Apple to Move from Intel to ARM Processors in Future Laptops?

[SkippyThorson]

I don't mind transition and change, but the fact of the matter is that when Apple makes a transition, they (ultimately) drop support for the previous architecture - speaking to you, PPC.

If another transition is made to Arm, and if this causes Apple to drop Intel support for my MacBook before its useful life is over, I'll just go out and buy a nice HP laptop.

I, individually, as a user, do not want to buy a brand new laptop, only to have the parent company (not just drop support) stop supporting it on every front altogether. I just got my Intel MacBook in December, after many happy years with my PPC iBook. If Arm causes Apple to forget me and my MacBook, I'll teach my handheld iDevices to happily sync to my Pavilion Windows Box.

Other than that, no, I'm not thrilled in playing the killjoy; transition is great, but one look at how much legacy crap Windows supports is kind of disheartening. Especially when my iBook from 2005 under Leopard is forgotten (aside from some minor updates, ending soon I presume), and people on old IBMs are happily using XP, still get updates, and will for some time to come.

Ah well, I'll deal I guess. Like I have any say in what Apple does. Me. The petty individual user. Funny thing is, I know I'll always buy iPhones. I can't say the same for the Macs.

 

[EssentialParado]

I'm surprised a few of you see this as so unlikely.

It would not be the whole PowerPC to Intel transition all over again because they already sell several ARM devices with widespread popularity, that run a stable ARM OS and has a lot of ARM-based software. Not only do they have this ARM / iOS software library but I would wager that selection of software has exceeded that on the OS X platform in both variety and quantity, and the quality is not far off from meeting and exceeding a range of OS X apps.

Apple actually has many reasons to unify iOS with OS X, both software and hardware wise. Not least because it would immediately become the no.1 computing system on the planet.

I think this rumor is quite plausible considering the inroads Apple are making with large multi-touch surfaces for their computers and the shifts toward a more iOS-oriented OS X.

 

[MrWillie]

THere would be no reason to discontinue Intel. They might have two lines. Which woud you buy? An Intel Mac that could run Windows or an ARM that was twice as fast and twice the batery life that could not run Windows. I'd take the second one in a minute but others might be forced to go with Intel.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8J2)

Oh please no! Intel are so good at CPU innovation.

No more boot camp presumably either!!

If I'm designing a laptop today, I would make damn sure it can do mostly everything that my desktop line can do -- and that means it needs an Intel chip and the ability to run desktop-class applications.

If you want to become a Netbook vendor, by all means switch to low-power ARM stuff. But, be prepared to lose a large segment of your user base who needs raw processing power to do stuff.

No, No. Win8 is supposed to run on ARM. So now instead of having a desk top, lap top, and iPad, I will have a workhorse desk top, and an iPad (with detachable keyboard) that dual boots to OS* and Win 8. Don't look at the now, look at the future.

I don't see anyone switching desk tops or high end laptops over to ARM. MS is developing Win8 to run on ARM (tablets) Apple won't let this go unchecked. I should be able to toss the laptop and get the boss to buy me one of these new devices. Tablet styled device. 256 bit hardware encryption. Dual boot between Win and Mac. Everyone wins. Well everyone except Android...

 

[z3r0]

It could lead to better security. For example some bugs only effect x86 versions of Mac OS X and not the PowerPC equivalent.

I'd welcome back a RISC based chip like ARM. RISC ISA's (ARM, PPC etc...) aren't encumbered like x86 ISA's (Intel, AMD), making them more efficient.

Also if Intel makes the deal to be Apple's foundry and manufacture its ARM based designs. Apple could benefit from both ARM RISC design efficiency and Intel manufacturing technology. For example Apple could licensing Intel's new tri-gate transistor manufacturing process and incorporate it into an ARM based design to further increase power efficiency and performance.

Intel might even choose to license from ARM and add their own technology like a custom Vector Processing Instruction set (SSE/Altivec), tri-gate, quickpath etc...

If Windows 8 makes the jump to ARM there's nothing holding Apple back.

