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MacOS ARM transition

archislave
Enthusiast
I wonder what the transition will be for the Mac on Arm. Will it run with Rosetta or only on Intel Macs?
Archislave

archicad 16.0 US, iMac El Capitan
19 REPLIES 19
Ben Cohen
Enthusiast
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3564716/apples-silicon-macs-promise-screaming-performance.html
That data suggests these developer-only, early field test Apple Silicon Macs achieve average scores of around an 811 points (single-core) and 2871 (multi-core) in contrast to the 726/2831 scores achieved by Microsoft’s Surface Pro X.
Dev kits are performing better than Microsoft Surface Pro X in benchmarks... even under emulation...

https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/29/first-benchmarks-surface-for-apples-arm-based-developer-transition-kit/

Performing very well, even under emulation, via Rosetta 2.

Back in the day, we had one of the first Intel iMac's running ArchiCAD with the old Rosetta 1 emulation and the performance was surprising good. Looks like history is repeating.
Ben Cohen
Mac and PC
Archicad (Latest Version) aus
www.4DLibrary.com.au
Jacques Toerien
Participant
It beats my 2010 MacPro 2.94Ghz 12 core on single thread...ah that's progress for you. CMP still >2x the score on multi-thread, but nowhere near the efficiency per core or Watt of the A12z. Quite impressive so far for a development system.

The A12x benchmarks about the same as a GTX 950 for Metal gfx performance (~9100), just below an nVidia 105o (~10,100), so the A12z should be about on par for Metal as it has 8 gpu cores instead of 7 in the A12x. Still well behind an RX 580 at 52,800. No idea about OpenGL, though according to Apple that is also slowly being deprecated for their OS releases.
2012 13" Macbook Pro 8GB Ram, OS X 10.14.6
2010 Mac Pro 2x 6 Core 2.93Ghz Xeon, 48Gb Ram, OS X 10.14.6, RX 580

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runxel
Legend
The ARM transition in itself won't be that big of a problem. You can recompile a lot of the code, and there is maybe 10% of things you need to rewrite.

A much (by far!) bigger issue is the deprecation of OpenGL. Especially since Archicad relies so much on it. Same reason why the future of the Rhino for Mac version is rather uncertain.
And it's not only your own code. Presumably there are third party libraries used – and you just don't know when or if these get updated at all.
Lucas Becker | AC 27 on Mac | Author of Runxel's Archicad Wiki | Editor at SelfGDL | Developer of the GDL plugin for Sublime Text |
«Furthermore, I consider that Carth... yearly releases must be destroyed»
archislave
Enthusiast
The better get on this fast recompiling for Apple Silicone. We may find more platform growth from computers so far outpacing windows x86 computers. My impression of Graphisoft is one of lacking enthusiasm for the MacOS. They take their time updating it. Why can’t the be more progressive like Adobe and especially offer subscription versions. I think we still have to wait for new younger leadership who see it as a no brained.
Archislave

archicad 16.0 US, iMac El Capitan
runxel
Legend
archislave wrote:
The better get on this fast recompiling for Apple Silicone. We may find more platform growth from computers so far outpacing windows x86 computers. My impression of Graphisoft is one of lacking enthusiasm for the MacOS. They take their time updating it. Why can’t the be more progressive like Adobe and especially offer subscription versions. I think we still have to wait for new younger leadership who see it as a no brained.
???? Not sure what you're rumbling about...
Graphisoft are massive Apple fanboys, so rest assured, if there is something lacking, then it is proper Windows support (multiscreen *ahem*) 😉

Secondly: Subscription versions are offered...
.... and nobody likes them. 
Have you not seen the backlash Adobe (great example there!) faced? Same goes for Trimble, who changed the license model of SketchUp a week ago or so.
(By all respect, but we really have to be thankful GS did not jump on that stupid bandwagon and offer subscription only licenses – yet)
Lucas Becker | AC 27 on Mac | Author of Runxel's Archicad Wiki | Editor at SelfGDL | Developer of the GDL plugin for Sublime Text |
«Furthermore, I consider that Carth... yearly releases must be destroyed»
schagemann
Enthusiast
Without getting lost in technical details whose effects are still mostly unclear, it is however a critical development to understand and prepare for.

