There are no ARM chips with enough power. They have said many times that they are not interested in minor performance improvements but rather want a leap. The Snapdragon X2 Elite chip is the leader (I cannot count Apple; they won't share their chips, obviously), but it doesn't even match AMD with their RDNA 3.5, and who knows when they will (or even if).
Taking games designed for desktop GPUs and running them on mobile GPUs with tile-based-deferred-rendering hardware will be a disaster. Mobile GPU designs will choke on modern games as they're designed around hardware features that mobile GPUs either don't have, or that run very slowly.
Peak theoretical throughput for the GPUs you find in ARM SoCs is quite good compared to the power draw, but you will not get peak throughput for workloads designed for Nvidia and AMD GPUs.
Isn't the GPU on Apple Silicon machines a tile-based "mobile" GPU design? Many of the hardware features that traditional GPU's have and mobile GPU's lack can be easily "faked" with GPU-side general compute.
While I agree with the general point, this statement is factually incorrect - apple's most powerful laptop GPU punches right about the same as the laptop SKU of the RTX 4070, and the desktop Ultra variant punches up with a 5070ti. I'd say on both fronts that is well above the average.
There is no world where Apple silicone is competing with a 5070ti on modern workloads. Not the hardware and certainly not the software where Nvidia DLSS is in it's own air with AMD just barely having gotten AI upscaling out and started approximating ray reconstruction.
Certainly, nobody would buy an Apple hoping to run triple-A PC games.
But among people running LLMs outside of the data centre, Apple's unified memory together with a good-enough GPU has attracted quite a bit of attention. If you've got the cash, you can get a Mac Studio with 512GB of unified memory. So there's one workload where apple silicon gives nvidia a run for their money.
That simply isn't true. I have an RTX 4070 gaming PC and an M4 MacBook Pro w/ 36GB shared memory. When models fit in VRAM, the RTX 4070 still runs much faster. Maybe the next generation M5 chips are faster but they can't be 2-4x faster.
GP said laptop 4070. The laptop variants are typically much slower than the desktop variants of the same name.
It's not just power budget, the desktop part has more of everything, and in this case the 4070 mobile vs desktop turns out to be a 30-40% difference[1] in games.
Now I don't have a mac so if you meant "2-5x" when you said "much faster" well thdn yea, that 40% difference isn't enough to overcome that.
Only a few, because it's not easy to find contemporary AAA games with native macOS ports. Notebookcheck has some comparisons for Assassins Creed: Shadows and Cyberpunk 2077[1]
a 4.5k$ M4 Max barely competes with an entry-level laptop with a 4060 which will be around ~1K in FPS in cyberpunk given the same settings. For AI it's even worse - on NVidia hardware you're getting double-digit speeds for FPS for real-time inference of e.g. stable diffusion, whereas on the M2 Max I have you get at best 0.5 FPS
Snapdragon doesn't do tile based deferred rendering the way Apple does (or did). Snapdragon does (or did) a form of tile-based rendering, but it is a completely different design, with completely different performance tradeoffs.
You can, but the immediate mode path is slower and uses significantly more power. Mobile GPUs are not good at modern desktop game workflows where significant portions of the frame are compute shaders. They're generally very memory bandwidth starved, and general compute sidesteps most of the optimizations the hardware has made to work around this.
I agree they won’t do a Steam Deck 2 that’s ARM. Maybe in the future?
BUT, what about a “Steam Deck Mini”? Something at/above the current Steam Deck, maybe a little closer to Switch 2, but smaller/thinner/maybe a little cheaper?
Yeah you’re not going to run Cyberpunk 2087: Johnny’s Rent Is Due. But older games, less demanding indie games, and many emulators would still work great. Plus remote play of your big desktop if you have one.
I’m not saying they will, but I could see it as a possibility.
Apple not sharing their chips extends to Apple keeping their grip on the higher density nodes.
I wonder if it's still the case, but for a while Apple was buying the totality of TSMC's capacity for 3nm nodes, leaving the rest of the world with only 4nm+ chips to grab.
You don’t need to wonder. Top of the lines Snapdragon, Dimensity and Exinos SoC all use 3nm.
Amusingly, it’s the second time in two days I have this discussion here and I have noticed that a lot of people, who I think are American and using Apple phones by default, are completely unaware of what the mobile SoC landscape looks like nowadays. Apple lead doesn’t exist anymore as of this generation.
Apple still leads in raw performance. Their M5 is far ahead of basically everything in single-core performance. AFAIK it's because their architecture prioritizes IPC over frequency, and they can spend the entire silicon budget on a very large monolithic chip.
Yes, the Nvidia GPU in the Switch 2 is more powerful. But not the ARM CPU.
The existence of Nvidia DLSS (upscaling and frame generation) alone is a huge advantage over the Steam Deck, too. The Deck can't use DLSS because it's Nvidia only, AMD FSR isn't as good, and the latest FSR isn't even supported (officially) on the SoC.
The bit about FEX is interesting. Taking x86 code and running it on ARM. The most important thing for Valve to do is pick what instruction set to use, one you can run natively or native hardware, or efficiently and reliably through translation on alien hardware. ARM might be a great choice, as hardware exists at scale on mobile devices, and emulated on other devices even if the CPU happens to be Intel or AMD. Valve is then in control, rather than Intel or Apple or Microsoft.
