Despite M1 Pro and M1 Max Performance and Efficiency Gains, Intel Still Hopes Apple Will Do Business With It

[amnesia0287]

Ultimately I can’t imagine intel much actually cares about apple. They make all their money supplying silicon for all the Dell/Lenovo/HP/etc laptops sold to huge enterprise scale businesses in bulk. And datacenters. Sure it’s good pr for them, but no one ever bought intel products (outside of their actual macs) just because apple used them, and likewise, no one bough mac products just because intel them.

Once Intel’s fabs finally catch up (they have numerous orders in for the same Samsung EUV lithography machines that TSMC is using as well as the next gen and probably the gen after that, but that back order list is like 2 years long or something), apple would no reason to not use their fabs, but they have little if any reason to bother for now. Intel doesn’t currently have any capacity for sale that is remotely comparable to what TSMC provides apple.

Either way, intel is much more diversified than a lot of people give them credit for, they make all sorts of network chips, fpga like the agilex(sp?) which are used in like all cloud providers and huge customers like Netflix. Oh and ssd. But more importantly they OEM produce tons of this stuff for other companies.

 

[robotica]

There are lots of chips in these computers, I am sure some of them could be manufactured by intel again someday.

 

[xxray]

What is the benefit to Apple to switch back to Intel? Worse performance, worse products, less product differentiation, and lower profit.

Apple isn’t just going to come back to you because you keep asking Intel. Put a good enough product out to make Apple want to come back to you.

 

[amnesia0287]

LOL, no. That's not how industry works. First, good luck reverse-engineering any trade secrets out of 30bn transistors, that would take years. Second, the NDA's prohibiting this would stipulate heavy penalties. Third, the damage to intel's reputation would be immense.
In fact, intel and Apple would work together to get Apple's IP on intel's foundries.

^this

and the people from intel who worked on the M1 would be like firewalled from intels own design engineers and stuff. This is like standard practice for sensitive IP. They would lose more than they could ever gain and it’s not as if reverse engineering a MacOS/iOS specific chip is gonna magically help them make better windows or Linux chips. Half what makes them sooooo efficient is the OS and the compiler that can take advantage of all the native silicon optimizations.

So sure, they could copy the blocks like the prores acceleration block, but it would be sooooo glaringly obvious if intel suddenly had such silicon right after working on an apple chip. And it’s not like they could hide it since they would have to get people an sdk and get them to use the new instructions. AND apple still owns those codecs, so they would have to pay to license them to expose them anyway.

 

[lysingur]

If you can't grow with your partner, let him move on to bigger and better things. There is a life lesson in all this, people.

 

[amnesia0287]

What is the benefit to Apple to switch back to Intel? Worse performance, worse products, less product differentiation, and lower profit.

Apple isn’t just going to come back to you because you keep asking Intel. Put a good enough product out to make Apple want to come back to you.

The article is about making Apple designed chips in intel fabs, which is extremely likely to happen eventually. At least unless apple goes all in and builds their own fabs lol. It just won’t happen for a few years tho because Intel’s current fab capacity is mostly outdated (well sort of, their 14nm process is actually super advanced, just not efficient enough to compare to modern stuff). But once they start getting more of the same EUV machines as TSMC is using from Samsung, as well as the other advanced process nodes they are working on, it should be much more competitive. They just gotta wait their turn to buy the stuff lol. Too much demand for lithography machines. (Cause silicon shortages).

 

[apparatchik]

Bring on the high-end, affordable, M1 Max Mac Mini, (a “Max Mini” 🤷🏻‍♀️), surely without the ultimate screen, camera, mics and battery of the MBP the cost will be a more reasonable $1.2 - $1.5K for the 32-core GPU…

 

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

Intel: please sell Intel processors side by side.
Apple: pay for it. Our AS totally trounces your professor.
Intel: we know. But still sell it.
Apple: no

 

[Mockletoy]

Intel: spends lots of money on cringey ads about how awful Macs are.

Also Intel: Why doesn’t Apple want to be my friend anymore? 🥺

They’re like a second-grader with a crush, yanking on Apple’s pigtails because that’s the only way they can express their feelings.

 

[rp2011]

Let’s remember that Apple is here at this point because Intel once passed on making chips for the iPhone because they didn’t believe it would be profitable. Having a virtual monopoly on anything makes a company comfortable and complacent. And this is why Intel it’s where it is now, heading down the well-traveled path of once great companies on the Complacency Super-highway to visit Kodak, Smith-Corona, Blackberry and all the gang

 

[HughRR]

Intel is like my ex wife. Tells everyone how good she is, while backstabbing and cheating on me, sobs through the divorce and then gets miffed when I find a better partner. Oh shall they both lament their choices in life.

 

[nicho]

An Intel spokesperson declined to respond to our email asking for a comment about the M1 Pro, M1 Max, and Apple dropping even more Intel-powered Macs from its lineup.

