[Fudzilla] Apple 2016 laptops will have AMD GPUs

[NTMBK]

It looks like Nvidia is not getting a look inside the marketing powerhouse which is the Apple Walled Garden of Delights .

http://fudzilla.com/news/graphics/40835-all-apple-2016-laptops-come-with-amd-gpus

Looks like NVidia is out for another generation?

 

[digitaldurandal]

Cant view the site from work apparently. I think we all expected this. I believe it is one of the reasons why AMD pushed Polaris. A lot of their contracts are for low power graphics.

 

[Yakk]

Yeah, it's been a good while the rumor of Apple going full Polaris has been going around. Probably a contributing reason on top of consoles why TRG is going Polaris first instead of Vega first.

So far TRG supplying Apple with GPUs seems to be helping them on the professional side, now it will be on the consumer side too it seems.

Polaris at Apple, Polaris on consoles, and Polaris on PCs.

That's a lot of Polaris.

 

[sirmo]

This was known already. AMD announced the design win with Apple in their last ER call.

 

[3DVagabond]

I don't think it was known that nVidia had been completely locked out though.

 

[sirmo]

I don't think it was known that nVidia had been completely locked out though.

I don't think that's surprising. They've already been locked out. No change there. Besides AMD specifically went with small Polaris 10 and 11 first so time to market is off too for Nvidia to be in consideration.

AMD is Apple's GPU supplier for the foreseeable future. From the software perspective as well AMD does better with OpenCL. OpenCL comes from Apple in fact.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I don't think it was known that nVidia had been completely locked out though.

When they wouldn't jump to Maxwell despite the power savings it became clear Nvidia is on the blacklist.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

I don't think it was known that nVidia had been completely locked out though.

I don't think they've been locked out.

But the performance/watt advantage of nvidia is mainly with graphics, with opencl the advantage is much smaller. Apple doesn't really care about graphics anyway, so why pay more for nvidia chips?

 

[RussianSensation]

Besides AMD specifically went with small Polaris 10 and 11 first so time to market is off too for Nvidia to be in consideration.

That's a key point right there. People keep criticizing AMD's strategy but when we look back at historical market share (post #174), contrary to what's being repeated over and over, AMD lost a lot of market share when 750/750Ti launched, well before 970/980 even showed up.

2015 Mac Sales = 20.6M units (it was almost 19M in 2014)
http://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-mac-computers-since-first-quarter-2006/

Even if AMD chips are found in just 25% of Macs, AMD has a potential of banking 5M+ AMD Polaris chips just from the Apple contract.

Some people seem to be [H] confused about AMD's strategy this time. They are trying to launch products without having direct competition from NV. This is why we should expect Vega to either blow the doors off 1080 in price/performance or flat out beat it. I am sure NV is loving this too since it means AMD has forfeited the entire $300+ dGPU market for the next 5-6 months, allowing NV to milk GP104 uncontested with ludicrous marketing gimmicks like the $70-100 FE cards. Both companies are benefiting by not directly competing with each other. Let's just hope Vega is the next X1900XT series, not X1800 series.

 

[zlatan]

I don't think it was known that nVidia had been completely locked out though.

They are not locked out, but it is hard for Apple to build Metal drivers for undocumented architectures.

 

[Mopetar]

They are not locked out, but it is hard for Apple to build Metal drivers for undocumented architectures.

I think NV's unwillingness to support Apple's OpenCL and other features a while back has contributed to them going with AMD, but there was also a time where Nvidia was going after SoC makers over graphics patents and I don't recall if they sued Apple, but it may have soured the business relationship.

 

[sirmo]

I think NV's unwillingness to support Apple's OpenCL and other features a while back has contributed to them going with AMD, but there was also a time where Nvidia was going after SoC makers over graphics patents and I don't recall if they sued Apple, but it may have soured the business relationship.

The bumpgate didn't help either I am sure.

 

[Yakk]

The bumpgate didn't help either I am sure.

Is Apple still covering these?

 

[Samwell]

The bumpgate didn't help either I am sure.

Bumpgate wasn't a long term problem. It was bad, but didn't play any role in todays decisions. After bumpgate they had Nvidia again. OpenCL and metal seem to be the biggest problems. As long as Nv doesn't change their attitude there, they're out. It was easy to see in the use of Tonga, many people complaining about it running too hot, but they anyway took it instead of Maxwell.

 

[sirmo]

Bumpgate wasn't a long term problem. It was bad, but didn't play any role in todays decisions. After bumpgate they had Nvidia again. OpenCL and metal seem to be the biggest problems. As long as Nv doesn't change their attitude there, they're out. It was easy to see in the use of Tonga, many people complaining about it running too hot, but they anyway took it instead of Maxwell.

It soured the relationship. Because for awhile Nvidia wouldn't own the issue. But yeah I've mentioned OpenCL among other things.

 

[NTMBK]

Also if Apple were to move to AMD APUs for their non-discrete-graphics devices, they could simplify their driver development as they would only be developing for one architecture instead of 2.

 

[renderstate]

Isn't Apple abandoning OpenCL? I don't remember where I read it..

 

[Bacon1]

Isn't Apple abandoning OpenCL? I don't remember where I read it..

Why would they?

 

[stuff_me_good]

So if you want premium, you go for apple. Best hardware wins.

 

[renderstate]

Replaced with compute on Metal. They are clearly less and less interested in an open ecosystem.

 

[Glo.]

And Compute on Metal uses what? CUDA? Magic?

OpenCL. Simple as it can be.

Compute uses OpenCL. Graphics uses OpenGL.

 

[Mopetar]

Replaced with compute on Metal. They are clearly less and less interested in an open ecosystem.

I thought Metal was their iOS graphics API they were using instead of OpenGL since they only used PowerVR GPU tech for their SoCs.

 

[renderstate]

IIRC Metal is now supported on OSX as well on INTEL, NVIDIA and AMD HW. They are pushing it a lot and I just don't see much of a role for OpenCL in Apple's future.

 

[renderstate]

And Compute on Metal uses what? CUDA? Magic?

OpenCL. Simple as it can be.

Compute uses OpenCL. Graphics uses OpenGL.

Compute on Metal uses Metal Shading Language, which is a subset of C++ https://developer.apple.com/library...gLanguageGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html

I am not saying Apple is suddenly dropping OpenCL but the new direction they have taken seems quite clear to me. IMO OpenCL is going the way of the dodo in the Apple ecosystem.

 

[Glo.]

IIRC Metal is now supported on OSX as well on INTEL, NVIDIA and AMD HW. They are pushing it a lot and I just don't see much of a role for OpenCL in Apple's future.

Based on what? Metal uses OpenCL for compute pipeline exactly in the same way as Vulkan will use OpenCL 2.0/2.1 for compute pipeline rendering in games.

Most people who claim that OpenCL is dying or will be phased out by graphics API pretty much do not know what they are talking about. It might happen, but not in close future. And by that I mean upcoming 5-10 years.