Will Stata for Mac make the ARM transition?

[Pete Ware]

Apple is rumored to be announcing a future transition away from Intel-based processors to ARM processors as soon as tomorrow. As both a Stata/MP user and a Mac user, I was wondering if anyone could comment on the likelihood that (and speed at which) future versions of Stata would run on those processors natively. It would be helpful to know especially as our institution replaces computers from time to time and we could potentially buy the “last Intel models” rather than the “first ARM models.” I’ll confess to not knowing enough about software development to know how Stata is currently compiled for Mac and whether it would be easy or difficult for the programmers to make the transition.

[Mike Lacy]

I'm not an expert, but my first reaction would be to note that Stata already runs well (I presume) on different processors that might be used under different operating system versions of Stata: Unix runs on different processors, yet there is (to my knowledge) just one Unix version of Stata; Windows users might have an AMD or an Intel processor, yet there is just one Windows version of Stata. Observing these facts makes me think there there should not be a problem with ARM processors. Someone with experience writing complex software for various OS and processor platforms, though, might have different thoughts.

[glenn_magerman]

Thanks! Same question here, so happy to follow and gather advice. I was about to commit to the new Mac Pro for statistical analysis (Stata, Python, C++) and graph visualisation (Gephi, neo4j). Now it's unclear how long to wait to obtain more information before committing...

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

I would speculate that, with Stata proudly supporting all major operating systems (Windows, Mac and Linux), they would eventually follow suit to work on ARM architecture. You may recall that they used to support AIX which ran on RISC processors. It only makes sense to support a major segment of the retail and commercial computing sector. This might also be speculation for version 18 of Stata, depending on how long it takes Apple to transition.

[Chinh Nguyen (StataCorp)]

Our official announcement can be found at https://blog.stata.com/2020/06/30/st...apple-silicon/.