[AppleInsider] Apple may abandon Intel for its Macs starting with post-Broadwell

[TreVader]

So one of the arguments against the idea of an A9 rMBA was thunderbolt, apple's huge investment in it and intel's control of it.

Well, one argument is that I do believe apple is capable of making that kind of drastic change. I don't think they will tho, and here is why;

This new MacBook Air can't even fit a thunderbolt port! Look at the concept drawings, there is no room. So Apple does not need to lose thunderbolt at all, and in fact will have to not support it regardless of whether they go ARM or not!

I'm gonna reiterate that I think only the MacBook Air retina that is about to be released will be ARM. Apple may even update the regular MacBook Air with Broadwell! At least it could have a thunderbolt port.

 

[imported_ats]

Usually? Have you seen it used in any other context? Because I haven't until I read this thread, maybe he forgot that HW-E actually has as much as 3 separe dice and now he is just saying he meant something else.
BTW. It's not true that there is no optimisation for the lower core count dice, the uncores of the 18 cores and the 8 cores dice are completly different, so this is BS. The memory controller is even different.

Acutally the uncore isn't completely different. In fact the only differential is the signalling standard used to communicate with DRAM, and a lack of secondary DRAM timing controller on some of the chop parts. Every other part of the uncore is the same.

 

[III-V]

So one of the arguments against the idea of an A9 rMBA was thunderbolt, apple's huge investment in it and intel's control of it.

Well, one argument is that I do believe apple is capable of making that kind of drastic change. I don't think they will tho, and here is why;

This new MacBook Air can't even fit a thunderbolt port! Look at the concept drawings, there is no room. So Apple does not need to lose thunderbolt at all, and in fact will have to not support it regardless of whether they go ARM or not!

I'm gonna reiterate that I think only the MacBook Air retina that is about to be released will be ARM. Apple may even update the regular MacBook Air with Broadwell! At least it could have a thunderbolt port.

Most of the concepts I've seen have room for a USB 3.1 c-type port. Thunderbolt is just about the same size, no?

Regardless, they're just concept art.

 

[imported_ats]

Heh, copy paste. I love internet people commenting on things that they know nothing about. Designing a chip with 5 billion transistors is like copy paste. So easy any idiot could do it!

I know right?

he'd most likely be wrong.

An optimized design for an 8-core part would have significantly less latency. It would also take less die space. It would also have lower power consumption.

 

[TreVader]

Most of the concepts I've seen have room for a USB 3.1 c-type port. Thunderbolt is just about the same size, no?

Regardless, they're just concept art.

USB Type-C is much, much thinner than normal USB 3.1, which is itself about the same thickness as Thunderbolt.


They are claiming the thing is incredibly thin. Maybe apple have ditched thunderbolt on their thinnest devices. It makes sense, thunderbolt is unwieldy for such a device.

 

[Lepton87]

Heh, copy paste. I love internet people commenting on things that they know nothing about. Designing a chip with 5 billion transistors is like copy paste. So easy any idiot could do it!



he'd most likely be wrong.

I said that to ridicule the idea that 8 cores HW-E is just a chop of 18 cores HW-E. If you actually comprehended what you read you would know that and didn't make stupid comments.

I know right?




An optimized design for an 8-core part would have significantly less latency. It would also take less die space. It would also have lower power consumption.

The L3 cache IS lower latency. That's beside the point, all I'm saying is a fully enabled die is not die harvested.

 

[krumme]

This rumor is probably out there to give Apple better leverage when negotiating with Intel. It may even be for the purpose of negotiating a better fab deal with Intel for Apple's ARM SoCs. The last time around Apple didn't like Intel's price, but with their foundry partners having some problems, Apple may want to pin it's had on Intel foundries. Apple would gain access to the only 'A' list fab and get a competitive advantage in perf/watt - they just want more favorable terms. As an added bonus, Intel's process advantage may just give Apple the clock headroom to start moving Macs over to ARM (but, even if true, this would be something like 4-5 years out after signing a foundry deal).

