Apple Dumping Intel For ARM Chips In Laptops?

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I can imagine ARM copying the 'extruded' processor design from Intel in the future to further improve their performance and power efficiency in their design (I don't prefer to use the term '3D' for transistors, because obviously every transistor is manufactured at 3 dimensions, but since the chip does not conduct electricity to transistors layered above (on a vertical plane) I merely prefer to call this an 'extruded' instead of '3D' design).

ARM has always been a better solution for mobile devices, especially now that they've been improving chip performance a lot.
And since Windows did not work on ARM, and apple is in control of their own OS, I can imagine it's not going to be hard for them to do the switch, while giving the same user experience as with intel chips.

An ARM macbook, probably has ~50% more battery life, and would be good enough performance wise for the entry models. Apple and Mac computers never really offered the top of the line computers anyways. They would do good by creating a netbook version first!
 
[citation][nom]NeuralSystem[/nom]AMD is dead. But Intel's x86 vs ARM based CPUs will certainly be something to drive the research up and prices down.[/citation]

Dude... AMD doubled my money on shares, they aren't dead, they are posting profits for your information
 
this is false. Apple and intel have put too much into thunderbolt for them to part ways anywhere in the near or not so near future.
 
[citation][nom]techguy378[/nom]It would be silly for Apple to go with ARM. Intel processors are just as energy efficient as ARM and have much better performance. There's absolutely no reason for an ARM processor to be on a Mac or Windows computer. Heck, even PowerPC processors would be a better choice than ARM on a Mac.[/citation]
"Intel processors are just as energy efficient as ARM".... yeah... right. Is that why ARM dominates the embedded systems market?

The domination of x86 was established a quarter of a century ago when processors ran at less than 10MHz and the number of transistors in a processor was a mere fraction of what it is today. Hardware and software have evolved immensely since then.
The only reason x86 stayed dominant for so long is the 95% market share of Windows. Even Intel themselves tried to replace x86 with Itanium but failed.
 
Higher competition will yield up better and more powerful processors, and maybe new revolutionary technologies that weren’t intended to be used until year or even decades in to the future will be used. One example is Intel’s most recent announcement of its 22nm 3D tri gate transistors that will be used in Ivy Bridge and beyond.
 
while it is all speculation, I hope it's true. More competition for Intel is great news for the consumer, and it may be an indication of how computing will be changing in the near future. Cloud-based services, for example, may quickly become the prominent alternative to traditional workstation computing.

Sounds exciting to me either way, as it offers a possible explanation of how Intel could trip up again (pentium 4 anyone?) Just because Intel is big, doesn't mean it can't fall down hard. To me it seems Atom processors have a very long way to go before than can be competitive with ARM chips in the ultra mobile market.
 
ARM is a good low power with less powerful performance processor while Intel x86/x86_64 is good for powerful performance with average power usage. That's why ARM could dominate the mobile market while Intel could dominate the desktop market.

Each of the architecture has pros and cons. Getting x86 into low power is hard. And getting ARM into high performance zone is not easy. If ARM based processor could ever be as fast as than Intel processor, then it would use more power than Intel processor. Plenty RISC based processors out there have lost the battle to Intel x86/x86_64 in this game.

While the rumor could sound reasonable in some aspects, I don't think ARM based processor could be ready to get into Macbook Pro in the next 10 years.


 
if it's better then intel sure, but i am not so sure....it's probably cheaper for apple to make it's own processors since it owns a part of ARM
 
And the benefit of this is what exactly? So programmers have to do slightly less work to port phone apps to the desktop? So that every product Apple makes will be a different sized ipad?
 
I am tired of is speculation articles of Tom's Hardware. Apple made a huge transition from PPC to x86-x64 architecture before 5 years, you believe that it's so easy every now and then to change architecture just for fun?
 
x86 is efficient enough,but it can't be scaled down enough for mobile market.ARM on the other hand is efficient for mobile but if they try to make someting competing in desktop market , they can't simply put more cores(they can but not many programs will run 32/64 cores). They will need to make them past 3 GHz ,and that needs a large cashe.That thing alone will make ARM expensive and more energy sucking.
I think ARM processor can canibalize Atom market but can't get near core in the near future.
 
The good thing is that with every processor upgrade from ARM, Apple needs to spend less energy in OS upgrades, since Intel's newer processors always had large changes, not only socket wise, but also speed, FSB, and extension wise, and I'm sure they had a lot of other things under the hood that changed things for the OS makers.

