Why not AMD?

[Meractik]

Why not AMD? Much of Apple's success is due to marketing and branding, not necessarily technological leadership. That should sound a lot like Intel these days, whose processors essentially lag behind AMD in terms of technology, but outsell AMD by huge margins thanks to strong marketing and branding. The Intel brand is much stronger than AMD's, and that is the sort of partner that Apple is interested in.


THE MARKETING AND ADVERTISING!!!!!


what a horrible reason!!

 

[spanky]

i would guess it has something to do with volume pricing

 

[jalaram]

IIRC, they were seriously considering both. I'm sure they got a better agreement with Intel.

 

[SouthPaW1227]

THE MARKETING AND ADVERTISING!!!!!


what a horrible reason!!

was this really that difficult?

 

[akubi]

I read on the times that one reason apple went to intel was because ibm won't produce lower heat cpus for notebooks (powerbooks had to use last generation cpus?). Since amd doesn't really have a viable alternative to pentium-m/centrino at the moment, they won't improve the situation. (I'm an amd fan and use amd64 for the record )

 

[spanky]

so will powerbooks have pent-m or centrino stickers on them? or will intel be supplying them with a new chip altogether?

 

[middlehead]

Originally posted by: spanky
so will powerbooks have pent-m or centrino stickers on them? or will intel be supplying them with a new chip altogether?

I don't remember seeing any models specified in the deal, but the fact that Jobs was using an OSX/Intel box for the demo in his keynote implies they'll use the same processors as everybody else.

 

[iwantanewcomputer]

i'd imagine cause they want the pentium m (next gen dothan) for super small, low power/heat laptops. the workstation differences between intel and amd are small

 

[loic2003]

I think one of the main concerns that aapl had is that they've not been able to squeeze the G5's into the powerbooks and maintain the competitive battery life that the PM's currently have. Intel's mobile chips are better than those of AMD and so the decision was taken to go for the Intel. Also, apple like to stay ahead when it comes to processing power and they've already had disasterous times with Motorola and IBM, I think they'll be wanting to avoid possible further nightmares and so have gone with the biggest company with the most resources who are most likely going to be able to fab the chips to their desired specifications for the forseable future.

 

[So]

Well, the thing is, they CAN once they make the tranisition, and they aren't going to risk breaking binary compatibility, so it's certainly possible. Part of the reason Apple made this move was to guarantee a continuous supply of CPUs so, they are not likely to switch until AMD can guarantee them a large monthly quota of CPUs.

 

[Leper Messiah]

Seriously. AMD doesn't have the production capability to add on another major customer.

 

[beer]

AMD can't make a competative mobile processor. End of story.
Secondly, I doubt that Intel is going to be providing the wireless radios. Airport Extreme is Broadcom IP, not Intel.

 

[Grey]

I admit ignorance on this issue, but are the intel chips going to be x86? If that is the case, why can't Tiger run on windows platforms?

 

[middlehead]

Originally posted by: beer
AMD hasn't made a competative mobile processor yet. End of story.

Fixed.


Hopefully when Fab36 opens, Apple will start buying AMD processors.

They can call the systems Double A's!

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: Grey
I admit ignorance on this issue, but are the intel chips going to be x86? If that is the case, why can't Tiger run on windows platforms?

I posted this is another thread. Let me copy/paste:

Originally posted by: beer

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Apple won't need DRM, they can cause hardware incompatibilities; they just have to use something other than the traditional PC BIOS for their motherboard underpinnings, throw in a ROM requirement, and you won't be running OS X on a PC any time soon. Oh, and FAT binaries have existed forever; Apple used them since the early 90's with the 68K->PPC transition, so they're not new.

Well that would partially solve the issue. Still, there would be nothing to prevent a third party from making a mac compatible mobo if they didn't use some funky features to prevent it from being duplicated. The only issue would be to copy their BIOS structure.

Consider this - what if, rather than security by obscurity, this platform was secured mathematically? In other words, assume AAPL/INTC had some sort of small cryptoprocessor or a 'trust module' of sorts. This trust module stored certificates of some sort, in hardware, completely independent of the OS. Now, lets say that in true cryptoprocessor fashion, there was no way to record bus activity - the traces were completely encrypted, shielded, etc.

If the BIOS checked for the existence of this certificate at boot, it could immediately tell whether or not the platform was 'trusted.' Trying to crack this certificate would be like trying to crack something like TLS. Even if you had all the diagrams in the world you couldn't break it since it's mathematically infeasible.

Given the potential cost to AAPL if OSX was cracked for generic x86 Dell boxes, this seems like a very real possibility.

 

[Grey]

Thanks for the post, now I am kind of curious. I am going to surf around and see if anyone is really thinking what you suggested.

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: Grey
Thanks for the post, now I am kind of curious. I am going to surf around and see if anyone is really thinking what you suggested.

It's the principle of the 'trusted platform'

 

[Schadenfroh]

would AMD even be able to supply a steady stream of chips to apple? I heard that as of now they are selling nearly every chip they build

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: jalaram
IIRC, they were seriously considering both. I'm sure they got a better agreement with Intel.

Apple never talked to AMD about it.

text

Many readers were surprised that Apple announced its partnership with Intel and not AMD, which despite being much smaller is ahead of Intel in x86 performance, energy efficiency, and other factors Jobs has said are important.

So, I called up Henri Richard, AMD's chief sales and marketing officer. He said Apple hadn't talked to AMD, and that in some ways that made sense. It was probably, he speculated, all about money. Porting the Mac OS to Intel and bringing along all the applications will be "incredibly" expensive, he said, "and the amount [of money] Apple can get from Intel is vastly greater than what it could get from us." With a marketer's optimism, Richard continued: "Steve [Jobs] is a smart guy. He'll get as much money as he can from Intel, and then go to the best architecture."

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

I have a feeling AMD CPU processors will be rising in price as their cost of operating increases, I wonder how competetive they'll be then...

 

[klah]

supply

 

[gsaldivar]

My gut feeling is that Intel will be developing variants of its flagship product lines to meet Apple's hardware needs. AMD might not be able/willing to accommodate Apple's need to enforce the proprietary nature of its hardware at an architecture level.

Remember, Apple is more concerned with marketability and maintaining its proprietary niche, rather than achieving best price/performance.

 

[phisrow]

Intel also has the platform thing down. AMD happens to produce the nicest desktop/server processor at the moment, and the chipsets that others have come up with to support them aren't bad; but they can't do anything like Intel's boring but rock solid all Intel motherboards. In particular, Apple probably wants/needs something nicer than the old BIOS and some hardware DRM. Guess who has lots of somewhat scary ideas about both? Intel.

 

[SilentZero]

Originally posted by: spanky
i would guess it has something to do with volume pricing

My guess as well