Sources Say Apple Originally Planned AMD Chip For MacBook Air

In summary by phantomfive · 2011-11-20 07:12 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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Re:In summary by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-11-20 08:06 · Score: 3, Informative

It is slightly more specific than that, in this case:

Apple continued to ship Core2s in their smaller systems for a surprising length of time after the newer intel gear became available because that was the only way they could continue to get Nvidia GPUs in anything too small for a discrete graphics card, and they were just that unimpressed with intel's offering.

Given that, it seems likely that AMD must have had real, serious, dealbreaker, volume issues with their APU parts(not just 'we need our Intel marketing support money' volume issues) for Apple to have dropped that plan.

It would be interesting to know if AMD just can't ship them in quantity at all(which seems modestly unlikely, given the number of cheapie PC laptops where they've popped up, and the fairly low prices they must be selling for), or if Apple required some fancy low voltage bin that AMD's process just didn't hit regularly enough...
Re:In summary by symbolset · 2011-11-20 08:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

On the other hand for what Apple's paying for Intel chips Apple could just buy AMD and fix their supply chain problems. AMD could be had for about $5 billion today. Apple's moving about 16 million Macs a year. It wouldn't take too long for that to pay off. And 64-core Mac desktops would be pretty neat.

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Re:In summary by washu_k · 2011-11-20 15:25 · Score: 2

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.

Umm, no. AMD doesn't have a chip that competes with Intel's ultra low power Sandy Bridge chips like in the Air.

The AMD Brazos chips compete on power consumption, but they are way slower. They are an Atom competitor, something they do very well but SB chips are in a completely different performance bracket.

The AMD Llano chips would qualify as "significantly better GPU, at the cost of a slightly slower CPU", but at much higher power consumption. Not suitable for the AIR either.
Re:In summary by hairyfeet · 2011-11-20 19:15 · Score: 2

Probably more likely Intel offered some of their famous kickbacks since this was before they got caught. Jobs was always a shrewd business man and if he got Intel chips 40% cheaper thanks to a little under the table kickback from Intel I doubt he'd pass it up. Hell everyone else did it, Dell, Gateway, eMachines, why not Apple?
In the end this just supports something I've been saying for years, which is for the vast majority CPUs are long past good enough and getting into extreme overkill. I've got tons of customers on duals and triples and frankly until the machines physically die i just can't seeing them needing replacements, which is why after years of the MHz wars CPU sales have declined. I mean what are they doing that is gonna need more power? Where is the "killer app" when even Windows 7 runs just fine on a 2005 era CPU? Hell even my kids that game constantly when asked if they'd like me to replace their dual cores with something more powerful were like "Uh why bother? all our games play nice, it all is working great, if it ain't broke don't fix it".
The only ones I've seen that need cutting edge anymore are those that are doing heavy jobs like transcoding or video editing and those aren't the kinds of things one does on a laptop whose selling point is who thin it is. So I'd love to see the books, i bet Apple's BOM went down after having a little talk with Intel.

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*** SHOCK *** by AmiMoJo · 2011-11-20 07:21 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

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Re:*** SHOCK *** by masternerdguy · 2011-11-20 07:31 · Score: 3, Funny

Nobody picks names out of a hat these days. Everyone now uses psychoactive drugs to have a vision where the X86 gods will appear and guide you. If an ARM god appears you know that your product is cursed.

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AMD always considered ... by perpenso · 2011-11-20 07:24 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

Re:AMD always considered ... by Baloroth · 2011-11-20 07:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's one thing to flirt. It is entirely another to be actually planing on using them, which by most accounts Apple was. I don't think this was just a gambit. AMD also would have given them a couple of advantages. Far superior GPU and better power efficiency (so I have heard, anyways), mainly. Probably would have been cheaper too, although that is just a guess.

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Uh... by AngryDeuce · 2011-11-20 07:26 · Score: 2, Funny

Okay.

So, are we just going to run any old article with Apple in the title now?

CPU & GPU performance not relevant by perpenso · 2011-11-20 07:28 · Score: 5, 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.

Re:CPU & GPU performance not relevant by phantomfive · 2011-11-20 07:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

In the context of something like a MacBook Air power consumption is a far greater factor than CPU or GPU performance.
I'm not sure why you think this, if they were looking for power consumption, wouldn't they go with the Atom?

I can tell you at least anecdotally, the last time I was looking at a laptop I really wanted something like an Air because of its nice slender shape, but I decided against it because it is underpowered compared to most other laptops I was considering, and I am ok with a shorter battery life.

