By: Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org), June 22, 2020 2:25 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
Chester (lamchester.delete@this.gmail.com) on June 22, 2020 1:32 pm wrote:
> Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on June 22, 2020 11:44 am wrote:
> > Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on June 22, 2020 11:26 am wrote:
> > > It's real!!!!
> >
> > Well we saw something of how x86 apps will work.
> > Any comments from the various people making strong claims regarding this?
> > Of particular interest was (img)
>
> We haven't seen much in terms of CPU performance. Several comments:
> I think they're trying to show graphics acceleration works properly on the
> A12Z and Rosetta 2 is functional. There was no attempt to show A12Z being competitive
> with desktop Intel/AMD chips - even ones from a few years ago.
The point of the exercise is to reassure customers that "all the apps you know and love will work without a hitch". The point is NOT to show tech-heads how much faster one CPU is than another.
This is not a product demonstration; the demo systems are A12Z, not the SoCs that will ship (which will be at the very least A14 based, but which will likely have 8 large cores, more memory channels, better GPU, ...) So there's little value in giving performance indications for a system that will be, at the very least 1.5x faster single threaded and quite possibly 3x+ multi-threaded.
> IMO we have to wait a couple years for Apple to release a desktop ARM chip before drawing
> conclusions (or at least for the A12Z dev kit to get out into the wild). They said the transition
> would last that long. And I hope they do well, because that'll light a fire under Intel and
> AMD. The next few years should be very interesting for CPU microarchitecture.
End user macs will ship end of this year (ie A14 based, IMHO). Two year transition probably means that A15 (next year) will be the one that scales larger (beyond 8+8?) cores via whatever mechanism (chiplets? separate die?)
> Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on June 22, 2020 11:44 am wrote:
> > Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on June 22, 2020 11:26 am wrote:
> > > It's real!!!!
> >
> > Well we saw something of how x86 apps will work.
> > Any comments from the various people making strong claims regarding this?
> > Of particular interest was (img)
>
> We haven't seen much in terms of CPU performance. Several comments:
- Showing off Word/Excel/Powerpoint is strange. Those apps run fine on an underclocked Atom
- DNG files in Lightroom - weird they didn't show exporting/raw conversion. Getting
> low res previews of effects was very fast on 2013-era mobile Haswell. Maybe they didn't
> show export because FPU performance is one of Intel's strengths (2x256-bit AVX execution
> units), and processing high res images really takes advantage of that. - Maya - I don't have Maya, but Blender's workspace view is a very light GPU load. I suspect it's the
> same for Maya. If they were confident in CPU performance, they'd show a CPU render. They did not. - Playback of multiple 4K streams - just means their GPU has a
> modern video engine. Intel's iGPUs could do this years ago - Tomb Raider - they ran through a small, isolated area without any enemies/allies
> present. I expect the weakest CPUs to have no trouble with that.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I think they're trying to show graphics acceleration works properly on the
> A12Z and Rosetta 2 is functional. There was no attempt to show A12Z being competitive
> with desktop Intel/AMD chips - even ones from a few years ago.
The point of the exercise is to reassure customers that "all the apps you know and love will work without a hitch". The point is NOT to show tech-heads how much faster one CPU is than another.
This is not a product demonstration; the demo systems are A12Z, not the SoCs that will ship (which will be at the very least A14 based, but which will likely have 8 large cores, more memory channels, better GPU, ...) So there's little value in giving performance indications for a system that will be, at the very least 1.5x faster single threaded and quite possibly 3x+ multi-threaded.
> IMO we have to wait a couple years for Apple to release a desktop ARM chip before drawing
> conclusions (or at least for the A12Z dev kit to get out into the wild). They said the transition
> would last that long. And I hope they do well, because that'll light a fire under Intel and
> AMD. The next few years should be very interesting for CPU microarchitecture.
End user macs will ship end of this year (ie A14 based, IMHO). Two year transition probably means that A15 (next year) will be the one that scales larger (beyond 8+8?) cores via whatever mechanism (chiplets? separate die?)
