Apple ditching Intel chips as soon as 2020

[XMan]

http://variety.com/2018/digital/news/apple-intel-chips-1202741497/

Have to imagine that's the end of Hackintosh, no?

 

[Chaotic42]

Here's another link with a video discussion.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...an-move-from-intel-to-own-mac-chips-from-2020

 

[Oyeve]

Good, now Intel doesn't have to waste time testing their products on macs.

 

[Chaotic42]

I wonder if programs on the Mac are going to start being web/JavaScript/whatever based. I wonder if the major third-party software developers are going to want to move to a completely different platform.

 

[eastofeastside]

Rumor coming out of GDC that Xbox Next and PS5 are switching to ARM-based CPU's. Now Apple Mac.

Obsolescence of x86 truly is on the horizon.

 

[urvile]

Rumor coming out of GDC that Xbox Next and PS5 are switching to ARM-based CPU's. Now Apple Mac.

Obsolescence of x86 truly is on the horizon.

Why?

Corporations and government departments don't use apple mac. Xbox is a gaming console.

 

[Kaido]

Rumor coming out of GDC that Xbox Next and PS5 are switching to ARM-based CPU's. Now Apple Mac.

Obsolescence of x86 truly is on the horizon.

I can see this happening, especially when combined with NVIDIA's vGPU technology.

 

[Anubis]

i dont have doubts they they will do this but i really don't see them competing with 6,8,12,20 core CPUs for any real tasks

 

[EXCellR8]

Honestly thought Apple was responsible for a bigger slice of Intel's revenue but as long as they have Dell and HP as one of their main partners I don't see it hurting them much. I'd be more interested in seeing where Apple takes the OS and its security or if they eventually release something new.

 

[Oyeve]

Honestly thought Apple was responsible for a bigger slice of Intel's revenue but as long as they have Dell and HP as one of their main partners I don't see it hurting them much. I'd be more interested in seeing where Apple takes the OS and its security or if they eventually release something new.

Apple tried this long ago before they went Intel. Didn;t work out too good for them. But, that was long ago and tech is different now. Unless they have some kickass design on the CPU front I don't see this panning out as well as they may think it will.

 

[EXCellR8]

They may just turn out to be slightly modified or higher clocked SoC processors supplied by another vendor. I'm not gonna pretend like I know about the fab process but as far as I know Apple has only had a hand in designing chips in the past but their mobile devices have always sold pretty well so they might have a chance this time around.

 

[Kaido]

Honestly thought Apple was responsible for a bigger slice of Intel's revenue but as long as they have Dell and HP as one of their main partners I don't see it hurting them much. I'd be more interested in seeing where Apple takes the OS and its security or if they eventually release something new.

Ehh...

http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/c...-first-arm-based-hpc-system/99303.fullarticle

 

[Eug]

Apple tried this long ago before they went Intel. Didn;t work out too good for them.

What are you referring to? Cuz Apple went with Motorola for the Mac literally over two decades before they went Intel.

But, that was long ago and tech is different now. Unless they have some kickass design on the CPU front I don't see this panning out as well as they may think it will.

They already have kickass designs on the CPU front. They are basically a generation ahead of everyone else in the low power space for ARM. Furthermore, I mentioned in the CPU thread that the ARM chip in Apple's current iPhone beats my 2017 era Core m3-7Y32 by over 50% (!) in synthetic CPU benchmarks. Regardless if you think those benchmarks are accurate or not for comparison, that's a pretty shocking number.

They haven't tried this in the high power space yet... publicly... but who knows what they have up their sleeve. They've undoubtedly been working on this for years already.

BTW, the chip design company they bought wasn't even doing ARM designs at the time. They were PowerPC, but then Apple terminated all of that and put them on ARM design... and now they have amongst the best designs in the world. It's amazing what a company can achieve with top tier talent, and hundreds of millions of dollars thrown at the problem.

 

[manly]

He’s referring to PowerPC, which was an alliance between Apple, IBM and Motorola.

I’m not sure what the competitive advantage is in challenging Intel in mainstream CPUs. These are mostly reasonably priced when you factor in Mac average sale price. However, if they can replace the high core count procs in 15” MBP and high end desktops, that would be a boon to profit margin.

