Apple are only interested in the Apple ‘ecosystem’ though, which will stunt their ambition sooner or later. Especially if these ARM based Macs don’t sell well, and Id say that’s a distinct possibility as the Mac market is not exactly huge. In that case the rest of their SoCs will have the same power restrictions as they have always had. There is no reason to believe that AMD, Intel, Nvidia etc wont catch up. They build chips for a wider range of scenarios than Apple can/will. And one of them may even buy ARM in the near future, although I personally hope that doesn’t happen.
Well, you guys can say that. But, let’s look at the mobile market. Has anyone caught up with Apple’s SoC yet? No, they have not. Every time they think they will, what they come up with does not perform in the real world as well as expected AND Apple comes out with a better SoC anyway.
Everyone else is invested in the Intel or Intel-compatible world. No one is going to take the time or money to create an SoC using ARM technology for the laptop/desktop that rivals what Apple is doing…not even ARM.
But they already are, and they are also creating server-grade CPUs with ARM cores as well. As with everything this will all move beyond what Apple’s niche will restrict them too because they only play in their consumer space.
Don’t change the meaning of my quotes. Yes, there are some servers out there using ARM technology. But, they do not rival what Apple is doing. ARM-based servers catching on is far from certain. So who knows how much might be invested in SoC development.
Annoying isn’t it?
Whether someone creates a SoC to rival Apple’s or not is fairly irrelevant as @danny had pointed out. Apple wont let you play in their walled garden so if their chips are faster so what ? If you want a ROCK on ARM, it isn’t going to be running on anything made by Apple. That doesn’t mean it wont be possible on other ARM-based hardware which could be perfectly performant for that task. The Apple cheerleading is missing the point.
@Speed_Racer, I think you are missing something.
Roon’s performance needs are not going up over time (well, not much). CPU speed is getting faster at a much faster rate than Roon can use it.
If CPUs keep getting faster and faster, it wont matter if you have the fastest (Apple), just that you have fast enough (everyone else).
Is the current fastest ARM CPUs, fast enough? Maybe Apple’s SoC is right now, but everyone will catch up to Apple’s current fastest. Let’s say the next ARM down from Apple today, is 50% as fast. In 2 years, let’s say both double in performance. Roon will be just fine on everyone else’s ARM, and even better on Apple’s, but no ROCK for Apple’s chips so it’s useless.
Then there’s this -
Is there a ROCK build for an existing ARM processor? Easier to go fanless, low-energy, cool.
Nope.
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Apple’s current Apple Silicon is more than fast enough for Roon and really nothing like any other ARM-licensed product available today or even expected in the next 2 to 3 years. The best ARM anything else out there probably isn’t ready.
Hopefully it gets other Arm vendors to create faster SOC system’s that will be quick enough for Roon, and open enough to run Linux. All the while being low power
I think Microsoft is probably hoping for the same thing as well
Mike
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It looks like Microsoft are heading down the same route as Apple and are planning to develop their own ARM based silicon. In both cases though the likelihood of it being open enough to run something like Roon OS seems slim.
Best we can hope is that a company like Qualcomm or similar steps up to produce an open SOC with similar (or sufficient) performance
Tim I hold out more hope on the Microsoft side, as such a large amount of Azure workloads run on Linux (though they are generally partnering with Qualcomm).
Qualcomm only seems to do the bare amount necessary each year to make their SOC faster (while improving ML and graphics capabilities), and this will hopefully be the competition they need to spur development. Sadly I think this could take several years to catch up, unless they have been holding back on us.
Mike
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Microsoft does not have the engineering prowess in place to do what Apple has done. Apple has been designing their own SoCs for 13+ years.
Let’s not forget that Apple has a special licensing agreement with ARM since Apple was one of ARMs founding partners. Apple also has a long and tight relationship with TSMC. Where is Microsoft going to go to get 5nm technology? AMD’s processors and SoCs are made by TSMC as well. Can TSMC handle Apple, AMD, and Microsoft?
No one has the investment in SoC design that Apple has. The fact that Apple licenses ARM IP for their SoCs should not encourage one to believe that other ARM licensees are anywhere close to what Apple has done. Apple is certainly not going to help anyone else out, that’s for sure. I think my “2 or 3 years” to have another ARM SoC like what Apple has today is overly optimistic.
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Yes the chips that Apple have produced are very impressive. Microsoft certainly have some work to do to get near them. Well done!
But that is all irrelevant. For all the power of these chips (from Apple or MS) they are unlikely to be accessible to something like Roon OS.
So if there is a desire to run Roon OS on ARM the devices will probably have to come from someone else. There would clearly be a market for high performance ARM chips outside of the walled gardens and they wouldn’t need to be as sooper-dooper as Apple’s are to run Roon OS.
Yes I agree Qualcomm do seem focussed on incremental improvements rather than step changes. Maybe the Apple silicon and MS plans will spur them on to keep up. We can but hope!
Tim while Microsoft has been partnering with Qualcomm on the laptop side, they have quietly been putting a lot of unseen effort into the data center Arm Chip’s, and really that’s probably what Roon needs.
Not sure these will ever see the light of day outside of Azure, but nobody partners like MS.
I’m certainly not hopeful for a few years, but the current 9th and 20th generation Intel Chip’s are perfectly fine for Roon.
It only things like multi zone DSD that kills one of those off.
But better performance and 10% of the power has got to get everyone excited. When you add the Synology/QNAP NAS that most of us have as well, then you could get touch greener systems that can do more work.
Mike
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As you say Microsoft have quietly been involved in custom silicon designs for 20+years so I agree that their efforts could certainly surprise the Appleistas!
But they are definitely more focused on the Azure side of things rather than than desktops.
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I am not sure that they will surprise Apple.
The way Apple have quietly revolutionised the chip industry over the last 10 years is incredible, and I do not think microsoft are capable of this (nor probably anyone else to be fair).
But it would be nice to think that something will come out of this effort that significantly improves the current state of play outside of Apple.
Microsoft has mostly been playing at Arm (on the desktop at least) and the results to now have been almost embarrassing, but I think this reflects more on Qualcomm than them as the chip vendor, but they should have been demanding more.
Mike
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If Microsoft decide this is a direction they want to move in, they could make it happen relatively quickly. They have the sort of money that would enable them to do that. And as an established company they don’t need to innovate. They let others take that gamble. They just buy their way into the benefits.