Macbook Air going to A6 cpu?

[Red Storm]

How long do you think an iOS device with an A* processor would last with a MBP sized battery?

Why would I want to boot into OS X when I could just boot into iOS, use a low powered CPU/GPU, and consume media.

Doesn't matter, it would be a step back for OSX users. You can't just cram another CPU in there, doesn't really work like that.

 

[foghorn67]

How long do you think an iOS device with an A* processor would last with a MBP sized battery?

Why would I want to boot into OS X when I could just boot into iOS, use a low powered CPU/GPU, and consume media.

With more RAM on ARM devices, more power is consumed.

I don't seeing the next gen or any gen of the MBA going ARM.

 

[Patranus]

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/405575/arm_goes_64-bit_its_new_armv8_chip_architecture
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/...s-64-bit-with-its-new-armv8-chip-architecture

 

[runawayprisoner]

And if they can somehow improve its performance by 10 fold, I guess that's where a perfectly optimized x86 emulator will effectively come into play.

Looks like 2016 will be it. That's half a decade from now.

 

[Patranus]

And if they can somehow improve its performance by 10 fold, I guess that's where a perfectly optimized x86 emulator will effectively come into play.

Looks like 2016 will be it. That's half a decade from now.

There is actually a company working on ARM powered servers.
The idea is that you have specific cores for different tasks.
This not only optimizes the execution of tasks but also greatly reduces the power requirements.

You already see this approach with hardware video recorders and Apple moving UI rendering to the GPU.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Emulators can't really be made with dedicated processors though. They require a lot of branching power.

Only linear processes like decoding or encoding where the clear path is already predefined can be made dedicated.

If there is a dedicated processor for emulating x86, it might well be an x86 processor, and that's where we go back to square 1.

An x86-compatible path in software is needed for a transition to happen. Apple really can't escape that if they want to move OSX or OSXI or whatever the next version of Mac OS is to ARM.

 

[JSt0rm]

apple has enough money to do whatever they want well.

 

[Emulex]

hp is coming out with arm 64bit servers. they will have many cpu's. keep in mind you can get awesome power savings. think of 8 or 16 cores (gated so you could run 1) -> reverse hyperthreading allows a couple of single threaded apps to use up the cores (again servers will see this).

so light cruising you get that 16 hour runtime

 

[Rottie]

I predict it will happen in the near future I read somewhere few months ago about Apple still contemlating about leaving Intel. Real question is which is fastest cpu A6 or Intel cpu?

 

[Eug]

I predict it will happen in the near future I read somewhere few months ago about Apple still contemlating about leaving Intel. Real question is which is fastest cpu A6 or Intel cpu?

No comparison. Intel of course.

A6 in terms of raw performance will compete against Atom, which is too slow for any general purpose laptop IMO. Performance on Atom netbooks sucks royally.

 

[Patranus]

No comparison. Intel of course.

A6 in terms of raw performance will compete against Atom, which is too slow for any general purpose laptop IMO. Performance on Atom netbooks sucks royally.

The problem is that you are comparing x86 to ARM.
x86 and Windows has to encompass so many platforms there is little to no optimization.
With ARM, Apple and optimized OS X to run on ARM.

 

[silverpig]

Dual-booting just to use a different CPU core would a major PITA, and pretty much the opposite of user friendliness. Plus Apple would prefer you to just buy an iPod touch or iPad for that purpose anyway, so A6 + Intel to run two different OSes in the same machine just ain't gonna happen.

I think the only way something like this would happen is if Intel created a CPU architecture that allowed the usage of two different x86 cores in the same machine. That way you wouldn't need to reboot, but could use the low power core for low power functions, and the high power core for high power functions. Much, more more elegant and user friendly.

How about putting an A6 and an i5 in the same laptop, and then installing both iOS and OSX that run concurrently. You boot up and see OSX, then you can 4 finger swipe to the side to get to iOS (instead of the dashboard). When you are on the iOS screen, the A6 runs things and you essentially have an iPad + keyboard while OSX goes into sleep mode (just as if you closed the lid). Swipe back to OSX and it wakes up and the "iPad" goes to sleep (like pushing the lock button).

 

[gevorg]

Its just a matter of time until ARM chips would be more than sufficient for typical desktop tasks of 90%+ users. Doesn't matter if x86 would be faster or not, what would matter the most is the price and power efficiency. Would A6 be that chip? No.

 

[alent1234]

Arm is not goIng to be that much cheaper after the entire system is priced


Not like when intel was competing against sun sparc

 

[runawayprisoner]

Actually, it's quite competitive with Intel now, price-wise. Atom from Intel costs about the same as a high-end ARM SoC. And decent CULV chips from Intel cost almost 10x Atom. Apple can layer 10 SoCs into the same package and it may not even cost them as much as just the motherboard of a Macbook Air.

