Macbook Third Gen 2017 - Next Intel M chips?

[blast87]

Knowing that Apple only updates the Macbook according to Intel's new chips. What are intel's roadmaps for the next Core M chips?

Are we going to expect another 10-25% increase next year? When are they expected to be released?
What can we expect other then a performance improvement? Will we see a thunderbolt USB-C port? Anything else?

 

[Hellhammer]

Kaby Lake is the successor of Skylake, but the release schedule is still unconfirmed. Roadmaps have scheduled mobile chips, including Core M, for Q4 this year, but volume availability might be in Q1'17. Though we all know that the MacBook won't be updated until Q2 next year anyway.

What's expected? A very incremental performance upgrade. Intel had to change its famous tick-tock product strategy as scaling down to 10nm proved to be more difficult than previous nodes, so Kaby Lake is merely a refined version of Skylake. That means single digit gains in the CPU performance department, but perhaps slightly bigger gains in GPU performance, but nothing spectacular.

And no, the mobile SKUs with integrated PCH (like Core M) do not support USB 3.1, so we will still be stuck with USB 3.0 (or USB 3.1 Gen 1 as marketing people call it). Thunderbolt 3 is also unlikely given that it requires an additional chip, for which the MacBook simply doesn't have any space. If Apple wanted to support Thunderbolt in the MacBook, they would have done that already.

So all in all, I don't have high hopes for the 2017 MacBook. There is simply nothing interesting coming in the silicon frontier and the design is too new to undergo any changes. 2018 will be the bigger year when Cannon Lake ships.

 

[Mollan]

What if they put an Apple AX chips?
I won't be too surprised if OSX is (another) living a secret life at Apple...

 

[Fuzzball84]

I don't think the Apple A series processors are as good for general computing as the current intel chips. Maybe in the future they will become similar.

But intel and arm are coming from different directions - A series are increasing in performance coming from very efficient design power wise while intel chips are very powerful generally, but they are making them much more efficient. They could end up being very similar and then it would be the case is it worth changing software for a new architecture.

 

[Mollan]

I agree, I believe that before switching to Apple chips we will need to have chips powerful enough to power an iMac, a Mac Pro or even a MBP, otherwise it won't be smart to have two different architectures at the same time...

 

[touchstoned]

You will have to wait until Cannonlake (late 2017/early 2018) for a significant change in performance or i/o capabilities on basically any Mac besides the Mac Pro. Intel has offered very little in performance gains with skylake and kabylake will need EDRAM and FIVR for any real boost in real world performance... let alone form factor. Intel has already detailed what you'll get with KabyLake... more of the same. No EDRAM sku... same boost clocks... 100mhz base clock increase would be likely. They weren't even capable of dropping the TDP like they did with Haswell and Broadwell.

http://wccftech.com/intel-14nm-kaby...16-256-mb-edram-hseries-91w-kseries-unveiled/

http://wccftech.com/14nm-kaby-lake-intel-launch-delayed-2016/

I am hoping that Apple put the next A10X processor into their mac, it's getting close to the point where Apple could take a 40% performance hit and still trounce intel's low TDP garbage with ease. Take a look at the iPad Pro GPU vs even the Macbook Pro.... the iPad is in a league of its own. It also matches the latest Intel Core M7 in single thread performance at a fraction of the price and with a fraction of the thermal headroom. The days of intel having the best mobile processors ended when Apple released A7.... people are just now starting to realize it though.

 

[blast87]

Perhaps next year or 2018 we will see an A-chip in the MacBook. Would be interesting to see when Apple makes the move and how much of an improvement it will bring.
The MacBook seems like the perfect first candidate for the switch. Whereas the MbP/iMacs are probably a long way off.

 

[Outrigger]

Perhaps next year or 2018 we will see an A-chip in the MacBook. Would be interesting to see when Apple makes the move and how much of an improvement it will bring.
The MacBook seems like the perfect first candidate for the switch. Whereas the MbP/iMacs are probably a long way off.

Wouldn't OS X have to be completely rewritten for any non Intel chips? I don't see Apple doing this, at least not any time soon.

 

[Mollan]

Wouldn't OS X have to be completely rewritten for any non Intel chips? I don't see Apple doing this, at least not any time soon.

They already did once 10 years ago. I wouldn't be surprised whether the Swift programming language was the beginning of a new ARM life for OSX. We'll see

The only thing that makes me think about this is that Apple will have huge revenue margins by using its own processors, and we all now Tim Cook's all about margins...

 

[Trey M]

I really think the likelihood of the MB being 'upgraded' to AX series chips in the near future is nonexistent. The inclusiveness of Intel chips between the Windows/Mac platform the last 10 years has done nothing but benefit the Mac platform from a developer perspective. Also, this inclusiveness allows Mac users to run VM machines and Bootcamp-type software that allows us to run Windows on our Macbooks. This is a very popular option, especially among many in this forum, and it would prove unpopular to stop this support for the sake of supporting Apple AX chips.

I do think it's possible we'll see AX chips in the Mac platform in a new Apple product category; think along the lines of a Surface Book made by Apple. Perhaps that would benefit from AX chips vs. comparable Intel M7 model. I think the Apple-built Surface Book would have enough differentiating features to support the benefits from an AX chip.

For a true notebook though, I can't see Apple moving away from Intel. Even while the Macbook is the disruptor in the market by including only one port with premium hardware, it's still a 'notebook' at the end of the day.