Intel Launches New Broadwell Core M Processors, Likely Destined for Apple's Ultra-Slim Notebook

[orestes1984]

Chromebooks are eating into iPad sales (some school districts have switched), and iPads outsells MacBooks in units.

ChromeBooks are a disaster... The increase in sales is to be expected over the back to school period, however, ask anyone with any remote idea about what's going with laptops and they will tell you flat out "don't buy a ChromeBook". In terms of real time market share this is what is actually going on.

Fewer people are using ChromeOS than Linux and while that number is growing its still insignificant. Also a 67% jump in sales from nothing is still pretty much nothing. ChromeOS represents less than 1% of computer users out there and with good reason. Anyone with any sort of sensibility wants a laptop that can do a whole hell of a lot more than the restrictive ChromeOS can offer.

And the Broadwell X86 core, when compared to an A8/arm64 core tuned and packaged for the same heat dissipation and DRAM speed as Broadwell, would be less than 2X faster, sustained (non-turbo).

And you're comparing non-turbo boost to A8s come back when you have a clue. People don't buy laptops for toys... People want Intel compatibility, you don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Serban]

+1

For that money you get even a greater cpu, double storage and 750M and i think it's was carefully thought not to overheat or something...i really think a 770M its to big and will make the macbook too hot..so again the price is ok, and i think with the next upgrade a 100$ price cut will be applied because of the retina imacs

 

[Serban]

i think this particulary CPU will not end up in the macbook air..because they don't have iGPU better than HD5000

 

[iLLUMI]

But look at how THIN it is!

So glad that I'm not the only one who's fed up with the obsession over thinness.

I really want a new MBA and I'm hoping for better battery life. So here's hoping that Apple have been holding off on the next MBA until the release of this new processor and hoping they won't make the battery smaller for the sake of THINness.

 

[Keirasplace]

There's no reason all those added features need to be on the SOC when it's a laptop. Even a super thin laptop easily has space for one extra chip. It's not a phone.

Sure, ideally they could be, but to sacrifice performance, compatibility and easy marketing for *that*? Not a good trade.



Being different when you don't need to be leads to disaster. PowerPC started falling behind and Apple was in big trouble. The differentiating factor is OS X and build quality. New features on top of that can be added in safer ways.



But why would you do that when you can do it without ditching Intel?

They won't ditch intel, just use them less. Maybe then, put pressure on them to actually get their ass in gear. There is little risk for them to do so.

You're the one who seem to think this is is a all or nothing proposition and also seem to be downplaying the tight OS/Integrated SOC advantage Apple has. That's basically were they're kicking everyone's ass right now. BTW, this is my area of expertise for 25 years so I truly understand both sides of the argument for and against using Intel for the next decade. I just don't think your giving enough weight to the advantages of Apple forging their own path.

 

[Serban]

So glad that I'm not the only one who's fed up with the obsession over thinness.

I really want a new MBA and I'm hoping for better battery life. So here's hoping that Apple have been holding off on the next MBA until the release of this new processor and hoping they won't make the battery smaller for the sake of THINness.

The current MBA has a very good battery life...so let's not lie about that. I hope they will keep the same battery life with the introduction of the retina display (higher ppi).

 

[vmistery]

To those worried about heat, you can passively cool a Core 2 quad with the right heatsink (source I do this) and without case fans. Now I realise that this is a somewhat different scenario and they will want to keep it thin and light but I suspect that the entire frame will essentially be a heatsink and adjusted for better heat distribution than say the MBA is at the moment. If they managed to include the screen to be part of this then that is quite a large cooling area. A lot of windows tablets are fanless with the current atoms with just a plastic nasty case. Basically I trust apple on this one.

 

[redbeard20]

Disappointing. Was hoping to finally have a worthy successor to my 6+ year old unibody late 2008 MacBook (240GB SSD, 8GB RAM). I suppose I still might make the jump in order to benefit from the better screen resolution, lighter weight, better battery life. Still, I can't help feeling we should've come farther in 6 years.

 

[nksk]

You're the one who seem to think this is is a all or nothing proposition and also seem to be downplaying the tight OS/Integrated SOC advantage Apple has. That's basically were they're kicking everyone's ass right now. BTW, this is my area of expertise for 25 years so I truly understand both sides of the argument for and against using Intel for the next decade. I just don't think your giving enough weight to the advantages of Apple forging their own path.

What could they do with a customized SOC on a laptop that they can't do with an Intel SOC + an Apple feature chip? (I'm not being sarcastic; I'd genuinely be interested.)