 

[Eug]

How about putting an A6 and an i5 in the same laptop, and then installing both iOS and OSX that run concurrently. You boot up and see OSX, then you can 4 finger swipe to the side to get to iOS (instead of the dashboard). When you are on the iOS screen, the A6 runs things and you essentially have an iPad + keyboard while OSX goes into sleep mode (just as if you closed the lid). Swipe back to OSX and it wakes up and the "iPad" goes to sleep (like pushing the lock button).

You'd be much better off running an ultra low power x86 + standard laptop x86. No need to go with two completely different architectures.

Actually, it's quite competitive with Intel now, price-wise. Atom from Intel costs about the same as a high-end ARM SoC. And decent CULV chips from Intel cost almost 10x Atom. Apple can layer 10 SoCs into the same package and it may not even cost them as much as just the motherboard of a Macbook Air.

But the problem is both Atom and high-end ARM are too slow. Hell, even on the iPad ARM is still slow. Apple has optimized the hell out of iOS, and certain tasks are still uber slow. Even if I just try loading up a page with a few animated GIFs, my A5 iPad 2 slows to a crawl.

 

[JSt0rm]

Well as a pro user I need power but I am glad that there is SOMETHING on the horizon that intel needs to worry about. I want to keep the fire under their asses.

 

[Red Storm]

Actually, it's quite competitive with Intel now, price-wise. Atom from Intel costs about the same as a high-end ARM SoC. And decent CULV chips from Intel cost almost 10x Atom. Apple can layer 10 SoCs into the same package and it may not even cost them as much as just the motherboard of a Macbook Air.

ARM is meant for devices that need battery over all else. Laptops are big enough that you can run MUCH more powerful/faster processor, RAM, and storage and still get good battery life.

Why exactly would anyone want to downgrade from Sandy Bridge to ARM? If you want iOS, buy an iPad or iPhone. There's no comparison between OSX (and its hardware) and iOS (and its hardware).

 

[Patranus]

Well as a pro user I need power but I am glad that there is SOMETHING on the horizon that intel needs to worry about. I want to keep the fire under their asses.

x86 is highly inefficient. Just look at what offloading GUI to the GPU has done. Apple could design specific ARM chips for different tasks that execute those tasks far more efficiently than x86.

x86 is like using a hatchet where ARM is like using a scalpel.

 

[Red Storm]

x86 is highly inefficient. Just look at what offloading GUI to the GPU has done. Apple could design specific ARM chips for different tasks that execute those tasks far more efficiently than x86.

x86 is like using a hatchet where ARM is like using a scalpel.

My X86 MBP smokes any iOS device, and runs a ton more useful applications. Why would I want to give up all those applications, limit myself to Apple's App Store, take away my ability to play games like Starcraft 2, as well as a ton of other functionality?

Sounds like some of you guys just want a Transformer like keyboard dock so you can turn your iPads into quasi laptops.

 

[Eug]

x86 is highly inefficient. Just look at what offloading GUI to the GPU has done. Apple could design specific ARM chips for different tasks that execute those tasks far more efficiently than x86.

Not really.

The more complex stuff you need to run, the more complex/faster the chips need to be.

A) Super fast ARM chips that can compete with x86 for pure compute power simply don't exist.
B) You don't really want a machine with 8 different narrow-purpose CPUs to do general purpose computing.

---

BTW, I have an iPad. I use it for reading email, playing Angry Birds, and surfing the internet. For real work I use my laptop or desktop. Hell, even if I just want to read Senor GIF or read a simple Flash-based website, I go to my laptop or desktop.

 

[alfa147x]

Guys. You can't compare idevice ARM to an x86 in your MBP

 

[runawayprisoner]

ARM is meant for devices that need battery over all else. Laptops are big enough that you can run MUCH more powerful/faster processor, RAM, and storage and still get good battery life.

Why exactly would anyone want to downgrade from Sandy Bridge to ARM? If you want iOS, buy an iPad or iPhone. There's no comparison between OSX (and its hardware) and iOS (and its hardware).

I think the point is that under high load, ARM would still consume less power than Sandy Bridge in idle.

Which makes sense, given that at its max load, Sandy Bridge can easily drain the battery under 3 hours. I actually tried.

Now, given perfectly linear scaling, 10x A5 is still only about barely faster than Intel Atom (based on Sunspider javascript benchmark), which means it's still at least 2x slower than a single core of Sandy Bridge ULV...

So given the same task, Sandy Bridge might complete in 1 hour, whereas ARM may take 4... or longer, so the longer battery life is negated pretty much.

So I agree with your thinking there. It's just too much of a tradeoff. I'd rather complete my rendering within the hour and move on to the next task even though I may have to drag around my charger more frequently. For a work machine, I'd choose power over battery life.

 

[alent1234]

it's not SB, but all the other parts in the laptop that suck up the power. SB will shut down circuits to only those that need to be on.

price wise Intel will win. OEM's buy an Intel CPU, chipset, mobo and GPU. one stop shopping, less testing and less money spent buying and putting parts together from different manufacturers. One of the ARM chip makers will have to have the same solution.

by the time you add the case, screen, battery, RAM, graphics and everything else in the laptop the price difference will be maybe $50 or Intel may win on price due to ease of manufacturing