AMD is making a bigger dent in Intel than Apple ever will. Apple doesn't even have 10% of laptop marketshare whereas AMD are currently at 20% for laptops and on a steady climb. Not to mention both the desktop and server markets where AMD is doing even better. So unless you think the whole PC world is going to switch to macOS or there exists another company capable of competing with AMD using ARM, we're not going to see a whole lot of change.
AMD is beating intel on price and performance and they have a fraction of the resources of Apple.
Intel is behind on process and has been for a couple of generations right as everyone hits a process wall.
For the first time since I got into computers in the late 80s Intel looks vulnerable.
As to whether Apple would go ARM on a MacBook who knows, I’d guess they wouldn’t but they could straight buy AMD in cash so it’s not beyond the realm they could tool up for desktop class ARM.
Funny... A move to AMD would be less disruptive to the macOS ecosystem and would solve the roadmap issues. It seems AMD will have the lead for a good couple years right now.
Intel must be creating a lot of problems for Apple to warrant this move. Or maybe AMD is not willing to give Apple the same sweet deal Intel gave Apple to get the transition.
1. Apple's main bread-earner right now is the Macbook, MBP and iMac. All of them are premium models and significantly, all of them use mobile processors. Only the Mac Pro uses desktop processors. AMD's mobile line cannot compete with Core 2 Duo currently and is only found in cheaper laptops.
I cannot see what apple gain by acquiring AMD. And what exactly will they do after acquiring AMD? Not buy Intel processors anymore and instead compete with Penryn and (future) Nehalem? And once again lose out to generic Windows boxes in the performance game?
2. Apple has no chip expertise in the desktop/laptop area. They have a small inhouse chip divison but its dedicated to mobiles and handhelds. Their recent acquisition was also in this space and was fairly small (less than $50mn if i remember).
3. Apple does not have the resources to compete with Intel. OTOH they have a very good working relationship with Intel and I dont see why they would want to disrupt that and instead focus on non-core areas.
I think amd may be on the verge of fixing a lot of the problems that intel has run into in their inability to move forward quickly - the 10nm switch is potentially devestating intel (intel's slow pace of advancement is kind of what the article eventually gets to). If apple said they were going to focus on amd chips at this point, the market would be excited. Are those apple arms going to be able to really handle the cpu load and scale over time like large market intel and amd design teams are scaling investments over billions of devices? I'd just be afraid apple isn't quite big enough. It's very exciting when a change like this comes along in any case. Will they run x86 'legacy' mac programs at a reasonable speed?
Laptops are only small component of biz for CPU chip manufacturers like AMD/Intel. AMD is traditionally weak in laptops and has not decent market share ever. This doesn't impact their business that much (Intel's numbers are not down that much after loosing Apple's deal after all)
AMD and especially Intel have high margin server CPU business, Apple's entire value prop is low power segment, their chips are not designed to compete in high power category and they will never sell outside their products offerings as only chips . AMD also does custom chip stuff like with PlayStation 5 etc, none of that is threatened by Apple.
Servers Chips with ECC support, enterprise features and other typically high end chips have very high profit /unit lot more than even Apple can make per chip( maybe higher % for Apple, but not absolute $ / chip). Apple is a minor player in the general CPU business.
There will be of course pressure from OEMs who stand to loose sales to Apple to step up their game, AMD/Intel are not loosing sleep over this in terms of revenue/margin yet.
The idea here must be that somehow Apple or AMD have figured out the magic sauce to making faster processors, while Intel of all companies is oblivious to it and won't be able to catch up.
In reality, there is nothing that Apple or AMD are doing that Intel could not also do, isn't already doing, or isn't in a hurry to also do.
Consider that at 14nm+++++, Intel still manages to outpace AMD with its 7nm CPUs and latest architecture. AMD competes mainly on price, which is not a great position to be in. Intel's profit margins are massively better.
It's possible that x86 will become less relevant in the future, but in that case Intel will still be one of the be best chip designers in the industry. They will once again produce ARM chips, perhaps borrow one or two insights from Apple's architecture. They will continue to outsource manufacturing to other fabs, perhaps even become fabless.
