“hello again.”
Apple has thrown down the gauntlet, invoking the slogan of Macintosh (and iMac) past to (hopefully) imply that they’ve got something mighty impressive for us next Thursday.
And I’d like to think I may just have an idea as to what it could be.
Now, maybe I've just been overthinking it. Maybe I'm just connecting imaginary dots from what are really just coincidence. Or maybe not.
Let's think about some of the oddities in Apple’s current lineup.
The Retina MacBook was released in the spring of 2015 as one of the first computers to support the USB-C port.
Soon after, it was announced that Thunderbolt 3 would be using the same connector as USB-C and would be available in the fall of 2016.
And yet, when Apple updated the Retina iMac in the fall of 2015, neither USB-C nor Thunderbolt 3 were included despite the fact that they would have been relatively easy upgrades to make.
Similarly, while the MacBook Pro’s have been rumored for a Skylake refresh with “AMD graphics chips,” and an OLED function bar, all of the pieces for that refresh have been in place since early summer with the release of Polaris.
What if, the reason Apple has held off introducing USB-C across the wider Mac lineup is because they don’t want to talk about new Intel CPU’s (and Thunderbolt 3?), because they won’t be supporting them (or at least not across the full lineup).
Yes I’m talking about (partial), architectural change. Not the kind most people are imagining though. There is always talk of Apple moving to its own in house A-series chips, but while Apple’s been on a roll with chip design over the last five years, I just don’t see this happening (at least not across the whole lineup). The fact of the matter is a full move away from X86 would be both extremely costly and risky for Apple, and given that the Mac is no longer the primary driver of their revenue, I just can’t imagine that they want to put in quite THAT much effort.
No, the architectural change I speak of is moving from a traditional Intel x86 computing model to an AMD x86 APU model featuring HSA, high performance “integrated” graphics (Vega?) and high speed memory (GDDR5?).
Think about it, Zen was originally supposed to be released in the fall of 2016, but was suddenly pushed back to early 2017. At the same time, Vega, which was supposed to launch in early 2017 has been pulled forward for a (supposed) 2016 launch. What if Zen wasn't actually delayed, but diverted for (temporarily) exclusive use by Apple. What if Vega was pulled in specifically so that it could meet Apple’s needs. What if Apple and AMD’s deep partnership over the last 3 years has been about more than just providing Apple with cheap prices and semi-custom design work.
IMO this would make a lot of sense for both Apple and AMD.
AMD wants a platform to show off not only Zen and Vega, but HSA (unified system/GPU memory), and the only computer manufacturer vertically integrated enough to both own their own OS software stack and be willing to optimize it specifically for HSA is Apple.
Apple, for their part would love to be able to have Macs that not only save space and run cooler (by having the CPU/GPU/memory on one chip), but that can also offer a unique performance advantage (HSA) over Windows (and Linux) PCs.
And of course moving to HSA would likely mean the end of user upgradable ram so that’s another “bonus” for Apple.
Maybe I’m just crazy. Maybe I’m over thinking this. Who knows. But I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if the “architectural change” or “paradigm shift” some people seem to be expecting is a lot closer to home (and reality) than one might think.
Anyway, its just a thought I've been kicking around and we'll probably be lucky to get Kaby Lake, let alone something like Vega, but a guy can dream right
Apple has thrown down the gauntlet, invoking the slogan of Macintosh (and iMac) past to (hopefully) imply that they’ve got something mighty impressive for us next Thursday.
And I’d like to think I may just have an idea as to what it could be.
Now, maybe I've just been overthinking it. Maybe I'm just connecting imaginary dots from what are really just coincidence. Or maybe not.
Let's think about some of the oddities in Apple’s current lineup.
The Retina MacBook was released in the spring of 2015 as one of the first computers to support the USB-C port.
Soon after, it was announced that Thunderbolt 3 would be using the same connector as USB-C and would be available in the fall of 2016.
And yet, when Apple updated the Retina iMac in the fall of 2015, neither USB-C nor Thunderbolt 3 were included despite the fact that they would have been relatively easy upgrades to make.
Similarly, while the MacBook Pro’s have been rumored for a Skylake refresh with “AMD graphics chips,” and an OLED function bar, all of the pieces for that refresh have been in place since early summer with the release of Polaris.
What if, the reason Apple has held off introducing USB-C across the wider Mac lineup is because they don’t want to talk about new Intel CPU’s (and Thunderbolt 3?), because they won’t be supporting them (or at least not across the full lineup).
Yes I’m talking about (partial), architectural change. Not the kind most people are imagining though. There is always talk of Apple moving to its own in house A-series chips, but while Apple’s been on a roll with chip design over the last five years, I just don’t see this happening (at least not across the whole lineup). The fact of the matter is a full move away from X86 would be both extremely costly and risky for Apple, and given that the Mac is no longer the primary driver of their revenue, I just can’t imagine that they want to put in quite THAT much effort.
No, the architectural change I speak of is moving from a traditional Intel x86 computing model to an AMD x86 APU model featuring HSA, high performance “integrated” graphics (Vega?) and high speed memory (GDDR5?).
Think about it, Zen was originally supposed to be released in the fall of 2016, but was suddenly pushed back to early 2017. At the same time, Vega, which was supposed to launch in early 2017 has been pulled forward for a (supposed) 2016 launch. What if Zen wasn't actually delayed, but diverted for (temporarily) exclusive use by Apple. What if Vega was pulled in specifically so that it could meet Apple’s needs. What if Apple and AMD’s deep partnership over the last 3 years has been about more than just providing Apple with cheap prices and semi-custom design work.
IMO this would make a lot of sense for both Apple and AMD.
AMD wants a platform to show off not only Zen and Vega, but HSA (unified system/GPU memory), and the only computer manufacturer vertically integrated enough to both own their own OS software stack and be willing to optimize it specifically for HSA is Apple.
Apple, for their part would love to be able to have Macs that not only save space and run cooler (by having the CPU/GPU/memory on one chip), but that can also offer a unique performance advantage (HSA) over Windows (and Linux) PCs.
And of course moving to HSA would likely mean the end of user upgradable ram so that’s another “bonus” for Apple.
Maybe I’m just crazy. Maybe I’m over thinking this. Who knows. But I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if the “architectural change” or “paradigm shift” some people seem to be expecting is a lot closer to home (and reality) than one might think.
Anyway, its just a thought I've been kicking around and we'll probably be lucky to get Kaby Lake, let alone something like Vega, but a guy can dream right
