Apple Threatened to Abandon Intel Chips over Power Consumption

[Trudy]

That's utter nonsense. Apple is below 5% market share worldwide. They are a nice customer for Intel, but sure not someone to dictate their roadmap.

This is mobile. Apple has a higher share in mobile than in desktops. Apple also has a very high share in the premium notebook market where Intel gets to make higher profits on more advanced chips. Apple also has a history of making the market go in its direction, so if Apple wants lower power now, the entire market will be wanting it soon. Intel will miss the boat by not giving into Apple's request.

Intel has previously bent to Apple's requests too. The low-profile packaging for the original MacBook Air had been explored by Intel, but it was sitting on the shelf. Apple asked that it be revived and completed for an ultra thin form factor laptop. Apple has also gotten first dibs on high-end processors for the Mac Pro. And, of course, Apple is Intel's to-market partner in Thunderbolt, Intel's main hope for public adoption of the technology.

Intel has much reason to listen to its larger partner, Apple.

 

[tkatz]

Intel does not really care that much about Apple with their 5% Worldwide PC share (way behind real computer companies). Not just that, they mostly buy Intel's cheapest chips (they do not produce servers).

Worldwide PC share doesn't mean anything. What share of those PC's are AMD's? What share of those are Dell, HP, Acer, etc..? How much money does Apple give to Intel per year vs any of those companies? Apple also works with Intel to improve on their offerings. Does Dell do that?

Also, using Dell as an example, if you check out their current "Popular Laptop" deals here...

http://www.dell.com/us/p/popular-laptop-deals?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn

3 out of 5 of those deals are i3 systems. The lowest end MacBook Air uses an i5. The 15"+ MBP's use i7's.... Is it really Apple that buy's Intels cheapest offerings, or could it be others?

In terms of talking about low sales of Mac Pro's, how about Dell, HP, etc.. sales of high end work stations and servers? How many of those systems are also running AMD's?

There's a lot of variables and your comment cannot be accepted for anything other then flame bait.

 

[jclardy]

I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with Apple, as I believe Intel could cut the TDP a tad here and there, but asking them to cut their TDP to 33% is pretty drastic. Typical Apple kicking and screaming to get what they want.

As if 7 hours isn't good or something, I know consumers want more, more, more, but somethings gotta give.

I won't be happy if they move to ARM, unless we see performance gains AND lower TDP. Otherwise, if it's not broken don't fix it.

7 hours is good if that is what you get, but 7 hours is under a light, web browsing and document editing load. If you want to do anything CPU/GPU/HDD intensive like video editing you will get 3-4 hours on a full charge on a 15"

And the 11" only gets around 2 hours under full load (fans blazing), although under a light load it can be stretched to over 5 hours.

 

[GermanyChris]

I think you miss the point. It seems "childish" to you because, presumably, you are an english speaking American. In much of the rest of the English-speaking world the word is "maths" and "mathematics" seems weird and foreign to them.

Actually it doesn't..

they do use the term maths but know what mathematics are and that it's proper..

Only a person on a forum would make a statement like that..


Cripes...

Chris

***people looking down there noses at people annoy me kith and kin is a appropriate statement for family and friends but that doesn't mean I'll use it***

 

[Stridder44]

What's crazy is how quickly Intel fixed everything. Just goes to show you how lazy they're being about new chip designs since AMD isn't exactly giving them a run for their money (unfortunately).

 

[CFreymarc]

I just pray they don't move to ARM processors.

That is one of the biggest trends and a total wake-up call to both Intel, AMD and the rest of the x86 derivative fab houses.

Not only is Apple looking to move to ARM, specifically the ARM Cortex-A series, but so is Microsoft. The current rumor come Redmond way is that Windows 8 is going to target both x86 and ARM instruction sets in native OS builds with yet another, proprietary binary file exchange format -- of which only the MS Office types will follow while everyone else goes XML.

This could make these PC overclockers look like 50's era hotrodders at a Hybrid car show.

 

[Bafflefish]

I think he is right, though, in that component suppliers (Intel, AMD, etc.) were not being driven by PC manufacturers (Dell, the former Compaq, the former IBM PC business, etc.) I think the drivers were more like server manufacturers, perhaps; or opportunities the component manufacturers self-identified based on emerging applications or market trends.

But even that's not necessarily the case, as in the early-2000s manufacturers were pushing for mobile, low-power variants of the Pentium 4 for use in laptops. In college I even had a laptop made by Compaq at the time that featured a 1.4 Ghz Pentium 4 "Mobile", a Radeon with dedicated VRAM, with a 14" screen that was only slightly thicker than my MBP now. It even still runs fine after a battery replacement a few years back.

