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Opinion: Apple Should Have Gone With Intel Instead of TSMC
itwbennett writes "Apple is planning to have its ARM processors manufactured by TSMC — a move that blogger Andy Patrizio thinks is a colossal mistake. Not only is TSMC already over-extended and having trouble making deadlines. But Intel was clearly the better choice: 'Intel may be struggling in mobility with the Atom processors, but Intel does yields and manufacturing process migration better than anyone,' says Patrizio. 'While TSMC wrestles with 28nm and looking to 20nm, Intel is at 22nm now and moving to 14nm for next year. This is important; the smaller the fabrication design, the less power used.'"
Remember when Intel took the MacBook air design and turned it into the Ultrabook reference design for its Wintel PC OEMs? Why would Apple not want that to happen again, only faster?
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Sounds like a silly premise. Who says Intel would even want to do it? Why would Intel want to go back into ARM fabrication when they are trying to beat ARM chips with Atom?
Intel supplies most of Apple's CPUs, yes?
To give one supplier most or all of your business gives them a HUGE advantage over you.
Just look at what happened to everyone who tied their business to Microsoft or IBM.
This is a business strategy issue - not a tech one.
Personally, I think Apple should take their cash and make their own processors, allowing for their OS to have a firmware component and thereby boosting performance and security.
They make their own chips, and you buy what they make.
Apple isn't going to be able to get Intel to fab their custom chips for them. That isn't Intel's business model.
Intel sells their own CPUs. They don't sell your CPUs.
They just happen to have the best fabs.
Intel's high end fabs are tasked to capacity with their own chips near as I know. They are probably not interested in taking on outside orders for ARM chips.
Now I suppose Apple could switch over to x86, but I doubt they'd be willing to do that given that they own a big stake in ARM. Also at this point Intel doesn't have x86 processors suitable for phones. They may make such a thing in the future but they do not now.
So ya, Intel would be the best option... if they were an option. They have fabs above and beyond anyone else, they spend billions in R&D on it and as such are nearly always a node ahead and have good yields. However, their fabs are for them. Their 22nm fabs are busily cranking out Haswell and Ivy Bridge chips. They are not for rent for cranking out ARM chips, unless something has changed since last I looked.
but apple will say it about anything. regardless of what it actually is.
but look at it this way, have you seen intel doing massive discounts on their cpu's lately? do they seem like they have plenty of excess capacity? would apple pay the same for a manufactured soc as they are paying for a haswell? no.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
From the article: "While TSMC wrestles with 28nm and looking to 20nm, Intel is at 22nm now and moving to 14nm for next year. "
TSMC's 28nm process is, in fact, widely considered a big success. Although it didn't ramp up initially, quite as a fast as their customers wanted, that only lasted a few months at start of 2012. Look a bit closer you see changing nodes has problems for all manufactures (even Intel).
20nm is in fact ahead of schedule. The likes of Altera are going to have to wait 2 years before they start producing chips on Intel's 16 nm process. While Apple will have 20nm early next year.
Apple could buy or merge with Intel, and then announce "x86, end of life, ten years. Merry Christmas, AMD." That would be the end of Microsoft, since nobody ever wanted Windows on anything other than x86.
Meanwhile, if Apple used Intel's fab for all of their processors, they could reduce their power consumption at a much faster pace than they're already doing. I'd love to get 20 hours of operation per charge from an iPad.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I love the summary.. some random dude (blogger) that writes stories on the Internet has an opinion and thinks mega-billion company is making a mistake.. and this is news on Slashdot nowadays.
How low Slashdot has fallen..
Intel *is* a foundry. They make chips for third parties. They have a whole "Intel Custom Foundry" division dedicated to this. They make chips for Cisco, Netronome, Altera, etc. Some of those chips even have ARM processors.
Intel is inching into the foundry business.
They are *not* making chips for Altera. They have a deal with Altera to make chips at 14nm but Intel doesn't even have a production 14nm process yet. The Cisco deal was only signed in January. No word on when they expect to ship. Their shipping customers (Achronix, Tabula, Netronome) are all startups with limited volumes. Apple needs huge volume. I don't think Intel is ready for that yet.
The processor industry is full of players who spend billions of dollars trying to make marginal gains in performance. Spending tons of money on R&D for new processors makes sense if you're selling those processors to lots of other mobile electronics manufacturers, but it doesn't make sense when you're simply hoarding them for your own products. It especially doesn't make sense considering nobody is buying iPhones because of their processor specs, let alone the fact that Apple produces their own chips. Apple would be better off using commodity hardware and spending their money on improving other areas of the user experience. But since I have turned against Apple over the past few years, I'm just fine with watching them make costly mistakes. From what I've been reading, quality control at TSMC has been somewhat questionable and Apple is asking a lot from them to make these new chips with cutting-edge fab processes at a high volume and with minimal defects. I have a feeling this decision will cause trouble for Apple in the future and all of this is a result of Apple trying to punish Samsung in their childish feud.
Ultrabooks are not subnotebooks; they're designed to be as fast, if not moreso, than regular notebooks.
"Ultrabook" is an idiotic category name to begin with. I fail to understand what's so "ultra" about it. Do we have also have "ultratops" on the stationary side of the spectrum? I thought that these were traditionally called "workstations". But it's also possible that I have a brain tumor and my memory is compromised. Just sayin'.
Ezekiel 23:20
Many people are posting as if Intel would be involved in chip design (for example: "Intel doesn't want to make ARMs."). Intel would be acting only as a foundry: Apple does the design work, sends Intel a set of files specifying mask geometry; Intel makes masks and fabricates the chips.
The questions thus become, who has good enough technology and who is a reliable supplier? If Apple doesn't need the finest tech that only Intel can provide, then using Intel isn't necessary.
TSMC having production capacity limits can be a problem, and it's likely to have delayed deliveries in a crunch. But foundry is their only business, not producing is not an option. Intel on the other hand, can decide "we need all foundries for internal use. Make your lifetime orders now; no new business will be accepted." 33 years ago (the only information I have, from a then-Reticon employee) was that this was a substantial risk in dealing with Intel as a fab.
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Android supports 3 architectures - ARM, x86, and MIPS.
Of the three, ARM is most prevalent on practically all smartphones out there. x86 is pushed heavily by Intel, but exists on a tiny miniscule amount of phones (one from Motorola for Asia, and a couple of other bit players), and Intel has to bundle in an ARM emulator to at least run a decent number of apps.
MIPS is a curiosity done more so as a platform - MIPS supporting Android for set-top boxes and the like.
But make no mistake, Android is best supported on ARM.
TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation) is a Taiwanese company, not Chinese. Unless you are going by Beijing's claim that Taiwan is a part of China, but even then, the first statement doesn't make sense.
"Wait, did someone suggest Apple should switch to Android? That's a great idea for a new article!" - John Dvorak Cringley.
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