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Apple and Intel Have Reportedly Discussed Deal for Production of Future iPhone and iPad Chips

Intel needs to do this. Mobile is where the action is, and Intel is completely missing out on that market. If they failed to develop their own competitive mobile CPU/GPU platform, at least they can keep their foundries busy manufacturing processors based on others' design.
 
drorpheus said:
I hope so, x86 has been the slowest and most unproductive arch of the 21st century. Look at how cutting edge intel has been since Apple signed on with them. 3 years and still waiting on something other than menial bumps for the macpro, why because of intel's lack and or desire to raise any bar. although no need to when your a monopoly.
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That has nothing to do with intel at this point.
 
I can't get my head around the supply chain numbers. Apple's estimated turnover this quarter is just over $40 billion. (I can't even type that as numbers).

Combined they'll sell some 70 million iPads and iPad mini's.(I hope these numbers are right)

So a change of just 1 cent is worth $700,000. Truly every cent does count.

Can you imagine them walking into a store and saying they need 70,000,000 of these XYZ's, how many can you supply a year. The supply chain and flow of parts just does my head in. Imagine the containers arriving at Foxconn daily. And the containers leaving.

Mind boggling. And freaking insane.
 
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Jaro65 said:
Intel needs to do this. Mobile is where the action is, and Intel is completely missing out on that market. If they failed to develop their own competitive mobile CPU/GPU platform, at least they can keep their foundries busy manufacturing processors based on others' design.
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But...margins on ARM processors are thin. Margins on x86 processors are pretty decent. I don't blame Intel for focusing on where the money is.
 
Garbage story. Not because of the end of the Samsung angle, but because of the insult to the rest of the Fab world which actually has created ARM relations and stamping certification unlike Intel that has not and will not.

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Jaro65 said:
Intel needs to do this. Mobile is where the action is, and Intel is completely missing out on that market. If they failed to develop their own competitive mobile CPU/GPU platform, at least they can keep their foundries busy manufacturing processors based on others' design.
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Intel isn't in the game with ARM to do this and Bloomberg shouldn't even be mentioning Intel and ARM in the same sentence, other than as competitors to one another.
 
iSunrise said:
If Intel doesn´t allow Apple access to it´s fabs, Apple will always be at least one step behind.
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Apple isn't really any steps behind because Apple has no fabs. But yes of the people Apple can hire to help them none of them are going to get out in front of Intel any time soon.

That group tends to be a bit split in that IBM has the "brains and research" and the rest have the scale. Intel leveraging both internally will stay out in front. Furthermore Intel doesn't have the distraction of a large number of external customers.


They could still make up some of that disadvantage with their software knowledge, but Apple KNOWS they are running into a blind alley.
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Apple can use their software skills to keep OS X relevant. If they do then Intel is the logical partner ( AMD could perhaps radically get better in the future but it isn't necesarily If they completely fail then I can see Apple not wanting an actual single source. )

Intel basically already can dictate what Apple does, Apple needs Intel´s CPUs already. Intel knows they can take that one step further with their new or future SOCs/mobile line-up.
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No. If the OS X market starts to slide backwards and growth evaporates Apple could just dump it. It isn't like they haven't "Steve'd" a product before. Apple isn't going to be dictated too. If OS X is growing that actually helps Intel too. That is the issue Intel needs products that are on the uptick. Not "generic boxes with slots" which have stagnated.


iOS is now a large ecosystem for Apple to make money off of. If it is even bigger 3-4 years from now and OS X is imploding Intel has little leverage.

