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Apple May Push Back Launch of Rumored 12-inch Retina MacBook Due to Broadwell Delays
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Do you have inside sources or do you just "know"?
We will see when Skylake is released.
The iPhone cost breakdown always bothers me -- it doesn't account for the cost of IP and other zero-price inputs like software. It's not as if the profit Apple makes on an iPhone is $800-$200 = $600. At some point they had to do a huge amount of development to figure out how to put it all together.
Same for a laptop.
That says nothing at all - and is in fact very misleading.
The Power8 is a server processor. That means is has very different design requirements. It is allowed to burn lots of power and cost the earth; Intel's chips have the exact opposite requirements.
The Power8 has 48/96MB of L3 cache depending on configuration. That is enormous! Haskell only has 2-8MB.
The Power8 has a die size of 362mm2 - 650mm2 (!!!). Haskell has between 177mm2 and 277mm2. Not only that, but it's estimated that about 65% of Haswell's die area is taken up by the GPU, which the Power8 obviously doesn't have. That means the largest (4-core) Haswell CPU takes up about 96mm2. You could almost fit 4 (i.e. 16 cores worth) of them on the die of the 6-core Power8.
Oh, and those IBM servers probably have some very sophisticated cooling system which exceeds the kind of cooling you'd typically want under your desk (or on your lap). For the record, you can overlock Haswell up to 4.8Ghz with air cooling that's still probably not as powerful as those servers have rocking.
These chips have completely different design requirements. It's like comparing a Bugatti Veyron to a VW Golf. The Bugatti will go faster, but while doing so it will also consume 12,000 gallons (45k litres) of air per minute and do 2.5mpg while burning through its $40,000 tyres in about half an hour. The VW is more modest, but for its size and relative economy delivers remarkable performance.
Actually, it's probably quite an apt comparison; the Power8 has 1700 integrated voltage regulators. Each Haswell has one (split in to 20 parts internally; still that's 85x less than the Power8). That's similar to the Veyron having 10 radiators.
But I didn'tt mention architecture; I said Intel has the best fabrication technology. The Power8 was announced around the same time as Haswell, but IBM itself have only been able to ship them since a month ago, on a 22nm process. Intel's been shipping cargo-ships full of 22nm Haswells for well over a year. Broadwell is being developed on a 14nm process which nobody else on Earth has been able to do at that scale so far. If we see chips at the end of the year, that's still better scale than anybody else has been able to achieve.
Building chips is really, really hard. Electronics-grade silicon is expensive, and all the processing that is done to it is also expensive. Materials behave completely differently at the nanoscale, and nano-scopic stress fractures and other utterly bizarre quantum forces can totally ruin your work. You can't conceivably test every function of every chip on the production line, so you need a very reliable and well-tested process to be able to get reliable, economical yields out. It's simple enough to demonstrate one 14nm chip once in a lab, but scaling that up to a production line is a whole other story.
Intel is better than anyone at doing that. As far as fabrication technology is concerned, they are the trailblazers of the silicon industry.
Intel's focus has shifted enormously from the Pentium 4 days: they're all about performance-per-watt now, not just performance. I've spoken to Intel engineers who have had really good ideas for improving performance but after rigorous energy analysis it was deemed that the power cost was too great. You don't need to worry about that when you're making enormous server chips.
I just hope they do a 17 inch MacBook Pro soon. Mine is on its last legs and I am expecting to go over to the dark side if Apple does not make one.
Try the 15" rMBP. Large Windows laptops are very, err, large. Plus most of them still only go as far as 1080p. Who wants to buy a notebook with a large display with only 1080p in 2014?
Well , there are Windows based laptops that compete with the 15" rMBP.
One of them is the Dell Precision m3800.
You should also realize that some people like having user changeable batteries , RAM , SSD , etc so they may not want to buy a rMBP.
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Apple doesn't care about people who want to buy 17" laptops anymore.
Other companies fill in that gap now.
Here is a possible replacement for you. You can get 5 years of NBD warranty service with that computer but it only comes with 3 years standard though.
