Intel has some darn good engineers. Combine them with Apple's. Lots of potential. The move the Intel was huge in Apple's success in the PC business. Could be here too.
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Intel to Begin Manufacturing 64-Bit ARM Chips in 2014
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Intel has some darn good engineers. Combine them with Apple's. Lots of potential. The move the Intel was huge in Apple's success in the PC business. Could be here too.
They won't go much thinner, restricted by USB, Thunderbolt, HDMI etc ports. Besides anyone thinking this means Apple will put ARM in desktop / laptop parts any time soon aren't reading the tea leaves properly. Just isn't enough benefit to offset the pain of transitioning away from the existing x86 system.
The bigger news here is Intel is opening up its fabs to ARM, that really is potentially huge. The devil, of course, is in the details. Not just cost but what process node is Intel willing to give ARM customers access to? Will it, for example, allow an ARM chip to use a 14nm process if that's what its current core i3/5/7 CPU's run on or will it insist on them being a step behind? If they genuinely are going to let ARM SoC's run on the latest process then anyone using Intel is going to have a potentially huge competitive advantage.
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It already is capable. The A7 benchmarks at the level of a 2010 11" MBA
Why wouldn't Apple be able to use future A chips in their MacBooks?
Edit: Never-mind, I misunderstood your comment
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If Apple decides to use an A-series chip in their OS X devices, they will likely be used in something like a MacBook Air at first. I could see some sort of device that competes with the Chromebook in terms of features and performance but not be so dependent on the cloud. It would be cool to have an entry level A-series based laptop running OS X that sells for $500 to $600.
I am sure Intel chips would still be used in the pro laptops and the all the desktops. The A series chip sure doesn't seem like a great choice for the Mac Pro for the foreseeable future!
I don't think they'd want to compete with the chrome book. For them, I'd imagine they'd want full OS X or bust.
They don't make their own. They design SoCs, but they don't produce them. The article is not about who designs SoCs, but about who produces them.
I have a feeling that most people in the comments plus the Macrumors team don't really understand what this is about. This is a fairly unexciting bit of news. Intel takes over the production of chips for another company. In this case, they happen to be ARM chips. Nothing special. Nothing new. Intel has produced ARM chips before. Still does, actually.
It only becomes "big" due to the baseless speculation of clueless analyst "Nathan Brookwood" which makes up two hyperbolic paragraphs of the Forbes article. MacRumors then copies exactly these two paragraphs as a basis for their own article and then adds some even more unfounded babbling about Apple, about moving Macs to ARM, etc.
Quite bizarre, actually. Intel takes over a minor order of chips for Altera, and after only two mutations in the hands of people who don't understand what it means, it looks like a tectonic shift in the whole processor landscape. I'd suggest for people to settle down and ignore that this article ever existed, as there is not a single hard fact contained in it.
This potentially gives Apple access to Intel's fabrication technology for higher density components. It at least means there is another big player in the ARM SOC fabrication arena which is a good thing.
"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
Honestly, I think this is great news considering how well the Apple-Intel partnership has been since Apple made the switch nearly a decade ago. It's one step closer for Apple to say "bye bye Samsung".
On top of that, Intel has been needing to shift their product line because making old desktop and mobile chips can't be sustainable forever.
Honestly, I think this is great news considering how well the Apple-Intel partnership has been since Apple made the switch nearly a decade ago. It's one step closer for Apple to say "bye bye Samsung".
On top of that, Intel has been needing to shift their product line because making old desktop and mobile chips can't be sustainable forever.
The News isn't that they're going to make ARM processors, but that they are letting others build their own processors using their fab.
The potential behind these chips is huge. Apple and Intel working together would be incredible, especially if it were exclusive for ARM (ie. no other company would use Intel, just Apple). Future looks promising.
Still, I will rue the day I'm on MacRumors seeing all the complaints of how the new Mac is running a version of the A10 chip, or equivalent.
Still, I will rue the day I'm on MacRumors seeing all the complaints of how the new Mac is running a version of the A10 chip, or equivalent.
Perhaps the hard part is ARM performance versus x86 performance or do you want to change from an Intel i7 to an Apple A7?
Holy ****, it's amazing how no one has any idea what they're talking about.
You know that Altera makes FPGAs, right? The ARM chip is there to drive the FPGA, but the FPGA is the primary product. There's a reason that Intel is fabbing for an FPGA company, and that is because they don't compete with Intel's other major customers and it doesn't cannibalize Intel's other business.
The only thing this means is that Intel is testing the waters for fabbing. The fact that there's an ARM chip there means essentially nothing. In fact, Intel already fabs ARM chips for other reasons, so this isn't really anything new.
