Apple Keynote WWDC New FCPX and ARM processors

All I can say is WOW
new Macs will be built using Apple silicone SOChips and designs.
ARM processors were rumored and will start to arrive for retail this year. A12Z shown in Demo.
Short section at end showing FCPX running on ARM and it is a new version 10.5.? Need to see if version # is visible in video.
Save my pennies and hope that Apple's previous silicone production experience will translate over without too many issues especially for 1st gen Macs.
Hope this Helps, Greg

Looks no different from 10.4.8···

They did mention some "intelligent" function to keep the subject centered while he switched from 16:9 to a social media type frame dimension.

Given the developers can get an ARM based MacMini my hunch is we'll see MacMini and maybe MacBook Air by the end of the year.

Two year transition seems long though. I wouldn't want to buy the last Intel iMac or MBP.

FCPX demo on new "Apple Silicon" was lame as all get out. They did what third party plugins do. This encourages the belief that they don't care. I pray I am wrong.

cseeman wrote: They did mention some "intelligent" function to keep the subject centered while he switched from 16:9 to a social media type frame dimension.

Yes, looks like content-aware trimming combined with tracking. Something, if it was just for the shown gimmick, I hadn't been holding my breath for. But the current FCP can't do this, so there must be a new version in the pipeline. Also, at some time I updated some native apps, and that was the time their icons changed appearance:

... like iTunes turned from blue to green or vice versa, and others. Seems to say that the app icons are stored within the app package. As for this icon, the main differences are that the slate is no longer slightly tilted and therefore looks less dynamic. And that it's fat and rounded. If a fat hen and a movie slate had a baby, that's what it looked like.

cseeman wrote: Two year transition seems long though. I wouldn't want to buy the last Intel iMac or MBP.

Sure. I'm old enough to remember as well Rosetta as the Universal binaries. Back then, when NLEs and their computers were ridiculously weak and slow, nobody ever had a serious problem with the transition. Otherwise they wouldn't have chosen the same names. But I know exactly what you mean. I was really determined to buy a new iMac today. In comes Tim Apple and announces, well folks, there is some awesomeness on the horizon, but for the time being we'll sell you some Intel based iMacs waiting on the shelves, stay tuned for autumn!

FCPX.guru wrote: FCPX demo on new "Apple Silicon" was lame as all get out. They did what third party plugins do. This encourages the belief that they don't care. I pray I am wrong.

Please explain. EDIT: just saw your other thread:

FCPX.guru wrote: But we saw nothing a current Mac model can't do. WFT, man?

Performance? We can't really judge, can we? It has been sufficient for me for years anyway. But the foundation (BTW, the Foundation trailer? Forget everything you ever saw! Or else this may look quite familiar!) of smart functions - a.k.a. deep learning a.k.a. AI - for various purposes may need more horsepower. I thought they might deliberately have chosen an underwhelming example to keep the good stuff for later.

FCPX.guru wrote: FCPX demo on new "Apple Silicon" was lame as all get out. …

a fully functioning, smooth working FCPX, running on an iPad (so to speak) … lame???
hmm... I come to a completely opposite conclusion.
Time will tell …

… oh! Just noticing: trusty ol' friend, my MacMini 2012 (with firewire!) does not support Big Sur!!
www.apple.com/macos/big-sur-preview/

After just nine years time for new hardware … oh my!

Everything shown and mentioned during the keynote about FCPX (and most other things) can be done today, be it with third-party add-ons. Nothing they showed or said was groundbreaking. And not just FCPX, but across the board. "Hey look! We're mimicking add-ons in the OS!" Sorry, not impressed. Overreaching but nothing honestly ground-breaking. No, no FCPX until fall. Until then, we suffer it disintegrating with every new Catalina upgrade.

Agreed. It's a worry for sure

Hey Karsten
You know I think I agree with you, It should be possible for FCPX to run on iPadOS. Didn't quite link iPad possibility.
Apple has been aligning the backend for uniformity between OS's with shared code/libraries/frameworks/Xcode/Swift so programming can be shared.

As far as performance goes, we'll have to wait for final product release and then testing. However, we do have comparisons between current products, and the ARM architecture in raw operations is at least as fast and sometimes faster than Intel, so I expect the new Macs to be at least equal, but power requirements to go down so laptops should go much farther between charges.
Who is to say that Apple won't release a new ARM processor beyond the A12Z that the Apple developer model Mini has? The developer kit is rental only, and in the past the ADK Intel computers shipped with a Pentium4(??) if I remember correctly, so we may (or not) see entirely new chips. The SOCs that Apple is making is also where you already see vast improvements over competitors ARM chips. So, we'll see…
Why didn't Apple buy ARM? It's was sold in 2016 to SoftBank a Japanese holding company for what is Apple pocket change. Apple has a licensing agreement only. Hope it is for a very long time.