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You may have to go to the dark side then. They won't be bringing back the 17 inch model.
why r you comparing power8 cpu to a haswell cpu?
the power8 is a server and workstation cpu that is more in line with the intel xeon lines of cpu's.
they don't know what the tdp is but estimates it to be less than 200 watts since that is the tdp for the previous power7 cpu and the power8 will be using 22nm process whcih should be more power efficient. and if you wanna compare tdp, intel xeons now are around 150watts. so it's not far off. and the powrpc8 is much more powerpcful!!!
the person you were replying to wasn't misleading anything. i think he was simply wishful thinking about apple having the option to return to using powerpc again.
and i don't blame him. besides os x, a macintosh is basically a pc in a pretty aluminum case. i kind of thought a macintosh was the complete package. different OS, different cpu (inside) and a "mac" outside.
if you look at gadgets today, smart phones are looking more and more like the iphone. dell, asus, razer, etc are making notebooks that look more and more like the macbooks. they are even doing the aluminum thing and even their "build quality" is getting better every year it seems.
maybe there is hope for the return of the powerpc since ibm is licensing it. a powerpc8 might not fit in a macbook. but it looks ripe for a mac pro, which is apple's "workstation."
so there is an option for apple to go ARM for notebooks and POWERPC for workstations if they choose to. ppl are not buying macs anyway b/c of "intel inside." ppl are buying macs b/c of the "culture." and even though i hate that word, i thought that it also meant "something different inside."
whatever.
I believe your assessment is right on the money. Now we'll see how Apple executes.
Yep, I can't believe I sold people on Apple products for years and years when they were just a fruit company. Now Apple has no need for professionals that need portable real computers to do real things. Soon I'll be able to get a 15 inch iPad, but no 17 inch computer to do real work. Just sad!
this decision to omit the 17" was probably made in a board meeting of appl stock wigs. maybe it took a year of this "meeting" until the stock wigs were able to compile a chart (probably using MS powerpoint) to convince his/her fellow stock wigs that they needed to omit the 17" mbp. this might seem arbitrary to us and to me (the 17" just meant a more expensive "15" lol) but this pie chart was apparently compelling enough for the rest of the stock wigs to vote out the 17" mbp from the line up.
my guess is that the 17" didn't sell enough to justify "wasting" aluminum blocks and shipping crates when they could just as well use the aluminums meant for the 17" in making more notebooks in smaller sizes. so, space/aluminums saved in production by shaving off the 17" and then when it comes to shipping, appl can ship more smaller notebooks in this shipping crate.
and/or this and the combination of the high grade TN 1920x1200 panels used in the 17" became rarer or more expensive for appl to stock/build/deliver....
also, as a clincher, perhaps, this stock wig also mentions that their thunderbolt displays can use a boost in sales by forcing ppl to buy it if they needed a "bigger" display. this last convincing anecdote probably made the vote sway towards the end of life for the 17" mbp.
that/or appl can't "design" a 17" retina version of the mbp (i love making fun of apple's "innovation" and "design" reputation) or a 17" retina screen doesn't exist or if it does, is too rare/expensive.
the transition from 2011-2013 where we saw the classic unibody macbook pro's go to the way of the dodo bird proves that my guesses here are probably less theories and guesses and probably closer to a documentation of why, what and how appl stockwigs decided to decide their decisions.
as for 12" macbook--i am hoping it will be a "cheaper" 15" mbp. i don't even care if it's "Retina." a "retina" 12" mbp just means it will add to the price, make the iris pro igpu struggle more and have less battery life. i know these things are "negligible" for ppl with deep pockets and for some reason want retina notebooks b/c it's the "latest" tech. but, oh please. make the panel a good panel with a resolution that is right for a 12" screen. don't make it worse and cram tech in there just b/c you can. design and innovation doesn't mean latest and greatest, appl. steve jobs knew that. steve jobs would all fire you, if he was alive!!!!!
p.s.--latest also doesn't mean greatest. and vice versa. i know steve jobs must have screamed this at a big headed stock wig once in his life during one of those hundreds of board meetings he must have went to. "LATEST DOES NOT MEAN GREATEST!!!" yelled steve jobs to a bigheaded, pignosed appl stock wig.
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