Thread: ARM based Macs?
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      02-10-2021, 11:41 AM   #39
mkoesel
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GuidoK View Post
It's the price you have to pay for extreme backwards compatibility.
Intel doesn't give a shit about apple, their main target is x86/x64 based pc (mainly windows based machines) as that market is way way bigger.
That's right. Being able to run arbitrarily old code forces decisions at both the architectural and micro-architectural level that are the enemy of simplicity. This ultimately makes for less efficient processors.

While AMD has fared better, they are still a slave to the same ISA. There's a reason why you don't see x64/x64 powered hand-held devices anymore. It was tried, but it didn't work. Performance/watt just isn't there, and the gulf remains visible as you scale up to laptops, desktops, servers, etc.

Quote:
And Microsoft has this thing about legacy compatibility.
I know that was tongue-in-cheek, but it's not just a nuance or quirk, it's probably the only thing keeping them alive at this point. In today's world, there are plenty of alternatives that give up nothing other than they require users and organizations to accept some up front change or concession - even if only minimally in some cases - in order to get up and running. Wintel offers smoother (or sometimes just the perception of smoother) upgrade transitions which turns out to be extremely valuable, and leads to massive advantage when fighting off threats to market share.
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