Both Qualcomm and Mediatek have mobile SoC which are more performant than the M2 and the X2 Elite is in the ballpark of Apple top SoC.
Considering how I currently use my Steam Deck, there is nothing my current phone couldn’t do. Sure, you won’t get PS5 performance but I’m personally completely happy with Switch 2 level performance.
This is exactly what happens when you invest billions and hire the best industry specialists for decades. M-series processors did not magically appear out of nowhere. Apple perfected them for years in iPhones, but people didn't have the ability to compare since Apple doesn't share their processors with anyone.
S0 is a step forward. Disabling CPU entirely is just a "workaround". Both S3 and hibernation has a lot of security implications which S0 solves. Apple uses their own S0 alternative and it works... Perfectly?
The real problem is that both AMD and Intel S0 implementations are mediocre at best and this is what they should fix. Also most vendors are dickheads and cannot even verify that their system even goes to S0ix states without any problem before releasing it. Because of their laziness you can buy brand new certified "Linux ready" machine which won't even achieve S0ix states out of the box.
So you say, after almost 20 years of development by thousands of engineers and developers and 130 versions it is still not secure and needs new features? That is kinda weird.
I tried finding anything in the transcript that mentions that import/export explicitly will be the open standards, but they seem to mention "FIDO" and import/export in different contexts, not together.
Trump will leave office in 2028 just like any other US president. The only difference between now and then is extreme polarization all over the world because a lot of emerging problems.
I am originally from Russia and I cannot read this seriously. Yes, there are problems in US democracy. But it still works and LIGHT YEARS ahead of what you can see in Russia. Those comparisons with Nazi Germany and other oppressive regimes are just insane. They devalue words, and you just won't find the right ones when shit really hits the fan.
I am also from Russia. Since this apparently gives me authority to speak on these matters, I can confidently say that what’s happening in the US today looks remarkably like Putin’s consolidation of power. How long until Congress is nothing more than an executive rubber stamp like the Duma? The judicial system is currently functioning as the only check against executive overreach, and it’s just a matter of time until injunctions are nullified or ignored as a matter of course.
I agree it’s not light years rather normal years away from Russian political system. Maybe not 5 years, but lets say 10-15 years of this shit and the US will look a lot like Russia (from a government form perspective). If Vance takes over after Trump, we will miss Trump I have a feeling.
But I am not from Russia, though part of my family is. I guess I am then only a half expert ;)
> Trump will leave office in 2028 just like any other US president.
Trump has been openly playing with the idea of a third term, and has spoken about ways of achieving this. What makes you so sure he will leave office in 2028?
> I am originally from Russia and I cannot read this seriously. Yes, there are problems in US democracy. But it still works and LIGHT YEARS ahead of what you can see in Russia.
I don't understand where you're getting the idea of comparing with Russia, Nazi Germany or other oppresive regimes. I asked the question about what other countries and organizations are in a better position to lecture about democracy.
Acknowledging that the USA is currently in an institutional and democratic crisis doesn't mean they're Russia; it means they're on the wrong trajectory.
> Trump has been openly playing with the idea of a third term
Because Trump is just a blabbermouth. Sorry, but people are just indoctrinated from both sides. You can check prediction markets and see the real odds of Trump not leaving the office. Yep, there is a chance, but IMO it's around 5% max.
> I don't understand where you're getting the idea of comparing with ...
Yes, I understand that US has democracy crisis. And so has the Europe! The problem is that there are no longer healthy examples in the world, except maybe smaller countries. Democracy as a thing is dying, but US are still holding the torch IMO.
This is a common debate tactic from Trump supporters and it just doesn't work. If your evidence for Trump being okay is that he's actually a liar so we shouldn't take threats seriously, that doesn't speak well on Trump. And, actually, it reflects very poorly on you. Why are you supporting someone who you knowingly admit is a liar? Why is your support founded on the assumption that what you're supporting will not be implemented? It makes no sense. It makes other's question your decision making abilities.
But, more to the point, much of what Trump has said and done has been downplayed until it actually happens. We can't just play pretend and cosplay Hellen Keller here. The insurrection, project 2025, these things are real and did actually happen. Despite being downplayed repeatedly. I mean, every Trump supporter on Earth has been calling Project 2025 anti-republican propaganda (but it's written by and for republican leadership?), and now that many part of it are being implemented verbatim - surprise! - it's what everyone wanted all along.
We cannot continue to downplay and underestimate this administration. They will do illegal things, they will threaten democracy, they will ignore court orders. If we cannot comes to terms with that reality, then we have no choice but to allow them to do these things.
There's been plenty of indications that's not true. Trump has been floating a third term and a Trump regime with his children. He said the election was stolen. He tried to steal it himself. You are basically saying "Well TODAY the United States is fine!" but if you look at the trendline Russia is basically still shit, and we now have an insurrectionist as a President whose spending a significant portion of his time destroying American institutions as far beyond repair as he can.
I recently discovered them and made an entire homelab based on the atomic OS and rootless Quadlets, can highly recommend them. They also allow to use systemd socket activation. Which means you can create systemd http/https sockets for example and activate Traefik automatically just like ssh.socket and podman.socket activates sshd.service and podman.service accordingly. It's a lifesaver since this is basically the only way to preserve source IP in rootless setups (rootless Podman/Docker usually doesn't easily allow to preserve source IP without major drawbacks).
