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Intel's Broadwell Chips for Most Macs Not Shipping Until Early to Mid 2015
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You can't compare the two, they use different applications and OS, have different memory management systems, etc. Literally apples and oranges.
Besides, by switching to ARM and recompiling OSX and applications to run on it, what would we gain exactly?
There is nothing wrong with Intel. Intel's "problems" are twofold.
First Apple wants the yearly OS/hardware fashion show where perfectly good models of both items are replaced with (sometimes) slightly better ones.
Second there are a bunch of whining consumers who think that a complicated industry, whose science they don't even understand, somehow owes them new products every year. You'll find them slobbering over all the latest gotta have buzzwords line "Retina", "liquid metal", blah blah blah.
Except you were responding to somebody who was asking about AMD, not ARM. There is a difference.
Not at all. THESE delays tell us that Intel is having a problem with their 14nm process. The problem may be at a "generic" level, eg with the lithography or metal layers, or may be material specific. (Each process shrink generally brings in some new material to act as a new low capacitance layer or whatever.)
The fact that they believe they can deliver the M CPUs but nothing else presumably tells us that either they can't get high frequencies to work (yet?), perhaps, for example, because as they ramp up the voltage they get burn-through in some places, or because the process variability is too high, so every die has spots that have both fast and slow transistors, so can only run at slow speeds.
Point is, process problems have nothing to do with the sorts of strategic decisions behind whether they concentrate on attacking ARM vs whether they concentrate on better Xeons. WHATEVER they do at that level, it depends on a working process.
The next interesting point will be whether Skylake gets delayed. Each new micro-architecture has its own set of possible problems that can lead to delay, especially given that Intel insists on retaining every bit of crap from every previous x86 ever, leading to a nightmare of interacting features and an insanely complex test matrix. IF Skylake is a truly new micro-architecture, who knows what unexpected problems they'll hit. But I expect it's more like that Skylake is more of what we've seen ever since Penryn --- fancier and fancier tweaks of the existing micro-architecture, but no daring redesign, so another round of 10% improvement over what went before --- nice but not the 30% to 80% improvement each leap that we're still seeing with ARM. (Of course who knows how long the ARM world can keep that up...)
The great advantage to Intel of this Broadwell delay is that it CAN allow them to delay Skylake if necessary without being too embarrassed, and without having to allow anything to leak out about the strain of having to keep making the micro-architecture more complex while retaining all that compatibility --- they can just slip the schedule by nine months and say "Hey, it's coming a year after Broadwell shipped, just as we always planned"...
Intel's technology is phenomenal. In terms of performance, most people can get by on duel-core chips from 5 years ago, it's only the tiny percentage which require more, or gamers & enthusiasts that think they need to pay through the nose for power they rarely tap into.
It's very easy to knock Intel, but people really need to give them far more credit for the technology & chips they produce.
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The truth is not a problem with the 14nm process, the problem is clearing a massive inventory of 22nm chips which are stockpiled up to the rafters.
It is an opinion piece but I tend to agree with it.
http://wccftech.com/intels-microarchitecture-delay-analysis-schedule-shift-real/
I'm almost certain you won't find an Intel exec issuing a press release stating they have huge inventory they can't clear thanks to the PC slump. That'll knock the stuffing out of investors confidence
This was the same reason Haswell was delayed thanks to a huge Ivy Bridge inventory...
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At this point there is almost no need for a faster chip. Apple needs to still update the MBPs to fix the yellow screen issue.
At this point there is almost no need for a faster chip. Apple needs to still update the MBPs to fix the yellow screen issue.
I'm almost certain you won't find an Intel exec issuing a press release stating they have huge inventory they can't clear thanks to the PC slump. That'll knock the stuffing out of investors confidence
In which case it's speculation on your part, not "truth".
Apple makes their own chip
No vision or imagination. Your choice is to sit there and take it – a potential loss of hundreds of millions and a ding in decades built reputation of fairly moderate pace of innovation - sitting there picking your nose, waiting on Intel to get it together…..
..that ARM is stuck in development limbo, unable to ever advance or hybridize to overcome the past issue of a teardown to rebiul of OS and software environment forARM and corresponding heat and energy reductions.
Since you're obviosly just tuning in mid show, “Innovation” is Apple’s middle name.
No vision or imagination. Your choice is to sit there and take it – a potential loss of hundreds of millions and a ding in decades built reputation of fairly moderate pace of innovation - sitting there picking your nose, waiting on Intel to get it together…..
..that ARM is stuck in development limbo, unable to ever advance or hybridize to overcome the past issue of a teardown to rebiul of OS and software environment forARM and corresponding heat and energy reductions.
Since you're obviosly just tuning in mid show, “Innovation” is Apple’s middle name.
Nope not speculation, you will have to take my word for it. If you look through my post history I mentioned about 6 months ago and repeatedly since then that Broadwell chips were not going to ship until Q1/Q2 2015.
To be fair, most Intel launches have slipped 6+ months in recent years. Doesn't prove they're sat on unsold inventory. I suspect Microsoft have most of that tied up in unsold Surfaces.
Or maybe I'm just more realistic. You say that ARM isn't going to just sit there, which is true. ARM is going to continue to get better and better. ARM is doing what Intel did in the 1990's, having explosive growth in terms of performance. But to say that they're going to overcome intel's performance while also keeping the lower power use is absurd.
Intel has a head start when it comes to massive performance at low cost in power.
Also, no, Apple can't magically bridge the gap. There's "innovation" from Apple and then there's what's possible through science. ARM will, in all likelihood, always be at least a few years behind Intel.
"According to Intel, the Broadwell delays will not affect the company's next line of processors, Skylake"
Skylake is already long-delayed from its original launch date. I guarantee it won't be shipped in 2015 either, since Intel has little competitive incentive to ship it.
Skylake is already long-delayed from its original launch date. I guarantee it won't be shipped in 2015 either, since Intel has little competitive incentive to ship it.
Yes, lets stop progress just because everything is good enough for most people. We can use 2ghz dual core chips for the next 20 years until AMD gets back in the game.
Personally I mostly use my computers to browse the internet, even a 5 year old computer is good enough for me. But for the people who need to speed, prepare to pay over $2000 for a newer CPU. Oh don't worry, if Haswell is good enough, those (slow) Haswell chips that will be still sold in the future will still sell for a high price of $200-$300 each, just cause Intel can.
Some people just don't have a clue.
GOTCHA!!!
Few Clever Minds here, same reason for the misteriously delayed Mac mini ...