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Why Apple Picked Intel Over AMD
An Anonymous Reader writes "Macworld has a piece looking at why Apple chose Intel chips over AMD's offerings when it decided to move away from IBM." From the article: "The reason, industry analysts say, is that Jobs has a clear goal in mind: innovative designs. And such designs require the lowest-voltage chips, which IBM and Freescale were not going to make with the PowerPC chip core--and which AMD has not yet perfected 'This is a practical, pragmatic Steve Jobs decision,' says Shane Rau, Program Manager, PC Semiconductors for market research firm IDC. Intel serves up the most complete line of low-power chips for mobile and small form factor computers, and a good-looking future roadmap for it. Also, Intel's mammoth production capacity erases any supply worries. "
I think this is the first time I have seen the words "practical" and "pragmatic" in the same sentence with "Steve Jobs". Remember the reality distortion field?
Said that it is worth while to mention that IBM is not incompetent. Their embedded cores which are custom designed are even more energy efficient. But again they are expensive (and task specific) and cost drives the market.
It's all about the mobile processors. Intel's PentiumM's are FAST, low power usage and did I mention FAST? Seeing as how Laptop purchases are rising faster than desktop purchases, and since Apple's laptops are the most long in tooth, I'm betting that the first new Apple Intel box will be a laptop.
Did anybody else notice that Jobs in his keynote addressed why they're switching to Intel, and now however many weeks later the analysts put pen to paper and write down what he said as the reason they think they're switching?
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A lot of ink has been spilled on why Apple chose Intel over AMD. I think it's all a bit of a waste of time.
Unless Apple uses some proprietary Intel instruction set, it can add AMD offerings to its lineup whenever it feels like.
My guess is that Apple chose Intel for their arch switch because:
1) It was easier to pick a single chip partner to do the switch with.
2) Intel likely offered incentives to go with them alone. There may be contracts involved in this, but they won't last forever.
3) Like it or not, Intel is the x86 brand with mindshare in the public eye.
4) AMD probably can't handle the volume of bringing all of Apple's products over to them at the moment.
The fact is that as soon as OS X is x86 it can benefit from the Intel/AMD competition in the same way that Windows and Linux users do today.
The hurdle is converting from PPC to x86. Going from Intel to AMD later on may not even be noticeable. In fact, if you think of the G4/G5 branding in the current Apple world, most consumers don't even know that their G4 is a Motorola chip and their G5 is IBM. They don't care, so long as there's an Apple on the side of the box.
Considering that AMD's chips are generally faster, cooler, and more efficient than Intel's chips, the choice of AMD would seem like a nobrainer without the Pentium M.
Apple seems to be moving hard toward mobile computing now anyway, so going for the Pentium M is a smart move all around, and it doesn't take much imagination to see those in Mac Mini's and the like in the future.
Myself, I'd have split the difference and gone with AMD for the 64 bit server chips. I think that descision is going to do good things for Sun.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Intel have a public roadmap into 2007, so their private roadmap must extend even further.
AMD have a public roadmap into 2006, but nothing long term. Privately, it may be different.
IBM have a roadmap into next week if you're lucky. Privately it may be different, but 3GHz G5s?
AMD has Intel beat at the moment on power consumption on the desktop, we all know that. However Yonah and Merom (and server variants thereof?) are what Apple are interested in. Yonah will come in many variants, with an ULV single core at 5.5W, and dual-core LV at 15W alongside the 35W dual-core standard processor. AMD have Turion however, and it isn't that bad in comparison with the current Pentium M, and 65nm should help them along even more.
It will be interesting to see how next year's processors compare. I think that AMD will remain leading in terms of performance at the high end, but the mobile arena will become very interesting with dual-cores from both company, new 65nm processors, and more to boot.