Apple are considering going with AMD processors - MacRumours

[djsynchro]

crApple

[HeadrickProductions]

http://www.9to5mac.com/intel-apple-534093460

has alot to do with apple competing with intel so that caused their relationship to go sour.

Not in apple's best interest.



Check out the article

[Harris.Andrew]

If I was a Mac user, I'd consider this good news.

I am, and I don't think this is good news at all. Intel and AMD may technically run more or less the same machine code, but there's still potentially plenty of architecture-based conflicts that would require developers to either rewrite critical sections of any assembly-optimized sort of code to satisfy AMD/Mac users - for some software this won't mean much but for other stuff, it could be a nightmare. As an example, I know u-he's ACE requires a very specific configuration of hardware supporting SSE instructions - if a future AMD chipset skimped on this hardware (not an impossible scenario given AMD's track record), it could basically screw Mac/ACE users. Not saying there couldn't be some workarounds but I'd rather not see developers even put in that position.

[LoopStationZebra]

Why is this good news? Maybe 5 years ago you couldn't touch them when the first dual cores were released. But after that? Pfft.

[LoopStationZebra]

because it has no reference to fluffing, gays, Nederlandse or spraying into prepubescent girls' crotches

Oh, It's gay. Believe me.

[anybody human]

http://www.9to5mac.com/intel-apple-534093460

has alot to do with apple competing with intel so that caused their relationship to go sour.

Not in apple's best interest.



Check out the article

This seems to be happening to Apple a lot. First Google tries to crush their phone and now Intel. It's almost like these companies picked the oracle's brain about how to build their dream company and then became Titans of Industry. "We could change the world! Wait, Wall Street said what? Sorry man, it's just business". Silicon Valley is for gangsters only.

[Harris.Andrew]

http://www.9to5mac.com/intel-apple-534093460

has alot to do with apple competing with intel so that caused their relationship to go sour.

Meh, both of these cases of Apple turning away from Intel here have really solid technical explanations.

The Intel integrated graphics is a kind of hackish, generic solution for the price points Apple sells at - Apple would be completely nuts not to go for the nVidia stuff. MBPs with graphics acceleration always used non-Intel stuff IIRC.

For where smartphones are at right now, ARM makes a lot more sense than Atom - correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there are any smartphones using Atoms. The reasons why get technical, but basically there's a good trade-off in using a simpler ARM architecture that's optimized for a more limited set of operations. Smartphones push boundaries not only on CPU speed, but memory and critically power consumption, so the choice of chipset architecture really, really matters. The Atom is impressive, but still oriented towards being able to run something like a modern PC OS, which is necessarily suboptimal on a smartphone (at their current level of smart-ness, anyway).

I see these rumors lately and honestly I think, someone's playing a game to drive down stock prices of Apple like Mad Money's Jim Kramer suggested a couple years ago ...

[hoffman2k]

Didn't Apple claim around the time of the intel switch that they had Intel and AMD builds running alongside OSX for years? They said the switch would take a year and 6 months later we had new macs and a whole industry scrambling to create a Universal Binary.
Maybe that is all a switch would take. Another checkbox in Xcode and a shitty period of binary transitions.

[Harris.Andrew]

Didn't Apple claim around the time of the intel switch that they had Intel and AMD builds running alongside OSX for years? They said the switch would take a year and 6 months later we had new macs and a whole industry scrambling to create a Universal Binary.
Maybe that is all a switch would take. Another checkbox in Xcode and a shitty period of binary transitions.

I'm sure the codebase for OS X is pretty well designed and modular. Crafting OS X to run on multiple architectures while only publishing one is probably a good practical test of the codebase as much as an experimental thing. Making things run optimally on any given architecture, however, won't be as straightforward. Specifically, from a higher-level language perspective, using Intel, AMDs, any current permutation of x86, should more or less just work, and work without the need for multiple binaries like there was with PPC -> Intel. But the chips can still be different enough that there are assembly level or micro-architecture level things going on that kill efficiency.

Since both Intel and AMD stuff use the x86 instruction set, conflicts should generally only be stuff that's been optimized at an assembly level. Commonly, developers tweak this sort of code for the most computationally intensive processes in their plugs. But there's a huge amount going on implementation-wise underneath the x86 instruction set, with pipelining and registers and different computational sub-units etc. -- micro-architecture. AMD and Intel implement this micro-architecture in very different ways. It turns out there are at least some optimizations one can do for one architecture that won't make sense on another. One would just end up with sub-optimal code on the wrong processor, but these optimizations can easily make or break whether the code runs acceptably fast enough. AMD / Intel would not be any worse than PPC / Intel was, but it's still a burden on developers.