Unfortunately, my 2012 rMBP is also not going to make the BigSur upgrade. I so love Big Sur. Have hiked and camped there many times. Hot springs too! Maybe next road trip:)

Be safe, Happy Editing,
Greg

There are many advantages to this. The 28-core Xeon in the Mac Pro is about $4,000, and Intel refuses to put Quick Sync on it. The 2016 and later MacBook Pros were supposed to get a 10 nanometer Intel CPU with better power efficiency but Intel's failure to deliver that hurt the battery life and thermals until Apple compensated somewhat with the 2019 model.

Up until competition from AMD, Intel restricted most "core" series CPUs to 4 cores. Except for a few enthusiast parts if you wanted more cores you had to pay for Xeon and a steep markup.

It remains to be demonstrated if Apple can deliver a truly high-end ARM CPU, but the progress to date seems promising. The first ARM Macs will probably be MacBooks, and even the current iPad Pro CPU is about that fast. A purpose-designed ARM CPU targeted for laptop/desktop power and thermals would probably be considerably faster, have more cores or both.

Also yet to be discussed by Apple is the GPU plan. The ARM integrated GPU may be better than Intel's but Apple may continue using discrete AMD GPUs for a while on certain Macs.

As the complexity and sophistication of iPad OS apps increases, it becomes more compelling to give Mac the ability to directly run all those apps. That helps solve the MacOS "niche" app development problem. You might not want to run some junky little iPhone app but something like LumaFusion on an ARM Mac would be interesting.

There are many more 3rd-party app developers working on iOS apps than MacOS apps. iOS apps will continue to scale upward, esp on iPad. Imagine what LumaFusion or similar complex apps will be like in two years on a 12.9" iPad Pro running on an even faster ARM CPU. The ARM Mac gives the ability to run those natively with no changes, no translation and no emulation. There will be issues to solve with the touch vs keyboard/mouse UI paradigm, but Apple knows that.

In general people tend to think of running a desktop app like FCPX on an iPad, but ARM enables a MacBook to be essentially as thin, light and power efficient as an iPad. That ARM MacBook will also be able to run all iOS apps, so the line between the two device types becomes blurred - in a mostly beneficial way.

The "State Of The Platforms" keynote showed a standalone app, it was just for demo purposes, doing facial recognition on Apple Silicon vs Intel. Apple's chip was so much faster. Imagine doing a large feature documentary, wondering if you got shots of a specific famous person, and FCPX could find all those clips for you with facial recognition.

I've been editing all day with my 2015 rMBP, FCPX 10.4.8, Big Sur. After spending some time with Big Sur, I can tell you that you start to feel like you're using a large iPad. WWWHHHAAATTT???? But yeah, Big Sur is nice, I like it, very snappy, very stable for a version 1.0 beta.

I've read some folks dis FCPX simply because of the new icons shown in the keynote. Well, I'm not worried about what the icons look like.

The screenshot of FCPX in the WWDC keynote showed two features we don't currently have. Effects Favorites category, and a downward menu arrowhead to the right of the Project name in the Timeline pane. Interesting. They also kept the Browser and Inspector panes closed, I assume so we couldn't see hints of new features.

Also, remember Tim Cook said they were going to make more Intel Macs and support Intel Macs for many years to come. And that the transition to Apple Silicon will take two years. Expect the first models to come out to be low and middle range machines. They'll start off slow, then work up to the more powerful computers.

FCPX.guru wrote: The

I've been editing all day with my 2015 rMBP, FCPX 10.4.8, Big Sur. After spending some time with Big Sur, I can tell you that you start to feel like you're using a large iPad. WWWHHHAAATTT???? But yeah, Big Sur is nice, I like it, very snappy, very stable for a version 1.0 beta.

Also, remember Tim Cook said they were going to make more Intel Macs and support Intel Macs for many years to come. And that the transition to Apple Silicon will take two years. Expect the first models to come out to be low and middle range machines. They'll start off slow, then work up to the more powerful computers.

Your Mac Book Pro is now touch screen enabled because of Big Sur?

Both AMD and Intel have stated they are dedicated to low cost high core count CPUs. Not sure if the the Apple ARM processors will compete with a 32 Core CPU and RTX 3080 Ti. I imagine in another 3 years the 32 core CPUs will be more powerful, less expensive and use less electricity. Apple's ARM CPU may or may not be a better option for desktop computers than what Intel and AMD will have to offer in another 2 years from now. Only time will tell which technology will be the best bang for the buck.

I thought it interesting the during the opening keynote and the platform’s keynote nobody said ARM, always calling it Apple Silicon.

Tom
Apple Branding
Apple Silicon is more than just the ARM chips, it is all of the added SOCs integrated into the logic board. Apple has been making it's own chips (TSMC fabs) all along and only licenses the architecture created by ARM. It is the integration that can make devices run faster and more efficiently. Something I think you know.
Apple Branding wants to make clear that it isn't your Grandpa's Oldsmobile that you are driving, but AppleCar.

Craig F in the interview with John Gruber on Daring Fireball around 48min in says that the A12z is only a test device and Apple has NO intention of ever releasing in consumer device. Much bigger and better chips being prepared for the Mac line up.

Worlds fastest computer is now ARM based. ARM is an easily expandable RISC CPU processor, so things like core count is only constrained by device size/thermals/$$.
Wonder about RAM, will it be universal shared RAM like in current devices or will Apple create separate RAM for Macs.

