Since the development for Rhino for ARM based processors (Apple Silicon) is under way for Mac, how do you guys face the probable sudden abyss of Intel falling behind development giving way to a different Architecture? What kind of hoops would you have to jump and what would the developers of plugins finally have to face here?
Currently it looks like Intel is going to be swept under the carpet sooner or later, now with NVIDIA mixing heavily in the game and Microsoft planning to bring ARM based computers to the market, I guess the development for Rhino for Windows could take a U turn or 2 either? at least i think the idea should have occurred to some and changes seem inevitable.
also how could that, maybe even positively impact general platform independent development?
ok, the same answer did we get when i asked about the necessary changes for Rhino for Mac. when will Rhino for Mac run natively on Apple Silcon?
why not, if that serves a unifying redevelopment of rhino for the better i am all in. anyway i dislike where Apple is going with its OS, so it would be about time for the 3. horse to gain more attention maybe.
some news regarding the downfall of x86 Processors. i dont fancy his way of reporting too much, very exaggerating, but the info is pretty good.
@nathanletwory found something on Linux for M1. if you are following that at all, it seems that it could find native support for ARM based Macs soon. could a development of Rhino for Linux gain more interest when all have changed to ARM?
good question, and far less rhetoric than one might expect. but to humour you a bit, i´d say your current version of rhino might last as long as your current computer will
right boyz and girlz… it seems that intel is playing ball and changing the game along with all the others. @stevebaer@dan@nathanletwory@DavidRutten and whoever this may concern. it seems that you guys might have to consider some changes in the cpu market pretty soon. how far that will cause havoc i leave to you, but i am thrilled that things are changing.
after Volterra has gone chill for quite a while, i at least could not find any info anymore there seems to be some recent eruption, will you guys at mcneel grab one of those at some point?
Although the Snapdragon X Elite is a promising processor, I doubt that it will be a game-changer for Microsoft like Apple Silicon was for Apple. Here are some reasons why:
Microsoft is primarily a software company that makes some hardware, while Apple is a computer device company. The adoption of expensive Arm devices may not be easily materialized by OEMs.
Apple users have a strong brand loyalty and trust bond with the company. Whatever Apple decides to do, they can get away with. On the other hand, Microsoft has faced backlash for putting the taskbar in the center of the screen, and people are still threatening to stop using Windows for three decades, yet they go to Walmart every black Friday for a new $300 Laptop.
Apple owns its product lineup and can refine its experiences as it wishes. The Windows ecosystem is more complex.
In my opinion, the real feature behind Apple’s success was the good seamless virtualization made by Rosetta. If Windows on Arm is looking for success, an embedded app virtualization needs to work seamlessly. Despite Rosetta, there were many complaints and issues with Rhino caused by this transition. So although it may look good on paper and YouTube, I’m glad that I haven’t had to deal with this personally in the last 3 years.
Government and institutions are going to be roadblocks towards this implementation, especially since many legacy software programs are still being used, and there are a lot of people still successfully running Rhino 2.
Performance PCs are highly dependent on discrete GPUs from AMD/Nvidia, and the power efficiency gains from ARM CPUs can easily vanish when these power-hungry GPUs are used, and chasing the integrated GPUs will likely result in a regression regarding Raytracing , OpenGL and DX features.
As a lifetime PC user, I prefer the evolutionary nature of computer progress to earth-shattering technology. As a Rhino user, I would prefer to see the developers focus on improving the performance and experience of the software rather than rewriting chunks of the code again.
maybe I’m too still in my thinking, but as a PC enthusiast I don’t see an Apple Silicon Moment happening anytime soon.
One popular thing about Apple ARM is the efficiency of the chip
However, people are willing to forget that the chip is built around Apple OS. While AMD and especially Intel CPUs are not anywhere near as efficient (as fantastic as it is as a CPU, my 13700K doubles as a small heater now), they are also remarkably agnostic of operating system.
It’s always good to have more competition to keep proces in check. However if that comes at the expense of fixing _FilletEdge to support even more platforms…
I will personally “loose” Rhino 8 on my 12 Intel-based iMacs & MBP’s since they run Catalina and Big Sur and none of them are supported by Rhino 8