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Sources Say Apple Originally Planned AMD Chip For MacBook Air
Several media sources (here's PC Magazine's version), all seemingly based on an account at SemiAccurate citing (but not naming) "multiple sources," report that Apple originally planned an AMD-chip based MacBook Air, rather than the Intel-based version that emerged later ("Plan B," says the report).
The AMD chips had a significantly better GPU, at the cost of a slightly slower CPU (which is a good tradeoff). Apple didn't go with it because AMD couldn't guarantee the volumes that Apple needed.
And this is essentially the story of AMD for the last decade.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I guess I'm just not sure why people are writing articles about this. Apple of course has prototypes with various chipsets. I find it interesting that they likely bailed on AMD because they were not up to the volume requirements, but that's not news so much as a market assessment people in the computer supply chain logistics business probably already knew.
So Apple were trying to chose between the only two players in the performance x86 world?! They actually stopped to consider the alternative rather than just picking the default when millions of dollars were at stake?
I'm blown away, like everyone else I thought Steve Jobs just picked names out of a hat.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
AMD is always considered before negotiating prices with Intel. Flirting with AMD before choosing Intel is a pretty common practice, even for those who planned on going with Intel all along.
Dont you have that the wrong way around?
Okay.
So, are we just going to run any old article with Apple in the title now?
For Linux before he patch, yes. For the rest of the world, no.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
The AMD chips had a significantly better GPU, at the cost of a slightly slower CPU (which is a good tradeoff).
In the context of something like a MacBook Air power consumption is a far greater factor than CPU or GPU performance.
Hackintosh community as drivers for AMD based netbooks and laptops would've become available. So wish AMD had the resources to meant high volume demands. Maybe next time!
It was also the story of Motorola back in the early Eighties, when IBM was developing that first Personal Computer: the story I always heard was that IBM chose the Intel line over Motorola's more capable 68K series simply because Intel had secondary sourcing and could guarantee volume, but Motorola was the sole source and couldn't.
Nope. Intel mobiles perform more processing per watt than AMD, and it's been that way for a few years.
Good thing they have an Intel in the iPhone now, right?
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Years ago when Apple dropped the PowerPC in favor of Intel, Jobs claimed it was because the electrical W:MIPS of PPC was predicted to soon fall short of the performance of x86, with battery, fan and other limits to consider - just as iP* and other mobiles dominated Jobs' vision.
How has that turned out? Have PPCs really fallen behind, or hit a wall, compared to Intel's CPUs Apple uses? How do the AMD x86es compare to the Intel ones on that criterion?
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make install -not war
No... it's entirely normal for an intel based laptop to get between 5 and 10 hours depending on the size of the battery and the speed of the chip. I'm not sure I've seen a single AMD laptop (that isn't based on the E-350) with battery life over 4 hours.
At least AMD doesn't build hardware level backdoors into their CPUs.
That you know of.
I meant, doesnt AMD need better battery life to be considered by Apple?
Apple going with AMD wouldnt improve the battery life as OP implies, AMD having better battery life would increase chances of it getting into Apple devices
I meant, doesnt AMD need better battery life to be considered by Apple?
Apple going with AMD wouldnt improve the battery life as OP implies, AMD having better battery life would increase chances of it getting into Apple devices
making the comment original
Wasnt refering to that part. I meant, doesnt AMD need better battery life to be considered by Apple?
Apple going with AMD wouldnt improve the battery life as OP implies, AMD having better battery life would increase chances of it getting into Apple devices
So you believe. http://www.i-programmer.info/news/91-hardware/1586-secret-debug-registers-in-amd-processors.html
-]Phreak Out[-
They were replies to different comments...
Oh. The OP's message was kind of weird. Basically saying he wishes AMD was the first choice because it's battery was worse. Maybe he wanted Apple laptops to suck.
Honestly, who cares? You're mischaracterizing the DRM feature as something that is a backdoor into your computer that can what, spy on you? Remotely disable your computer? I haven't seen a single source demonstrate that their DRM feature does this.
The issue is that intel FORCES "HD3000" graphics to buy the mobile processors.
In my opinion that is a deal breaker on things like the Air. Even light modern gaming is painful on intel graphics... Sure the new Air is "better" than the last one... With 3x the CPU thrown at the problem. Consider the Air with the same CPU but newer Nvidia graphics? At that point an AMD processor that's slower, but with a better tightly bound graphics is going to be a better experience for the target low-end users more likely to play games.
I have older C2D MacBooks with intel and with Nvidia. The intel is criminally awful at even light WoW with roughly the same CPU. That makes almost all of the current cheap MacBooks unacceptable for a 5 year investment.
Intel mobiles perform more processing per watt than AMD, and it's been that way for a few years.
Performance per watt is only tangentially related to battery life. Most laptop CPUs spend 95% of their power on hours idle, which means that the important figure is idle power draw. The fact that the Intel chip could be doing 60% more calculations if it actually had something to do doesn't make the battery last any longer.
Sayeth the n00b that obviously never owned a Pentium 4.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I don't see where the OP implies that... To me, he implies that AMD's battery life sucks compared to intel's and that that would be sufficient for apple to tell them to fuck off.
No... it's entirely normal for an intel based laptop to get between 5 and 10 hours depending on the size of the battery and the speed of the chip. I'm not sure I've seen a single AMD laptop (that isn't based on the E-350) with battery life over 4 hours.
Considering that the CPU is only a fraction of the power draw of a laptop, a factor of two difference in battery life is almost certainly not attributable to the difference in CPUs.
The primary reason for the battery life difference is probably that Intel chips are sold in higher end laptops that contain higher capacity batteries.
