Multi-core A4 based Macs on the way?

[spektrumcreations]

So, I've been thinking about this...

 

Since Apple now has introduced the A4 chipset, basically ARM RISC processors, in first the iPad, then the iPhone and iPod Touch, and most recently (as of this writing) Apple TV, I have fears about the future of hackintoshing...

 

Since the ARM-based A4 chipset is not the same as that of x86 instruction sets, I question if Apple is considering developing Macs that use multi-core, even multi-processor Apple chips, that will stray further from the ARM style chips used in other Mobile Internet Devices, phones, etc... This move would potentially only require a porting of what would then be an A4/ARM/RISC based kernel to a kernel compiled for x86(intel/amd)...

 

Taking it a step further though, as far as I've been able to assess, Apple has taken more of an embedded OS approach with iOS, which seems to present further potential challenges to the hackintosh community.

 

Honestly, if Ubuntu had a solid application like Garageband (circa iLife '08, not iLife '09 which was dumbed down too much and made it more difficult to do certain things) and solid iMovie and iDVD style apps, which was not complicated (as it is currently) by routing signals through ALSA or whatever, and also had better gaming, then I'd leave both OS X and Windows behind.

 

That said, I am very fond of OS X and cringe at the thought of losing the ability to control the hardware and run the OS I want, in this case, OS X.

 

It makes me wonder if there's another solution, a solution that would help the people at Apple realize that some of us "just want the OS".

[Nghia Developer]

To answer your question: maybe no, hardly yes

I don't think x86 will be replaced by A4 at least in the next 10 years

If Apple uses A4 it could be the end for Hackintosh however, it could be the end for Apple too because:

The reason why current Macs are become more and more popular is because with x86 we can install both Snow Leopard and Windows, or even Linux on Mac, with A4, there's no Windows and while Windows still dominates the computer world, moving to A4 is a risk

When Mac is about 50% of market share, Apple perhaps will change to A4

 

A4 is still not as strong as x86 (and it variant x64) made by Intel or AMD, as long as these companies lead/beat up A4, x86 is the best and only choice for Mac

[spektrumcreations]

To answer your question: maybe no, hardly yes

I don't think x86 will be replaced by A4 at least in the next 10 years

If Apple uses A4 it could be the end for Hackintosh however, it could be the end for Apple too because:

The reason why current Macs are become more and more popular is because with x86 we can install both Snow Leopard and Windows, or even Linux on Mac, with A4, there's no Windows and while Windows still dominates the computer world, moving to A4 is a risk

When Mac is about 50% of market share, Apple perhaps will change to A4

 

A4 is still not as strong as x86 (and it variant x64) made by Intel or AMD, as long as these companies lead/beat up A4, x86 is the best and only choice for Mac

 

You make some very good points. Specifically, the ability to run other OSes on Macs is a very strong point. Still the thing that concerns me is the idea of Apple going that route to pave their own road using emulation or cloud services to access virtual machines through more lucrative partnerships, most likely with Microsoft and Canonical, by requiring licensing and of course getting their cut of the licensing. I agree that it would be a bad move. But, that is my opinion. I question what percentage of Mac users use their Mac for A/V and other content creation instead of just basic tasks like browsing, document and spreadsheet creation, basic presentations and basic gaming, and audio/video consumption; all of which could easily be done on a $1000 Mac with a beefed up multi-core, custom A4 (or A5 if that's how they'd approach the differentiation) chip set that allows for a more powerful yet less power-hungry system. The Mac Pro then becomes essentially the system that they would target at media artists but even then...

 

My HP Mini 311-1000nr netbook with a single core, dual threaded Atom n270 1.6ghz and 3gb of ddr2@800mhz runs OSX great. The nVidia ION chipset is powerful enough to run QE/CI but is incapable of working with video editing. The would be solved simply by a more powerful GPU and so, really, I would think it would be more likely within 5 years, perhaps even closer to 2 years tops before the entire line of Apple computers is using their own proprietary hardware.

[applehacker]

x86_64 ftw. No A4 garbage.

[Hangten]

@spektrumcreations

 

 

Nothing personal, but I think you should look at the history of computers and really its not like someone needs to own or could ever own a Big Blue IBM mainframe but you do realize Intel has a 32 core or something of that nature down its pipe. And the power envelope to number crunching is what you might consider the specific use is cloud or clusters of computational power. So use your little iphone to tether as a supercomputing control panel... All crunching even graphics could be done in the hive of superclusters x86_64. And you do realize that 128bit computing has been tried but its not practical at this time and with ram or density getting nuts it wont be long for that to be a reality.

 

I think the answer you might be looking for in just five years or so will be seeing light working in the nano scale micro fibers acting as switching resistors. Intel and light peak will surely be off springing something and so will AMD's Fusion so combined existents of both or all three (mobile, general consumer computers, monster data farms) is painting in my opinion a really extraordinary future.

128bit Microsoft coming

Edited September 23, 2010 by Hangten

[tdtran1025]

Power, power, and less power, consumption, that is. There is already a massively parallel machine built on A9 Cortex chip for research purposes. A4 is a weak sibling built for Apple by ARM using the a variant of A8. What's going to stop Apple from doing a 8-core of A9 for their bread & butter MBP has many fold the performance of the current offering yet can last 2 days on a single charge? Think about it. Apple already has plan for the next iPad that can do 1080p HD video. It means iTV and iPhone-x would have the same capability.