 

[firewood]

People want Intel compatibility, you don't know what you're talking about.

That's what most people who "knew" what they were talking about said about tablets before the iPad. They wanted full desktop Intel or Mac PPC software.

Turns out that most people who buy MacBooks don't run any Intel-only apps (at least any that can't be easily ported to arm64) anymore, and don't even bother with the Core i7 processor upgrade. Apple could easily sell some hypothetical arm64 notebooks to half their customers and Intel models to the other half, keeping around half of the profits they currently send to Intel for themselves. Or put both processor families in a high-end model, which would be great for iOS (and Android and Windows Mobile) developers.

They could even just rumor taking a lower profit on some hi-end arm64 development in order to help negotiate a better deal with Intel. Intel used to have an advantage over everybody in processor units sold, which they used to fund staying ahead in R&D. That advantage has disappeared. Tons more ARM cpus are shipped per year these days.

 

[Serban]

with a custom chip..i think we can say bye bye bootcamp or virtual machines
they need to be compatible with the new cpu...
i hope apple is still with intel but not with these cpu because they are worse than current one in everything (maybe not heat or battery management) but even in the iGPU

 

[orestes1984]

Tons more ARM cpus are shipped per year these days.

And they still don't perform anywhere near as well as Intel CPUs in any other factor other than performance vs. Watt.

And if you think Microsoft are all of a sudden going to come to the party to license Windows RT to run on Macs, you've got another thing coming. This is Microsoft the same company that deliberately broke its support for DEC Alpha's and PPC machines with the release of Windows 2000.

Microsoft couldn't care less about the few dollars it gets from Windows license seat sales to Apple users and I'm sure they're not really all that interesting in porting Office either.

The only reason they continued to do it in the first place was to get Internet Explorer on Macs as the default web browser on the "internet" Mac, because they knew just how strong a web browsing experience it would provide with a built in TCP/IP stack.

 

[firewood]

Microsoft couldn't care less about the few dollars it gets from Windows license seat sales to Apple users and I'm sure they're not really all that interesting in porting Office either.

MS already offers plenty of software on iOS as well as having ported major portions of Office to Windows RT and also to run from the MS cloud on HTML5 browsers.

But plenty of MBA buyers don't even bother with running Office or any Windows VMs. So what MS does or doesn't do makes no diff to them.

And they still don't perform anywhere near as well as Intel CPUs in any other factor other than performance vs. Watt.

Thus most of Intel's advantage will start to disappear when ARM licensees start making and packaging high-Wattage 64-bit processors in high-volume.

 

[Serban]

Apple has started NOT to 2x the cpu performance anymore...its get harder and harder to do that...and Intel with skyline will make almost 1.5x from Ivy Bridge

so difference will still be there

If Apple could have made A8 2x cpu and 2x gpu this year and again 2x cpu and 2x gpu in the A9 next year maybe the gap was closer..but is not the case anymore

 

[orestes1984]

Thus most of Intel's advantage will start to disappear when ARM licensees start making and packaging high-Wattage 64-bit processors in high-volume.

I'll believe ARM is a real contender when I see the day, I've been watching this space for more than 10 years, they're still really not anywhere closer than they have been before to being competitive with x86 processors.

 

[Gudi]

OK. I'm seriously beginning to believe the rumor about Apple switching to ARM / AMD. Apple wouldn't seriously put the 800MHz processor onto a MacBook Air. Intel was once king of processors, now I'm not so sure.

You do realize it was Apple who pushed Intel in this direction? Demanding better performance per watt rather than raw performance. Thinner, lighter, cooler, quieter - not just faster and faster, as if speed is all that matters.

This new Core M chip is what Apple always demanded and finally Intel is coming around to deliver. A 4.5W TDP Intel CPU is precisely what will prevent PC manufacturers (including Apple Mac) from switching to ARM anytime soon. The rumor is dead just as you started to believe it. Intel repelled the possibility of an ARMed attack on it's PC business.

 

[Serban]

These cpu will not end up in the macbook air !
Like the haswell cpu with HD4400 last year
These cpu are for normal laptops like Lenovo or Hp etc

 

[randian]

I'll believe ARM is a real contender when I see the day, I've been watching this space for more than 10 years, they're still really not anywhere closer than they have been before to being competitive with x86 processors.

That's because nobody is designing ARM for maximum performance. Give it a deep pipeline, big caches, and high clock rates and you'd have something competitive. It would also draw a lot more power, need a lot more cooling, and take a lot more space on the die. I suspect it would have superior performance to the x86, but nobody is willing to fork over the megabucks to fund my experiment.