...this is just a backwards move for anything beyond the netbook space, which Apple isn't competing in.

 

[ten-oak-druid]

Intel has a leg up on ARM.

 

[Jon the Heretic]

whatever

No I'm talking about cost/performance for the products Apple were making and I should have been clearer. IBM could not deliver and were no longer a suitable provider of processor technology for Apple.

PPC offers better performance/cost ratio than Intel if you factor out mobile. You think Microsoft (XBox 360), Sony (PS3) and Nintendo (Wii) don't care about performance/cost? Microsoft actually switched TO PPC FROM Intel x86 (original XBOX).

Pretty amusing when people like to compare the G5 (very old by now) to the latest Intel chip and say, look how much faster! (others in this forum have made this foolish comparison, not you).

It is the only in the Mobile space where things looked much different. Apple made/still makes a lot of money on laptops (then called iBooks and Powerbooks) and they weren't keeping up. More expensive and slower is a bad mix. And IBM/Motorola weren't going to correct that problem -- ever.

But believe what you want. I won't lose sleep. I could spend a lifetime debunking these kinds of myths but I just don't give a crap anymore.

 

[oldwatery]

I welcome this idea. Intel is a disgusting anti-competitive company that cannot play fair. Apple is forced to use Intel's chipset and IGP instead of Nvidia which may have lead Apple to a decision like this. ARM is the future as is iOS, so like it or lump it. The low end Macs would probably have ARM and others both ARM and Intel. I would also welcome a switch to AMD.

Oh that's funny!.
Like Apple is not anticompetitive...they define the word!

This move is so possible.
Apple wants every slice of the pie and doesn't give a crap about what the consumer has to go through to play in their sand box.

Steve wants the "computer" to go away.
he has a megalomaniacal concept of owning the tech world and making everything in his image.

This will happen and you will all be running some kind of iOS on every Apple machine sooner rather rather than later.

Like it or lump it you say? Apple are getting waaay too big for their boots and every Empire falls in the end

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

No, No. Win8 is supposed to run on ARM. So now instead of having a desk top, lap top, and iPad, I will have a workhorse desk top, and an iPad (with detachable keyboard) that dual boots to OS* and Win 8. Don't look at the now, look at the future.

I don't see anyone switching desk tops or high end laptops over to ARM. MS is developing Win8 to run on ARM (tablets) Apple won't let this go unchecked. I should be able to toss the laptop and get the boss to buy me one of these new devices. Tablet styled device. 256 bit hardware encryption. Dual boot between Win and Mac. Everyone wins. Well everyone except Android...

because android doesn't run on ARM processors.... and people can only have 2 operating systems installed on one machine, the 3rd will cause catastrophic failure!

 

[stevep]

ok

the financials of running a cloud infrastructure as a service are that you have to oversubscribe to make money on it. this fad might last a few years but the reason people went from mainframes to PC's was because the mainframes were expensive and even your tiny virtual slice had to be begged for and paid for in blood.

i love vmware, but it has a lot of limitations in the real world. same with amazon's cloud service.

smartphones and tablets are the next step in the trend. more power to the user but now everywhere they go.

Well, fair comment. And I remember using a mainframe (in London) from my Warwickshire office a long time ago (with a 300 baud modem) and you're right, it was an expensive way to do things, though cheaper than the standalone mini-computer option. By comparison nowadays, processing power, storage and memory are very cheap, so while we may be using global services like MobileMe and Box.net, I envisage medium to large companies having their own servers, with in-house tablet apps to access them.

I'm not suggesting this is going to happen next week, as it requires a whole infrastructure to make it work, including fast fibre-optic connectivity, city-wide public wi-fi access and the development of good quality server-based apps (that can do what stuff like MS Office, Adobe CS, AutoCAD etc can do) as well as the willingness of companies to change the way they currently work. I would think that financial institutions in the larger cities might well be the prime movers here, as they already use a similar model, (ie a massive database accessed by a large number of employees over intra/internet).

