[AppleInsider] Apple may abandon Intel for its Macs starting with post-Broadwell

[Eug]

I think the last thing that Apple wants to replicate is Surface RT. IOS "pro" on ARM would be very similar to what Surface RT was trying to do.

On a more generic level. Apple is very particular about not regressing performance, generation on generation. If for some reason they can make a faster chip than Intel, then sure they'll switch. Till that point there really is no point.

At this point I don't really care about more performance on my latest iDevice. All I want is sufficient RAM. The performance of A8X with 2 GB RAM is as much as I need for such a hybrid.

Surface RT was different. It was trying to scale down Windows 8 with the same Windows 8 UI to run on ARM, except it couldn't run the popular Windows 8 software, and Windows RT didn't have any software to fill the void.

iOS already has a rich app ecosystem with lots of iOS app developers, which would help he platform greatly if Apple decided to create a new iDevice form factor.

---

I've already taken my iPad 2 with keyboard cover with me to a few meetings where I wasn't going to be a presenter, because all I needed was something to check email, surf, and read PDFs and PPT files. As slow as the iPad 2 is, it wasn't the performance that irritated me. It was the small key spacing in the keyboard, the lack of a trackpad, and the lack of true iOS support for it that irritated me.

Plus iOS is inherently snappier to begin with than OS X, which is why iOS on ARM can be pleasant.

 

[RampantAndroid]

That's true, but it's the mirror argument I have for replacing x86 with ARM (Apple Ax or otherwise). It's a needless move with little to gain.

Performance of iOS devices is not a source of complaint for their users, nor do competitors have sizable leads over them that compel more than a nanoscopic number of people to move from iOS devices to competing options.

Now a couple-three years from now if Intel is suddenly crushing ARM stuff in price/performance/power/heat/package? It gets more interesting. I don't think we see anything that drastic happening though. Intel will steadily improve and become more competitive in the small-die space, but it's not enough to make it a pressing issue for now, or the near future.

Bottom line :

Apple wins with x86 in 'big' devices MBA and up.
Apple wins with ARM in 'small' devices iPad and down.
Apple has no need to change either of those paths for a good while yet.

I completely agree; I was responding to the idea that somehow moving iOS features to the bigger devices was an argument for switching to ARM; in reality iOS features can move to OSX regardless of the CPU architecture. I really don't see a move to ARM unless Apple has something crazy up their sleeve. My 2012 MBP can barely game as it is, stick an ARM CPU in there and I'll be back to playing 2d platformers instead of having the option to play full fledged games like Tomb Raider and such.

 

[R0H1T]

I completely agree; I was responding to the idea that somehow moving iOS features to the bigger devices was an argument for switching to ARM; in reality iOS features can move to OSX regardless of the CPU architecture. I really don't see a move to ARM unless Apple has something crazy up their sleeve. My 2012 MBP can barely game as it is, stick an ARM CPU in there and I'll be back to playing 2d platformers instead of having the option to play full fledged games like Tomb Raider and such.

I guess you missed probably the most important news from this year's CES ~
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8811/nvidia-tegra-x1-preview

Now imagine an SoC twice (maybe even thrice) as powerful as that, on 14nm, & it's GPU being at or slightly above par as compared to the X1. This coupled with active cooling ~
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8872/...p-technologies-and-cooler-master-join-forces-

Now that'll give you close to an i3m level of performance & a much better GPU, I doubt Intel has anything close to such a solution atm. If Apple were serious in doing something similar then you can bet ya they can replace the entire i3/i5 (u/m) variants from their lineup by just making OS X run on ARM & porting critical apps to it.

 

[witeken]

Armchair engineering is so easy :whiste:.

People should instead look at who's actually executing in the marketplace. Does any SoC exist that is faster than Broadwell-Y? Nope. Does any other company have FinFETs or even in meaningful production with viable yields? Also no. Is any other company even close to releasing its second real node with FinFETs? Not at all.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Does any other company have FinFETs or even in production? Also no.

Samsung claims to.

 

[R0H1T]

Armchair engineering is so easy :whiste:.

People should instead look at who's actually executing in the marketplace. Does any SoC exist that is faster than Broadwell-Y? Nope. Does any other company have FinFETs or even in meaningful production with viable yields? Also no. Is any other company even close to releasing its second real node with FinFETs? Not at all.

Is there any company in America with cash at hand anywhere close to Apple ~ nope.