I wish Apple had gone with AMD processors from the beginning. Maybe then AMD would not have a mobile platform practically dead in the water
He wishes Apple had gone with AMD.
Follows up with "AMD would not have a mobile platform practically dead in the water"
implying apple going with AMD would lead to better battery life
Actually, the typical draw of a whole laptop is in the region of the 50W range, the typical draw of the CPU is in the 30-35W range. Make your CPU 10W less efficient and you shorten battery life by ~20%.
I planned on getting rich by now. It didn't happen, I guess something changed.
I think you'll find there are lots of examples of companies planning to do something and then changing their mind. Not sure any of it is newsworthy...
For it to get Thunderbolt as it seems unlikey to be part of any add in video card.
So what will the new intel MB with TB look like? will the high end Core i7 and sever chips have no hope of TB in less intel add's video to the cpus and even then how will TB work with a add in ATI or nvidia card?
I don't think most Mac Air buyers are looking for a gaming laptop.
But the Pentium 4 would throttle when it got too hot. An Athlon would melt.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
The OP isn't talking about a "gaming laptop" but a laptop capable of limited casual gaming. This is perfectly within scope for the target demographic.
I see the total lack of support my i945 Minis have in this regard and wonder how the MBA gets treated. Extant products may simply tell you to take a hike if you try to install them on a MBA.
The Apple netbook should be able play some 5 year old RTS port.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No, implying that AMD wouldn't be stuck with a platform that gets 0 sales and hence 0 investment.
I think you're confusing actual power draw with TDP. So for example, an A8-3500M has a 35W TDP, that's the most it will draw for a sustained period of time. The actual power draw at idle will be more in the neighborhood of maybe 10-20W, something like that. So you take that, you add the screen, the hard drive, memory, wireless, etc. and you get your 50W. The CPU is not the dominant factor. In most cases the screen uses more.
Incidentally, Llano has lower idle power consumption than Core i3.
So as for this:
I'm not sure I've seen a single AMD laptop (that isn't based on the E-350) with battery life over 4 hours.
Here you go. AMD A6, "9-cell (100 WHr): Up to 12 hours and 30 minutes."
You never want to deal with just one supplier. You need competition, and the continual threat that you can always go with supplier B.
And when the specs are met and the price is right for the current generation, you drop the alternative supplier, and start discussing the next.
Afaict thunderbolt is implemented as a seperate chip connected via PCIe and displayport. So I don't see any reason why you couldn't have a system with an AMD processor but an intel thunderbolt chip.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Whatever it is, AMD is up to something new, and will announce in February.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Take a look at what vPro does sometime. If you have hardware that supports it there's an actual embedded processor in there, directly connected to your network cards (both wired and wireless) and with full access to your RAM, and there's no way to tell what code it's running. If you don't, your Intel-based computer still supports isolated processes whose memory can't be peeked into or scanned for malicious code.
I don't get it.
Oblivion Awaits
you guys are forgetting that thunderbolt in actual reality is totally useless for lack of devices. modern pccard slot would do the same thing anyways.
it would be nice if you could actually add tb gpu's. but that really doesn't seem like it's going to actually happen.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
vPro doesn't exist for the evulz, it exists because it is a network management feature that IT professionals wanted.
I meant, doesnt AMD need better battery life to be considered by Apple?
I'm typing this on my 13" MSI e350-based laptop. It has the best performance/power ratio I could find.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
No, my P4 didn't throttle. It hit temp and instantly shut down. No throttling.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
So what will the new intel MB with TB look like? will the high end Core i7 and sever chips have no hope of TB in less intel add's video to the cpus and even then how will TB work with a add in ATI or nvidia card?
Can someone please translate this to English.
Learn to love Alaska
Why would guaranteeing Apple's volumes be a problem? It's not like AMD is filling up Intel shortages w/ other customers - whatever business they have is on projects they win w/ OEMs on certain models. Even if Apple were to go sole sourced w/ AMD, which I think unlikely, their volumes are just a fraction of the PC market - just b'cos AMD might not be able to satisfy all of Dell's or HP's needs doesn't imply that they'd have the same problems w/ Apple. All AMD would have to guarantee Apple is their supply of CPUs, GPUs and chipsets, of which the first 2 comes out of their 5 fabs, and the last out of other chipset manufacturers like SiS, Via, ALi...
More likely, as far as supply issues go, it's more likely that the delay in AMD's fabs in moving to the smaller & more competitive lithographies is what made Apple not go w/ them, since they ain't likely to be as cost competitive as Intel.
Going forward though, doesn't it make sense for Apple to port Lion to the A5 or A6, and make both their Airbooks as well as their iPhones/iPads on those? And have a common apps for both platforms, and increase the Mac's market share that way? If performance is inadequate, maybe add a core or 2 to the CPU?
I'll grant you that 50W for the total is an overestimate, which is clear when you do the math for hours of battery given battery capacity. (I took the number from the post I was replying to.)
But the point about TDP not being typical consumption is still valid. Look at the link I posted for the HP laptop with the AMD A series processor. If you take the most similar battery to the one in the MacBook Air (the 55Wh one), the battery life for the AMD laptop is 7 hours 15 minutes. Which is less than a watt from the calculated power consumption of the Air using your method, ~7.6W vs. ~7.1W. And there is undoubtedly that much margin of error in the numbers.
So then you want to talk about the benchmark results and say that the motherboard matters. Of course it does! When you're talking about ~7-8W total power consumption for the entire system, everything matters. But I think the larger point here is that AMD CPUs are competitive with Intel on power consumption. There is no great discrepancy one way or the other. Which means that attempting to disqualify the AMD chip for using too much is wrongheaded.