Apple switching to ARM for the Macs
Nov 21, 2020, 9:18 pm
#31
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I don't think Rosetta supports the privileged levels needed for x86 OS virtualization. Plenty of older articles about that. I'd be happy to be proven wrong about this.
VMWare, Parallels, etc aren't talking about it yet.
Eventually there will probably be something, but it's not there yet.
-David
Nov 21, 2020, 11:02 pm
#32
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Supporting a hypervisor on top of the emulated x86 environment would be harder, and the Intel and AMD virtualization extensions are both going to be in patent for a while yet, but there's little reason to do that.
It's much slower, but QEMU is open source, and can run Windows 10 in pure emulation mode right now. Given that it has a MacOS-Intel port, and Linux AArch64 can emulate Windows 10 successfully today, if nobody has gotten that working on MacOS-ARM it's just a matter of time.
Parallels also had something to say about it at WWDC although the details are vague: https://www.parallels.com/blogs/apple-silicon-wwdc/ although the wording there is quite vague
Nov 22, 2020, 2:12 am
#33
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It will be interesting to see the performance benchmarks. Just ordered a ThinkPad T-series with an AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U (8 cores, 16 threads with SMT; and, of course, no BigLittle arch or the like). Looks like multi-threaded performance will be on par with the M1 and single-threaded performance slightly lower. But, ofc, numbers on the M1 are limited so far.
Still think it's the more robust way to go. I'm sure there are gonna be issues with non-native x86-64 code (or x64 code, as M$ calls it) for some time to come despite Rosetta 2 and virtualization.
Still think it's the more robust way to go. I'm sure there are gonna be issues with non-native x86-64 code (or x64 code, as M$ calls it) for some time to come despite Rosetta 2 and virtualization.
Nov 22, 2020, 3:25 am
#34
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Nov 22, 2020, 5:40 am
#35
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There are some benchmarks posted on Anandtech. Native performance is in line with what I read elsewhere. What's interesting, though, is that they run a large number of benchmarks natively as well as under Rosetta2. The performance drop with Rosetta2 is between 5 and 50% with roughly 30% on average (the largest performance penality of ~50% is indicated by Cinebench R23 multi-threaded).
Not trying to dispute the significance of Apple's new design, but I personally am in the camp of holding out for another year or two until the share of native software is larger than today.
Not trying to dispute the significance of Apple's new design, but I personally am in the camp of holding out for another year or two until the share of native software is larger than today.
Nov 22, 2020, 11:52 am
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Nov 22, 2020, 4:54 pm
#37
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Parallels also had something to say about it at WWDC although the details are vague: https://www.parallels.com/blogs/apple-silicon-wwdc/ although the wording there is quite vague
Here's an older article I found from June ...
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/23...ation-windows/
-David
Nov 22, 2020, 5:09 pm
#38
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Ahh, wither the MacBook 12? I have a colleague in support who is traumatised by Apple’s discontinuation of this line. He is at least able to bring up virtual machines supplied by customers, in VirtualBox, if he gets a call out in his local Aldi. For him, both M1 and the discontinuation of his favourite model are quite unpleasant.
Nov 22, 2020, 9:57 pm
#39
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Oh, am I the only one here with an M1 Mac? Well here goes. I have the base Air. It augments or replaced a 2015 MacBook Pro. The performance of the new laptop is nothing short of astonishing. Microsoft Word took 20 seconds to load first time; near as damming instant thereafter. Photoshop 30 seconds; likewise. Rosetta is superb. At base, the most I’ll ever manage in terms of virtualisation is something lightweight running XCFE rather than Gnome. That’s further down the line. Once I have a time machine I’ll experiment with my area of development - Java/Selenium. I expect X86 Java to run better than my Intel MacBook Pro.
Battey life? Crazy good. This is an ultra book that outperforms all but very high end Intel systems. Imagine having to work a full shift between London and Sydney. This will pretty much do it! There will be problems but Apple really have nailed this!
Battey life? Crazy good. This is an ultra book that outperforms all but very high end Intel systems. Imagine having to work a full shift between London and Sydney. This will pretty much do it! There will be problems but Apple really have nailed this!
) There are a couple of iPad apps I like that don't have Mac versions and they run great.I thought about the iMac earlier this year but paused. Now I can't wait for an Apple Silicon iMac (or equivalent). I've only had it a week (and my laptops are mainly traveling computers -- remember that, going to places where you don't live
) so it will be a while before a full test.I think Apple has a winner here.
Nov 23, 2020, 9:12 am
#40
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Rosetta can translate most Intel-based apps, including apps that contain just-in-time (JIT) compilers. However, Rosetta doesn't translate the following executables:
- Kernel extensions
- Virtual Machine apps that virtualize x86_64 computer platforms
Rosetta translates all x86_64 instructions, but it doesn't support the execution of some newer instruction sets and processor features, such as AVX, AVX2, and AVX512 vector instructions. If you include these newer instructions in your code, execute them only after verifying that they are available. For example, to determine if AVX512 vector instructions are available, use the sysctlbyname function to check the hw.optional.avx512f attribute.
- Kernel extensions
- Virtual Machine apps that virtualize x86_64 computer platforms
Rosetta translates all x86_64 instructions, but it doesn't support the execution of some newer instruction sets and processor features, such as AVX, AVX2, and AVX512 vector instructions. If you include these newer instructions in your code, execute them only after verifying that they are available. For example, to determine if AVX512 vector instructions are available, use the sysctlbyname function to check the hw.optional.avx512f attribute.
Whether it's possible to use Rosetta (or a future version of it) as a fast fully-emulated environment for other OSes (or for an OS compatibility layer) is a big unknown, but Apple is surely aware how heavily people use Docker in a lot of software development workflows, and hoping people moving to ARM images is a long term plan not a short term one.
In the meanwhile, it will be interesting to see if Wine (or the Proton fork of it) work on Rosetta, and how quickly people have instructions up for Windows-on-QEMU for ARM Macs.
Nov 23, 2020, 9:41 am
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The Wine-based commercial CrossOver software is available as an late alpha or early beta (unsure which) but I read on a German blog some software is running relatively stable on it. Note it is currently running on Rosetta2, it's not a universal app.
Nov 23, 2020, 3:35 pm
#42
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The only software I’ve seen not run smoothly is the desktop app from Tastyworks. It’s always been a bit unpolished, but lags more in the M1 mac than on windows.
It’s a legacy Intel-Mac app. I’m curious if running there Windows one simulated on Mac, is smoother than running the Intel-Mac version through Rosetta
It’s a legacy Intel-Mac app. I’m curious if running there Windows one simulated on Mac, is smoother than running the Intel-Mac version through Rosetta
Nov 24, 2020, 12:31 am
#43
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On a different note, ARM works very well for Apple's business model. My understanding is the good performance with lower power usage at the same time comes in no small part from the RAM being on-package. So Apple can continue to charge fantasy prices for RAM upgrades, as it's impossible to self-upgrade after purchase.
Nov 24, 2020, 9:22 am
#44
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Nov 24, 2020, 6:00 pm
#45
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It looks like some guy on YouTube got 6 displays plugged into an M1 Mac with DisplayLink adapters. Nowhere near all at 4K, mind you, but I could see most people being okay with like two displays at 4K or maybe even 1080p (+ the laptop's built in display).