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Comment by ptrptr | Hacker News Reader

Question - is this a sign of maturity of ARM architecture? Can we really expect desktop OS to move to ARM? Could Apple start transitioning Apple AX into their laptops?

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Servers and desktops have very different requirements, just ask the linux guys. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I don't see that happening for another 5 years at least. Apple in particular is already getting a lot of flak for underpowering laptops, switching to Arm now would basically kill the entirety of their remaining high-end offering on desktop.

On the other hand, their A10 chip is roughly on par with the performance of the Intel chip they include in the 12" MacBook. They're not going to replace an i7 with an A10, but maybe replace the M3 or M5 with an A10, replace the i5 with an A11, and shoot for the i7 with an A12 or A13. Why else would they dump so much money into making the fastest ARM chip on the market? The iPhone doesn't need that much power, but they keep pumping it up anyway.

We all know OSX will run on ARM, they just use a different WM and call it iOS.

I've been speculating that they'll do a A11+x86 combo; possibly using a very underpowered, bargain basement x86 paired to an ARM for native binary compatibility during the transition.

Apple does have a massive team working on optimizing their ARM chips, they started out with redesigning the uncore, hired quite a bit of talent from other companies, and have moved to optimizing the CPU itself.

They even forced Global Foundries and Samsung to sync processes at 14nm to build their chips:

http://semiaccurate.com/2014/04/17/semiaccurate-right-apples...

Microsoft is releasing a version of Windows client (not to be confused with server, which was todays announcement) for ARM with an x86 compatibility layer.

For servers - yes. And not just the 64-bit ISA, but the server specs/standards, the hardware ecosystem, OEM/ODM engagement...and software, of course! And conjecture - in the cloud it won't matter what arch you are on.

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