Can Apple pull this off, given their resources (engineering plus $$) & previous experience moving from IBM to Intel ~ absolutely.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I say good riddance, it would restore the differentiation apple had on the pc space when they sported ibm cpus. To buy a mac that has idebtical hardware to what you can get in a pc its kinf of absurd, speciallu for the Premium they ask for their products

That began when Apple moved away from SCSI drives, no?

If you remove all Intel technologies from Apple computers then there ain't much left in terms of hardware. And I guess buying an Apple computer knowing full well it is a tablet with KBM might just redefine the word Premium.

 

[III-V]

That's exactly what I think.

Yep, that's my view as well. Anyone believing that Apple could dump Intel for their MacBook Pros, iMacs or Mac Pros needs their head examined. Probably Mac Minis as well.

 

[Gikaseixas]

If anyone can go solo, it is Apple but i think they still have a few years to build something close to i7 performance.

 

[witeken]

Is there any company in America with cash at hand anywhere close to Apple ~ nope.

Can Apple pull this off, given their resources (engineering plus $$) & previous experience moving from IBM to Intel ~ absolutely.

I don't think you really understand Moore's Law. If Apple wants to move from Intel, they'd have to do these things:

1) Outcompete Intel with regards to
*CPU architecture (microarchitecture, clock speed, efficiency, ISA, other features like boost)
*GPU architecture
*Adjacent technology (modem, media, I/O, other uncore features,...)

2) Outcompete Intel on the production side of things:
*Process technology (feature sizes, transistor and interconnect innovations, yields,...)

Apple doesn't have GPU, they don't even have CPU boost, and they certainly don't have fabs. If they aren't better at both those things, there isn't a reason to move on from Intel. They could invest the money to become better than Intel at 1) (which is doubtful if they could pull that off given that building CPUs is Intel game), but it will cost them a huge amount of money, immediately nullifying the (overblown) cost incentive to move from Intel. But even if the R&D somehow doesn't cost them any money, they'd still have to go shopping at Intel so they don't downgrade on power, energy efficiency and performance, but Intel's made it extremely clear they wouldn't participate in any sort of price war with TSMC or Samsung, so the premium would be real and would immediately nullify the cost incentive to spend development moneys instead of buying pre-built state of the art parts (because those costs would at the very least be the same).

They could also spend tens of billions of money to start a fab, but it would take years to catch up to Intel, if they ever could, and that surely wouldn't pay off...

Lastly, I can come back to Moore's Law: don't forget Apple's volumes are relatively extremely small, which means that they'd have to spend billions of R&D to ship only a few millions laptop SoCs, so development cost per ship would be substantial and certainly wouldn't help the case to move from Intel.

The whole idea of Apple moving away from Intel (without a performance, energy efficiency, power and feature downgrade) is lunatic; just like the idea Apple would produce its own displays.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Is there any company in America with cash at hand anywhere close to Apple ~ nope.

Can Apple pull this off, given their resources (engineering plus $$) & previous experience moving from IBM to Intel ~ absolutely.

Apple got a lot of cash because they cant find any better way to use it than their current hedgefund. And throwing the money into a black hole isnt the best idea.

 

[elemein]

If anyone can go solo, it is Apple but i think they still have a few years to build something close to i7 performance.

It'd likely take much longer than that with lack of experience and it would certainly be incredibly hard due to the process disadvantage.

 

[III-V]

Just like the idea Apple would produce its own displays.

I actually don't think that one's too crazy. There's not really need for them to do so, though. Display technology is advancing at a healthy pace, and there's not really much need for Apple to grab the reins. Where Apple's desired progress, the panel manufacturers have obliged.

That's another reason why it's not really likely for Apple to ditch Intel... Intel is heading in the same direction as Apple. Apple wanted better graphics, and Intel obliged. Apple wants better power efficiency, and Intel's been obliging. There's no need for them to leave unless their demands aren't being met, and since they are... well, this talk of them leaving is rather silly.

They do have the money to do just about anything they wanted, so it's certainly possible they could go off the deep end and buy their own fab and cut off Intel entirely -- but it'd be incredibly stupid for them to do that at the present time.

 

[R0H1T]

I don't think you really understand Moore's Law. If Apple wants to move from Intel, they'd have to do these things:

1) Outcompete Intel with regards to
*CPU architecture (microarchitecture, clock speed, efficiency, ISA, other features like boost)
*GPU architecture
*Adjacent technology (modem, media, I/O, other uncore features,...)

2) Outcompete Intel on the production side of things:
*Process technology (feature sizes, transistor and interconnect innovations, yields,...)

