Just a quick question in regard to Apple's latest chip transition. Not sure if this has been asked elsewhere but does anyone know what SideFX's position is? Will Houdini make it over or is this the end of the road for Houdini on the Mac? As far as I know Cinema 4D is transitioning and there was a demo of Maya running under the Rosetta emulation.

PLEASE let's not turn this into another “Why don't you get a PC?!?!” type of conversation…PLEASE!!!


SideFX hasn't made an official statement about it, and I doubt they will any time soon; but I suspect that there are conversations happening behind the scenes.

It's really all too early to tell, just yesterday rumors surfaced of a new iMac based on the 10-core Intel i9, so my guess is that for high-end computing Apple isn't done with Intel chips quite yet.

I think it will all depend on what ARM CPU's can actually offer. If they can keep up, and surpass Intel CPU's, if a 40-80+ core ARM Mac Pro is feasible and indeed puts a Xeon (and a Threadripper) to shame, then it's likely that the platform will continue to be supported by the likes of SideFX…and perhaps even start getting the attention of PC users.

This time next year we should all have a better sense as to where things are actually headed, but in the meantime it's all business as usual.