 

[shervieux]

Boo

While computers always need to move ahead… I would not be too happy with this. Many of us switched to Apple due to them coming on to the Intel chipset, which allowed us to run Windows. For me (and I am sure many others are in the same boat) - this allowed me to continue running the windows software I had and to slowly switch to native Mac OS X software over time - thus easing the cost associated with changing platforms. I came from decades of Windows use to Apple in 2008. I finally am off Windows (except for supporting others and enterprise software for work). I have all the personal software I need, about 100 applications; and I am about to upgrade some of them to professional versions. While I will be needing to upgrade my computer within the next year or two, I do not have the resources to upgrade all my software because of a new chipset. Nor would I be happy about running the software in a slow emulator. I think many many developers would be ticked.

Maybe this is why the community college I am looking at to go to school for broadcasting had someone build them super high end Windows computers (they could not buy any cost effectively with the power they needed). They only have one Mac and are switching everything over to Adobe due to them going full blown in CS5 with Apple, ipad/ipod, and professional HD support. It seems their Windows software is better than their Mac Software. The College did say they would keep a couple of macs around for final cut.

They did stress that what they teach is concepts that could be applied to any software package - you would just need to learn the specifics of that package. However, this also means that if I become comfortable with one software - I may not chose to switch and learn another in order to get my work done quickly.

Think twice Apple and make wise choices. Everything I have invested is on Apple now and all are Intel software. we are talking about over $1000 in software. That may be chump change to some; but this is my personal software that I use in business, personal, free lance, hobby, run my home, etc.

I think even the rumor of a switch now would sway many who are still on the fence about converting away from Windows. Especially those who still prefer running Windows XP over Vista or 7.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

os xi or ios x ?

os xi = os 11 = ios x

interesting convergence...

 

[MrWillie]

because android doesn't run on ARM processors.... and people can only have 2 operating systems installed on one machine, the 3rd will cause catastrophic failure!

Or why the hell would you want to run Android ? Do you use it on your desktop or laptop now ? When given a choice between Win8/OS* or Android, who is going to choose Android ? Can't you see that this will kill the mobile OSes in tablets ? Same OS on your "truck" computer as tablet/laptop.

 

[RalfTheDog]

As long as it can run Angry Birds, Who cares?

 

[janstett]

I can see ARM-powered devices "growing up" -- i.e. an iPad becoming a small iMac-like device and for low-end laptops.

But replacing Intel on the desktop? Not anytime soon. Maybe in 5-10 years iOS will displace OSX but not before then.

 

[RalfTheDog]

I can see ARM-powered devices "growing up" -- i.e. an iPad becoming a small iMac-like device and for low-end laptops.

But replacing Intel on the desktop? Not anytime soon. Maybe in 5-10 years iOS will displace OSX but not before then.

Why do you think ARM=IOS? ARM has the potential to become an ultra high end platform, far outperforming x86. Picture a Mac Pro running 32 ARM cores. Picture speculative branch prediction spreading between cores. Picture those 32 cores each running with 8 times the cache of the equivalent generation x86 chip and running at a faster clock while generating less heat.

 

[HyperZboy]

Wow, 579 negatives and lots of whining.

Look at all the Intel trolls squirm.

Enjoying this story immensely!

Signed,

PowerPC

 

[techwhiz]

Apple and Processors

Apple went from Motorola -> PPC -> Intel
They also wen from Mac OS/8, OS/9 and now various releases of OSX.
They have maintained compatibility at a level unheard of in the industry.
The PPC machines ran Motorola code and the Intel machines still run PPC code.

All that being said, I work in the chip industry.
Apple got out of the desktop processor market, remember AIM; Apple, IBM, Motorola? Because they couldn't compete with a 800 pound gorilla.

There is no way in h@ll ARM is going to have a laptop processor that competes with a four core i7 in the next two years. Remember ARM doesn't own a single foundry and is nothing more than an IP company. Intel pushes the limits of process and owns their own foundry. Apple will be using Intel if they want performance. Just about everybody in the semi industry knows that unless you can make huge investments in process technology, you will not be competing with intel for desktop and laptop processors.

