buy their new stuff.
Woot. That would be a gamebreaker for Intel since ARM would be fully alone in this.
Wondering if Apple will put it on a Phone.
Apple is going "x86-killer" mode.
Apple A12/A12X -> Standard Vortex core with ARMv8.x-A ISA.
Apple A12D -> Vortex Plus core with pseudo-ARMv9.x-A ISA.
ARMv9.0 kills x86/x86-64 and all planned extensions to x86 after it. There is no reason to go x86 when ARMv9.0 is available. ARMv9.x and ARMv8.x are big.Little at the ISA level anyway, so no incompatibility of using both.
Apple kicks off the end times.
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I doubt that. Even if it exist it may be nothing more then a 64bit only slightly more cleaned up of ARMv8.4.
PeterScott
Platinum Member
- Jul 7, 2017
- 2,605
- 1,540
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Apple has never really shown interest in AMD CPUs. Though I would love to see Raven Ridge in the overdue Mac Mini.
I could never understand why. They get Radeon Graphics which is what they want. And a decent CPU. May be for Zen 2 with 7nm and improved IPC.
Edit: Arh. I forgot the real reason. Thunderbolt. Which should be solved soon as Intel promised to opens it up... and hasn't done so yet.
moinmoin
Diamond Member
- Jun 1, 2017
- 4,944
- 7,656
- 136
The promise is that they'll make Thunderbolt royalty free this year. Will that mean TB controllers will be available from companies other than Intel though?
In theory yes. In practice opening up the spec doesn't equal to opening up other things. For they may still charge you for using the Thunderbolt name or something silly like that.
They said they will have more details in 2018, well it is half way 2018 now.....
moinmoin
Diamond Member
- Jun 1, 2017
- 4,944
- 7,656
- 136
Yeah, all I saw so far is "royalty free" which still didn't happen as you said. And all the reports of it I saw were combining it with Intel's announcement, that they would include the controller in the processor in the future, which is like the opposite of what we are waiting for (possibility of AMD and ARM based systems to integrate the tech). Intel likely has more issues now than back when they announced this as well.
IMHO simply for the mac line sales are too low to justify custom chips unless they greatly reduce the lineup so that 2 chips/socs are enough but that would kill any mac pro type thing. and even then mac sales are tiny compared to iphone but I guess they would save a ton on the software side to make it worth it.
As ARM perf/watt starts to be twice of x86 it's only matter of time when all notebooks has to be ported to ARM or lose on all perf/battery time/size metrics. And as laptops have to be ported desktops will naturally switch too. And thats not only MAC side, Windows-systems needs that transformation also or everybody switch to MAC/arm-based Chromebooks. Dekstops won't survive alone and sure Apple and Microsoft knows that, and pretty sure that Intel has acknowledged that too.
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