Would Intel ever fab ARM chips for Apple? Probably. Would Intel ever sacrifice it's x86 business with Apple just so it could fab Apple's ARM chips? Never. That would be more work for less profit.
I don't even understand why anyone would want an ARM powered Mac. There's a crazy huge performance difference between the best ARM processor and an Intel Core processor. You want significantly worse performance so Apple can make even higher margins on its computers?
Also, the issue of merging iOS and OS X is misunderstood. You don't have to merge the codebase, they're already the same code. It's an issue of compilation, and not so much an issue for Apple, but an issue for all the 3rd party apps that are already compiled for x86. When moving to a less powerful architecture (Intel->ARM) you're not going to have a lot of success running all those apps in an emulator.
You know that Altera makes FPGAs, right? The ARM chip is there to drive the FPGA, but the FPGA is the primary product. There's a reason that Intel is fabbing for an FPGA company, and that is because they don't compete with Intel's other major customers and it doesn't cannibalize Intel's other business.
The only thing this means is that Intel is testing the waters for fabbing. The fact that there's an ARM chip there means essentially nothing. In fact, Intel already fabs ARM chips for other reasons, so this isn't really anything new.
Would Intel ever fab ARM chips for Apple? Probably. Would Intel ever sacrifice it's x86 business with Apple just so it could fab Apple's ARM chips? Never. That would be more work for less profit.
I don't even understand why anyone would want an ARM powered Mac. There's a crazy huge performance difference between the best ARM processor and an Intel Core processor. You want significantly worse performance so Apple can make even higher margins on its computers?
Also, the issue of merging iOS and OS X is misunderstood. You don't have to merge the codebase, they're already the same code. It's an issue of compilation, and not so much an issue for Apple, but an issue for all the 3rd party apps that are already compiled for x86. When moving to a less powerful architecture (Intel->ARM) you're not going to have a lot of success running all those apps in an emulator.
I expressed a similar thought a while back that future macbook would run on ARM. Judging what has been done by Apple on the architecture of iPad Air, it is no longer a supposition.
I had a friend who worked at ARM. Apparently Intel had to get a license as part of some acquisition or something.
He said they have a book with the licensing prices. Intel is the only customer ever to pay the full price stated in that book
If Apple switches everything they make to ARM chips, that would be a disaster.
Just read David Pogue's review of Mobile Office and the lack of a essential Office features. Balmer teased a full version of Office for the iPad, but that's years in coming and Balmer made demands that Apple has to do for it to even be developed.
In other words, don't hold your breath!
If Apple switched all Macs to ARM without Office support, that would be the death knell of the Mac. That's why I don't think Apple will do it. They'll just take advantage of Intel's sophisticated foundries instead. At the moment, Apple has been having trouble on supply because they want to get away from Samsung, but the alternatives have proven unable to provide the proper yields. That's Intel's strength and would allow Apple to nearly completely ditch Samsung.
Just read David Pogue's review of Mobile Office and the lack of a essential Office features. Balmer teased a full version of Office for the iPad, but that's years in coming and Balmer made demands that Apple has to do for it to even be developed.
In other words, don't hold your breath!
If Apple switched all Macs to ARM without Office support, that would be the death knell of the Mac. That's why I don't think Apple will do it. They'll just take advantage of Intel's sophisticated foundries instead. At the moment, Apple has been having trouble on supply because they want to get away from Samsung, but the alternatives have proven unable to provide the proper yields. That's Intel's strength and would allow Apple to nearly completely ditch Samsung.
Really? Current ARM chips have the power of a C2D? Even if that is true, and I haven't seen much to suggest that it is, that's a C2D. We've moved up in the world. They'd have to design a chip that has the power efficiency of an ARM chip and the power of an i-Processor if they don't want to weaken the air. And that's not even talking about the fact that they'd be cutting off their own feet in terms of laptop applications.
Why are people pushing for a one OS solution? It isn't always the best idea.
I think things are lining up pretty well for an "iPad Pro" next year that will do many of the things an 11" Macbook Air is designed for.
They'll just have a Lightning connector and sell lots of dongles at $30-$40 a pop.
Look at is this way. With multiple suppliers Apple can get better pricing. It will enable cheaper phones and also make Samsung less profitable if Apple chosse to stick with them.
Lack of supplier diversity with x86 chips did end up biting them on the ass when Intel tried to shove HD 2Ks down their throats, an incredibly inferior GPU compared to what Nvidia offered at the time. I doubt Apple is willing to see a repeat of that with their iOS devices. It isn't quite the same this time, certainly, but I'd be wary if I were them.