A 1 GHz ARM Cortex with dual or even four processors is a far cry from a 3 GHz i7 with four cores and eight threads.
Also you need all the DDR, PCIe and other peripheral controllers. Intel builds a platform and sells that. It includes the chipset and peripheral controllers. ARM doesn't make chips. Apple doesn't own a foundry.

I'm no Intel troll; I just know how it works.

 

[Giuly]

What's wrong with you people?
First, most of you have no clue that CISC (x86/_64) is crap, but nothing better popped up - until ARM. RISC like the PowerPC architecture was always superior, but IBM couldn't keep pace innovating. The "G6" they announced for "within one year" in 2004 started sampling in late 2010, now called the PowerPC e5500.

I believe that ARM is the future and the legacy of the PowerPC. An iPad 1 scores around 340 in Geekbench2, the iPad 2 about 720. This can be compared to a 733MHz Quicksilver PowerMac G4 and a 867MHz Dual-Core MDD.
What you learn is that Apple's A4 scales performance pretty linear with the numbers of cores. The new 11" MacBook Air has a score of about 2230. A quad-core A5 would be faster than this - while emitting little to no heat, as these chips are intended to go into smartphones soon. Read: A quad-core A6 iPad, which is technically possible today, will be faster than the 11" MacBook Air.
As the MacBook Air can handle a little heat, there is no problem with sticking six, eight or even twelve ARM cores inside. I don't think that even Ivy Bridge can compete with that.
Now the iMac's CPU has a TDP 9.5x as high as the MacBook Air. An ARM Cortex-A9 core consumes about 1W - at 2GHz. An 48-core 2GHz Cortex-A9 iMac with an estimated performance somewhere between an 8-core and a 12-core Mac Pro? Sounds nice to me, and the Cortex-A15 (aka Apple A6) cores are going to be even faster.

Problem being, that neither Cortex-A9 nor -A15 support more than 4 core. But this is probably due to the fact that they are intended for phone, tablets and routers rather than a full-blown computer like an iMac. But what ever the ARM core will be called that the Apple A7 will be based on, it sure will - and has to - take care of that if Apple intends to put these CPUs into computers.

Apple gave you the proper education to not be fooled by the megahertz myth. I think that the MHz rating as an indication for speed will be replaced by the numbers of cores for ARM based systems anyways. But don't be fooled by Intel's marketing that suggests that their CPUs are superior either. Technically, they never were. Apple as a hardware manufacturer is well known to know that (thus PowerPC rather than Pentiums) AND - unlike Dell, Asus, Toshiba, MSI, etc - doesn't care whether Windows runs on it because Mac OS X is transited to ARM more or less by selecting ARM as the target in Xcode and hitting "build", as long as it's rentable to put ARM CPUs in Macs (because Apple doesn't just have hardware and software departments, there's marketing and sales, too) there is no argument against transiting.

Don't give hate. As long as it's superior and promising, give love.

I don't mind transition and change, but the fact of the matter is that when Apple makes a transition, they (ultimately) drop support for the previous architecture - speaking to you, PPC.

Same goes for Lion and Yonah-based Macs or iOS 4.3 and the iPhone 3G. All they're saying is: "Hey, time to get a new Mac anyways". Keeping legacy for machines that are too slow to run certain applications and processes that come with a new OS doesn't make sense to me, either. Not that a Quad-Core PowerMac G5 couldn't run Snow Leopard just fine. It's just isn't going to be faster than a $600 Mac Mini. Selling the G5 and buying a Mac Mini isn't going to burn a hole in your pocket. If it were a PC, it probably would've stopped worked anyways already

 

[diamond.g]

How long did it take Intel to go from dual 1ghz to where we are now? That's what the iPad has today. In 2 - 3 years i think ARM could evolve into something that looks like a core 2 duo or better. Apple seems to be aggressively pursuing the ARM path by acquiring two ARM design companies and betting the farm (iPhone, iPod, whatever they put them in next) on low power, custom processors. Only time will tell.