Hey, I am all for it since they are (devices) now ubiquitous electronic appliances and the less current they draw, the happier I am.

Then again desktop machines will always be different. But they also be running cooler, too.

[spektrumcreations]

Power, power, and less power, consumption, that is. There is already a massively parallel machine built on A9 Cortex chip for research purposes. A4 is a weak sibling built for Apple by ARM using the a variant of A8. What's going to stop Apple from doing a 8-core of A9 for their bread & butter MBP has many fold the performance of the current offering yet can last 2 days on a single charge? Think about it. Apple already has plan for the next iPad that can do 1080p HD video. It means iTV and iPhone-x would have the same capability.

Hey, I am all for it since they are (devices) now ubiquitous electronic appliances and the less current they draw, the happier I am.

Then again desktop machines will always be different. But they also be running cooler, too.

 

That's the point I was trying to get to. The cloud computing idea was not a solid conclusion. I was trying to just quickly brainstorm, a thought in process, about what was seeming possible.

 

In fact, this article ( http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/09/2...Hybrid-ARM-Chip ) was posted to Slashdot.org today. The concept of these in a MBP (MacBook Pro) is more than feasible, as you more clearly were able to articulate. Thanks for getting the point of my concern.

 

At this point, after a little more thought, the only thing that Apple would need to do with the Mac Pros is move to the system on a chip idea(which I may be misunderstanding to be a firmware based, embedded OS rather than a disk based OS), while still using the Xeon multi-cores. Then the hackintosh community would be destined to challenges beyond simply porting a little bit of a kernel or extracting a few bits of hardware data for kext modification...

 

And just to address the post about 128bit and understanding the hardware. Just by increasing the L2 or L3 caches (or the equivilent thereof), and increasing bus speeds, the performance would be higher, even with a lower clocked cpu. This is what Apple is great at is matched hardware. And the point of them owning their own chip manufacturing suggests that they will develop them in such a way as to meet their goals of power efficiency > better battery life > environmentally friendly AND ultimately a capable computer system that allows at the very least, the same (upon introduction) or better performance than the current/previous Mac systems.

 

Though I could be wrong, it makes sense. Luckily that's not happened yet.

[Hangten]

"The system-on-chip design, based on ARM's v7 MP series, features two dedicated 1.5GHz processing cores plus a third 624MHz core in a single application processor - making Marvell the first company to bring such a beast to market"

link to info

 

 

So, does that mean that only a single application can run? per core! and I need to ask at what resolution can my GUI be and how much memory... price to value of a MBP of = computing power? This posting is only for as you call it brainstorming.

 

And when running 4g does my power eat the dust? Like its been explained or not?

[spektrumcreations]

"The system-on-chip design, based on ARM's v7 MP series, features two dedicated 1.5GHz processing cores plus a third 624MHz core in a single application processor - making Marvell the first company to bring such a beast to market"

link to info

 

 

So, does that mean that only a single application can run? per core! and I need to ask at what resolution can my GUI be and how much memory... price to value of a MBP of = computing power? This posting is only for as you call it brainstorming.

 

And when running 4g does my power eat the dust? Like its been explained or not?

 

Seriously, that link was effin' hysterical. "Oh my god, I think I just had an aneurysm. Yes. I am dead now. You killed me." LMFAO

 

I would guess the technology still doesn't exist in the form of a prototype MBP just yet. However, if I were a computer engineer or Steve-O J. I would probably be figuring out ways of designing or re-designing the ARM/RISC style chips to utilize multi-threaded task management. Kinda talkin' out my butt there but...

 

I did look up 'system on a chip' and it seems like just a buzzphrase really. There doesn't seem to be any indication that the concept of 'SoC' has anything to do with a firmware based OS.

 

thanks for the laugh...

[ameris_cyning]

It will never happen.

 

Many people were pissed at Apple when they switched to Intel. Switching to a different processor 5 years later is going to {censored} developers off and buyers.

[an1r0n]

There's a huge chance that A4 could stop us from building Hackintosh (at least for a while). I assume that the next big move in iMacs or even Mac Pro-s will be A4 chip, along with the Intel. So, just to clarify, I'm saying it will have both chips. Why do I think it's possible, hear me out:

 

- A4 chip could boot SplashTop like instant-ON iOS which will give you access to your files without starting the Mac OS.

 

- There is a quite big possibility that A4 could be used for checking if the hardware is genuine or not. Hell, Apple could change EFI or somehow integrate it into A4's iOS! And that's when it get's interesting ; )

 

Just have this on your mind, any changes or new chipsets / processors won't stop us from making Hackinotshes ; )

 

Cheers to all...

[chipped]

No way... They just can't pull a 50x performance increase out of their ass first of all. ARM processors are typically used in low power devices and thats where they'll stay. You find them in most small things like routers, modems, iphones, ipads, mp3 players, <insert other smartphone here>, etc. It's just not fast enough buddy