But Intel making something that helps differentiate OS X devices from iOS ones would be a good partnership if both groups are growing. There is no reason why they can't (different rates but both growing).
 
drorpheus said:
It gets harder and harder for intel to eek out more performance because its still never learned to work outside of x86. There are 4 and 5ghz cpu's out right now and have been for years yet Intel keeps on selling you on gimmicks like colossal die shrinks that yield nothing but a smaller die. You've been buying the same 2.5-3.3ghz dual and quad core cpus for the last 7 years.
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No, die shrinks are in no way a gimmick. Without die shrinks our processors we have today wouldn't even be possible. A smaller die allows higher clock rates, higher performance per watt, and most importantly, more transistors. Since computing has gone more mobile performance per watt has become more and more important, and as such has become much more of a focus. One way to keep power down is to limit clock rates, and another is to reduce the voltage the processor needs to operate. We have gotten really close to a physical wall with respect to reducing voltage, so they have began to fix clock rates. Now most of these intel chips now can be overclocked by a full 1GHz even on good air cooling, and even farther on water. The other way they add performance is by adding features/improving efficiency per instruction (read: more transistors).These features improve performance of your cpu without increasing clock speed, so your Nehalem based core i7 at 2.6GHz is going to lose against a current Ivy Bridge i7 at 2.6Ghz. Intel constantly adds instructions to their processors that can be used to make things like video playing/encoding, and a myriad of other things faster, but it's up to software devs to actually implement them in software to see the performance increase in the real world. Sorry, but if you think smaller die's are just a gimmick, then you are very very mistaken as that is the driving force behind all of the computer technology you have today, and that is why intel spends lots and lots of $ on moving to smaller and smaller die's.
 
Hopefully this means people with current idevices will feel the same pain I feel when software and compatibility is never updated for my G5 Powermac. Misery loves company.
 
afrowq said:
Hopefully this means people with current idevices will feel the same pain I feel when software and compatibility is never updated for my G5 Powermac. Misery loves company.
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This doesn't mean they are switching to an intel processor for the mobile platform, it means that apple will hand intel a chip design and intel will build it in their fabs. I do agree on the G5 powermac bit though. I still have my Dual 2GHz G5 powermac in use, and for being as old as it is (early 2005) it's still quite snappy, but man does software support suck. That said, I do understand the need to move forward with tech, and even with the old software, my G5 still does a great job at recording audio with Pro Tools 7.
 
drorpheus said:
It gets harder and harder for intel to eek out more performance because its still never learned to work outside of x86. There are 4 and 5ghz cpu's out right now and have been for years yet Intel keeps on selling you on gimmicks like colossal die shrinks that yield nothing but a smaller die. You've been buying the same 2.5-3.3ghz dual and quad core cpus for the last 7 years.
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Okay, first of all, clock speeds means absolutely nothing in terms of performance across different chipsets. Just because random company A has a 5ghz processor out on the market (who would this be, by the way), doesn't mean that they've surpassed Intel on the performance front.

Secondly, there are very few physical differences between an x86 and ARM chip. The differences lie mostly in the instruction set. ARM has plenty of room to grow. x86 is very mature, yet still nets at least 15% jumps on average year after year.

7 years of the exact same processor, despite consistently eeking more performance out of their processors while sticking to roughly the same clock speeds? Really?

Colossal die shrinks that produce nothing but a smaller die? I'm not exactly a computer science expert, but I do have a basic inkling of how processors work. If you think shrinking a processor does nothing but makes it smaller, then I can say quite confidently that I know plenty more than you do.

Please. Educate yourself.
 
ozziegn said:
why would it seem like making any deal between supplier xxxxxx and Apple would be like making a deal with Satan? I say that because this makes me think of how bad Walmart puts the squeeze on all their suppliers.

As much as I love Apple products, it seems like Apple would be the Walmart in this case.
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Don't look now but Apple is already the Walmart of the tech sector. Anyone that's in denial about Apple squeezing it's vendors are only kidding themselves.

A long time Apple customer, I remember when Intel and Apple were arch enemies for many years. Motorola being the original and long time chip supplier for Apple computers.

The popular slang word used amongst the haters was "Wintel". Referencing a PC that ran a Microsoft Windows OS and an Intel Processor.

Later when Apple caved.... and began using Intel Chips in Mac the roar from the faithful was so loud only Jobs could spin the story and not have a total war on his hands.
 
JaySoul said:
I thought Intel aren't very good at making mobile chips just yet?
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Because Intel has crappy mobile offerings in the x86 space, doesn't mean Intel sucks at making mobile chips.

Quite the contrary, Intel's fab tech is top notch.

It's just that x86 makes for poor mobile chips, and the only reason x86 has been able to stay ahead in the marketplace is that Intel's fabrication technology has been enough of an advantage to keep their chips competitive.

