Will Lightwave 2020 go Universal Binary for the M1 processor?

**Koen Delbroek** · 11-16-2020, 02:03 AM

Hi everyone,

Does anyone know if Lightwave wil go UB for the M1 chip some time?

Big reason: The M1 processor and price point of the mac-mini looks like a great render-farm option..

It performs better than the i9 8 core 9980 2.4Ghz. By 10% even! This for 599 in education!

You can buy 5 of them for less than 3000 bucks... Have the render capacity of 2 times 28-core Mac Pro (that cost at least 10 grand a piece!)

Other thing: Wil it work under rosetta 2? What speeds do we have?

If somebody owns a M1 machine... Can you post your results?

Interesting topic I Think....

Best regards, Koen

**pauland** · 11-16-2020, 05:35 AM

Originally Posted by Koen Delbroek

Hi everyone,

Does anyone know if Lightwave wil go UB for the M1 chip some time?

Big reason: The M1 processor and price point of the mac-mini looks like a great render-farm option..

It performs better than the i9 8 core 9980 2.4Ghz. By 10% even! This for 599 in education!

You can buy 5 of them for less than 3000 bucks... Have the render capacity of 2 times 28-core Mac Pro (that cost at least 10 grand a piece!)

Other thing: Wil it work under rosetta 2? What speeds do we have?

If somebody owns a M1 machine... Can you post your results?

Interesting topic I Think....

Best regards, Koen

Don't expect that performance running LW on an M1 machine - it will be running under emulation.

Mac users may have hit the end of the road with LW already. :-(

**David_CGC** · 11-16-2020, 11:15 AM

Even under emulation (translation, technically), the first benchmarks have the M1 out-performing any Intel processor used in any Mac ever in single-core performance. Not by a lot, but the lack of regression is pretty stunning. So assuming no bugs preventing it running under Rosetta 2, Lightwave should be as good as ever on Apple Silicon Macs for the next few years, until Rosetta 2 is removed (which, assuming they keep it around as long as Rosetta 1, would be around 2026).

UB Lightwave would be pretty sweet, but given the app having any further updates at all is looking doubtful, and given that it would depend on Lightwave having been kept current with Mac best-practices in a way that doesn't seem have been the case, I'm not optimistic.