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Re:CPU & GPU performance not relevant by allanw · 2011-11-20 08:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

Atoms are friggin slow compared to a regular CPU and should only be used for sub-$400 netbooks, not $1000 laptops. One of the great things about the Air is that it doesn't use some dumbed down CPU, it's just a regular Sandy Bridge clocked down.
Re:CPU & GPU performance not relevant by allanw · 2011-11-20 08:29 · Score: 5, Informative

Obviously power consumption is important but performance is also very important. An Atom is an extremely cheap CPU that doesn't deserve to go in a $1000 laptop, like I said. Otherwise you can take the argument to silliness by asking why Apple didn't go with ARM or something.
I've found that Macbooks are pretty comparable in price to a Windows laptop now, at least the Airs (since we're on that topic). Nothing out there matches a Macbook Air in price, considering that the Air comes with an SSD and a Sandy Bridge CPU.
Re:CPU & GPU performance not relevant by Theovon · 2011-11-20 09:33 · Score: 4, Interesting

People tend to conflate power with energy, and you may be doing it here. If you're going to be executing a particular job, and you want to optmize its efficiency, then it will consume some power over some time period, which is ENERGY. On the other hand, if you're talking about the battery life of your laptop, then the computer is almost completely idle, and what we want to therefore minimize is idle and average power.
Optimizing just for power isn't sufficient. If something uses half the power but takes 4 times as long, then it's twice as bad. However, we don't typically wake our computers to run compute-intensive jobs, just to put them back to sleep when those are done. We do a lot of screen-staring, which complicates the issue.
Interestingly, performance per watt IS in the right units. Performance would be something comparable to operations per second, while watts is joules per second. The seconds cancel out, giving you operations per joule, which is the correct efficiency metric.
Re:CPU & GPU performance not relevant by catmistake · 2011-11-20 10:14 · Score: 2

The trouble with Atom is its really not powerful enough for anything but what GP said... netbooks, web, light word processing. Yes, its very low power, but AMD is in its ball park power-wise, and AMD completely spanks the Atom in processing power. I realize Atom has a huge following, and so does Intel in general, due to their chip fabs being the best, even if they couldn't produce a viable GPU to save their lives. Trouble is the Atom is actually equivalent in processing power to a PowerPC G4 ... so for Apple to sell a NEW computer with an Atom, it would be like it was 2003 again.
IMHO, when AMD studdered on the question of supply, Apple should have just bought them outright.

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Re:CPU & GPU performance not relevant by Teknikal69 · 2011-11-20 10:47 · Score: 2

I think I might be one of the few that actually likes the Atom I have a netbook I actually use for tons of stuff and the Atom gives me over a ten hour battery. I basicly use the netbook for everything I would do on my desktop and it works fine I've even watched 720p videos on it.
I think the early Atoms might have been poor and that's how they got the bad rep but the one in my netbook seems to be pretty good to me and I really like the battery life.
Re:CPU & GPU performance not relevant by afabbro · 2011-11-20 11:51 · Score: 2, Funny

Atom is only for toy netbooks.
I guess I'll just power off my Atom-powered toy and stop reading Slashdot. If only I was using a real, manly laptop like gnasher719, sigh...

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Re:CPU & GPU performance not relevant by mjwx · 2011-11-20 13:22 · Score: 2, Informative

I've found that Macbooks are pretty comparable in price to a Windows laptop now, at least the Airs (since we're on that topic). Nothing out there matches a Macbook Air in price,
BZZZT, wrong, but thanks for playing. Asus U36SD.
US$861

Macbook Air 13"
US$1250

The Asus has a faster processor, switch-able graphics, USB 3, HDMI, VGA, SATA 3, Gigabit Ethernet and if you wanted to stick a 128 GB SSD into it, you're still $150 up on the Macbook. The Macbook also solders the RAM to the mainboard meaning it's non-upgradable and does not use a standard form factor or SATA interface meaning if you want to upgrade that you need to pay more then you would for standard hardware and yes, people do upgrade the RAM and HDD in their laptops, especially as SSD's get cheaper (well, get cheaper for most of us).

Not to mention that Asus supports the U3xSD series with their 2 year international warranty where as Apple only has a 1 year North America only warranty.

So can we do away with the myth that Mac's are cheap. I can get a Dell with an SSD for A$800. That's in Australia where everything costs more.

