Slashdot Mirror
No More Intel Inside, Apple Plans To Use Its Own Custom-Built Chips in Mac (bloomberg.com)
Apple is planning to use homegrown custom-built processors in its Mac line of computers, ditching Intel, the processors by which powers Apple's current line of computers, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The company could make the switch to its own chips as early as 2020, the report said. From the report: The initiative, code named Kalamata, is still in the early developmental stages, but comes as part of a larger strategy to make all of Apple's devices -- including Macs, iPhones, and iPads -- work more similarly and seamlessly together, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The project, which executives have approved, will likely result in a multi-step transition.
The shift would be a blow to Intel, whose partnership helped revive Apple's Mac success and linked the chipmaker to one of the leading brands in electronics. Apple provides Intel with about 5 percent of its annual revenue, according to Bloomberg supply chain analysis. Intel shares dropped as much as 9.2 percent, the biggest intraday drop in more than two years, on the news.
The shift would be a blow to Intel, whose partnership helped revive Apple's Mac success and linked the chipmaker to one of the leading brands in electronics. Apple provides Intel with about 5 percent of its annual revenue, according to Bloomberg supply chain analysis. Intel shares dropped as much as 9.2 percent, the biggest intraday drop in more than two years, on the news.
That is all, just whoa
Am I surprised? No.
Apple has a track record of moving across chip lines. Being that they make the OS and the Hardware, the processor isn't that big of a deal, and they have a really good track-record of keeping compatibility across different processor lines. Compared to say Microsoft who barely made the 64bit transition.
That being said. The real question is for the people who duel boot their Macs, or use Virtualization. My biggest fear is if OS X moves to the closed infrastructure that is iOS. I can deal with Apple approved apps for my phone, but for my laptop, I will want to install whatever I feel like.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
PPC anyone?
Um, wasn't April 1 yesterday?
If Apple switches to ARM based A-series processors then people dual booting macs with Windows/Linux will be out of luck. It would make Mac a more closed ecosystem as Apple will probably use the switch to make only App store apps run on ARM macs. Stock up on Intel macs while you can.
To date, Apple has stridently refused to incorporate a touchscreen on their notebooks, which would be the most obvious step in bridging the development/user-interface divide between iOS and OSX, yet they feel it's useful to switch to a single processor architecture to achieve the same goal?
I don't want my Mac to behave like my iPad. I don't want a dumbed-down experience where I can't do anything that Apple doesn't permit.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
...If Apple want to keep their exclusivity and a niche market, they will have to go on their own, completely.
Today, An Apple computer is nothing different from a glorified designer laptop with a PC (typical Intel based architecture) inside, which means you could basically without too much effort just run Windows or Linux on it.
What Apple has gotten much grief for, is that they often use 2-4 year old hardware, instead of bleeding edge hardware. While this is usually good for "tried and tested", meaning that it will result in a relatively stable, well supported computer - it's offering very little new to its userbase, but who are the Apple userbase, this is what you got to take a closer look at:
The Apple userbase is often designers, musicians, artists, film people and basically people working within the creative industry. They like design, and they're willing to pay for it. It may not be the latest, greatest or best - but it sure looks the part, and it gives them a sense of community as they're not "mainstream", but still like to see themselves as the ones considering the computer just a tool, an accessory - and secondary to their work.
They don't want hassle with updates, compatibility issues, endless drivers - they just want to get about their workday without getting into "the computers" themselves.
Apple GET that, but in order to stay really truly "off" the rest, they have to find their own way again...
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Here comes macOS. Only runs on macs, and macs only run it.
How well will Intel virtualization work with these? If I can't run my various VirtualBox VMs on this, no sale.
It’s not like we haven’t heard these rumors for years now... we even heard stuff like this before Apple move to Intel. But still, some things are out of their control.
- Will Adobe play along, or walk away? Much as I hate Adobe, they’re a necessary evil when it comes to doing real work on many Macs.
- How locked down will these “computers” be? Right now, I can install just about anything I want... and I have a bash/zsh shell, to boot.
- What about the few Apple pro apps which remain? They’ve already shed a huge number of customers - it seems unlikely the remaining nes will tolerate another backwards jump.
One would hope that Apple would do their homework on this, since people who still use a laptop or desktop generally have very different requirements than people who use an iPad with a keyboard. A “laptop” which is just a glorified iPad would serve no purpose.
#DeleteChrome
You guys do realize that the news is THIRD hand, posted on April SECOND, which could mean that the information originated on April FIRST... just saying.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
PPC anyone?
I’m finally gonna get that G5 PowerBook!
#DeleteChrome
This has been in the works since the start of the LLVM project.
A few years back, Apple and the LLVM project made the announcement that code compiled for x64 with CLang was finally able to run unmodified on the ARM architecture. By compiling into an intermediate language, Apple has made it possible to write code that should run unmodified on any LLVM platform so long as all libraries are present to support it and that the code doesnâ(TM)t depend on hand written assembly or code which needs direct access to the stack for the platform ABI.
With the transition from PPC to x86, a lot of transitional APIs such as Carbon were introduced. Also, the principle of fat binaries were made common place in such that each application or framework could be compiled for two or more platforms. Consider that Apple had Yellow Box running in house on x86, PPC and Sparc.
