Apple's Potential Shift from Intel to ARM for Macs Not Implausible, But Faces Hurdles

[shanmugam]

Intel has advantage over any one in the industry in process technology. 22nm rocks.

It would take billions of dollar (every three years) to spend to get that level of maturity

Apple still relaying on Samsung, TSMC.

unless apple uses Intel to manufacture ARM processors!

[chazmuzz]

Originally Posted by definitive

How would this affect one's ability to use Windows through Bootcamp?

Windows 8 runs on ARM

[tann]

Honestly don't see anything happening for the next 3-5 years. Arm processors are still quite a way behind where intel's are (especially for a proper computer!).

[longofest]

Originally Posted by bharatgupta

read something about a "new kind of notebook" that apple is testing in its lab on patently apple website, possibly that and macbook air kind of notebook might see such transplants otherwise i too see no reason for apple to switch away from intel cpu's atleast not in coming 5 years.

The performance difference between the A6X and the slowest Macbook Air is about 600%, so I even have trouble believing this as anything but skunkworks even for MacBook Air until we see A50-series level designs start appearing, but even then, you'd have Haswell out which will drop power usage and increase performance in Intel's line, so you have to go and ask why

[prowlmedia]

Originally Posted by dkersten

Good thing Apple is looking out or its customers again. If there's one thing we need its a low power chip on all those desktops.

To be fair - it only mentioned it as a laptop possibility.

And if it's relatively painless for the Dev's and invisble to the end user. Why not.

Depends on the power doesn't it. The 15" is damn fast and stil has decent battery.

[Sincci]

Originally Posted by chazmuzz

Windows 8 runs on ARM

No it doesn't. Windows RT runs on ARM, but that's completely different thing than Windows 8. Windows RT cannot run apps that are made for the x86(-64) version of Windows. And it doesn't matter anyway since Microsoft doesn't sell Windows RT anywhere, they only license it to the tablet manufacturers. So this means that there wouldn't be any support for Bootcamp anymore.

[Jethryn Freyman]

Why not just buy Intel?

[roxxette]

Originally Posted by Jethryn Freyman

Why not just buy Intel?

Why chevron dont buy apple ?

[whooleytoo]

Originally Posted by baryon

Don't think anyone would enjoy having to rewrite every dingle piece of software ever written for the Mac, or else run it in emulation, 20 times slower than if you didn't switch from Intel. The switch from PPC to Intel only just finished completely, a few years ago, when pretty much PCC is no longer supported by anyone. Are we going to have to start all over again, just to get slightly faster computer?

Not a rewrite, most software likely would just require a recompile (though performance-criticial software would certainly require some hand-tweaking).

ARM chips might make sense at the low-end (Air), where size and battery life seem more important than outright performance. And that's where all Apple's Mac sales growth is now. Also make sense if the long-term plan is to merge iOS & OS X.

OTOH, it could just be a bluff; to strengthen their hand when dealing with Intel.

[frank100]

maybe Apple will decide just to drop Intel based macs within a future...

[everything-i]

Not implausible, which roughly translates into highly improbable. The cost and time-frame to implement would make it a pointless exercise, they would only use the processors themselves and volumes would not be anywhere near sufficient to get any economies of scale. Apple have so far only just completed a semi custom ARM design which is a million miles from a fully custom processor. Do these people have any appreciation of how much effort and cost is involved in doing this from scratch. Surely if they did they would realise how pointless it would be given the current direction Intel is taking with its offerings. By 2017 it is likely Intel will have similar performing mobile processors to ARM, the only thing currently lacking would be the ability for 3rd parties to integrate Intel designs into SOC designs and is currently a big advantage for ARM designs, if Intel can overcome this they will be a real across the board option by then. ARM is currently lacking any high performance processor designs for power laptop and desktop plus you have to then transition all software to RISC if you go this route which is another huge undertaking. You would be in the realm of Rosetta again which was hugely painful last time but at least had the huge benefit of getting Apple onto superior x86 processors and able to run windows software using virtual machines or boot camp.

[chazmuzz]

Originally Posted by bharatgupta

very valid point and its at present that things are kind of stable for software developers and users, such moves will only disturb already healthy and flourishing ecosystem.

I have a theory:

Currently XCode can compile the same source code into either x86 or arm. If you run some code on an iPhone simulator it generates an x86 binary, but for a device it generates an ARM binary. Apple will only care about binaries uploaded to the App Store as that's the only place they want to distribute software to consumers.

Decompilers exist, so maybe Apple could decompile every app on the App store to source code, then recompile to an ARM binary..

Maybe they can come up with a way to translate x86 machine code to ARM machine code directly

The app store could contain a binary for both architectures and serve the appropriate one to the consumer

[dashiel]

If you control the chipset, IDE and virtual machine you can iteratively tune them to improve performance. Apple’s AX series don’t even need to maintain pace with Intel in terms of raw computing power.

