Apple, Intel In Talks Over Chip Manufacturing Deal

[sundragon]

[citation][nom]ojas[/nom]The traditional PC market has declined only in the first world. Everywhere else smartphones and tablets are usually complementary devices.[/citation]

Actually, you're wrong. We in the US primarily desktop based still - Europe, Asia, and South America are heavily focused on mobile computing. Most of the world's population don't use/own a computer, just a cell device.

There are two reasons for this:

Most people on the planet can't afford a computer so their access to the web/internet is through mobile devices.

Furthermore, most developing countries invest in cell towers as they are easier to install than laying cable based infrastructure. It can take months to get a landline in many countries as the infrastructure for that hasn't kept up with growth.

If you look at the statistics, based on rank, we are #3, but based on % of population we are #40. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use

The world bank places us father down on subscriptions per 100 people http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2?order=wbapi_data_value_2011+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=desc

 

[dvmoo7]

No reason for Intel to abandon their x86 mobile SOC in order to make arm arch for apple. I think its much more likely for apple to adopt x86 in their mobile products in the near future. After-all, X86 on Intel leading edge process beats arm. Arm has no inherent design advantage so the edge goes to Intel for the state of the art mfg process. http://research.cs.wisc.edu/vertical/papers/2013/hpca13-isa-power-struggles.pdf

 

[InvalidError]

[citation][nom]dvmoo7[/nom]After-all, X86 on Intel leading edge process beats arm. Arm has no inherent design advantage so the edge goes to Intel for the state of the art mfg process.[/citation]
That remains to be seen.

As you said, Intel's current x86 SoCs benefit considerably from Intel's fab advantage. Once Intel starts baking ARM wafers based on their engineering and fab flow, we will see how much of an advantage is due to fab advantage and how much is inherent to the design. There may be surprises.

 

[dvmoo7]

[citation][nom]InvalidError[/nom]That remains to be seen.As you said, Intel's current x86 SoCs benefit considerably from Intel's fab advantage. Once Intel starts baking ARM wafers based on their engineering and fab flow, we will see how much of an advantage is due to fab advantage and how much is inherent to the design. There may be surprises.[/citation]
Trust me, Intel has been investing billlions and has years of research in their x86 mobile product and now with 22nm trigate and a world class LTE solution coming out next quarter or so, I really dont think they will simply throw all that away to make some arm arch for apple. I cant wait to see atom 22nm tech vs ARM A15 or whatever their latest offering will be this year. The only outside chance I can possibly see is some kind of agreement where intel may temproary make a few arm while intel works to get x86 on iOS for iphone and ipad. That even might already be in the works like they did when apple/intel under the cover of their "skunk works" ported Mac OS to x86.

 

[hannibal]

Well I hope that Intel will produce the next AMD CPU and APU prosessors 🙂 It would be interesting to see how good they actually could be if produced with modern production technology!

Most propably it would cost too much for AMD to buy production capasity from Intel, but it would definitely be interesting! AMD steamroller would be much closer in speed to Intel Hasvel CPU if they could be made by Intel production technology.

 

[InvalidError]

[citation][nom]dvmoo7[/nom]Trust me, Intel has been investing billlions and has years of research in their x86 mobile product and now with 22nm trigate and a world class LTE solution coming out next quarter or so, I really dont think they will simply throw all that away to make some arm arch for apple.[/citation]
Intel does not need to design an ARM CPU for Apple, Apple ALREADY designs their own, they just need someone to make the masks and bake the wafers for them. By choosing Intel to do that, Apple's ARM CPUs will have the same tri-gate and other Intel goodies Intel puts in their own chips and we will have a fair watt-for-watt comparison of x86 vs ARM SoC performance with all else being almost exactly equal.

 

[ojas]

[citation][nom]sundragon[/nom]Actually, you're wrong. We in the US primarily desktop based still - Europe, Asia, and South America are heavily focused on mobile computing. Most of the world's population don't use/own a computer, just a cell device.There are two reasons for this:Most people on the planet can't afford a computer so their access to the web/internet is through mobile devices.Furthermore, most developing countries invest in cell towers as they are easier to install than laying cable based infrastructure. It can take months to get a landline in many countries as the infrastructure for that hasn't kept up with growth. If you look at the statistics, based on rank, we are #3, but based on % of population we are #40. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_ [...] nes_in_useThe world bank places us father down on subscriptions per 100 people http://data.worldbank.org/indicato [...] &sort=desc[/citation]
Ok i love it when this happens.

No, YOU are in the 3%, my country has about 1/7th of the world's population and ranks #2 😛

I know what i'm talking about. When it comes to smartphones/tablets vs a laptop/desktop, this is how it goes:
1. Every family will have at least one desktop. In some cases, it'll be collecting dust, because:

2. Every (adult) member usually has one laptop, or because the desktop's been replaced by a laptop.

3. At least the adults, or kids over 15, are likely to have a smartphone. Remember we don't have the carrier subsidies, so a high end smartphone costs well over $500. So therefore when it comes to choosing a work platform, the decision b/w a $500+ phone or tablet and a laptop usually ends up in the laptop's favor.

4. 3G is still expensive and capped, most of the country uses a dumb phone, feature phone or a sub $200 smartphone with a 2G connection.

Also, almost everyone i know who's bought a windows 8 laptop recently is complaining about windows 8.

Example of a friend of mine. He had an old Core 2 Duo desktop that was assembled back in 2008 or 2007 i think. So it was falling apart. He had an Xbox 360, later bought an iPad, as "all his needs were met" by it. That was still while we were at high school, btw. Then his dad went to the US for some work back in 2011, brought back a Sandy Bridge based Toshiba (or Acer? can't remember) notebook. He tried BF3 in it, ran into throttling issues. Anyway, in the meanwhile, he had replaced his Nokia feature phone with a Lumia 800, and also bought an ipod touch 4th gen.

End of last year he ended up spending $1400 (by current rates) on a desktop PC with a 3570K and a 670.
A few days ago he told me he needed a cheap laptop for MS Office-like work, and basic computation during his internship (he's a Physics major), as his ipad simply isn't enough.
Compatibility issues, lack of being able to boot into linux, etc.

Same problem's facing us in our engineering college with Win 8's secure boot.

As for our house...1 desktop (Core 2 Quad, will upgrade to Haswell this year), 3 laptops (one 8 year old IBM that we've lent to someone who works with dad, for internet access, one 2009 MacBook pro that annoys the heck out of my dad, but he got so...and a retrofitted 2007 macbook that i use, borrowed from a family friend. Changed the HDD with an SSD and installed windows 7, i'm good for college now), i have an ipod touch (4th gen) and a nokia dumbphone, mom has a touch-screen blackberry which she hates, and dad has an older blackberry with a keyboard that's going bad so he wants to replace it.

I'm thinking of getting a cheap android smartphone till i see something i'm willing to spend more than $400 on (which will likely be a dual core derivative of Intel's Bay Trail).

Mom could use a tablet, perhaps, but i guess for now my macbook would suffice, since i don't use it at home.

Cheers 😛