One thing I would expect to see is lots of cores in this hypothetical ARM product. ARM should be a lot simpler and smaller than x86, so you can cram a lot more cores into the same space. You can see something similar in some of the ARM server products, where they're deploying lots of low-power cores in place of a small number of "big" x86 cores.

You may have noticed that Intel's embedded CPUs are pretty lame despite Intel's process advantages and megadollars in development. ARM and MIPS own that space. They can't make an x86-based phone CPU to save their life either.

 

[firewood]

This new Core M chip is what Apple always demanded and finally Intel is coming around to deliver. A 4.5W TDP Intel CPU is precisely what will prevent PC manufacturers (including Apple Mac) from switching to ARM anytime soon. The rumor is dead just as you started to believe it. Intel repelled the possibility of an ARMed attack on it's PC business.

The market portion consisting of customers who have to run legacy Windows and apps written in x86 asm was never under attack. That's for Intel, AMD and Via to fight over.

The portion consisting of customers running portable software (which includes almost anything built with Xcode, gcc or even LLVM under Linux) will go under attack if and when vendors can ship a 4.5W TDP 64-bit ARM CPU that is either close to competitive in performance or a lot cheaper to make or buy than this sub-GHz Intel offering.

 

[diamond.g]

And those turbo speed are for single core performance. Do anything multi-core, and you are running at base speeds.

Not true, as long as there is thermal headroom the chips will run at much higher clocks even when multiple cores are in use.

For example, the Surface Pro 3 runs at 2.6Ghz with both cores when W is low. When W is high it will fall back to 1.8Ghz (i5-4300U). If you are able to hit tJunction the CPU will throttle even more. Core M basically will do the same thing.

To be honest I kind of hope Apple does a high powered ARM core. Intel hasn't had any real competition since Athlon64. Just look at how we are "just now" hitting 4Ghz. Intels chips have been able to do it for years, they just never bothered to bin them that way.

Another question, does Apple expose what the clock state is on their Mac's? I ask because in Windows you can see what speed your CPU is running at realtime (along with W used). 800Mhz is currently what Intel chips run at if load is low, as demand increases so does the CPU speed, until it hit the thermal limit then starts to throttle. Intels XTU is a really handy tool for seeing what your CPU is doing performance and thermally.

 

[leenak]

.

 

[EntropyQ3]

And they still don't perform anywhere near as well as Intel CPUs in any other factor other than performance vs. Watt.

Performance/Watt is a huge deal. Just as huge as the other figure that you don't want to bring up: Performance/$.

Meaning that you can have the same performance while still enjoying an advantage in power AND cost. For all devices up to an iPad Air2, at least. We'll see what the future brings.

 

[RedRaven571]

So glad that I'm not the only one who's fed up with the obsession over thinness.

I really want a new MBA and I'm hoping for better battery life. So here's hoping that Apple have been holding off on the next MBA until the release of this new processor and hoping they won't make the battery smaller for the sake of THINness.

The way Apple is going with notebooks, the next Air will be the thinnest notebook yet because they will eliminate that pesky screen, you will need a separate external monitor. Folks on this forum will cheer Apple saying integrated monitors are so 2000s, NO ONE really wants one anymore, Steve predicted the demise of built in screens years ago......

New Apple commercial will feature Jony shaving his head with new ultra-thin Air....

 

[Aetles]

Introducing the 2015 MacBook Air. It has a processor speed from a decade ago, the same amount of RAM as a decade ago, the same amount of storage as a decade ago and finally to round things up it has the same price as a decade ago.

And introducing the "new" Apple logo, rainbow-colored.

We might as well buy old PowerBooks at this point.

Introducing the 2014 spec complainer troll. Same moot point from a decade ago, same missing the big picture from a decade ago.

Remember when Apple first introduced the MacBook Air? People like you were on the fence complaining about processor speed and what not. And then by some miraculous turn-of-event the dumb people who actually bought really loved it. Yes, it was sacrificing a lot, yes it was clearly under powered. But here's the shocking part: for a lot of customers that does not matter as much as the amazingly small footprint and other advantages.

The MBAr 12" looks like it will be another hit, another "most amazing Mac ever with enough speed to serve a lot of people". All while the forum comments are trying to out-do each other in complaints of how ridiculously bad it will be.

 

[oxfordguy]

I'm more interested to see what new processors will be going into the next generation of Macbook Pros, and especially whether the 13" version will have decent graphics capability...