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Re:CPU & GPU performance not relevant by welcher · 2011-11-20 14:19 · Score: 2

It's not all that easy to compare though -- I'd say when you are looking at a small computer, just how small and light it is is very important. The Asus is 20% heavier than the macbook air (3.7lbs vs 3.0lbs).
Re:CPU & GPU performance not relevant by Kumiorava · 2011-11-20 14:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

Sure, but you also managed to overlook the Macbook Air benefits compared to your excellent Asus model. First of all Macbook Air is just under 3lbs, while Asus is 3.7lbs. That weight difference alone explains some of the hardware differences and design decisions. Additionally Macbook Air has better resolution on the display, which is a huge plus in my eyes, 1440x900 compared to 1366x768. Add the ultra light power adapter of Macbook Air to the mix and you get portable system with you well under 4lbs.
Second area where I believe Macbook Air will prevail is heat management. Try using all those goodies loaded in Asus for an extended period of time and the laptop becomes unbearably hot and reduces battery life significantly. Macbook Air also heats but I believe less so because of lower powered CPU and no dedicated GPU. Adding dedicated GPU or more CPU power is less appealing on ultra portable than on a desktop computer and should be always weighted on the down side they create.
Nice things Macbook Air has that are more rarely found in competing products: Magsafe power port, OSX Lion, Thunderbolt port, excellent microphone, and great webcam.
Re:CPU & GPU performance not relevant by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-20 17:06 · Score: 4, Informative

ah... I wasn't aware AMD sold off every fab... more fallout from Intel's dirty tricks... fuckers... competition drives technology, and Intel set technology back a bit by doing what they did.
The fallout from the "dirty tricks" was maybe that AMD couldn't gain as much marketshare as they might have during the window of time when AMD's technology was competitive, but that was mostly limited by how fast they could expand production facilities (building chip fabs is very expensive and time consuming). Many other factors went into AMD's fab sell-off, most of them self-inflicted wounds. Off the top of my head:
* The last time AMD executed well on CPU core design was the original Athlon 64/Opteron core. Everything since has been between terrible and mediocre, with the only minor success finally coming this year in the "APU" products (which still only give them a foothold at the low end). In the meantime, Intel hit a home run with Core 2 and kept executing extremely well thereafter.
* AMD had to cancel an entire next-gen CPU architecture, and based on recent events probably should've cancelled Bulldozer too. While waiting for these new architectures they could do little but release minor retreads of the aging K8 (Athlon 64) core, which kept them a year or more behind Intel in performance (especially in the growing laptop segment, where AMD was very weak). Worse, they managed to screw up some of the retread products with serious bugs, hurting their credibility (especially in the server market).
* AMD correctly anticipated the need to acquire GPU technology when GPU + CPU integration was on the horizon. However, after failing to acquire NVidia, they then overpaid for ATI by several billion dollars. After the acquisition, ATI went through a multiyear stretch of disappointing products, so the ATI division kept posting losses. It was so bad that for a year or two AMD had to periodically write off hundreds of millions of dollars of "goodwill" to reflect the declining value of the ATI division relative to what they'd paid.
* Core 2 hurt demand for AMD's CPUs badly enough to drop orders far below AMD's production capacity, at a time when AMD was trying to expand from one to two fabs. They were eventually forced to mothball the new facility partway through completing it, which is very bad news financially (fab equipment is horribly expensive and depreciates quickly, so buying a bunch of it and then having it sit idle means you're losing money at a scary rate). It's also bad financially to not fully utilize a completed fab, for the same reason, but because AMD's process tech was too unique, nobody wanted to build ASICs in AMD's fabs, so they were stuck with just letting it be partially idle.
* Tying into that, the reason for expansion was that during the P4 vs. Athlon64 era, AMD's CEO (Hector Ruiz) had come up with a long term strategy of expanding marketshare to 30%. This required a second fab (AMD had traditionally had just one), and aggressive price competition with Intel to buy marketshare. He stuck with it long after Core 2 changed AMD's competitive position for the worse. This left AMD spending tons of money and pricing its products too low during a time when they should've been putting the market share expansion plan on hold, maximizing profits on the products they had, and focusing on new products to put themselves back in front of Intel.
This all snowballed to the point that AMD was unable to get new loans because they were too much of a credit risk. They were hovering on the edge of bankruptcy, and were having problems with the capital expenditures needed to keep up with Intel on fab technology even after giving up on capacity expansion. It became a death spiral which could only be stopped by selling the fabs. It never would've gotten so bad if it AMD hadn't stumbled so badly on execution and made so many tactical and strategic mistakes.
(Many in the industry think AMD hasn't been run well since Jerry Sanders retired in 2

This would have been great for.. by ClaraBow · 2011-11-20 07:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

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!