Apple, like all big vendors, is trapped by the mobile processors. There is still no way around Intel there. Until they are willing to get rid of Intel Chips in their whole lineup, they can't offer AMD chips in their desktop machines. For the same reason, AMD didn't gain dominance in the times the Opteron ran circles around the Intel chips.
Maybe this is 2005 Me talking, but I simply don't trust AMD to do anything well. To be fair, both Intel and them have had high profile failures where the product either didn't work at all or didn't perform adequately (Itanium and Bulldozer).
The AMD I remember also had a tendency to over estimate performance and underclock parts, (1800+, anyone?) even if they could sell them for less.
It's this part that makes me think Apple wouldn't want to deal with them. For all of Intel's missteps, Apple choosing AMD because they are the cheaper alternative smells weird to me.
Does Apple actually invests into laptop/desktop development? They are usually couple of years behind competition (DDR3, Sky Lake chips). While their ARM chips are heavily developed.
I think they decided long time ago that ARM is good enough, and are waiting for train to stop to change the engine. It is not about Intel quality, but about saving money and independence. AMD is not even considered as an alternative...
Apple has been screwed by CPU manufacturers 3 times already, or do you think they changed architectures because they were having great fun doing that?
In the past 3 years I've seen more and more people asking not for an Arm Mac, but for an AMD Mac. Because AMD is again cheaper and faster than Intel.
But it appears Apple can now afford to build their own CPUs that are better and lower power than either AMD or Intel. Not to mention PowerPC, which is still around in some form at IBM :)
It's a no brainer for them. No one can screw them over now except themselves.
Apple was never competing in the same space as Intel and AMD. From the beginning, Apple made ARM-based RISC chips. Intel and AMD used their own x86-64 architecture. Apple's was great for iPhones because of power efficiency. They were able to improve their chip designs so much that they smoked the competition away with the release of their first fusion chip (iPhone 7 I believe) and have been miles ahead of everyone else since.
They then scaled up performance so much that a desktop ARM chip was made. That had never been done on a large scale before. So, no, imo Apple was never behind Intel and AMD, they were never competing in the same space.
Apple should have switched to AMD instead. They would have almost perfect compatibility with Intel hardware and they would not need investing lots of money to develop chips.
Now they either need to halt some Mac lines or develop all kinds of CPUs, from mobile (which they probably can do, because they should be similar enough to iPhones) to server-grade (which they have no experience at all). And there's no way Mac Pros would sell enough to offset development costs. I just don't understand how they are going to manage that situation.
I'm puzzled why you think that. Apple doesn't compete with Intel and AMD. If those companies produced a better ARM chip they'd be happy to sell it to Apple. Even a non ARM chip, Apple has shown they'll switch.
What would make Apple sweat at this point? Google must have when it seemed like they were going to produce high end consumer versions of ChromeOS laptops and Android phones. That's the kind of integrated experience that would compete with enough money behind it to get somewhere. Google blew that one though.
I'm not like pro Apple, I just don't think they care that much what Intel does.
It's kind of the same situation with Tesla vs. the big car companies. They were always going to catch up, and they made huge progress in the last few years. AMD and Intel have spent decades trading places, sometimes with unethical practices that would make 2000s Microsoft blush. I'm not sure Apple is prepared for what happens when AMD and Intel both come for them.
AMD does just fine competing with Apple, they had chips competing with the M1 on 7nm silicon, 18 months before the M1 hit shelves. Intel is shaken, but their roadmap is starting to look competitive again for the first time since Skylake. Apple's only defense was their control over the 5nm node, which is gone now. We have 4nm GPUs that make Apple's offerings look like toys, and the 5nm AMD APUs are highly competitive with even Apple's highest-end chip.
Apple made the right choice abandoning Intel on the 10nm node, but they don't have a roadmap from here besides "get better silicon". The competition is hot, and I don't think either my next laptop or desktop will be ARM based (unless someone out-performs Apple).
I'm not a big fan of this article. It doesn't 'work out well for everyone' that AMD are a node behind Apple. In fact with Apple moving into more general compute I would say it's less 'work out well for everyone' and more 'existential threat'.
Also, the shift from desktop CPUs to mobile CPUs as leading the shift to smaller nodes sounds less like a massive revelation, and more like the innevitable result of mobile CPUs out-stripping traditional CPUs in volume & margin.
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