Since I'm already overly speculative here, I mean, there's a chance that a new AMD which outsources fabrication combined with a really strong voice from Apple on long-term goals of their architecture, plus a few other random things (LLVM?), could end up with some really awesome processors for audio software. But AMD's track record has generally (not always, but generally) been producing generic x86 that's cheaper but slower than Intel, always a pretender to the throne. At times, I don't doubt that scoring well on benchmarks has driven AMD's design - the graphs always suggest AMD has a few exceptional benchmarks but so often that doesn't translate into anything in the real world. So, I don't really see Apple leaping into this with AMD, unless AMD stops being Intel-on-a-budget.

I'm kinda trashing AMD here if anyone responds to show me I'm wrong on some point somewhere, I'd welcome it - just, no need to turn this into some lame Intel/AMD war.

[leedsquietman]

Developers already still have to code and optimize for AMD processors on windows, because it still has a large enough share to warrant it. So, it shouldn't be too much of a hassle. At one time it was Intel, AMD and Cyrix, the latter having gone under and now that AMD owns ATi, it is preferable to have an AMD/ATi combination than an Intel with integrated GMA graphics.

Perhaps they will put the AMD chips into the Macbook and lower end Imacs and Intel in the more expensive Mac Book Pro and Mac Pro.

Probably all a big red herring anyway just to twist Intel's arm ...

[H20nly]

I am, and I don't think this is good news at all. Intel and AMD may technically run more or less the same machine code, but there's still potentially plenty of architecture-based conflicts that would require developers to either rewrite critical sections of any assembly-optimized sort of code to satisfy AMD/Mac users - for some software this won't mean much but for other stuff, it could be a nightmare. As an example, I know u-he's ACE requires a very specific configuration of hardware supporting SSE instructions - if a future AMD chipset skimped on this hardware (not an impossible scenario given AMD's track record), it could basically screw Mac/ACE users. Not saying there couldn't be some workarounds but I'd rather not see developers even put in that position.

Does the sound of Live's summing engine bother you too?

[Pyro Z]

Wait, they are unhappy with Intel's turnaround time, so their solution is to go with a company that has less resources, slower processors, is heavily in debt and troubled financially, and consistently has manufacturing problems and shipping delays?

Yeah....I'm with leedsquietman, this is nothing but a corporate chess move.

[Harris.Andrew]

Does the sound of Live's summing engine bother you too?

My arguments here have been a little paranoid, worst-case scenario but it's definitely not imaginary. If you look into what's been happening for the past 10 years with SSE between Intel and AMD, you should find that it's a pretty ruthless industry. Apple moving to AMD would just add fuel to this fire, IMO. There's definite risk attached to that move. I absolutely see plausible risk for something like a massive fracturing of the x86 or SSE architecture in the sum of AMD and Intel and Apple's history (AMD threatens this, like, every 2 years), and an almost guaranteed risk of developers taking some kind of hit - it might not be show-stopping but it's at least another source of problems they didn't create but still would have to clean up.

[H20nly]

^ fair enough.

some of the issues you described above though, would be driver issues on the side of the vendor of said software/hardware (u-he etc.). its up to them to make sure their "equipment" works. they have to live up to their claims. in this case, Apple would only have to provide a platform. should vendors choose not to be able to launch from it then they do so at their own risk.

nothing is constant except change, especially when it comes to technology.

Apple is going to have to feel the growing pains if they wish to capture a larger part of the HUGE market share some feel they are closing the gap on. I doubt Intel is loosing money. If they can't make processors fast enough for Apple, thats more than likely a result of them not being the priority... if you think about it... make Apple's niche happy vs. make the masses happy. Intel don't care about Apple... Intel cares about Apple's money, but not at the expense of the rest of the wad.

[Harris.Andrew]

^ fair enough.

some of the issues you described above though, would be driver issues on the side of the vendor of said software/hardware (u-he etc.). its up to them to make sure their "equipment" works. they have to live up to their claims. in this case, Apple would only have to provide a platform. should vendors choose not to be able to launch from it then they do so at their own risk.

Well, the only thing I would say here is Apple has a track record of making decisions somewhat secretively where developers can get run over. The original question was, is a switch to AMD a good thing for Mac users or not? My logic is just that it's probably bad (maybe not too bad at all, maybe horrible) for developers, and this in turn hurts users. Having heard nothing more about this story I'm convinced it was an anomaly, but in the hypothetical - there's no way to know whether it takes a day or a month (really, optimizing across micro-architectures is about as time-consuming as anything I can imagine) from, sort of, boutique developers who tend to be my favorites by far. Or for some developers who may have been on the fence about Mac development, whether they do that or not.

nothing is constant except change, especially when it comes to technology.

For sure. Maybe ... nothing is constant except for the failure of technology to not engender the (at least apparent) need for more technology