I vote that we may see several Macs come out this year including a new Apple Silicon iMac(6K:unsure: ) and new laptops. Don't think it will only be low end Macs. Just guessing like everyone else.

Haven't had time to watch sessions from WWDC yet, so looking forward. Anyone have suggestions for interesting dev videos?

Happy Editing, Greg

VidGreg wrote: Worlds fastest computer is now ARM based....

If you mean the IBM Summit supercomputer, it is the world's fastest but it's based on the IBM POWER9 CPU, not ARM. The POWER9 is the descendent of the PowerPC CPU used in Macs from 1994 to 2006. It has nothing to do with ARM or Apple Ax CPUs.

The POWER9 RISC CPU is very fast but similar to high-end CISC Intel CPUs, it burns 130+ watts. It is a reason why for many years people thought there was no real advantage in RISC -- at very high performance levels they burn about as much power as a Xeon.

However it appears Apple may have some architectural secret in their SoCs. They are on a good trajectory but thus far have not actually demonstrated performance approaching a high-end Xeon or POWER9 CPU.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_(supercomputer)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER9

Edit/add: OK I see the 48-core Fujitsu A64FX ARM-based CPU is used in the new Fugaku supercomputer which as of June 22 is faster than the POWER9-powered IBM Summit.

"Yeah, I heard that story too, but I heard it was his foot."

VidGreg wrote: …Haven't had time to watch sessions from WWDC yet, so looking forward. Anyone have suggestions for interesting dev videos?
…

this caught my attention:
www.fcp.co/forum/2-off-topic/33325-wwdc-the-action-vision-app

Conc. 'first Macs with chips' … dare to say, easiest way to 'sell' the advantages of homebrewn silicon, are laptops, sort-of '24h battery life'. Because 'speed' is no asset in the consumer league, meanwhile any computer is 'fast enough'. Some überMacMini, a MiniPro, would be a step 2.....

my 5 ¢ …

VidGreg wrote: ...Much bigger and better chips being prepared for the Mac line up....Worlds fastest computer is now ARM based. ARM is an easily expandable RISC CPU processor, so things like core count is only constrained by device size/thermals/$$...Wonder about RAM, will it be universal shared RAM like in current devices or will Apple create separate RAM for Macs....

Greg, your post started me thinking. It appears the Mac ARM transition may be unlike the two previous transitions (Motorola 68K to Power PC, then to Intel x86), In those cases the CPU changed between CISC and RISC, but the system-level architecture did not change. E.g, the major functional blocks were CPU, memory, and a discrete GPU. It is possible the upcoming ARM transition may be different, but in a beneficial way.

The Fujitsu 48-core A64FX ARM CPU might give hints about this. It is specifically optimized for supercomputer use, but it does show that ARM architecture can scale to high-end Xeon and beyond. So desktop Mac users need not worry that future ARM-powered desktop Macs will be power efficient but slow. Indeed it currently appears there is no fundamental roadblock to making an ARM-powered Mac Pro which is considerably faster than the current 2019 x86 design.

If current trends in higher-end ARM CPUs are any guide, it it possible the overall system-level architecture may change over time. We might differentiate it this way:

Current x86 computer approach:
- Discrete CPU, GPU and memory
- Limited hardware accelerators (e.g, Quick Sync)
- Limited CPU cores, e.g, less than 16 on lower-end machines, less than 32 on higher end machines
- All CPU cores are symmetrical and "heavyweight", with good single-thread performance but high power consumption
- Scalability of CPU cores is hampered by energy cost of moving data around

Possible Future Apple ARM computer approach:
- ARM CPU may use on-chip memory, enabled by the smaller real estate of the CPU core
- Core scalability and power consumption greatly improved due to data locality enabled by on-chip memory
- Higher (maybe much higher) core counts
- Heterogeneous (not symmetrical) cores. Greatly expanded use of the high power plus low power cores used in mobile devices.
- The large flock of ARM cores if properly designed could eliminate need for a discrete GPU. E.g, A GPU is mainly a large # of lightweight cores. Given enough ARM cores a dedicated GPU might not be needed.
- Greatly increased use of heterogeneous hardware accelerators. Think of Quick Sync-like accelerators for many different tasks.
- Faster implementation of future accelerators. E.g, nine years after the debut of Quick Sync, Intel still won't use it on Xeon. If Apple wanted to add a hardware accelerator to their Ax CPU, they could do it immediately.

Intel's Quick Sync is part of the integrated GPU. Intel does not see the need to add a GPU to the Xeon CPUs.

No one knows what CPUs will be like two years from now but we do know AMD and Intel have to compete with each other. Competition is a good thing. If two years from now Apple only uses Apple's silicon wafers there will be no competition. On the Apple side AMD does not need to worry about competition from Nvidia.

Let me put it to you like this. The $6,000.00 Mac Pro can make use of the Promise RAID system. The problem is the Promise RAID system will get it's ass kicked by the competition at a fraction of the cost. I am not saying the Apple architecture is not good but without competition you might end up paying more and getting less. Do you see my point?