BTW, this brings me to the age old question:
Can Core run on a Rpi4 with enough memory?
Why not? It’s less powerful than new macs, as it has less CPU cores. But it’s the same architecture, isn’t it?
If I don’t require complex DSP and DSD and oversampling and stuff, why not?
This is not in the same ballpark.
Apple’s ARM derivatives are the fastest in the industry.
RPi 4 has an SoC designed to be cheap, not fast.
The Rpi4 is not only not in the same ballpark as the forthcoming Apple ARM CPUs, it’s not even in the same ballpark as other existing ARM SBCs.
Even if there were a version of Roon Core for ARM, the RPi4 would not be a suitable platform.
Don’t get me wrong: I own more Raspberry Pi’s than I care to admit. But I understand what they’re good for (and not good for).
If course. Long time ago. OpenGL and Mono are things of the past. Certainly for Apple
The Arcorn Archimedes… I owned an A3000.
That machine, the OS, was sooooooo ahead of it’s time. Loved it!
They were great. I upgraded to a RISC PC which was super cool. You can run RISC OS on an RPi, which is a real nostalgia trip.
Notes from yesterday’s Apple WWDC:
I think it’s worth acknowledging the openness by which these guys operate. Not many vendors are this open about what’s going on. It makes me not like the silly complaining I see occasionally here on this forum.
Thank you, @danny and everyone at Roon, for a great product and also for doing it the right way (at least from what it looks like to me on the outside).
so is it possible have roon core for ARM based NAS?
(Without any inside information, @danny can say more) I think we get better insight by not thinking of Apple’s new stuff as ARM. Yes, of course it’s based on ARM, but an essential element of the modern ARM world is silicon customizability. The Apple chips have a lot of unique power. And in fact, Apple doesn’t talk much about ARM, the refer to it as Apple Silicon. So whatever we get on the new Mac doesn’t necessarily translate to other ARM devices.
And we should be happy about that, both ARM and Linux are remarkable for scaling both up and down. In our space, we see a lot of small, power-sipping, low cost devices, and at the other end devices competing with Intel-based stuff. They are not the same.
People who know more about modern silicon and their manufacturing processes have told me that the ARM camp can’t match Intel’s raw technology prowess, but they compensate with flexibility, with the ability to put various custom processors on the silicon. All modern devices, but especially Apple’s, contain a lot of specialized processors that can do some task faster and with less power than a software implementation running on the main CPU. Consider a phone playing music while otherwise shutdown, a lot more frugal than CPU playback.
In classical computer architectures, especially on servers, going back to the 60s, we talk of SMP for Multi Processor systems, but we should not forget the S, it stands for Symmetrical, multiple identical processors. Today we see an explosion of Asymmetrical multi-processing. ARM is strong here, and Apple more than most.
But this makes it difficult to generalize about ARM-based systems.
An exciting time for us as consumers. Exciting and challenging for the engineers.
You don’t think it’s using the “main CPU” while it’s doing that? I do.
Your larger point is well taken, though.
And then there’s the whole RISC (ARM) / CISC (808X) debate, which seemed so important in the 80’s…
A big unknown is if (or possibly when) Apple will decide to change the instruction set and/or pipelines of their CPUs; at which point they will no longer be ARM compatible.
Whilst currently they are solidly based on the ARM big.LITTLE architecture as you describe, Apple own these specific chip designs outright (they bought the chip design from ARM completely, as opposed to just licensing it). So they can change it as they see fit, and may not care about wider compatibility as long as they keep their own toolsets up-to-date and their developers happy.
Let’s not forget that Apple has been making chips that consume very little power yet, for single core tests, show impressive speed. The A13 at is on par with the Intel i9-9900K in single core speed. Just think what might be possible if Apple are not limited to 6 watts and could use 95 watts like that i9.
Yeah, but all these arguments (and acronyms) aside, what matters today is the execution.
And that’s where Apple Silicon shines.
Anybody can put stuff in a SOC, but Apple has done more.
An iPad today is not just fast in benchmarks, but it is power-frugal, and relegating work to coprocessors is a part of both.
I’m actually thinking I may get one of the new Macs, because of this silicon.
The benefit vs. learning curve has never seemed compelling before, I use iOS but no Macs, but now… Intriguing.
I guess my point was a wider one; if and when we get a Roon build that runs on this desktop-grade Apple (ARM) silicon then it may not necessarily be compatible with other generic ARM CPUs like used in the RPi etc.
But I agree, I am intrigued as to how much performance Apple can squeeze out of these chips when the mobile device limitations are removed.
That’s pretty much guaranteed, just as the Windows build doesn’t run on Intel-based Linux boxes.
I was thinking of a headless Roon server installation, which might be a bit more portable, but yes quite. So Roon would still need to consciously add broad ARM CPU support. Although having to at least think about it for the new breed of Macs might move them a step closer.
But I think Roon would be crazy to provide an ARM-Linux version of the Core. Imagine the number of people trying to run Core on under-powered devices, and then complaining about it in Support.
Yes it could be a disaster for sure.