If they are successful Apple will release it in an early adopter product (e.g. the original MacBook Air, Retina MacBook Pro, G4 Cube) it will probably be expensive, it will probably be compromised. If it’s popular like the Air, its engineering philosophy will work its way in to other product lines. If it fails, like the G4 Cube, it will be abruptly and unceremoniously discontinued.

[glis]

Intel's future looks pretty grim. They're down to the last few die shrinks before their superior fab process comes to a standstill. Then they'll be stuck with a bloated obsolete instruction architecture with nowhere to go. Give it another 3-4 years and we'll see.

[mkimid]

The changing of CPU means the changing of whole platforms.
It is not just a meaning of chaning OS
I do not think Apple will leave x86 platform whatever they happen.
More ever, if they loose BootCamp and x86-VM environment,
they will loose not small number of customers.

[Karma*Police]

These "leaks" could be a negotiating ploy for Apple to get Intel to give it special pricing, exclusivity to certain tech, etc.

That said, I've no doubt that these two architectures will eventually intersect performance-wise at some point. And with all the money going into mobile, there's no guarantee that Intel will lead the performance race a few years from now so it would be irresponsible for Apple to not explore moving macs to ARM at this stage.

[everything-i]

Originally Posted by prowlmedia

To be fair - it only mentioned it as a laptop possibility.

And if it's relatively painless for the Dev's and invisble to the end user. Why not.

Depends on the power doesn't it. The 15" is damn fast and stil has decent battery.

This is very painful for devs as x86 is very different from ARM RISC, it isn't as simple as a trivial recompile in most cases. Intel's low power offerings are improving very rapidly and there would be a real risk that a move away from Intel wouldn't bring any real benefit by the time it is completed.

[rjohnstone]

Originally Posted by ntux

I'd bet Apple is currently negotiating some contracts with Intel, and is intentionnaly letting some rumors like these get out so they could pressure them a bit

Apple is only a small percentage of Intel's business.
They lack any real negotiating power in this area.

Originally Posted by glis

Intel's future looks pretty grim. They're down to the last few die shrinks before their superior fab process comes to a standstill. Then they'll be stuck with a bloated obsolete instruction architecture with nowhere to go. Give it another 3-4 years and we'll see.

"Intel's future looks pretty grim" Thanks for the laugh.
You must have forgot the /s tag in your post.

[r00b3n]

Even for users who still want to run Windows on BootCamp, now you have WindowsRT. And maybe we could get other alternative OSes on there too, like Android. It might be cool.

R

[Mord]

Originally Posted by Mr Fusion

This would be a very silly move.

Switching to their own chips I could possibly understand, but ARM? Eventually they're going to let them down just like IBM and Intel.

If they made this move they'd be doing both, building their own chip licensing the ARM instruction set, they wouldn't really be reliant upon ARM for much at all other than the standardised ISE, this enables them to unify their platforms and vastly simplify the development of iOS and OS X.

Long term I think this would be a good move.

[Big Dave]

In a computer, I don't care about power savings. I want high processor speed with lots and lots of cores. I want a Chevy Corvette not a Toyota Priss.

[Mr Fusion]

Originally Posted by OllyW

ARM doesn't manufacturer chips, they just license their designs to other companies.

Originally Posted by Mord

If they made this move they'd be doing both, building their own chip licensing the ARM instruction set, they wouldn't really be reliant upon ARM for much at all other than the standardised ISE, this enables them to unify their platforms and vastly simplify the development of iOS and OS X.

Long term I think this would be a good move.

So ARM doesn't manufacture chips? Oh.. Well then this makes more sense, I can understand why Apple would do this now.

I find the title of this article misleading. Either that or I need to read things more carefully.

[OllyW]

Originally Posted by r00b3n

Even for users who still want to run Windows on BootCamp, now you have WindowsRT.

Good luck running your Windows programs on RT.

[krravi]

Apple trying to do everything on its own is going to cause its downfall. There are somethings that you just leave it to others. Maps fiasco is a good example. Sure over time, Apple Maps will get better, but Google isn't going to be taking a nap either.

They want 50 - 60% markup on everything.

I knew bootcamp was a switch and bait kind of deal to sucker users in.

"Hey look you can run Windows on our machines too.. but your machine might end up like a heater as we don't supply the necessary drivers and software to cool the macs. And we dont entertain any support calls if windows is concerned"

Great! And Apple is pissed at Google that they didn't give all the features to Apple? What goes around, comes around, Apple !

[bernuli]

What if software was written to be multi CPU aware. Then you could simply add ARM CPUs as needed to make your desktop (or laptop) as fast as you wanted.

Would't this be a good, easily scaleable solution for well into the future?


B