Over the years, Apple has progressively deprecated any API which was too tightly bound to a single architecture one by one. All code not compiled with LLVM has been slowly killed off. The App Store on IOS and MacOS have set restrictions as to what system calls could be made. Most performance oriented libraries such as QuickTime have been altered, enhanced, etc... to slowly eliminate the need for hand written code. Apple has bullied developers into never writing Mac targeted compilers and instead focused them on compiling to IL or Swift/Obj-C first.
Just like Microsoft has been trying to universally move to .NET for a retargettable platform, Apple has moved to LLVM.
There is no technical reason why Mac couldnâ(TM)t run on ARM today. Iâ(TM)d imagine Apple has had Mac OS running on an iPad Pro for some time. The main difference would probably be the type of SSD they employed.
Performance wise, current Apple chips should have more than enough CPU to handle tasks at least as well as the m3 chips in the Mac Book. 4GB or RAM should be enough for most users as well. PCIe for M.2 storage should be a trivial change for Apple. And Apple has already said they are preparing their own GPU core. I would expect that GPU core to be comparable to Intelâ(TM)s from the beginning. Unlike other GPUs, OpenCL and even most of OpenGL are optional as Apple will dictate the OS graphics API. Of course they already have a strong enough following among game developers that if they cut corners, the developers will suck it up and continue.
What most people mention is a problem is that Mac has a huge dual boot audience. I would expect an agreement with MS or Amazon to happen to push cloud based virtual desktops. Many enterprises get security by using Mac because malicious Mac software doesnâ(TM)t tend to screw with virtual machines. So they deliver the enterprise desktop on a VM and let the user mess with their Mac however they want.
What I expect to really shake things up will be an announcement from Apple to support Windows for ARM as an application/subsystem. Then I expect to see Microsoft support their x86 emulator possibly with acceleration on Mac. Unlike Transmeta. Apple working with Microsoft could easily make their x86 JIT perform better than real hardware. This has to do with how branch prediction, pipelines and cache work.
I honestly donâ(TM)t see anything particularly amazing about this other than the long time it took to get here. Apple must have assessed that the lost business will be offset by the profits gained. Of course, I have been hoping to buy a new Mac Mini this year, my 2012 model is getting old. If Apple releases something âoerespectableâ for $500 or so, Iâ(TM)m in. I only need it for testing Mac builds.
Apple hasn't made a secret of their intentions to homogenize the experience, the OS, the apps along their product lines. iPhones drive the business, iPads are a shrinking market, Macs are still busy, and Apple TV is probably better defined as 'we wish it was viable', but they keep their feet wet in it. Speakers are an also-ran. Siri needs to be upgraded to offer value to Mac users.
Making an 'A" style CPU makes sense, and developers who can't learn iOS will find life hard for other reasons. It remains to be seen if iOS is useful for traditionally desktop apps, but this could encourage devs to start building cloud-dependent apps for Macs, and that lets Macs be lightweight and have longer battery life. Add an LTE modem and that's that.
I was at an Intel facility the day Dell announced they would sell servers with AMD processors. You would have thought people had lost their firstborn. The rumor that a team member had been fired just because they were laughing in the cafeteria was partly true; they weren't in the cafeteria. Miserable day. I wonder what's going on there today...
I'm not there any more. Completed the project.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Apple is getting rid of Intel but they're not making their own chips. Instead, they're getting rid of processors in their computers entirely. Their new computers will be .2mm slimmer and processors will be made available via dongles for primitive people who refuse to let go of outdated technologies.
Going Intel doubled Mac sales, going back to non-Intel may cut it in half.
I saw nothing in the article that stated explicitly that the new processors would be incompatible with Intel. It's quite possible they want to have better control of the Intel compatible processors they use. This kind of a shift is not taken lightly, and has likely been considered for a long time.
The current 64 bit architecture used by Apple, and shows in chips made by Intel, was developed by AMD. If Apple wants to make their own "Intel compatible" processor then they could enter a licensing agreement with AMD to do so. Intel might not be happy about this but I don't know what they'd do about it. Maybe they'd offer to fabricate these Apple designed chips under license from Apple?
What I got from the article was that Apple has been using portions of the iOS in their desktops for some elements of running the system and wants to share more code between the two. That could mean a lot of things besides abandoning the Intel architecture. It might mean designing a CPU with asymmetric processing. They might put an ARM core and three x86-64 cores on a die for desktops and laptops, That means not having to put a separate ARM processor in the computers like they do now. If they want to have some x86 fun on the iOS devices then maybe a chip with a two ARM cores and a x86 core on it.
Is it feasible or even desirable to have cores with different instruction sets on them in the same device? It must be because it sounds like Apple does this already, only the cores are in separate packages. If they believe the future is in having ARM running alongside x86 then they might just want to put those cores in the same package. To make that happen might mean having to design their own processors.
I've seen things like this proposed before. I seem to recall someone at least planning to build a laptop had a tablet mode where the tablet used a low power processor and tablet based OS for most tasks in that mode. If there were things that required more processing power, or was opened up to become a laptop, then the higher power processors was "woken up" so it could run a standard desktop OS.
Perhaps Apple wants a processor that is in every way compatible with what Intel offers but they just want a few "tweaks" so they can stay ahead of the performance curve. Apple is already in all kinds of technology licensing agreements so to pick and choose from, and to put them on a chip that they'd put in their own computers might not be that big of a burden for them. They might even be able to get in a deal to sell them to other computer makers, most likely after it's "old news" so as to not compete with their own products.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.