Comment by the_real_cher
15 hours ago
does that mean since this is the iPhone 16 cpu, by proxy the iPhone 16 can also run Windows in a virtual machine?
15 hours ago
does that mean since this is the iPhone 16 cpu, by proxy the iPhone 16 can also run Windows in a virtual machine?
Maybe/maybe not (we don't know how identical the A18 chip is to what shipped in the iPhone) - but it does determine that the virtualization stuff that was added to the M1 (in the era of the A14) has now moved over to the A series, at least enough to support macOS.
Speculation I’ve heard from Ben Thompson of Stratechery is this machine is, in part, a way to get value out of iPhone Pro chips that had defects.
The Neo has a 5 core GPU. The iPhone 16 Pro had a 6 core.
So, if he’s correct, these are the same exact chip. Just with a fault in one GPU core or one GPU core disabled if it was good. That lets them use extra chips they already made that would have gone to waste, at least until they run out.
Which would mean they both would have identical abilities, assuming no software lock for segmentation purposes.
It’s all supposition. But it make a lot of business sense.
What a cool and smart way to utilize those chips!
It would explain why they picked such an arbitrary number of cores.
Thats pretty cool.
Is this a trick question? Of course. However Apple imposed artificial limitations, like disabling JIT.
So they're purposefully crippling it?
Yes. See UTM: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/utm-se-retro-pc-emulator/id156...
Unfortunately, the performance is very poor due to Apple restrictions on iOS.
What do you mean by Apple restrictions?
Are they arbitrary restrictions Apple puts on them to prevent this kind of thong?
I mean, in principle you already can: https://getutm.app/
It doesn't work well - probably not at all for a modern version of Windows - but the tools exist.