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posted by martyb on Monday July 13 2020, @03:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the Apple-of-my-eye dept.

Apple has built its own Mac graphics processors:

Like iPhones and iPads, Apple Silicon Macs will use an Apple-designed GPU – something that makes complete sense when you consider this is how current iOS devices work. But it could be a reason for pause by some high-end users during the transition period from Intel-based hardware.

[...] You see, while Intel Macs contain GPU’s from Intel, Nvidia and AMD, Apple Silicon Macs will use what the company seems fond of calling “Apple family” GPUs. These use a rendering system called Tile Based Deferred Rendering (TBDR), which iOS devices already use.

It works differently from the Immediate Mode rendering system supported in Intel Macs: While the latter immediately render imaging data to device memory, the former makes more use of the GPU by sorting out each element first before submitting it to device memory.

You can find out more here.

The effect is that TBDR rendering delivers lower latency, higher performance, lower power requirements and can achieve higher degrees of bandwidth. The A11 chip and Metal 2 really consolidated this technique.

It’s important to note that the GPU in a Mac with Apple silicon is a member of both GPU families, and supports both Mac family and Apple family feature sets. In other words, using Apple Silicon and Rosetta, you should still be able to use software designed for Intel-based Macs.

[...] How will Apple exploit this? Will it ditch fans in order to make thinner Macs? Will it exploit the opportunity to explore a new design language for its PCs? At what point will an iPhone become all the Mac you ever need, given your choice of user interface and access to a larger screen?


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2020, @08:18AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 13 2020, @08:18AM (#1020184)

    GPUs are hard, a lot harder than CPUs. 3dFX invented modern GPUs, and nVidia bought them. ATI was the largest maker of 2D and OEM graphics before inventing the Radeon and later being bought by AMD, and has spent 25 years trying to barely keep up with nVidia. Lots of other companies have tried to make competitive GPUs and it never works out. Matrox, Rendition, PowerVR, S3, SiS, Number Nine, Intel.

    Magic sauce technology (especially if it's the same as technology that has already been tried) rarely pans out. Fast memory, efficient render pipelines, and advanced drivers are what wins the day.

    Most Mac users barely care if the thing even switches on, but the ones doing serious graphics and video work need a real GPU. Apple hates games and doesn't really want them on the Mac at all, but the Mac can't survive long term exclusively as a fashion statement.

    Maybe Apple is OK with that. Maybe in a few years they're planning to come out with a dock where you plug in your iPhone and that's your Mac. Maybe Apple is counting on their strong position in smartphones to let them replace the PC with a phone entirely. It's a big, risky bet, especially since the dock is just naturally going to cost more than a whole Intel laptop (and the iPhone is slowly but surely losing its popularity). I'd bet more on the whole thing blowing up in their face, but it's their decision to make.

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  • (Score: 1) by petecox on Monday July 13 2020, @08:52AM

    by petecox (3228) on Monday July 13 2020, @08:52AM (#1020189)

    Maybe in a few years they're planning to come out with a dock where you plug in your iPhone and that's your Mac. Maybe Apple is counting on their strong position in smartphones to let them replace the PC with a phone entirely.

    e.g. Convergence on Ubuntu Touch. Continuum on Windows 10 Mobile.

    p.s. Google could already own that market if they put Chrome OS on phones. But instead they've settled on Android apps running in a window on touchscreen tablets.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 13 2020, @09:32AM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 13 2020, @09:32AM (#1020197) Journal

    Intel never stopped making integrated graphics, and now they are poised to beat AMD's iGPUs temporarily with Tiger Lake, make a return to discrete gaming GPUs, and more importantly, sell big discrete GPUs for AI and supercomputers [anandtech.com].

    Apple can probably scale up its current mobile iGPUs significantly for laptop/desktop-oriented versions. With sufficient die area and cooling, even SoCs can compete with discrete GPUs (see next-gen consoles that will have around RTX 2070 Super / RTX 2080 Super performance in an APU/SoC).

    Apple's hatred for games is greatly exaggerated.

    Revolution Software’s Beyond a Steel Sky brings new adventure to Apple Arcade [venturebeat.com]
    Apple is getting serious about iPad gaming with better gamepad and keyboard support [theverge.com]
    Apple Rumored to Be Working on an ARM-Based Console Most Likely Featuring Its Own A-Series Silicon [wccftech.com]

    They've sold billions of dollars worth of casual-ish games on iOS, all of which should be able to run on ARM-based Macs. Whether or not they will do much beyond that remains to be seen. The Nintendo Switch has shown that x86 games will be ported to an ARM device, even one with serious hardware constraints, if there is demand for it.