You can definitely make a case that PC manufacturers were stagnant with designs on the desktop side, but in the laptop sector, they've been fairly good at pushing Intel, AMD and others to advance their product lines. Plus they tend to throw out nearly every option to consumers, which is why PC users can still obviously get Blu Ray, eSATA and other options that Apple continues to reject.

No, this whole notion that Apple drives *everything* is just part of the reality distortion field. Apple contributes, but so do others.

 

[DePaulBlueDemon]

The more appropriate title would have been "was threatened." I thought this was a recent development.

 

[shompa]

Yes, clearly PC hardware would be "as horrible now" as it was ten years, since it was clearly Apple who was driving...

* the push for high-performance discrete graphics from 3Dfx, ATI and nVidia. Oh wait, Apple didn't really play a role.

* advancements in CPU architecture. Oh wait, how long did Apple stick with Motorola and IBM, even during Motorola's inept period of being unable to break past 500 Mhz on the G4, or IBM's major issues with heat on the G5?

* AMD's implementation of 64-bit instructions into the x86 architecture. Oh wait, Apple was still using the PowerPC architecture at that time...

* Intel going more with Centrino for power efficiency, and ultimately moving over to Core, Core 2 and their derivatives (and now on to Nehalem).

G5 was/is a real 64bit CPU. X86 uses 64bit extensions.
That is the reason why you don't see any performance gains in X86 when using 64bit program. Actually, on X86 performance decrease in 64bit by 3%. Why use 64bit when it is slower?
Memory? Intel had already 38bit memory addressing.

X86 has never been the fastest CPU. Different class of RISC CPU has always been faster.

G4 was/is great. Per clock cycle it is still as fast as the newest intel today.

In 2002 I started to convert all my video to DVD. I bought the fastest PC at the time and spent over 1000 dollar on it. 1.5ghz AMD, 10000 SCSI hard drives, Geforce3 and so on. It took 15 hour to compress one DVD.

A 667mhz G4 compressed same DVDs in 90 minutes.

Apple hardware is faster in Windows then PC machines. Why? PCs still uses 1970 BIOS. Apple uses EFI. Why haven't one single PC company ditched BIOS?

Apple was fist in graphic accelerate its operating system back in 2002. This pushed graphic cards more then a handful of PC gamers.

You also seems to forget that many graphic cards have debuted on mac. For example the Geforce4.

You are also missing the biggest revolution in CPU history. ARM license more CPUs in one quarter then AMD has done in its lifetime. We are talking about 2 billion CPUs per quarter. X86 is just a drop in the bucket here.
ARM was founded by amongst other Apple and is defining CPU landscape today. Already next year tablets will have taken 25% of the computer market. Within 3 years 50% of laptops will use ARM.

X86 will be a niche CPU just like SPARC, PPC and Power. X86 will be used in cheap high end servers and gaming rigs. All other will use ARM.

 

[deconstruct60]

This is mobile. Apple has a higher share in mobile than in desktops.

So does the vast majority of the major PC box vendors.

Apple also has a very high share in the premium notebook market where Intel gets to make higher profits on more advanced chips.

I don't think it is as much selling Apple the advanced chips ( the other vendors buy those also in collectively greater numbers). Apple is different that most PC vendors in that they have cash to back up their bluster. If Apple wanted to prepaid AMD $600-900M to push the envelope they could. Apple could clearly make AMD a more challengin competitor to Intel.

The fact was that Intel had the techonlogy. They were just slow rolling it to the lower end of the mobile line. Apple just called them on being lazy and told them to get it in gear or they take business to those who would. If Apple plopped a suitcase of cash in front of AMD they'd jump as high as Apple wanted them too.

There was no need to go to ARM anymore there was need for Apple to do custom Flash chips .

Intel has previously bent to Apple's requests too. The low-profile packaging for the original MacBook Air had been explored by Intel, but it was sitting on the shelf.

Again. It wasn't like other vendors might have asked for this ( the tech was developed). Apple just can uncork the logjam for the rest of the industry sometimes because they can put a creditable "...or I will leave" threat on the table. If more of the vendors would gang up and stick it to Intel they'd could probably uncork things sometimes themselves too. (e.g., Pentium 4 -> Core transition being one where customers vendors and end users looked at long term operating costs and said "No!" )

Just because Apple threatens to leave doesn't mean they want to leave.
I think folks are confused by that one. Going with ARM would be a big step backward in performance. Even ARM isn't pushing their A15 solution for mainstream PC usage.