I think in general apple applies a lot pressure and demands on their suppliers besides negotiating price down.
What is important for apple is to have competition between supliers and reliability and control. You prefer competition for your internal development and tech too. The x86 market is still king of compettitive and therefore attractive as it brings new products and ideas that they can benefit from using their brand for end products.

 

[TreVader]

Have you guys taken a look at the leaked photos? This thing is 100% ARM, just look at the size of it!

That is the MacBook next to a 6.1mm iPad Air 2. By the looks of that Pic the new rMBA has to be less than 8mm, and appears closer to 7-7.3mm thick! Put your iPhone next to your iPad Air 2 (doing it now) and the thickness is very similar to the photo.

Given that this MacBook is not only 1/2 the thickness (in body) than the last MBA, it's also more than an inch smaller diagonally because the bezels have been reduced to nothing. That means the battery not only will be <50% the volume, it will be closer to 33%.

So according to the prevailing view on this forum, Apple will 1) downgrade their processors from Broadwell-U to core M 2) Jam that said Core M processor into a thermal envelope where it has been proven to throttle horribly and give marginally better battery life to Haswell and 3) reduce that marginal increase to a significant decrease by cutting battery power by 66%.

Does that all sound like Apple to you?

 

[ShintaiDK]

It sounds like Broadwell-Y.

 

[StinkyPinky]

I'd rather they make it a bit heavier and put a better battery inside. Just like most smartphones.

 

[Qwertilot]

I'd be surprised if they'd compromise battery life in any significant manner. They've been very reluctant to do that with air's so far.

 

[III-V]

Does that all sound like Apple to you?

People were blown away by what Apple was able to do with the original MacBook Air. If anyone could make it work, it's Apple.

1) downgrade their processors from Broadwell-U to core M

You think they'll cut their performance by 50%, and have no third party apps for use, all for a single product?

 

[Fjodor2001]

I'm gonna reiterate that I think only the MacBook Air retina that is about to be released will be ARM. Apple may even update the regular MacBook Air with Broadwell! At least it could have a thunderbolt port.

How would they add support for ARM binaries then? Currently all Apple SW is x86 only as far as I'm aware. It used to be both PPC and x86 in what's called fat binaries, but nowadays it's only x86.

It could of course be handled in the same way as the PPC->x86 transition, but do you think Apple is ready to re-introduce fat binaries containing both ARM and x86 code?

 

[senseamp]

How would they add support for ARM binaries then? Currently all Apple SW is x86 only as far as I'm aware. It used to be both PPC and x86 in what's called fat binaries, but nowadays it's only x86.

It could of course be handled in the same way as the PPC->x86 transition, but do you think Apple is ready to re-introduce fat binaries containing both ARM and x86 code?

Software vendors would recompile to ARM if that's where Apple moves the hardware to.

 

[III-V]

Software vendors would recompile to ARM if that's where Apple moves the hardware to.

For a single product? No.

 

[Essence_of_War]

It sounds like Broadwell-Y.

Yeah. I mean, IF the photos are real it certainly doesn't rule out a switch to ARM, but it seems consistent with both that and a switch to broadwell-Y. The latter is significantly more parsimonious.

 

[senseamp]

For a single product? No.

Depends on the volume of the product. Also, they will see the writing on the wall for future products.

 

[North01]

That is the MacBook next to a 6.1mm iPad Air 2. By the looks of that Pic the new rMBA has to be less than 8mm, and appears closer to 7-7.3mm thick! Put your iPhone next to your iPad Air 2 (doing it now) and the thickness is very similar to the photo.

That picture just shows the display/hinge. Based off the picture, the hinge alone is 7.3 mm~7.9 mm, and that's without the body.

 

[TreVader]

That picture just shows the display/hinge. Based off the picture, the hinge alone is 7.3 mm~7.9 mm, and that's without the body.

Look at the pic, the hinge covers the entirety of the side of the screen half. The bottom half will look exactly the same.

Also you are way off on 7.9mm. I put my 7.2mm iPhone 5s beside it and it's exactly by the pic.