    The strategy they are talking about right now is putting ARM in Macs, and eventually Mac Pros, not docking. I don't see why they couldn't make iPhone docking a thing immediately, unless the connector needs changes to handle 6K+ resolutions or they want to try a WiGig approach. Seeing as Ubuntu Edge failed (by setting expectations too high) and nobody talks about Samsung DeX docking, maybe there isn't much demand for it yet.

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    • (Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday July 13 2020, @04:17PM (1 child)

      by Mojibake Tengu (8598) on Monday July 13 2020, @04:17PM (#1020418) Journal

      Gaming on iPad is as painful as is possible. Consider this: iOS has no method of terminating an app by user. I don't understand why if not for the pure purpose of stalking.
      Instead, the system kills the badly behaving app or when running out of resources. I'll address this situation later.

      In iOS fake multitasking system, originally only one, and now just 2 (in words: two) in current iteration of the system, applications could run in front end, facing the user.
      Anything on background can be killed at any moment at system's discretion. Killing means all network resources disconnected. One of the collateral damage of this tactics is iOS devices are nearly unusable for a simple remote terminal, even if you buy some fancy terminal app, for ssh session cannot survive reconnection. Sure, there are hacks for this condition, but not standard protocol.
      I hate Apple for this unlogic. On the protocol side, that practically means user is shackled to the http(s) world.

      Badly behaving means, any app can be killed for good reasons, like consuming to much memory or CPU time, but also for dubious system reasons like suddenly higher temperature on battery. The gaming device (iPad 6th generation, max possible memory) itself is underengineered badly. When running games, it is very easy to get the device overheated, so the game seemingly crashes, usually at climax of the thrilling combat because killed by system for strange internal temperature condition caused by heavy 3D rendering. Many known iOS games have inferior graphics in compare to other ARM platforms just because of that.

      Considering the fact Apple is partner to GE, pushing iOS into industry control panels, and also with Pentagon, providing custom iOS devices for SOG, this funny behavior is a good recipe for industrial accidents or even possible combat losses. I can't even conceive how people could be such stupid. Only comparable level of stupidity is the out of memory killer (known as famous OOM Killer) in Linux kernel.

      This is why I cannot tolerate transition of Mac platform to ARM and upcoming convergence of MacOS to iOS. I simply do not believe the Apple marketing propaganda about it.

      --
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      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 13 2020, @07:04PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 13 2020, @07:04PM (#1020578) Journal

        The propaganda has only just begun:

        Windows PCs Will Have to Switch Over to ARM CPUs Eventually to Match Apple’s Future Offerings, Says Former Mac Chief [wccftech.com]

        “Specifically, what are Dell, HP, Asus, and others going to do if Apple offers materially better laptops and desktops and Microsoft continues to improve Windows on ARM Surface devices? In order to compete, PC manufacturers will have to follow suit, they’ll “go ARM” because, all defensive rhetoric aside, Apple and Microsoft will have made the x86 architecture feel like what it actually is: old.”

        [...] “This leaves Microsoft with a choice: Either forget Windows on ARM and cede modern PCs to Apple, or forge ahead, fix app compatibility problems and offer an ARM-based alternative to Apple’s new Macs. It’s a false dilemma, of course. Microsoft will forge ahead…with repercussions for the rest of the Windows PC industry.”

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2020, @08:46PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 14 2020, @08:46PM (#1021465)

      Docking will be the killer when smartglasses start getting really mainstream - maybe another 5-10 years. Phone SoCs are already fast enough for 99% of people, but interfacing is the pain point. If you're not going chorded input (because nobody make chorded input devices for consumers except tapwithus, and despite being very cool, that is definitely not going to be mainstream). A Bluetooth (or usb-c hub) keyboard/mouse or AR "touchscreen" or gestures might be enough for most people.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 14 2020, @09:37PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday July 14 2020, @09:37PM (#1021489) Journal

    There's a new GPU player in town:

    Asia based Zhaoxin has plans for a dedicated graphics card series [guru3d.com]

    That one looks pretty lackluster compared to this concept from another Chinese company, also on a "28nm" node:

    Look out Nvidia and AMD… Chinese GPU maker has a GTX 1080-level card in development [pcgamesn.com]

    Chinese companies can take a cheap and readily available older node, make a large and power hungry GPU, put lots of High Bandwidth Memory on it to help performance and lower power consumption a bit, and then sell it at cutthroat margins so that it has decent price/performance.

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