[rbanffy]

The Xeon Phi had up to 16GB of fast memory in the same package as the main die. IIRC, it could be used as memory or as cache for external memory (which was much slower).

If Apple integrates two more memory chips, it'll be able to power a pretty solid desktop or laptop.

On the performance, Rosetta is most likely doing JIT so that most of the time it's running native ARM code. It did this with PPC binaries and DEC had it for Alpha.

[95014_refugee]

As noted elsewhere, Roesetta doesn't JIT unless the AOT transpilation lets it down. Most apps are statically transpiled at installation time...

[ecnahc515]

That's (AOT transpilation) quite the interesting approach to the problem. No wonder it's so fast.

[kzrdude]

We could also entertain the idea that if they would find some instruction particularly hard to emulate - they could have added new instructions on their own chip to cover it.