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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: 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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