 

[gnagy]

Ms for example is building windows 8 for both x86 and arm.ARM is good small scale but does not scale up very well to high speed demands in terms of power usage. X86 and ARM do not work as well in the others playing field.
Apple doing arm only in things like the air would work but not all the laptops

The next gen ARM chips will be 64-bit and comparable performance to Intel, at a lower power consumption. Why would that not work for everything: servers, desktops, and laptops?

 

[deconstruct60]

ARM was founded by amongst other Apple and is defining CPU landscape today.

ARM was initially funded by Apple. Not founded. Venture capitalists are not founders; just money providers.

Already next year tablets will have taken 25% of the computer market. Within 3 years 50% of laptops will use ARM.

Only if Intel and ARM stand still and let it happen. I don't think either one took ARM seriously 2 years ago. Now they do. It is going to be harder for ARM to take market when Intel and AMD aren't practically giving it away.
The ATOM design cycles were long and unfocused. They are not anymore. Likewise AMD's Fusion approach is finally starting to pay off. Next up they'll start folding more of the support chip funcdtions onto the CPU package like Intel has.

the challege for the x86 vendors is to add enough value to laptops so that 50% of them are not under $300-400. That was one of the drivers toward ARM .... lowering the price. AMD and Intel just need to give a little bit on that front to reaint the share. One way to keep the CPU package price up is to put more into the package (GPU , high end PCI-e controller, etc. )

 

[cmaier]

Actually it doesn't..

they do use the term maths but know what mathematics are and that it's proper..

Only a person on a forum would make a statement like that..


Cripes...

Chris

***people looking down there noses at people annoy me kith and kin is a appropriate statement for family and friends but that doesn't mean I'll use it***

I'm not taking linguistics advice from someone who uses "there" for "their."

 

[840quadra]

Maybe Apple did not learn from the PowerPC fiasco.

What lesson was that? Are you talking the transition from PowerPC to Intel, or the fact that they had been on PowerPC to begin with?

 

[deconstruct60]

The next gen ARM chips will be 64-bit and comparable performance to Intel, at a lower power consumption. Why would that not work for everything: servers, desktops, and laptops?

Actually they are not 64-bit. They will have the similar kludgey "address space extensions" that x86 got before it went 64-bit. (**)

There are no 64-bit pointers/addresses. Just "managed" 32-bit address spaces that point to subsets of a greather than 4GB of physical RAM.

ARM CEO saying no 64-bit right now....
"The company's upcoming Cortex-A15 is a 32-bit design that can extend to 40 bits, and ARM is considering 64-bit addressing in future processors after that, ... "
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9208339/ARM_CEO_says_no_rush_to_64_bit_server_chip




(**) I think there is company who have tweaked/forked the ARM design so that it is 64-bit but long term being on that fork may not be a good idea.

Sure Apple could 'fork' ARM designs and do a real 64 bit versions. But that is a silly move. 'fork' off from ARM doesn't buy you good things large term for max return on investment.

 

[gnagy]

Sure Apple could 'fork' ARM designs and do a real 64 bit versions. But that is a silly move. 'fork' off from ARM doesn't buy you good things large term for max return on investment.

Apple bought a chip company and has $70B sitting in the bank. I'm betting a real 64-bit chip is on the way. But yeah, not 100% sure.

I know that NVidia is spending a ton of money making one:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Nvid...ll-Use-a-64-bit-ARM-Architecture-188401.shtml

 

[Bafflefish]

Lots'o'Troll

If you're going to try and troll, at least use some actual factual information to do it.

"Extensions" do not matter - the x64 is just as legitimate of a "64-bit processor'" as the G5 is/was. They both have 64-bit integers and registers. The only time I've seen "performance" loss is for 32-bit applications in a 32-bit OS running on an x86-64 CPU, but for natively-written or updated 64-bit code running on x86-64, performance is equal or greater. Do some research.

Yes, there have been RISC systems that were faster, but in most areas of consumer and prosumer applications, x86 has typically been faster, in the early 2000s due solely to the speed of the processors (reduced time on performance), and then later due to such advancements as moving the MC onto the CPU die, etc. Some applications saw improvements due to AltiVec enhancements, but for the most part x86 has long been dominant now in the consumer market (which is... wait for it... where Apple primarily focuses).

The G4 was a great 32-bit processor, but it hasn't been faster than anything PC-side for a good 7-8 years now. Don't even try to spout such nonsense.

The "fastest PC at the time" in 2002 would have been well-more than "$1,000", even if you bought the components yourself and assembled it, and it's very likely those SCSI drives alone would have been nearly that much at the time. Seriously, if you're going to spout out trollish crap, do a better job.