One of them being energy efficiency, and hardware thread monitoring (to evenly distribute threads, or use a single thread on an overclocked core).
With ARM things are much simpler, since the core by default gets into a sleep state when not used, and it's been like that for many years already! Apple's going to make a great deal with these!

If AMD or NVidia (preferably AMD) would jump in, it might be possible to create an XBOX, Nintendo Wii, or perhaps even a PS3 out of these computers!
Computers of today have difficulty processing those 128bit consoles, if they only run a 32 or 64bit platform. Emulators are not powerful enough, but if the hardware becomes as powerful as those gaming consoles...

Ofcourse, they will not be a match against intel core i processors running windows apps, but with the right optimizations, a 1Ghz dual or quad ARM core can perform very similar to a corei5/7, if not outperform them on some fields (like emulation of gaming consoles, and possibly a lower power consumption)
 
I am amazed that that this speculation is considered to a fact by some ha ha :)

Intel processors are very quick no matter what anyone would says.
I would love it if Apple would use AMD chips as an option..but hey if it hasn't happened yet it most likely wont happen at all 🙁
ARM...WhoTF are they...?? I mean seriously they own the Mobile market and all of a sudden Apple would want to replace their entire Desktop Line up with them?? That makes no sense... HA HA Mac Pro's Running ARM chips instead of Two 6-core (12 core total) 2.93ghz....Yeah I don't see that being replaced by Arm chips anytime soon 😀 or even an iMac with 2.5GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5...

the Mac Mini...yeah I could see that as an experiment to see if it would sell.. But Not ARMpit...HELL know.. Steve Jobs is not a crack-head to do something that stupid 😀
 
[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]If true it would be Apple's 3rd platform in 20 years. Such an unstable operating system, lol![/citation]

I totally agree..
 
[citation][nom]molo9000[/nom]"Intel processors are just as energy efficient as ARM".... yeah... right. Is that why ARM dominates the embedded systems market?The domination of x86 was established a quarter of a century ago when processors ran at less than 10MHz and the number of transistors in a processor was a mere fraction of what it is today. Hardware and software have evolved immensely since then.The only reason x86 stayed dominant for so long is the 95% market share of Windows. Even Intel themselves tried to replace x86 with Itanium but failed.[/citation]
Intel failed with Itanium because those 90% of people that run Windows (esp businesses) didn't want to replace all of their software that was designed for the x86 architecture. Who would? Intel is already on the verge of releasing an Atom processor that will give at least as good of battery life as the most energy efficient ARM CPU. Intel's current Atom processors already have considerably better performance than the best ARM CPU's. As for Itanium, you are aware of just how slow those processors performed on the desktop aren't you? It's no wonder that AMD64 succeeded and Itanium failed. The world doesn't need an architecture change. Nobody should know that better than Steve Jobs. Even though x86 was/is better than PowerPC developers weren't too happy about having to recompile their software as I recall.
 
Really~ .. After Intel brought power-cpu cpu based mac back from life support?

Well.. It is apple's move thou I wonder how that effect their Mac book sales. Windows are x86 / x86_64 base and there are a lot of ppl use windows on their shinny mac book/mac book pro/mac book air instead apple OS.
 
I find apple to be a strange company. they put a ulv cord 2 duo in their macbook air. and when people ask why not put a more efficient Nehealam based ULV processer. they said its better for heat and power.

2 words

LOL

i know in time the boundries between all of these products will be blurred further and IMO it will get to a point where everyone will have a Desktop and a Smart Phone. Tablets and Smart Phones will combine. Netbooks and Laptops(Only Cheap Laptops would make sense) will become useless. so we will be essentially back where we were 15 years ago. Everyone will Have a desktop and a Phone. the desktop will be for word documents, Gaming, Video and Photo Editing. the mobile would be like mastercard.

 
They've already released their 2.5ghz quad, and licensees will have SOCs using it very soon, so "this could potentially work" before the end of 2011.
 
[citation][nom]stm1185[/nom]They better drop the pro from their notebook names then![/citation]
this is not a necessarily true statement...i am sure that Apple will figure a way to keep performance on par with that of the intel cpus
 
[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]If true it would be Apple's 3rd platform in 20 years. Such an unstable operating system, lol![/citation]

Actually it would be the 4th platform:

6502,
680xx
PPC
x86
ARM
 
Not going backwards. I like my Core 2 Macbook Pro with a 64 bit OS X. I do not see myself dumping it down the road for a 32 OS OS X light. I don't think Open Office is even available for the "I will be a real computer" iPads and Phones.
 
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