Being a semiconductor company isn’t inexpensive, so it does make business sense to grow that business from the mobile space into “PCs” if possible.

 

[TheStu]

Why?

Corporations and government departments don't use apple mac. Xbox is a gaming console.

IBM is transitioning to Macs, and Walmart Corporate is as well. In total cost of ownership, they are finding them to be hundreds of dollars less per user than Windows PCs (https://www.computerworld.com/artic...-are-even-cheaper-to-run-than-it-thought.html)

Switching to ARM makes sense for Apple since they'd be able to bring more things in-house which seems to be one of their favorite things to do. Whether it makes sense for developers, or how painful the switch will be... who's to say?

 

[mikegg]

I wonder if programs on the Mac are going to start being web/JavaScript/whatever based. I wonder if the major third-party software developers are going to want to move to a completely different platform.

No. This is actually great for developers. Build one app, have it work natively on iOS, iPad, and Mac.

 

[mikegg]

I think this is great news for Apple. There will be hiccups during the transition for sure but I want a 20hr battery life Mac.

Intel processors haven't gotten much better since 2011 with Sandy Bridge.

Meanwhile, the iPhone 8 processor is faster in single core tests than the Macbook Pro. That's unacceptable.

 

[Midwayman]

I can see it happening as a first step toward unifying iOS and osx. If they get their macs on arm it means getting a hybrid ipad working would be much easier. I mean MS tried the ARM windows which didn't fly so well, but Apple has the ability to force the issue unlike MS.

 

[sweenish]

Everyone is running around yelling "ARM", like that's what it has to be. They're ditching Intel, not x86, per the rumor.

MS tried one approach, and are currently actively trying another. It's not amazing so far. I doubt Apple is going all ARM, even if Apple's chips run circles around Qualcomm's.

 

[Blackjack200]

I can see it happening as a first step toward unifying iOS and osx. If they get their macs on arm it means getting a hybrid ipad working would be much easier. I mean MS tried the ARM windows which didn't fly so well, but Apple has the ability to force the issue unlike MS.

Right, why can't they just be developing their own x86 alternative? Isn't that what they did with ARM, where the original iPhone used a Samsung chip and today Apple designs their own chips but using the same instruction set?

When PowerPC chip performance fell far behind Intel's x86 chips Apple forced app developers through a painful transition, why in the world would they want to put themselves in that position again?

 

[Chaotic42]

Don't Intel and AMD hold the patents for a lot of the x86 and x86-64 instruction sets? If they wanted to, they could really stick it to Apple with fees and red tape, I'd imagine.

 

[Oyeve]

When PowerPC chip performance fell far behind Intel's x86 chips Apple forced app developers through a painful transition, why in the world would they want to put themselves in that position again?

Why? Because that's apples MO. Make crap seem like its obsolete so we can sell more stuff. Like my mid-2009 being obsolete because apple deems it not capable of sierra. complete BS IMO.

 

[Blackjack200]

Why? Because that's apples MO. Make crap seem like its obsolete so we can sell more stuff. Like my mid-2009 being obsolete because apple deems it not capable of sierra. complete BS IMO.

So what does Apple do if they move MacOS to ARM and then Intel starts beating their chip designs? Migrate everyone back again?

I don't see it. iOS is fundamentally different from MacOS from a market perspective. iOS is smaller than Android, sure, but it's still a dominant platform with market power. Mac computers do not have market power, they are a small, premium slice of the PC market, and Mac users need the platform to work well in Intel/Windows dominated environments. The ability to boot Windows from a Mac, to virtualize Windows machines, and for major application developers like Microsoft to easily port their major products to the platform are all critical for its success.

I'd be shocked if they abandoned x86, but I guess we'll see.

 

[Midwayman]

Right, why can't they just be developing their own x86 alternative? Isn't that what they did with ARM, where the original iPhone used a Samsung chip and today Apple designs their own chips but using the same instruction set?

Anything is possible I suppose, but that would be problematic from an IP perspective I think. If Apple was buying companies that owned x86 related IP... But ARM seems far more likely if they're rolling their own chips.

 

[Red Storm]

So it's either they are ditching x86 for ARM or they're just ditching Intel for AMD.

If it's the former, I guess that's the end of me buying Macbooks.