Intel did fine with Xscale, and other alternate architectures. They just didn't make enough money. So they sold it off.

As for why they'd move to fabbing for Apple... this seems fishy. Not even sure this story is credible because I don't see why Intel benefits.
 
slu said:
The change in opinion around here on Intel from the days of the switch from PPC to now is really incredible.
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That because most people can't distinguish between Intel's different divisions, so they'll cheer or boo about whatever they hear last.

There's some things Intel does well. There's some things that Intel does which are embarrassingly sad.

Then again, this all tends to hold true for most companies mentioned here in the past.
 
Peace said:
I highly doubt that. Apple designs it's own ARM chips and has them stamped out by samsung currently.

If anything Apple will go to Intel for the foundry work.
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Agreed. It would be interesting to see this happen however.
 
deconstruct60 said:
Apple can use their software skills to keep OS X relevant. If they do then Intel is the logical partner ( AMD could perhaps radically get better in the future but it isn't necesarily If they completely fail then I can see Apple not wanting an actual single source. )

No. If the OS X market starts to slide backwards and growth evaporates Apple could just dump it. It isn't like they haven't "Steve'd" a product before. Apple isn't going to be dictated too. If OS X is growing that actually helps Intel too. That is the issue Intel needs products that are on the uptick. Not "generic boxes with slots" which have stagnated.
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They already have a partnership. Intel is already making a profit from it and so is Apple. Apple even asked Intel to integrate faster mobile graphics into their upcoming Haswell top-end mobile processors, because Apple has a vested interest eating into the desktop as fast as possible with their mobile portfolio. Both know they need each other for this.

I think you´re underestimating the impact that Intel´s x86 products have had in Apple´s line-up over the last several years. For every product that Apple introduced the last couple of years they needed efficient and fast processors. Intel even manufactured a custom mobile processor package for Apple´s Macbook Air, because Apple needed that. They want to be at the top when it comes to thinner, faster, more performance per watt/more battery. Apple dumped PowerPC for the very same reason. There´s no software skills in this world that could compensate the loss of Intel on the manufacturing side. You can code efficient software, but even that has it´s limits.

Yes, they won´t go bankrupt without Intel and they will probably find a way. But staying with Intel is certainly the easier route to take.
 
I bet Intel will be on being a foundry. There is no reason not to when you can make money and apple production will be lots of money.

Intel makes great processors and have been caught out by sudden mobile explosions for sure. This is a way to get practice and then sell a chip to apple and maybe even android manufacturers to break samsungs hold on chip making.

Intel can broker a deal with apple to supply their desktops an maybe future products.

It's win win for both as far as I can see.
 
drorpheus said:
I hope so, x86 has been the slowest and most unproductive arch of the 21st century. Look at how cutting edge intel has been since Apple signed on with them. 3 years and still waiting on something other than menial bumps for the macpro, why because of intel's lack and or desire to raise any bar. although no need to when your a monopoly.
Click to expand...

Incorrect, Intel has better performing ships than what Apple puts in the Mac pro, Apple just refuses to use them.
 
ozziegn said:
why would it seem like making any deal between supplier xxxxxx and Apple would be like making a deal with Satan? I say that because this makes me think of how bad Walmart puts the squeeze on all their suppliers.

As much as I love Apple products, it seems like Apple would be the Walmart in this case.
Click to expand...

Walmart isn't putting the squeeze on anyone, if they were don't you think companies would have their products removed from their shelves?
 
JaySoul said:
I thought Intel aren't very good at making mobile chips just yet?
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drorpheus said:
It gets harder and harder for intel to eek out more performance because its still never learned to work outside of x86. There are 4 and 5ghz cpu's out right now and have been for years yet Intel keeps on selling you on gimmicks like colossal die shrinks that yield nothing but a smaller die. You've been buying the same 2.5-3.3ghz dual and quad core cpus for the last 7 years.
Click to expand...
32nm came and went guys. It achieved performance parity with ARM and slightly edged ahead on idle power. Now we have the dual core versions that were out at MWC 2013.
 
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