Apple doesn't have GPU, they don't even have CPU boost, and they certainly don't have fabs. If they aren't better at both those things, there isn't a reason to move on from Intel. They could invest the money to become better than Intel at 1) (which is doubtful if they could pull that off given that building CPUs is Intel game), but it will cost them a huge amount of money, immediately nullifying the (overblown) cost incentive to move from Intel. But even if the R&D somehow doesn't cost them any money, they'd still have to go shopping at Intel so they don't downgrade on power, energy efficiency and performance, but Intel's made it extremely clear they wouldn't participate in any sort of price war with TSMC or Samsung, so the premium would be real and would immediately nullify the cost incentive to spend development moneys instead of buying pre-built state of the art parts (because those costs would at the very least be the same).

They could also spend tens of billions of money to start a fab, but it would take years to catch up to Intel, if they ever could, and that surely wouldn't pay off...

Lastly, I can come back to Moore's Law: don't forget Apple's volumes are relatively extremely small, which means that they'd have to spend billions of R&D to ship only a few millions laptop SoCs, so development cost per ship would be substantial and certainly wouldn't help the case to move from Intel.

The whole idea of Apple moving away from Intel (without a performance, energy efficiency, power and feature downgrade) is lunatic; just like the idea Apple would produce its own displays.

They don't have to do any of this, there aren't very many pro apps on OS X that utilize the full potential of an i7, so they can certainly do with a more optimized custom OS running on ARM. In the future when better multithreaded apps are developed, & they most certainly are coming, a true eight core ARM CPU will do just fine besides alot of content creation is GPU oriented & with openCL a number of specialized tasks can now be offloaded to a GPU.

Apple isn't about the latest & greatest at 14nm or 20nm, it's the ecosystem (apps/software) that counts & anyone who doesn't consider this as their strongest suit is definitely gonna be surprised at how easily they'll can x86 as & when the time comes.

 

[witeken]

If they don't care about performance, they can put cheap Pentiums in their laptops...

 

[Denithor]

I don't really think Apple would actually do this, but then again they made the iPhone 5C.

And we are starting to see lots of "desktop" computers out in retail that are nothing more than a netbook (at best) in a large case.

So, maybe a bottom dollar Mac on iOS for the masses? With the Apple sticker on the side they could still probably demand a premium price.

 

[exar333]

If it 'was just a few billion dollars' to compete with Intel's best products, don't you think other companies would have already followed-suit?

 

[tential]

They don't have to do any of this, there aren't very many pro apps on OS X that utilize the full potential of an i7, so they can certainly do with a more optimized custom OS running on ARM. In the future when better multithreaded apps are developed, & they most certainly are coming, a true eight core ARM CPU will do just fine besides alot of content creation is GPU oriented & with openCL a number of specialized tasks can now be offloaded to a GPU.

Apple isn't about the latest & greatest at 14nm or 20nm, it's the ecosystem (apps/software) that counts & anyone who doesn't consider this as their strongest suit is definitely gonna be surprised at how easily they'll can x86 as & when the time comes.

Sorry, but Apple does use the "latest and greatest". Not to our standards as enthusiasts, but it's far beyond budget products available. The whole Macbook Pro lineup uses an i7 processor.

There is a reason Apple flourishes, it's because they don't use bottom of the line products, you don't have to be a tech genius to purchase Apple products, no matter what product you purchase, you're getting good quality hardware (even if it's at a price premium and isn't as good as we may like it to be it's still good compared to the tons of junk out there).

Apple does care about performance, and intel is the performance king. Going to an SoC that doesn't outperform or isn't on par with Intel draws a massive performance difference between Windows and OSX which isn't something Apple is really prepared to do.

 

[RampantAndroid]

I guess you missed probably the most important news from this year's CES ~
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8811/nvidia-tegra-x1-preview

Now imagine an SoC twice (maybe even thrice) as powerful as that, on 14nm, & it's GPU being at or slightly above par as compared to the X1. This coupled with active cooling ~
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8872/...p-technologies-and-cooler-master-join-forces-

Now that'll give you close to an i3m level of performance & a much better GPU, I doubt Intel has anything close to such a solution atm. If Apple were serious in doing something similar then you can bet ya they can replace the entire i3/i5 (u/m) variants from their lineup by just making OS X run on ARM & porting critical apps to it.

I've seen the stuff on the X1 platform. My statement was hyperbole; specifically, it's a large step backwards from even my GT650m which is already kinda slow. And I don't think Apple is foolish enough to fragment the OSX market. Move part of the Macbook line to ARM and leave the rest on Intel/x86 and the new ARM devices will have no software out the door beyond first and second party apps. Third party will follow *sluggishly* - many apps used by people will take a while to be ported IF they are ported. IF Apple leaves OSX outside of the app store an open platform.