Because that entire time Intel is just going to sit around and let themselves be overtaken... Intel learned a lesson when AMD beat them (P4 vs AthlonXP/64).

People seem to consistently forget that most (if not all) of Intels chips they use now are binned lower than needed. I assure you, if a competitor chip showed up tomorrow, running at 4+ Ghz, you would see Intel counter that same day. 4Ghz clocks on Sandy Bridge chips is fairly trivial. I still don't understand why Intel chooses to bin the chips as low as they do.

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

Or why the hell would you want to run Android ? Do you use it on your desktop or laptop now ? When given a choice between Win8/OS* or Android, who is going to choose Android ? Can't you see that this will kill the mobile OSes in tablets ? Same OS on your "truck" computer as tablet/laptop.

In case you have missed the last 10 years.... desktop OS's suck on tablets. Why do you think no windows tablet ever took off? It doesn't translate well to a touch experience. If you think Apple is going to put OSX on a tablet you are fooling yourself... they didn't put iOS on the iPad for no reason

 

[RalfTheDog]

Apple went from Motorola -> PPC -> Intel
They also wen from Mac OS/8, OS/9 and now various releases of OSX.
They have maintained compatibility at a level unheard of in the industry.
The PPC machines ran Motorola code and the Intel machines still run PPC code.

All that being said, I work in the chip industry.
Apple got out of the desktop processor market, remember AIM; Apple, IBM, Motorola? Because they couldn't compete with a 800 pound gorilla.

There is no way in h@ll ARM is going to have a laptop processor that competes with a four core i7 in the next two years. Remember ARM doesn't own a single foundry and is nothing more than an IP company. Intel pushes the limits or process and owns their own foundry. Apple will be using Intel if they want performance. Just about everybody in the semi industry knows that unless you can make huge investments in process technology, you will not be competing with intel for desktop and laptop processors.

A 1 GHz ARM Cortex with dual or even four processors is a far cry from a 3 GHz i7 with four cores and eight threads.

You are assuming it will not be an Intel designed ARM chip built in an Intel fab. It is long past the time for Intel to dump x86 and ARM has huge upside potential.

 

[Fast Shadow]

[
UNLESS...

Apple already a running version of OSX working on existing ARM like the secret version of Intel OSX they 'announced' at switch.

I am 99% sure that Apple has ported OSX (the whole thing, not just iOS) to ARM already as a proof of concept.

 

[xxBURT0Nxx]

Why do you think ARM=IOS? ARM has the potential to become an ultra high end platform, far outperforming x86. Picture a Mac Pro running 32 ARM cores. Picture speculative branch prediction spreading between cores. Picture those 32 cores each running with 8 times the cache of the equivalent generation x86 chip and running at a faster clock while generating less heat.

while i see what you're saying it's going to be a while before we see 32 core ARM processors, and I doubt Intel is going to sit there for years and stop development of their processors.... it is going to be a very competitive space, and if ARM does turn out to be more efficient and prove to have a better future, you can bet Intel is going to find a way to hop on the bandwagon, the largest processor manufacturer isn't going to just sit around waiting for their demise.

 

[techwhiz]

ARM and Intel

You are assuming it will not be an Intel designed ARM chip built in an Intel fab. It is long past the time for Intel to dump x86 and ARM has huge upside potential.

Intel dumped it's (no pun intended) ARM, arm and sold it to Marvell a couple of years ago. Intel is pushing an Atom derivative for mobile computing including cell phones.

You honestly think Intel would dump x86 instruction set and go to ARM.
Just remember because it executes x86 instructions has no bearing on what the core processor architecture looks like. x86 has grown up and now includes things like speculative branch execution, and a host of other modern features.

 

[Fast Shadow]

I can't help but wonder why this story, which is the very definition of a "Page 2 Rumor", is up front and yet the release of an OSX+EFI update for the new Macbook Pros is on Page 2? This place has changed, and not for the better.