Key M1 Mac Engineer Departs Apple for Intel

[cmaier]

So, really PowerPC could have surpassed Intel, just it was IBM and Motorola that did not want to get involved it seems. Wow ! What PowerPC could have been.

They may have tried at the end, but they also needed a good fab. I was using fabs like Hitachi and Rockwell in that time period. IBM had its own fab, which was pretty good, but had poor yields and wasn’t optimized for power.

But, yes, if they had more time and they understood that the market was going to shift to smaller and lighter and transportable machines, it could have been fine.

 

[groove-agent]

Intel said they can compete with Apple Silicon. But in order to do this they need to poach Apple engineers and technology? This looks bad for Intel.

 

[DeepIn2U]

NOT Rocket Science, he saw that the stock had probably max'd-out, & now has very little additional, if any, upside.

So he moved on.

Cook got what he wanted, a Prop'd-Up AAPL stock ... now, he must suffer the consequences !

There will be a lot more defections !

I don’t think this guy had stock options and if your thoughts were right he isn’t that smart as Apple stick continues to go up every. When it looks steady for a few weeks. Not to mention stock splits have been very generous.

 

[DeepIn2U]

I want to see Intel improve as well, as someone that still prefers Intel in my Windows PCs and not AMD for compatibility, Intel has performed better than my AMD tests. I also want to see Apple Silicon get much better too! Hopefully this doesn't hurt Apple too much.

Lol compatibility the amd chips are not the issue but software.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Folks who jump like this are not looking to cherish their legacy which is a major shift in industry , they are just looking at money and knowing Intel , this guy will find out that he cannot change intel’s work culture

He was previously at Intel prior to Apple.

 

[Benjamid]

Apple is doomed!

 

[DeepIn2U]

While I hope this doesn't have issues with Apple Silicon, I seriously doubt they are in the rough design phase of M2. They are probably already thinking about M3 or M4 even.

Most likely anything known by Wilcox bout the M3/4 will be changed to increase performance & efficiencies of processing or even the layout with will change.

 

[cmaier]

Most likely anything known by Wilcox bout the M3/4 will be changed to increase performance & efficiencies of processing or even the layout with will change.

My understanding was that he was an architect, so he wouldn’t know much about the implementation anyway.

 

[bobenhaus]

Because he knows the truth about Apple's propaganda. Thats why he left and I am glad he did. Maybe Intel will come out with something more powerful, or maybe intel will lose and POWER will come back.

Apple because of Tim Cook is just one big activist bullhorn and that's why he left.

 

[cmaier]

Apple because of Tim Cook is just one big activist bullhorn and that's why he left.

No it isn’t. He agrees with every one of Apple’s political leanings.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Apple because of Tim Cook is just one big activist bullhorn and that's why he left.

I agree, Tim Cook is a moron - many reasons why I don't like him as a person and also how he treats people. While Jobs I can tolerate, cook is an IBM type. He also is a liar on many things.

 

[cmaier]

I agree, Tim Cook is a moron - many reasons why I don't like him as a person and also how he treats people. While Jobs I can tolerate, cook is an IBM type. He also is a liar on many things.

The number of people who have the success, credentials, or IQ score, to call Tim Cook a moron is pretty small.

 

[Macbookprodude]

The number of people who have the success, credentials, or IQ score, to call Tim Cook a moron is pretty small.

I consider you smarter than Cook. I like your positive knowledge of chip fabrication and at least you are one of very few who know PowerPC wasn’t a failure.. when Steve said in 2006 there are even more PowerPC products to come, I saw how that ended up - Snow Leopard not working on that platform, although in the PowerPC forum many are trying to REVERSE ENGINEER Snow to run on PPC. It was never given a chance and the same fate will happen to Intel Macs in age of ARM.

 

[Ethosik]

Lol compatibility the amd chips are not the issue but software.

Motherboard, Windows 11 and USB issues say otherwise..... Stop trying to nitpick or get down into the weeds here. Compatibility DOES mean software and drivers as well. If a game doesn't work well with an AMD CPU and RTX 3080 laptop vs runs well on a handheld/Switch like PC or my 5th gen i5 with a GTX 680, its a compatibility issue.

 

[cmaier]

I consider you smarter than Cook. I like your positive knowledge of chip fabrication and at least you are one of very few who know PowerPC wasn’t a failure.. when Steve said in 2006 there are even more PowerPC products to come, I saw how that ended up - Snow Leopard not working on that platform, although in the PowerPC forum many are trying to REVERSE ENGINEER Snow to run on PPC. It was never given a chance and the same fate will happen to Intel Macs in age of ARM.

Yeah, I’m probably not any smarter than Tim Cook.

 

[pertusis1]

This reminds me of the time Bill Gates plowed $100 million into Apple. Without Apple, Bill Gates company gets all chopped up by anti-trust action.

This is Apple’s way of helping Intel not die entirely. (Tongue in cheek)

 

[chucker23n1]

when Steve said in 2006 there are even more PowerPC products to come,

He said that in June 2005, and it was true.

 

[tubular]

They may have tried at the end, but they also needed a good fab. I was using fabs like Hitachi and Rockwell in that time period. IBM had its own fab, which was pretty good, but had poor yields and wasn’t optimized for power.

But, yes, if they had more time and they understood that the market was going to shift to smaller and lighter and transportable machines, it could have been fine.

You could argue the PowerPC went pretty far in its own right.