Entitled much?

Did you genuinely send an email out of the blue and expect them to respond? Wow.

 

[theluggage]

i think intel might be bipolar.

Companies have to be, at that level. Samsung were happily selling components to Apple while they were going for each others' throats in court over iPhone copying.

Anyway, this isn't about Apple switching back to x86 - that ship has sailed for the immediate future (although, so far, we haven't seen anything to directly replace the Xeons and PCIe GPUs in high-end Mac Pros) - this is about Intel and Samsung wanting to manufacture Apple's M-series processors for them - which is not so stupid: Intel would get a slice of Apple's money and Apple would get the security of a second source of components.

NB: Intel would be utter fools if they weren't at least looking into making ARM (or other post-x86 processors) while still trying to prolong the life of the x86 - and while Apple aren't likely to license anybody to sell M-series chips to their competitors any time soon there's probably deals to be done over certain technologies and patents involved in the M series.

Actually, Intel did (AFAIK still do) make a high-performance ARM processor - they inherited the StrongARM from DEC and followed that with the XScale - where that leaves them in terms of licenses for ARM technologies, I have no idea.

 

[xDKP]

Go home Intel... You're drunk...

 

[quatermass]

Intel still hopes to do business with Apple in the same way as I expect to be able to lower haystacks from the boat deck of the Lusitania. Anything's possible.

 

[theluggage]

There are lots of chips in these computers, I am sure some of them could be manufactured by intel again someday.

Pretty sure there still are - the Thunderbolt re-timer chips that show up in the iFixit teardowns, for a start - along with god knows how many Intel patent licenses covered by Intel/Apple deals that we'll never know about...

 

[PsykX]

Apparently the Fanboys from MacRumors are spamming companies (Intel) with emails in the hope for a triggered reaction to generate some material for their articles.

If you were a journalist, what would you do instead? Sit down on your laurels and wait for the info to come in by itself?

Gotta be proactive...

 

[theluggage]

Intel still hopes to do business with Apple in the same way as I expect to be able to lower haystacks from the boat deck of the Lusitania.

What possible confusion of ideas makes you think that Apple and Intel aren't doing business? Intel don't just make x86 CPUs and have a patent portfolio the size of a planet.

 

[vtrautia]

Intel has won Apple over their side one time. How hard can it be to win them again back?

 

[kerr]

That ship has sailed. Intel, you screwed up.

 

[Aggedor]

"Apple announced in June of 2020 its two-year-long transition to Apple silicon for the Mac, and despite Intel's best hopes and dreams, Apple is continuing its momentum to break up with it."

Seriously, MacRumors, either get better writers, or get better editors. Lines like the one I highlighted are not reporting, or even analysis.

 

[theluggage]

Ultimately I can’t imagine intel much actually cares about apple.

No - but they care about the future of the x86 business and their near-monopoly on the PC market.

Apple and ARM have already been instrumental in wiping out Intel in the phone/tablet market, now the M-series Macs are showing that there is life without Intel on laptops and desktops - especially when it comes to how well Rosetta 2 copes with running x86 apps on ARM. All reports say that the M1 Macs work well with Windows-on-ARM, too, even in a VM - it's just over to Microsoft & Parallels to properly support it.

Even if the future isn't Mac, Apple are, and always have been, a major source of direction for the wider PC industry - so even if everybody is running Windows-on-ARM (or Android) in 10 years time, the success of the M1 Macs will have played a large part in that.

...just as with the phone market - even though Android is the market leader, the iPhone defined the modern smartphone (including the ARM processor). Heck, without Apple's investment in the ARM 6 and heroic failure with the Newton, ARM would probably just be an obscure historical CPU chip fondly remembered by British vintage computer nerds...

 

[Leon Ze Professional]

The horse has already bolted from the barn door! Oh wait, Intel are still trying to calculate how to close the damn barn door generating a whole lot of heat in the process.

 

[norwaypianoman]

c")

I was looking at a picture of Ariana Grande the other day, and then I looked myself in the mirror.

As I said to my mom, I still believe Ariana Grande loves only me, although she never met me.

And although she got married this year, I am very sure she will probably marry me instead soon.

I also believe I will get enough money to buy the most expensive Macbook Pro.

Keep believin´ Intel. What is meant to be, will be. Fate has told us so

 

[falkon-engine]

I love Pat's optimism… "Yeah I know she's now engaged, but it's just temporary, she'll be back soon." "Yeah I know she's now married with kids and living on the other side of the world, but I'm pretty sure she'll be back any day now..."

Well Apple is making its own chips now, so wouldn’t that make it asexual? “She’s done with men (other processor vendors) altogether.” Well except for the thunderbolt 4 chip, or the USB-pd chips.

Until Lunar Lake maybe.