"Apple hardware" is the same in almost every way as what you could obtain in the PC consumer market. Many PC manufacturers are now moving to EFI. Seriously, Troll Fail.

The GeForce 4 debuted as retail cards, not with Apple systems. Try again.

Oh, and while I don't have ARM's sales or licensing data off-hand, of course they are likely to sell more units than Intel or AMD: ARM processors go into a wide-array of devices. However, it's hardly "revolutionary" in the PC industry, as ARM has been around for decades. I know you're just trolling, but seriously, get real.

 

[JackAxe]

Random rant but went from a Q9550 to i7-950 and I honestly can't tell a real world speed difference. So having them do something else to compete might be good.

The other year, I upgraded from a Q9450(Stock 2.66 Ghz) to a i7 920(Turbo 2.8Ghz) and the difference was null for the most part.

The only area that really benefited from the new chip for me, was MaxWell Renderer. The extra threads nearly cut its rendering time in half.

My 920 runs at 3.8 Ghz stable now days -- did try 4.1 for a bit, but had a few crashes. But there's not much diference between this clock speed and its default for the most part.

I own multiple tablets, 2 of them have the Cortex 9 as their base, and they're fine for little things, like web browsing and so on, but still just far too weak when compared to the desktop procs, and adding more cores will not fix that.

 

[ucantgetridofme]

You'd have to be a complete mactard to buy a laptop with phone processor.

 

[blackburn]

Stop overvolting your cpus intel, and they will heat up less!
Good c2d days when you could undervolt your cpu by 0,2 volts and have it run way cooler. Nowadays cpus are undervolting locked.

 

[TMay]

Apple holds considerable away over Intel in terms of selling a premium product and being able to pay higher prices and demand better performance than the $299 PC makers who have to take what is left. Go through any airport and you will see PC users in a dirty corner on the floor where there is an outlet available. Mac users are not out hunting electrons. This difference creates a huge psychological advantage for Apple and I must say I enjoy sitting in a chair instead of on the grubby floor.

That said, Apple's window for abandoning OS X and moving to iOS closed some time ago. Apple now owns the high end of the computer market. When the switch was made to Intel chips, Apple had about 4% of the market and many were loyal hobbyists who were willing to move as Apple moved. Today with 12%, many customers are serious business users who are not to be trifled with. Just as Microsoft is now trapped within the constraints of Windows 95 which remain a part of Windows-Whatever today, Apple is stuck with its hardware architecture choices which were made in 2006. On the plus side, OS X is far more flexible than Windows, but I just don't see Apple making the killer mistake of forcing a change of all software just when they have market momentum beyond anyone's dreams on their side.

What I see Apple doing is motivating Intel to follow their lead by evolving hardware to better serve the software rather than the software having to adapt to the hardware that is available.

MS and Apple are joined at the hip with their operating systems. MS is going to support ARM in Windows 8 so that gives Apple a support path for Windows on OS X when and if Apple goes to ARM. I don't believe that Intel is at risk with desktops at this point, but MBA class devices are not a sure Intel win anymore.

 

[Eidorian]

Nowadays cpus are undervolting locked.

Where is the proof?

 

[Shanpdx]

Intel is a great company

apple may be pushing it or setting the vision how the laptops should look like.

but the real threat is Tablets like iPad and andriod powered devices.

So intel moving towards 17watts and under - it would be great if intel bring down the cost of the CPUs - i think it will eventually happen.

To save money intel will go great length to process maturity and cutting labour and cost.

Intel still wins in terms of manufacturing technology - IMHO.

 

[Schizoid]

This story is just rubbish...

Apple threaten Intel and tell them their CPUs need to be better, Intel snap into line?! I think not

Intel would have just told Apple, "...see how many Macs you'd sell for the rest of the year without any of our chips."

 

[tonytiger13]

Really? Wow.

I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with Apple, as I believe Intel could cut the TDP a tad here and there, but asking them to cut their TDP to 33% is pretty drastic. Typical Apple kicking and screaming to get what they want.

As if 7 hours isn't good or something, I know consumers want more, more, more, but somethings gotta give.

I won't be happy if they move to ARM, unless we see performance gains AND lower TDP. Otherwise, if it's not broken don't fix it.

It's thought like yours that stagnate progress and innovation. If it's not broken, keep it handy, but let's try something better. That's what we should always be saying. And that's what Apple continually does. Other companies are stuck in the grind and don't realize their potential. Did anyone at Microsoft or their hardware developers think to tell Intel to kick it into gear on low consumption chips? Doesn't seem so.