Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still expect that they'll offer devices in traditional form factors What are iOS developers supposed to develop on?
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Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
121–130 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#122Is Apple competent enough to build an equally powerful CPU? Or is it a no-brainer for the kind of money they got?
Apple's Cash (77B) is about 1/3 of Intel's Market Cap (224B), maybe they could just buy Intel.
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#123Intel stock is down 7.3% currently.
The whole market is down today because of the TTT (Trump, tweets, and tariffs).
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What are the odds that Apple will just internalize x86 production... Zero, since it's wildly improbable that Intel would grant them a license to use the x86 architecture.
They could just buy AMD, which is also a rights holder to X86_64 (in fact, they basically “invented” it). Super highly doubt it will happen, but technically possible.
It is not unheard of for licenses to have terms which require renegotiation in the event of acquisition. That might make such an acquisition a mortal threat to x86_64, but not a seamless path to using it.
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still expect that they'll offer devices in traditional form factors What are iOS developers supposed to develop on?
Buy two iPads and use one as a keyboard.
I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not :-)
That said, CPUs have gotten so cost effective that it makes possible something which has come in and out of favor for a while, which is a network of devices that do one thing co-operating as a larger system.
So lets say you buy your "iDisk" which is a storage brick that you can put on a short range wireless network. A couple of iPad monitors, a wireless Apple keyboard, and a wireless Apple mouse. You set up this box of stuff and arrange it around on your desk and it is essentially a "single" computer system perceptually which, running a development "app" could work fine for development.
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#126This is such an obvious move, that I predicted it 2 years ago:
https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/in-3-years-apple-will-switch-f...
My prediction in 2016, was that Apple would switch to ARM based laptops in 2019, so it looks like I am off by just 1 year.
A quick summary of my argument back then was that ARM was getting fast ENOUGH, but are considerably cheaper. Standardizing on one CPU architecture for all their products makes sense. In addition it allows them to differentiate themselves from competitors.
The only choice I am still uncertain about is the Mac Pro lineup. Since performance will matter a lot more in this segment it is harder to see a transition away from intel. A possible solution would be for apple to go massively parallel and simply use a lot of ARM CPU cores. Sure single thread performance wont be able to compete with intel but they might not need to.
A lot of the stuff you need a Mac Pro for like compiling large programs fast, video processing etc is likely very paralelizable.
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#127How much has Intel knuckled under to the intelligence community which wants to bug 100% of our electronics?
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#128Surprised by the comments on performance. Putting a second cpu/SoC on the board and keeping it in a low power sleep mode, then spinning it up as needed would be trivial for Apple.
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#129Based on this article, it doesn't sound like Bloomberg has enough information to distinguish between Apple being committed to a transition, or Apple developing chips to improve their negotiating position with Intel. It's also very unlikely to happen on such a fast timetable; given the IP situation, it's unlikely Apple could make an x86_64 chip, and any move away from x86_64 is going to require significant work by thi…
It will obviously be an ARM transition not x86: https://medium.com/@Jernfrost/in-3-years-apple-will-switch-f...
Re: Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs from 2020, Replacing Intel
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the IP/licensing situation particularly onerous here to prevent making their own x86_64 chip?
Yes. Everything since the Pentium is still encumbered. Intel and AMD have extensive cross licensing agreements. Anyone want to build an x86_64 chip would need to either purchase a company that already had licenses or negotiate with both AMD and Intel.
Couldn't Apple easily buy AMD? (not to say they wouldn't have a million reason not too)