Apple/Intel Speculation Running Rampant

6031769 writes "ZD Net are reporting a rumour that Steve Jobs will announce Apple are going to move to an Intel chip base at their worldwide developer conference today. Still just a rumour, but could this be the masterstroke Apple have been promising or is it a blind alley?" Lots of submissions about this one, but no one knows for sure - there have been stories about how AMD is hurt by this - but I think my favorite debunking of it is the piece by John Gruber on Daring Fireball.

Comments

branding POV

[rokzy]

the worst thing in the world would be for a Mac to have an "Intel inside" sticker on it, or even on the packaging. but as annoying as their stupid campaign is, would Intel make an exception to their rule for Apple? Apple's design is one of their biggest assets so I can't see them giving in either.

a few questions...

[nickos]

I'm a bit sentimental about PPC, but I guess this move probably makes some sense for Apple (see here)

I have a few questions that I haven't seen raised anywhere else though:
1. Will Windows run on these machines?
2. Will Apple offer some kind of Window compatibility using something like WINE?
3. What will happen to Yellow Dog Linux?

Switching the Mac would be bizarre. Other product?

[Lemming Mark]

Switching the Mac over now would be really weird: for years Apple struggled with the G4's performance - then I might have understood. Now they've got IBM as a partner - one of the world leaders in CPU architecture, silicon fabrication, etc. It would seem truly bizare to ditch out from PPC at this point, especially given IBM's huge commitment to PPC world domination (and their manifest triumphs over Intel in another volume market - games consoles).

Using an XScale, I could understand. Intel are *the* market leader in high end portable processors at the moment (try to find a powerful PDA that *doesn't* have an XScale). An XScale would be the sensible choice for an Apple PDA or, indeed, the iPod / Phone combo that has been so talked about.

This "leak" might about buying Intel might a be deliberate publicity stunt but I find it really hard to believe the Mac will move away from PPC in the foreseeable future.

The third possibility is that Apple will introduce something new - something else they've not mentioned before. An ultra Apple / Windows friendly UNIX server? An appliance computer (e.g. a cross between iPod and a {web,file,database}server?) A set top box (*cough* *pippin* *cough*)? Personally, I think Apple could be good with appliance computing.

AMD, and other speculation

[mattdm]

The AMD link isn't really about how it'll hurt AMD, but about how Apple couldn't choose AMD because AMD can't reliably keep up with that level of demand.

That's a lot more interesting/reasonable, since a switch to Intel architecture for Apple would be *good news* for AMD, since then going from Intel-made chips to AMD ones would be possibile sometime later.

The "debunking" link sounds reasonable -- "Here's my bet: Intel is going to produce PowerPC chips for Apple. But I'm only betting one dollar." Another possibility along those lines would be that Apple is switching to Intel *graphics chips*, which would make sense given the comment in the original rumors that the switch would happen on low-end computers first.

Why not an Intel PowerPC chip?

[peterdaly]

Here's my theory:
If any of this is true, which I'm not at all sure it is, why does everyone think it's going to be an x86 chip?

Apple IIRC has the ability to license the PowerPC chip to others. What if Apple is licensing PowerPC to Intel because IBM can't deliver? No incompatability. The current chips are already made by two differrent companies.

If there is ANY fact to this rumor, and it all seems to be rehash of the cnet story, this where where I think the most logical answer lies.

-Pete

Re:fact vs fiction

[ptomblin]

Fact: Because IBM didn't meet their performance promises to Apple, they now have to give Apple a whole bunch of PowerPC intellectual property. Apple could take that IP over to Intel and either have Intel manufacture 3GHz G5s, or make an Itanic/Power hybrid chip.

In other words, don't assume that a move to Intel means a move to x86.

Re:Could be a disaster....

[Mark_in_Brazil]

The LAST thing Apple needs to do is to piss off it's user base.

But maybe there's a way for the story to be true and Apple to not piss off its user base.
I've been told that Apple managed to put some very tough clauses into its contract with IBM over the chips. If IBM were unable to meet certain criteria, Apple would be able to take some of the intellectual property, basically allowing Apple to take the design and have somebody else make the processors.
I've noticed that the reports on C|Net don't say Apple will use Pentium chips. They say Apple will use Intel chips.
If you RTFD (D="Debunking") from the blurb, it's mentioned there that Apple pays a lot less for the chips it gets from IBM than it would pay for comparable Pentium chips.
It's also interesting (mentioned in the "debunking") that Apple has NOT been warning its developers about a pending change of endian-ness, as you might expect them to if a change to little-endian Pentium chips from big-endian PowerPC chips.
But... if it's true that Apple can take the chip design to Intel, then Intel could conceivably make PowerPC chips for Apple. That's about the only way I can see this rumor being true. It would still be tough, because I don't think it would be easy for Intel to get production of a new chip going at the required volume within a year, but I am not a silicon expert.

Just something interesting...

[omega9]

Some posts argue that Apple switching to Intel would mean switching byte endianness, and that would piss off a whole slew of Mac developers and require enough software rewrites to be extremely uncomfortable.

That's a good arguement, but it's interesting to note that IA64 can go both ways. I'm not saying they'd go IA64, but that Intel is capable of making that a non-issue.

Personally, I think this while notion is awesome entertainment no matter what happens. And I don't think Apple will be going Intel any time soon.

Re:Its all just talk.

[Yaruar]

there are a lot of problems with the G5 though. It's a great chip, but there are major issues with power and size on it, so much so that it's looking unlikely it will make it into a laptop any time soon, and remember it's the sexy titanium powermacs's that everyone has been drooling over in recent years. + they have had so much trouble sorting out supplies for power chips with motorola and IBM messing them about in recent years. It makes sense to shift to intel. the architecture isn't as good, but the supply is readily available and development is going on a lot faster than with the power chips. A move to AMD 64's or pentium M's would do apple a great deal of good, especially with the integtation into advanced motherboard architecture which again is a problem with the Power.

But only Dvorak has suggested Itanium

[goombah99]

Few articles have speculated on what chip they will use. I can think of two possibly three. Itanium, pentium-M and some unannounced response to the Cell processor.

The case for the Itanium is that the reason it failed in the Wintel world was the difficulty of programming for it, notably its ramant use of out of order instruction capability. And when Windows did not really embrace it that was the death sentence. But Apple has a unique position of controlling the hardware and the OS. Thus they could potentially master this beast. Going Itanium could let them leapfrog the x86 world and have more headroom for growth. I also wonder if the itanium has, like the Power series, support for both big/little endian, thus making the transition easier?

Pentium-M. Well this is no brainer. They need a new chip for the laptop and there's none on the horizon. The interesting thing here is that if they went with a hybrid strategy of Pentium-M in the laptops and G5 in the desktops they have a good transistion strategy available. The graphic artisits and application-specific power users will not settle for emulation of their favorite applications. Thus they have to keep G5 on the desktop till all the applications like Photoshop and Maya have swithced over.. But that class of folks wont be using Laptops as their main machine. And the laptop users might be well satisfied with a fast pentium-M machine that occasionally had to run some applications in a slower emulation mode.

Surely intel has some response to the Cell. Are they going to cede the entire video game/ digital hub market to xbox, sony and the cell? I suspect not. But to enter that market they need a partner. And who better than the maker of the ipod and the only company with a coherent home digital hub strategy (think iLife). Well that would be apple. You cant argue market share dictates windows since the ipod proves that wrong and Microsoft already has its bets on the xbox.

So maybe this is about a video console and not about general purpose computers???

Itanium is Endian agnostic

[goombah99]

The Itanium supports both big and little endian. thus switching to this processor would be simpler than X86.