Based on the pic it is at most 7.5mm thin as a whole.


Even if your poor estimates based on nothing but conjecture were correct, it still only leaves 5mm for the whole body including keyboard. Surface pro 3 is like 8mm and it has no keyboard nor does it need space for a clamshell.

 

[dawheat]

For a single product? No.

Yeah - I'm in the camp that we will see Apple move some x86 based products to ARM one day and the MBA being the most likely candidate. However Apple has been pretty methodical in how they progress their roadmap and 2015 feels too soon.

Having some base MBA product with an ARM SOC while simultaneously selling and supporting x86 versions sounds like a nightmare for consumers and Apple. And they won't/can't get rid of Intel in this line until they have a SOC that matches the performance of the top tier MBA - 1.7Ghz i7 with 8GB of memory.

Then the software branch would also be a PITA to manage. So it's not to say Apple couldn't do it - they certainly can - but it would be a far more disjointed change than I see them making. If they do it, it'll be when they can transition the entire MBA line at once and have a clean cut-over.

 

[senseamp]

It gives them leverage to negotiate better pricing from Intel. In markets where Intel has to compete with ARM, it's losing money and having to do counter-revenue. Apple can be on the receiving end of some counter-revenue as well if they have a credible ARM transition strategy they can hold over Intel's head. But for it to be credible, they have to actually take a swing at it. Maybe they'll do a low end ARM MBA Lite in the $500 range, then go to Intel and talk about what's what.

 

[Roland00Address]

@TreVader

You do know that when Intel announced core m they showed two reference designs called Llama Mountain

The 10.0 inch tablet was 6.8 mm thick
The 12.5 inch tablet was 7.2 mm thick

The iPhone 6 is 6.9 mm thick, 6 plus is 7.1 mm thick.

Thickness does not mean core m nor does it mean arm.

 

[TreVader]

@TreVader

You do know that when Intel announced core m they showed two reference designs called Llama Mountain

The 10.0 inch tablet was 6.8 mm thick
The 12.5 inch tablet was 7.2 mm thick

The iPhone 6 is 6.9 mm thick, 6 plus is 7.1 mm thick.

Thickness does not mean core m nor does it mean arm.

You are totally missing my point about thickness. It has NOTHING to do with thermal dissipation. Of course apple could fit broadwell into that thickness and make it work, the problem is will it have good battery life? What was the battery life on these "llama mountain" tablets? Intel did give any, because they never would have worked in retail designs, hence the yoga 3 pro.


How are you going to engineer your way around the issue that this thing is going to have a miniscule battery volume?



You use an ARM chip that's how.


What is the argument against using ARM here? It's definitely not battery life, and we have all agreed that an A8X+ processor would work for a small retina macbook device, so performance isn't really a great reason (especially given the performance will come at the cost of battery life), so what is it?


Deference to intel? Why does Apple owe intel anything? Intel is screwing apple on margins and has become unwilling or unable to provide the performance apple wants on its mobile devices. Why not show intel that if they don't get their act together or lower their prices, apple will move elsewhere?


Apple does this to all their other suppliers. Guess what, it's time to squeeze intel. And if intel won't give up it's margins and innovate, it gets cut.

 

[Arachnotronic]

What is the argument against using ARM here? It's definitely not battery life, and we have all agreed that an A8X+ processor would work for a small retina macbook device, so performance isn't really a great reason (especially given the performance will come at the cost of battery life), so what is it?


Deference to intel? Why does Apple owe intel anything? Intel is screwing apple on margins and has become unwilling or unable to provide the performance apple wants on its mobile devices. Why not show intel that if they don't get their act together or lower their prices, apple will move elsewhere?


Apple does this to all their other suppliers. Guess what, it's time to squeeze intel. And if intel won't give up it's margins and innovate, it gets cut.

Software compatibility, ability to run Windows.

These are valuable features, and they're X86-only at this time.

 

[Nothingness]

It sounds like Broadwell-Y.

To clarify, are all Broadwell Y variants now renamed Core M or only some parts?