I think if Apple is going to move Macbooks to ARM, it HAS to be done wholesale, and the benefits aren't there right now.

 

[RampantAndroid]

They don't have to do any of this, there aren't very many pro apps on OS X that utilize the full potential of an i7

Huh? So all the photo and video editing software...audio software...CAD and 3D design software...none of that counts? OK...

 

[monstercameron]

I've seen the stuff on the X1 platform. My statement was hyperbole; specifically, it's a large step backwards from even my GT650m which is already kinda slow. And I don't think Apple is foolish enough to fragment the OSX market. Move part of the Macbook line to ARM and leave the rest on Intel/x86 and the new ARM devices will have no software out the door beyond first and second party apps. Third party will follow *sluggishly* - many apps used by people will take a while to be ported IF they are ported. IF Apple leaves OSX outside of the app store an open platform.

I think if Apple is going to move Macbooks to ARM, it HAS to be done wholesale, and the benefits aren't there right now.

if it is ios then they have a large catalog of software that would only need minor ui tweaks.

Huh? So all the photo and video editing software...audio software...CAD and 3D design software...none of that counts? OK...

because none of these exist on ios or that every mac book owner uses those type of programs and aren't in coffee shop writing a novel.

 

[R0H1T]

Sorry, but Apple does use the "latest and greatest". Not to our standards as enthusiasts, but it's far beyond budget products available. The whole Macbook Pro lineup uses an i7 processor.

There is a reason Apple flourishes, it's because they don't use bottom of the line products, you don't have to be a tech genius to purchase Apple products, no matter what product you purchase, you're getting good quality hardware (even if it's at a price premium and isn't as good as we may like it to be it's still good compared to the tons of junk out there).

Apple does care about performance, and intel is the performance king. Going to an SoC that doesn't outperform or isn't on par with Intel draws a massive performance difference between Windows and OSX which isn't something Apple is really prepared to do.

Yes because that's the best general purpose CPU atm but 99% of those users can do without an i7, an i5 will do just fine for'em & it's not like the Macbook Pro has an i7 5960x in it is there?

I give them 2yrs at most to reach an i5 level of perf (well at least 90%) on the 14nm node, pretty close to Broadwell in fact & another 4yrs to get to skylake/cannonlake with their 10nm (Apple's) SoC. You're seriously underestimating what Apple's acheived in the last few years & the only thing stooping them atm, from making that switch to ARM, is a certain lack of imagination & a definite lack of professional software written for ARM. As for GPU, anyone here thinks Intel is top of the line, seriously?

Huh? So all the photo and video editing software...audio software...CAD and 3D design software...none of that counts? OK...

Of course they do but 99% of these apps will do just fine on an i5 & as for the rest see my post above.

 

[III-V]

I give them 2yrs at most to reach an i5 level of perf (well at least 90%) on the 14nm node, pretty close to Broadwell in fact & another 4yrs to get to skylake/cannonlake with their 10nm (Apple's) SoC. You're seriously underestimating what Apple's acheived in the last few years & the only thing stooping them atm, from making that switch to ARM, is a certain lack of imagination & a definite lack of professional software written for ARM. As for GPU, anyone here thinks Intel is top of the line, seriously?Of course they do but 99% of these apps will do just fine on an i5 & as for the rest see my post above.

It's not so much a question of whether or not they have the resources. There simply is no point to them doing what you state. It would be a phenomenal waste of resources, and a huge burden to developers.

 

[aigomorla]

wouldnt OSX kernal need to be re-optimized all over again from scratch to support the ARM?

Then wouldnt apple need to invest in R&D on both tablet/Phone + Desktop CPU's which would cost a gignormous amount of resources?

I dont see how apple would do that when R&D is done by Intel, at a level which no other vendor can compete against.

It doesn't make sense and i dont see the saving from cost of having your OWN cpu.

Also who wants a desktop which is just as fast as your phone/tablet?

 

[R0H1T]

It's not so much a question of whether or not they have the resources. There simply is no point to them doing what you state. It would be a phenomenal waste of resources, and a huge burden to developers.

They'll save billions that they spend on Intel's processors, you think that isn't incentive enough then I have a bridge to sell you. IMO they just need 80~90% of the top end (Intel) perf & their ecosystem synergies + profits will be massive.

I'll reiterate though that for such a thing to happen they must have a certain vision in mind, besides their greed & mountain of cash will eventually lead them there