Form memory for the last transition from classic Mac OS (PPC) to OS X (Intel), was reasonably smooth via Rosetta which was around until OS X 10.6

The main concern we have is how to best deal with any new hardware purchases, in the period where Apple and 3rd party software manufacturers will be ironing out the inevitable initial problems.

Our current take on this is to buy (if we/you must) the last models of Intel based Apple Hardware, before any new ARM based Macs are released. This should then allow anyone who needs new hardware, to sit out the first couple of years of trouble, before upgrading 'Biggest Kahouna'.

What are your plans or strategies regarding this?
macinteract
Design Technology Managers.
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mikas
Expert
Unfortunately my plan will be to not buy Macs, and instead if a workstation is needed, it will be a windows machine.
I allready use WInPC occasionally, though I really like MacOS more. I just don't want to experience a transition period anymore. I have done two transition with Mac already, and I have to say that for me they there not buttery smooth like it seems it was to some other users.

Yhhis way I don't have to worry about what programs act up with new Apple Macs and which are usable. All are crosslicensed progs nowadays. AC, Rhino, Cinema, Solibri and TwinMotion. No additional costs from there. If Macs appear to perform well after this transition period (or maybe earlier), then I will reconsider jumping back to Mac. And that is only if they are priced differently at the workstation level than what they are at the moment. That is if they ever will touch the workstation business anymore at all, there seems to be too little revenue available from that market to Apple.

OT: tried the dark theme already, and like it a lot. Hope win gets it soon too.
AC25, Rhino6/7+Grasshopper, TwinMotionMac Pro 6,1 E5-1650v2-3,5GHz/128GB/eGPU:6800XT/11.6.5 • HP Z4/Xeon W-2195/256GB/RX6800XT/W10ProWS
Anonymous
Not applicable
Karl wrote:
Jacques wrote:
Sorry, wrong. In Apple's case (and others), Apple Silicon ARM has A LOT to do with GPU. ...
We can agree to disagree.... my comment was not precise, but was in terms of ARCHICAD and Twin Motion, neither of which will perform usably or at all with any on-chip GPU known today, but which require powerful, heat-generating discrete GPUs at the moment. With today's (and next year's) technology, computers without discrete GPUs are not usable in a production ARCHICAD workflow.

I don’t think this is the case. There is nothing limiting the power of an integrated GPU, and it has the benefit of using shared memory, meaning it can potentially perform faster. One of the largest bottlenecks for the GPU is the speed at which data can be transferred between the CPU (which packages the data for each frame) and the GPU (which calculates it, and then sends it back). If that turnaround time can be reduced, it has a huge benefit overall.

The OpenGL deprecation in favour of Metal is a big cost for developers, but a huge win for consumers. This means developers will be required to rewrite their graphics pipelines on a MUCH faster framework. My (albeit limited) understanding is that openGL provides a number of APIs to program the GPU, but because its cross platform and works on multiple chips, it disguises the actually instructions it’s using on the GPU itself. So you tell the program to do an instruction, but beneath that, openGL has to determine how to run those instructions on its given chipset and then translate those instructions to be run. Metal provides an API that more closely matches the actual hardware instruction sets that are on the chips, so it doesn’t have to abstract itself. You can run similar graphics on much less computing power

So now we potentially get an integrated chip that has faster data transfer between the CPU and GPU, an instruction set that runs with FAR less overhead on the GPU, and the added benefit of unified memory between the cpu and GPU. I think there’s a lot of power that will come from that increased efficiency. I mean consider how incredible their graphics performance is now on mobile, and that’s with a decent amount of throttling for energy efficiency.

With that, while it’s technically possible for apple to include discreet GPUs in their future products, im not sure it’s going to be such a necessity. They already provide the option for eGPUs, and even support multiple eGPUs now. If I had to guess, I would say they are likely capable of making an excellent integrated GPU, one that would be more than capable for Archicad, and likely better than most discreet ones, and consumers that really need top tier performance (I’m thinking like Mac Pro buyers) can purchase their own GPUs.
antoine129
Newcomer
Looks like Archicad 24 is working on the M1 MacBook pro!
https://github.com/ThatGuySam/doesitarm/pull/189#issuecomment-731724199

I wonder what the performances are, if Archicad 23 also works, and if 8 or 16 GB of RAM makes any difference.

And of course what are Graphisoft's plans for upcoming versions!
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
GRAPHISOFT just posted this article today on ARM Mac support:

https://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/knowledgebase/130674/
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB