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Apple to Skip Intel Arrandale? Demands Alternative Chip?

AppleMacFinder said:
Why :apple: don't want to have this crappy GPU inside the Arrandale?
Because it will reduce the prices!!! ;) And we don't need it. Just NVidia. :rolleyes:
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Actually if Intel did release special non integrated GPU Arrandale's solely for Apple they would likely be significantly more expensive due to the relatively small batch sizes involved. One option, though I don't know if its technically feasible would be to cripple the IGP as they did with the FPU in the i486SX.
 
yamabushi said:
Apple could move fairly quickly if not without difficulties to AMD, PA Semi ARM or PPC, IBM PPC or POWER. This is good news for consumers as it gives Apple leverage in negotiations with Intel even if they are not seriously considering these other options.
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But Intel knows that moving the OS quickly to a new architecture is the smallest part of the problem.

The main problem is moving the ISVs to an incompatible architecture. Remember the "Hey Adobe, where's Photoshop for Intel" days? Can you imagine the uproar if it's "Apple OSX 10.6 is Intel only, Apple OSX 10.7 is PPC only"?

So, the only option for Apple is x64 from AMD.... Not much of an option, is it?

That is, unless Apple plans on abandoning computers and becoming completely a consumer gadget company.
 
mrskitch said:
RE: Apple and Arrandale by: Theo Valich on 12/5/2009
After publication of the story, we have received information that sheds new light on the situation.

We'll try to confirm, but it looks like Apple is going to wait for Sandy Bridge, coming later in 2010.

Ed.


--- This was posted in the comment section of the article from the author. If this turns out to be true I'm going to strangle something...
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LOL
Of course it's not true ;)
 
bob5820 said:
One option, though I don't know if its technically feasible would be to cripple the IGP as they did with the FPU in the i486SX.
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Didn't intel demonstate that they have the tech to turn off circuits completely (as demoed with nehalem itself)? Certainly more feasible than shutting off the gpu with a laser for different manufacturers/lines.
 
smileyborg said:
Hmmm....I would like to see quad-core MacBook Pros in the very near future...hopefully this issue won't cause any delays.
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Actually Arrandale aren't quad but dual-core ....
I think we'll see Macbook Pros with quad-core cpus in H2 2010 ...

Ciao
 
AidenShaw said:
Do you see "laptop" mentioned for that 90%? Didn't think so....
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Eer, yeah, actually it's all over it - did you read a different article?

However, if you want to believe that 60% of Apples sales are sub $500 Acer class laptops with centrino grade chips instead of $2000 macbook Pro's with high end chips then go for it.
 
yamabushi said:
Not sure where all the hate for PowerPC is coming from. It served Apple well enough until the last year or two. It also is still used by many other companies as well as the POWER series.

The POWER series continues to evolve and now includes VMX (Altivec). The G5 is related to the POWER4. Since then IBM has released POWER5, POWER5+, POWER6, and soon POWER7.
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A nice presentation on POWER7 here:

http://www.power.org/events/powercon09/taiwan09/IBM_Overview_POWER7.pdf

We can estimate the preliminary performance figures for the POWER7 from the graph on page 8.

I imagine integer, means specint_Rate and floating pt. means specfp_rate.

From the graphs, POWER7 is 5.65x faster in integer and 6.5x faster in floating point than POWER6 on a chip basis.

The best result for POWER6 is 542/544 for a 16 core/8 chip p570. Dividing by 8 would give the best POWER6 1 chip result (I admit this number might be higher than this since I'm assuming perfect scaling - which in turn means POWER7 result might be slightly higher as well).

Chip Int/fp
2 core 5.0Ghz POWER6: 68/68
8 core 4.0Ghz POWER7: 383/442
4 core 2.93Ghz Xeon 5570: 130/100
2x4core 2.93Ghz Xeon 5570: 259/198

POWER7 is reported to be 200W. Even with this figure, it would still give higher performance/watt than the Xeon 5570 (95W)

Chip Intrate/watt fpRate/watt
Xeon 5570 1.37 1.05
POWER7 1.92 2.21

BTW, Intel's upcoming Beckton 8 core chip is a 2.26Ghz /130W part. This would have no where near the outright performance as POWER7 or even the performance/watt of the POWER7.

Anyway, I doubt it will ever make it into a Mac again, but its good to see what IBM have been doing recently.
 
thunng8 said:
A nice presentation on POWER7 here:
.........
BTW, Intel's upcoming Beckton 8 core chip is a 2.26Ghz /130W part. This would have no where near the outright performance as POWER7 or even the performance/watt of the POWER7.
........
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Pretty sure Intel's price/performance ratio is much better than IBM's.
 
After reading all this stuff about intel making a custom CPU for one of Apple's initial MBA offerings, and the allusion that Apple is some huge intel customer (it's <10% and below HP and Dell BTW), I became intrigued.

Looking at one of the sites that actually appears to be run by people with a modicum of technical understanding, it looks like intel *repackaged* one of their chips into a smaller BGA package. Sure that requires some clout, but it's *not* a processor redesign!
 
bob5820 said:
Actually if Intel did release special non integrated GPU Arrandale's solely for Apple they would likely be significantly more expensive due to the relatively small batch sizes involved. One option, though I don't know if its technically feasible would be to cripple the IGP as they did with the FPU in the i486SX.
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I'm pretty sure that the Arrandales have the option to turn off the IGP, so apart from some silicon saving (offset by the need for a custom chip), I don't see why a custom version would be needed.
 
Azathoth said:
After reading all this stuff about intel making a custom CPU for one of Apple's initial MBA offerings, and the allusion that Apple is some huge intel customer (it's <10% and below HP and Dell BTW), I became intrigued.

Looking at one of the sites that actually appears to be run by people with a modicum of technical understanding, it looks like intel *repackaged* one of their chips into a smaller BGA package. Sure that requires some clout, but it's *not* a processor redesign!
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Right, and the BGA package itself wasn't designed for Apple - but was a design that was planned for a future CPU.

The CPU in the MacBook Air is a 65nm Merom based Core 2 Duo, with a 4MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB and runs at either 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz. The packaging technology used for this CPU is what makes it unique; the CPU comes in a package that was originally reserved for mobile Penryn due out in the second half of 2008 with the Montevina SFF Centrino platform. Intel accelerated the introduction of the packaging technology specifically for Apple it seems.

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3203
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Similarly, the "exclusives" on the 3.0 GHz Xeons for the Mac Pro were not custom silicon, they were a top bin of the existing parts at 150 watts. The bin had been offered to other server vendors - who passed on the 150 watt parts in favor of the 120 watt version a few months later.

I don't believe that Intel has made any custom silicon for Apple - just binning and packaging and slightly accelerated releases. That's still impressive, but not nearly as impressive as custom "Apple wafers" going through the Intel fabs.


Hmmmm, Apple wafers. (Homer Simpson style)
 
Rocketman said:
Intel has many niche processors,... Rocketman
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Can you offer any examples of niche processors costing less then the mainstream processor they are based on?

Rocketman said:
but Apple tends to have volume for the few processors it adopts.
Rocketman
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Yes Apple has volume, but it is still relatively small compared to the mainstream market. The honeymoon treatment that Intel gave Apple in the early days of the switch from PPC may well be over.
 
VoR said:
Didn't intel demonstate that they have the tech to turn off circuits completely (as demoed with nehalem itself)? Certainly more feasible than shutting off the gpu with a laser for different manufacturers/lines.
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You're probably correct, I'm not that familiar with exactly what Intel has demoed on Nehalem. My example was of Intel's practice back in the early 90's. Crippling a chip may not sound like a viable solution but at one time it was a common practice.
 