NASA’s latest Mars rover has the same processor as an iMac from 1998

It also has 256MB of RAM.

www.theverge.com

 

[throAU]

Because an ARM design is the only way Intel will get to sell anything to Apple. In the unlikely event Intel comes out with a stupendous x86 Apple still won't use it, they're all-in with ARM.

Additionally, they've done it before and used to own the StrongARM line of products.

 

[throAU]

I think he’s right (though “based on” is wrong language. They use the same cores. It’s just as right to say A16 is based on M2.)

There was a recent rumor about the timing of M2, essentially indicating that the M-series cadence will be longer than the A-series cadence, suggesting that M- will essentially skip A15-cores. This makes sense given that by the time we get M1 Max Duo and M1 Max Quadra for the Mac Pros, and get the new iMacs released, we will be almost to the point where A16 is released.

I think also we need to be aware that the process TSMC is manufacturing these things on will play a part.

Apple will push tiny little iPhone dies on TSMC 3nm first. If that's A16 or whatever they'll use that to shake out the early issues until it is ready for volume manufacturing of the much larger M series dies.

A14 is 5nm. Until a new process is ready for manufacturing large dies in volume, I'd expect Apple to continue with A14 based cores in the M series products, just more of them in larger dies - until the new process yields well enough for big dies.

At that point they'll use whatever the current Ax core design is for that mature-enough manufacturing process as the basis for the new M chip.

 

[throAU]

Pretty sure the idea is to add an arm core or something, separate from the x86, for some reason.

Given the results Apple are getting with translation, time is ripe for them to ditch the legacy baggage and transition IMHO.

x86 is so full of hacks, bandaids, sticky tape and bubble gum; adding even more layers of crap to it will only exacerbate the problem.

Notice how when Intel finally jumped to the 10nm process (Has some advantages compared to TSMC 5nm), they finally have a CPU with better performance per watt than the M1?

Oh so that's why Ice lake is/was such a rip-roaring success!

Never mind my 2020 Ice lake 10nm MacBook Air was handily outperformed by my 2017 (or was it 2016) 10.5" iPad Pro without a fan. Which was also on 10nm. Process helps, but to claim it is more important than design is complete and utter bollocks.

 

[cmaier]

Given the results Apple are getting with translation, time is ripe for them to ditch the legacy baggage and transition IMHO.

x86 is so full of hacks, bandaids, sticky tape and bubble gum; adding even more layers of crap to it will only exacerbate the problem.

I agree. Wasn’t suggesting otherwise. Was just trying to translate someone else’s proposal.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Motherboard, Windows 11 and USB issues say otherwise..... Stop trying to nitpick or get down into the weeds here. Compatibility DOES mean software and drivers as well. If a game doesn't work well with an AMD CPU and RTX 3080 laptop vs runs well on a handheld/Switch like PC or my 5th gen i5 with a GTX 680, its a compatibility issue.

USB issues is software - drivers. They’ve been standard for years. Motherboard is of course where chipsets are and the right drivers (continuously updated) resolves issued.

You seem upset bro. Btw you made the complaint = nitpicking. You never specified and now through all kinds of random stuff.

Name a game (made in recent 3-5yrs) that is not compatible with AMD’s CPU’s then validate.

It seems you’re stating compatibility when you mean performance. Yes some games run better on Intel (of course due to much more legacy code and directX support being better).

Should we be talking same platform yet with a. Different OS like Linux then yes crazy compatibility issues. But stating a game works on Switch vs AMD then it’s a completely different coding platform etc., not even with the rebuttal.

 

[deconstruct60]

It’s a little different when the ”customers“ are the computer companies who buy your chips. (Nobody at Intel or AMD spends any time worrying about what end-users wnat).

That is perhaps true of AMD at times, but not of Intel. At least not for more than a couple of decades. In the mid-90's, Intel was one of the major "white box" PC box makers. ( Probably were making more personal computers than Apple was at one point. Just that other folks slapped their labels on the practically finished product. ). As Intel go more dominate they eased out of that somewhat because:
i. lower monopolistic scrutiny from antitrust folks.
ii. own both the chipset and CPU (and iGPU) gave them better margins. And raise of offshoring PC manufacturing to lower cost countries.
iii. easier to sell "intel inside" stickers and nudge folks into making stuff they wanted built.
iv. pragmatically even easier still when most of the PC market switches to laptops.

However, even today though Intel has their NUC products.

Intel Developer Zone

Find software and development products, explore tools and technologies, connect with other developers and more. Sign up to manage your products.

www.intel.com

Intel never dropped completely out of making partial-to-complete systems for some end users.

The breadth and depth of reference boards that Intel has historically made is also very substantially larger than what AMD did (or even attempting to do now). The feedback driving that ecosystem diversity of reference boards had user feedback in them.

Intel has had a parallel development studio since. 2008 . This isn't bought by computer manufacturing vendors. It is bought by end users.

 

[deconstruct60]

The Feds are going to be increasing interest rates about 3 times this year to slow inflation and that in turn will cause companies to lose value.

Companies that borrow 100's of billions of dollars to pay dividends.. yeah those companies could likely loose value.

However, companies that are not primarily borrowing to construct tax paying hiding schemes probably will not be impacted as much. If borrowing money to do something constructive that has a 7% ROI and inflation is 5% then it really isn't as much of a problem.

Similar with hand-waving acquisitions that don't make much rational sense (but cheap borrowed money) versus something that has high synergies. ( some of these overpriced aquihires will dry out . A bunch of these companies with zero profits but astronomical valuations will evaporate. )