Hi,
Yes, I also heard about the better energy efficiency of the arm
processor. That's probably the main reason why typical mobile devices
almost never run on Intel processors. What effect the change to arm will
have performance wise, esp. when libraries aren't yet optimized for that
processor, is another matter.
Even already confirmed that some gdal algorithms are optimized for Intel
only, so far.
And it will be significant work for some (Peter?) and will probably need
additional funding to do this work.
I don't blame Apple on this. It's a good move if hardware will go
greener because of this. But I expect QGIS to perform worse on MacOS arm
because of this change initially, until more optimizations towards arm
processors are in place.
Andreas
Am 24.06.20 um 15:20 schrieb Tim Sutton:
Hi
On 24 Jun 2020, at 11:52, Andreas Neumann <a.neum...@carto.net
<mailto:a.neum...@carto.net>> wrote:
Hi Peter,
Thanks for this feedback.
I remember when Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel that they had
kind of compatibility/abstraction layer that allowed old software to
work on the new intel platform. Are there similar plans with the
switch to arm?
Yes they will support application bundles that ship both ARM and Intel
architecture (“Universal Binary”) - see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_binary
They will continue to support their Intel based machines for years to
come (no specific end of life indicated yet that I have seen) but they
expect all new hardware to be sold to be based on ARM within 2 years.
I wouldn’t bash Apple on this - Intel have been slow at rolling out
small nanometer architectures and the whole world is moving towards
ARM - Windows is already available for ARM though they kinda fluffed
it. Plus they are a company who likes to periodically advance their
platform with breaking changes - just like we did going from QGIS 2 to
QGIS 3.
Apple are good at making their developer tools work nicely at
compiling software for the hardware they support. Since long ago Marco
Bernasocchi started making QGIS ARM friendly, hence QGIS for Android,
QField and INPUT.
For me I welcome this - the ARM chips will use less power when under
low loads (better green footprint) and the new platform promises being
able to run iOS apps directly on macOS so e.g. we can run INPUT
straight on the desktop if we want to use a lightweight QGIS (ok yes I
know INPUT could already be compiled for macOS but not run using the
same package as iOS built one).
Regards
Tim
Andreas
Am 24.06.20 um 11:53 schrieb Peter Petrik:
Hi,
As building on iOS already works
(https://github.com/lutraconsulting/input-sdk/tree/master/ios), I
imagine it would be possible to run another architecture build for
MacOS with a similar approach. It is in Apple's interest to
facilitate transition to developers. To evaluate how hard it would
be, that is more tricky at this point. First of all, Qt has to
support this new architecture, I haven't found a statement from them
yet if they plan it and when. So even Qt supports it (hopefully from
Qt5 releases and not Qt6), we have to build all the deps with the
new architecture, which takes some time to create recipes. And of
course find a hardware where it all can be built (probably another
machine , yes). Not saying that it is very frustrating to do
development of such a new package if you do not own such hardware
yourself...
P.
On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 11:33 AM Régis Haubourg
<regis.haubo...@gmail.com <mailto:regis.haubo...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Andreas,
I'm also worried about this move.
But one way to forward the cost to Apple is now to stop buying
macs.
Sorry to troll, but the vendor lockin' nightmare they are
building is not of the same nature as of the powerpc era.
I sold mine because they stopped to support it though it worked
very well on the hardware side. And switching to linux on Mac is
made hard on purpose.. > never again for me, even if they do
really good stuff.
I found in LENOVO some durable hardware, easy to repair,
hardware that works nicely and avoid me to trash a working
computer.
Best
Régis
Le mer. 24 juin 2020 à 11:11, Andreas Neumann
<a.neum...@carto.net <mailto:a.neum...@carto.net>> a écrit :
Hi all, esp. Peter,
So I wonder what the new announcement of Apple switching
everything from Intel to arm architecture will mean for our
project? According to Apple they will switch all of their
devices to arm over the next 2 years.
Will it be a lot of work to adapt the build system to the
new processor architecture? It will probably mean that we
will need an additional Mac build server for arm
architecture in our infrastructure and will have to provide
packages for both systems for many years to come ...
Not so nice for us as a project - can we forward these costs
to Apple for that move?
Greetings,
Andreas
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