Good for Apple

I think that Apple is showing a little backbone on a good issue. Intel is getting a little too pushy with its chip set market plans.
 
bob5820 said:
Crippling a chip may not sound like a viable solution but at one time it was a common practice.
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Still is isn't it? :)
Can overclock so many cpus at stock voltages to mhz ranges exceeding anything at retail, but I guess these companies have to leave some headroom (and time obviously) in between releases.
Do AMD even do chips that arent quad core now? Of course some are binned as dual/tri core due to defective silicon, but high percentages are just repackaged to meet market demand - much cheaper to produce single products in volume (unless you're apple :).
 
VoR said:
Still is isn't it? :)Do AMD even do chips that arent quad core now? Of course some are binned as dual/tri core due to defective silicon, but high percentages are just repackaged to meet market demand - much cheaper to produce single products in volume (unless you're apple :).
Click to expand...

Ah, the Intel FUD machine hard at work.
 
jgp said:
I think that Apple is showing a little backbone on a good issue. Intel is getting a little too pushy with its chip set market plans.
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What issue? Some feature in the chip/chipset that you turn off if you don't want? Lots of systems ship with Intel chipsets with both the integrated chips and PCIe x16 slots. Low end SKUs use the IG, high end SKUs turn it off and ship a discrete card. The customer has the option of turning both on for a dual-head system.

Apple aren't "showing backbone", they're acting like prima donnas again if they expect special packaging from Intel.

(Of course, it's possible that the root of the story is that Apple are simply going to ship Arrandale systems in January with the IG turned off - and the whole story is nonsense.)
 
MorphingDragon said:
Ah, the Intel FUD machine hard at work.
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What do you mean "FUD"? You're not one who typically wears the tin-foil hats around here.

The Intel Celeron line was born to rescue chips that had defective caches. Instead of throwing a chip with some bits of bad cache away, you blast it with a laser to turn it into a chip with a fully functioning cache that's half the size. (The transistors for the cache are a fairly large percentage of the chip area, so an isolated defect has a good chance of damaging part of the cache.) Intel's probably shipped single core Pentiums/Celerons that are actually dual-core chips with a defective core. (E.g., it's been said that "Core Solo" chips are "Core Duo" with a defective core, although Intel has not confirmed that.)

"Yield" is a key factor in profitable semiconductor manufacturing, so finding a way to sell chips with minor defects is something that everyone does.


MorphingDragon said:
So its okay if the rest of the PC industry wants a special chip. (Cough Atom Cough)
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Atom was part of Intel's roadmap for 18 months or so before it appeared. It was not a special package for one customer.
 

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rme said:
Pretty sure Intel's price/performance ratio is much better than IBM's.
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No doubt about that. POWER7 is a chip for IBM's servers. It does not have the volume to compete with Intel's Nehalem on price. It is compelling if you need the performance. Also, POWER7 seems to address the high power usage issue of previous POWER parts.

If you scale down the 200W 4Ghz 8 core part to 2 cores, you would get a 50W CPU. If you scale the frequency down to around 3Ghz, then theoretical it can even fit in a Mac laptop - with significant higher performance than Arrandale :cool:
 
Azathoth said:
After reading all this stuff about intel making a custom CPU for one of Apple's initial MBA offerings, and the allusion that Apple is some huge intel customer (it's <10% and below HP and Dell BTW), I became intrigued.

Looking at one of the sites that actually appears to be run by people with a modicum of technical understanding, it looks like intel *repackaged* one of their chips into a smaller BGA package. Sure that requires some clout, but it's *not* a processor redesign!
Click to expand...

It was a repackaging that Intel already had in the planning for the product cycle but where also thinking of killing off due to lack of interest as well. Along comes Apple wanting to add something like the Air to their product line, Intel comes to the party by bring the product forward and letting Apple make the demand needed to get it running.

I could see the same happening again this IGPless version would only be offered to OEM's like Apple knowing that the demand from Apple is enough to kick start the production line, and see who else they can get onboard.

Then Again i doudt Intel makes any product with a pre-commit for one or more of the big customers
 
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