Re:This would have been great for.. by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-20 07:44 · Score: 2, Interesting

I was running os x on my old amd system quite early on in the osx86 scene...

Repeating history by macraig · 2011-11-20 07:30 · Score: 2

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.

Re:wish they had used AMD chips from the beginning by KingMotley · 2011-11-20 07:38 · Score: 2

Nope. Intel mobiles perform more processing per watt than AMD, and it's been that way for a few years.

Re:AMD makes hot cpu by devleopard · 2011-11-20 07:38 · Score: 2

Good thing they have an Intel in the iPhone now, right?

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PPC vs Intel vs AMD? by Doc+Ruby · 2011-11-20 07:42 · Score: 2

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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Re:PPC vs Intel vs AMD? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-20 07:49 · Score: 2, Informative

I don't know if he ever made that specific claim, but IBM was more interested in the XBox 360 and PS 3 than the Macintosh. Intel was able to provide a roadmap of future plans/processors.
Re:PPC vs Intel vs AMD? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-11-20 08:09 · Score: 4, Funny

Does my XBox count?
It's a computer. What else would it do?
Re:PPC vs Intel vs AMD? by TeknoHog · 2011-11-20 08:36 · Score: 2

+1 (pun intended)

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Re:PPC vs Intel vs AMD? by Doc+Ruby · 2011-11-20 10:13 · Score: 2

Jobs most certainly did make that specific claim:

When we look at Intel, they've got great performance, yes, but they've got something else that's very important to us. Just as important as performance, is power consumption. And the way we look at it is performance per watt. For one watt of power how much performance do you get? And when we look at the future road maps projected out in mid-2006 and beyond, what we see is the PowerPC gives us sort of 15 units of performance per watt, but the Intel road map in the future gives us 70, and so this tells us what we have to do.
IBM had a roadmap as well as Intel, but Jobs claimed that Intel's roadmap was for better performance per watt. I never saw either roadmap. That's why I want to know how the two chip lines actually performed per watt since. Which would show whether a decision based on it was actually the right one. And if not, suggest that perhaps (if Jobs expected otherwise) that there was a different reason than the one Jobs claimed.

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Re:PPC vs Intel vs AMD? by catmistake · 2011-11-20 10:51 · Score: 3, Informative

It wasn't a question of IBM "falling behind." IBM is still cutting the bleeding edge as Intel, even today. The PowerPC's in Mac's were different from the PPC's IBM supplies for their own hw and xboxes... one major difference, Mac's PPCs had Altevec. But the issue was IBM wasn't pushing the envelope on the Mac PPC's fast enough for Apple's tastes, not exactly falling behind... IBM didn't have their heart in it because Apple was such a small customer for them... only a small percentage of the chips IBM produced were for the Macintosh. Apple had no negotiating power with IBM to get them to step up their R&D in the Altevec PPCs. Intel saw Apple as a tasty meal and promised them everything they wanted, and except for GPU, pretty much made good on the promises. All of this notwithstanding, PPC's are great technology, and they are still around and will still be around for some time... just not on the desktop (often I make the mistake of thinking the desktop is all there is... of course there are plenty of spaces IBM has taken PPC to that Intel couldn't touch.)

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Re:Not Sure This is Newsworthy by Doc+Ruby · 2011-11-20 07:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

You don't know why people write articles that you admit you find interesting?

You judge Slashdot articles on whether computer supply chain logistics readers already know the stories?

Have another bottle of beer.

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Re:Intel by Macrat · 2011-11-20 07:50 · Score: 4, Interesting

At least AMD doesn't build hardware level backdoors into their CPUs.

That you know of.

Re:wish they had used AMD chips from the beginning by mehrotra.akash · 2011-11-20 07:52 · Score: 3, Informative

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

Re:Intel by TrancePhreak · 2011-11-20 07:58 · Score: 3, Interesting

So you believe. http://www.i-programmer.info/news/91-hardware/1586-secret-debug-registers-in-amd-processors.html

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Re:Not Sure This is Newsworthy by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-11-20 08:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

The "story", in this case, is not that 'Apple had a prototype' but the claim that AMD was Plan A and that the intel Air shipped for volume reasons.

It's been a while since AMD was plan A for a thin-n-light laptop design...

Re:AMD makes hot cpu by Khyber · 2011-11-20 08:44 · Score: 2

Sayeth the n00b that obviously never owned a Pentium 4.

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Sources Say Apple Originally Planned AMD Chip For MacBook Air

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