What can we expect from Apple with ARM and Photoshop performance

[yoRR-nl]

As we know by now Apple will move over to there own processors by the end of this year. From everything i have read en watched so far, the A12 ARM cpu from Apple that we can also find in the iPad pro's are clearly powerfull all-ready.

I was wondering, what can we expect in Photoshop with ARM?. Does it have the same hunger to raw CPU power and the need for a lot of memory as with a X86? 

Or can we see a very different approch with ARM to Photoshop?

What are your thoughts about the ARM chacnge from Apple? And what if Adobe fails to deliver. That would hurt not only Adobe, but als Apple.

I know a lot of graphic power users who left Apple en moved over to a powerfull PC, but still many users are with Apple for their graphic design because of the history. 

[davescm]

Hi

This forum is answered by volunteer users, we don't work for Adobe. Anyone involved in Adobe pre-release is subject to NDA agreements.

So, any comments will just be guesses, until Adobe itself makes announcements.

Dave

[DaveJCummings]

Exactly,  and even a lot of those using Pre-Release may not have knowledge of what's going on with PS and Silicon, since only those using the Developer Transition Kit with Apple really has access to what's going on with Silicon's performance 

[Mylenium]

There's at least three years to go on that, so any assessment is premature regardless of whether you are "in the know" by being active on the Beta or not. To the users it probably won't matter, either way. Apple has plenty of experience with their Rosetta emulation on intel and this is no different, just in the other direction. They'll make it as easy as possible and for the time being it's probably merely a matter of compiling the binaries differently, with any serious optimizations only coming later when developers understand the new architecture better.

Mylenium

[Test Screen Name]

I don't know anything about Adobe's plans, except that they have been involved with Apple's keynotes, which leaves me free to speculate.

- The question " Does it have the same hunger to raw CPU power and the need for a lot of memory as with a X86? ". If Photoshop needs a lot of CPU power, it's because it is doing a lot of work. If you look at the amount of work needed to run multiple layers of tens of millions of pixels, it's hard to imagine it can do less work without reducing functions. So any port to a different architecture will also use a lot of CPU. Running an emulation is likely to be painfully slow, so I suggest waiting until there is a native version.  Memory needed? Pretty much a simple function of how much data is needed to store all the layers and info. The only way to use less memory is to slow it down by using disk/SSD instead!

The Apple Silicon approach to GPUs is a little different, based on sharing RAM with the CPU rather than the GPU having its own RAM. There are doubtless good and bad things about this, and this is where major performance improvements or losses may come. When buying, it means you will probably need more headline RAM (since video RAM isn't in the headline today).

[Test Screen Name]

Actually, there is one thing we can expect with certaintly: people jumping to the new systems while they are still beta, and having all sorts of problems. Some of them will have no live system, and their work will suffer. They will blame Adobe, rather than their own stupidity in going to a beta with work to do. I think some people think "beta" is a cool spelling of "better". Already we are seeing this with people jumping to the Big Sur beta and expecting to do their normal Adobe work!

[davescm]

"I think some people think "beta" is a cool spelling of "better"

ROFL 🙂

Dave