Does AMD has some future?

[juanrga]

New rumor that AMD is for sale

http://channeleye.co.uk/amd-rumoured-to-be-up-for-sale/

I would feel better if we know what the "Chinese Company" was, though I have a few guesses. A sale would mean the loss of the X86 license though, which would explain why AMD is focusing so much on ARM cores...

The company is BLX with assistance from the Government.

I doubt AMD will lose the x86 license. Moreover if you pay attention lately AMD is silent regarding ARM. Zen leaks arise, but nothing about K12, Skybridge, Cambridge... and Seattle continues being vaporware.

 

[juanrga]

The ARM processors are "good enough" for most peoples needs. They are also $20 as opposed to $200. Pretty sure in five to ten years the cheap, "good enough" cpu's will be the norm.

Uh? The 80W ARM SoCs have more performance than 10-core Xeons and cost much more than $20.

I note after your multiple pleas to close the thread you are posting triple posts... welcome!

 

[jdwii]

New rumor that AMD is for sale

http://channeleye.co.uk/amd-rumoured-to-be-up-for-sale/

AMD just needs to get out of the CPU market and stick with the graphics cards because then they will actually succeed more as a company I think in total profit. Of course Intel would have a monopoly in which, at least in the U.S., the government will have to use antitrust legislations to regulate the prices of the processors.

not so sure about that. their FX cpus still sell like hotcakes to budget gamers and the like. mabye they should just continue down that avenue?

That isn't helping them any. Its a very tinny market compared to even their APU sales. I'm sure K12+GCN could keep them alive in the dgpu market(few more years) and they might be able to get into mobile. Also they could make a lot of money one day on K12 servers.

 

[jdwii]

I know this may sound bad, but if that is the case, I think I'm buying intel. And that is coming from someone who's used AMD for the last 15 years or more. Another good company to buy them would be apple. Since they like having control over hardware.

Your not the only one i promise you intel is good now its not the same crap from the pentium 4 days. I used to love Amd a lot myself would only buy their products but now i'm open to what's best for my budget. Its having a rational mind set. Its odd to say this but the CPU i own feels faster in most cases to the 8350 something i would have never believed and don't expect anyone else to either without testing the new ones with 4mb of L3 cache. I mean in all my single player games almost all my stuttering went away. What's funny is i think the I3 is better at playing the games but my 8 core was faster at loading them.

General use feels a bit slower when multitasking but nothing to bad, still fast. I remember when i tried their ivy I3's and they sucked imo for the money. I'd still recommend people to go with an I5 for gaming however. If Intel did this
I7- 6+ cores with HT
4- cores + HT I5
4- cores I3
Pentium- 2 cores with HT

I'm pretty sure Amd would have been gone a long time ago even more so if they unlocked more budget line CPU's.

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

It was not long ago that amd had faster chips before core 2 duo. May be that amd will surprise us hopefully.

 

[gamerk316]

It would be really weird for Lisa Su to sell the company in her first year.

You'd be surprised. It's not terribly uncommon for CEOs to come in, sell the company, and make a boatload on stock options when the stock jumps by 20%. It happens ALL THE TIME.

Also, why would they develop a new x86 architecture with Zen if they would lose the license in a buyout?

Keeping revenue flowing. They need a product to sell in the interem.

If that was the plan Rory would have been the man to do it. Anyway CEO's don't make that kind of decision unless they own the company. They can only bring that proposal forward. The Board of Directors has the final say.

Yes, but the BoD is of one mind. Only the US Government things splitting control of running an organization between groups with different philosophies is a good idea. That's why whenever you see the CEO change, you immediately have executive turnover. Executives who don't agree with the vision of the new CEO either get removed or leave. If the CEO determines the proper action is to sell, the BoD is already on board as well. All that's left is to convince the shareholders, and if they think they can get a free 20% stock boost off it, they'll do it in a heartbeat.

I've been through this three times over the past six years where I work. Investors care only about stock price. If they can pump it to a premium and bail, they'll do it without a second thought, even if they destroy the company in their wake.

 

[gamerk316]

The ARM processors are "good enough" for most peoples needs. They are also $20 as opposed to $200. Pretty sure in five to ten years the cheap, "good enough" cpu's will be the norm.

Uh? The 80W ARM SoCs have more performance than 10-core Xeons and cost much more than $20.

I note after your multiple pleas to close the thread you are posting triple posts... welcome!

Please stop comparing CPUs to CPU/GPU. If Intel slapped a $5 iGPU on Xeons, they'd crush ARM. It's just GPUs have so much more number crunching capability in some subset of tasks that makes ARM "technically" more powerful then Xeons. But for the tasks the chips will actually be performing, the Xeons crush.

Myself and others been calling you out on this for well over a year now. Stop it.

It was not long ago that amd had faster chips before core 2 duo. May be that amd will surprise us hopefully.

Says alot about Netburst, doesn't it? Even then, had it scaled like Intel predicted, AMD would still be behind. They released a product that was about 20% more efficient then their competitions worst performing architecture, then fell behind again the next release cycle. That's normal, and expected when you have David vs Goliath. Unless Intel really misses on CPU design, AMD is never going to remain ahead of them in performance for any length of time.

That's why I've said from the very beginning that AMD should have pushed what eventually became APUs and take over mobile (which at the time, meant laptops). AMD was literally 5 years too late to the party to matter. And now, Intel is catching up on that front, as they are finally focusing on iGPUs.

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

Well if AMD gets out of the market, maybe intel will be busted up for being a monopoly. Just when you see a company like AMD, and people are even talking this way, you are kind of sad because of what they have done in the past and their potential. If they could get bought out by a Samsung or Apple, or Sony, someone larger perhaps they could be competitive with extra R & D dollars.

 

[gamerk316]

I discussed this in the other thread. Intel is not a monopoly because X86 isn't the dominant CPU arch. Sure, it controls the Desktop and Server markets, but embedded belongs to PPC, and mobile belongs to ARM. And no one is accusing IBM or ARM of being a monopoly, despite the fact they sell more chips then Intel does. Likewise, there are perfectly viable non-X86 desktop OS's (Linux and BSD come to mind).

So no, Intel is no where close to being a monopoly.

 

[juanrga]

The ARM processors are "good enough" for most peoples needs. They are also $20 as opposed to $200. Pretty sure in five to ten years the cheap, "good enough" cpu's will be the norm.

Uh? The 80W ARM SoCs have more performance than 10-core Xeons and cost much more than $20.

I note after your multiple pleas to close the thread you are posting triple posts... welcome!

Please stop comparing CPUs to CPU/GPU. If Intel slapped a $5 iGPU on Xeons, they'd crush ARM. It's just GPUs have so much more number crunching capability in some subset of tasks that makes ARM "technically" more powerful then Xeons. But for the tasks the chips will actually be performing, the Xeons crush.

Myself and others been calling you out on this for well over a year now. Stop it.

You are completely wrong! I didn't compare any GPU.

I compared the 80W CPU ThunderX SoC from Cavium (which lacks iGPU) against the E5-2470 v2 Xeon CPU (which lacks any iGPU) and how the former gives more performance on CPU workloads: concretely the well-known SPECint_2006 benchmark, where the ThunderX CPU scores 350 points whereas the IB Xeon CPU scored 320.

Contrary to perennial FUD, ARMv8 ISA scales up very well, and the ARM server SoCs are already at Xeon-level on CPU performance. In fact, the 80W ARM SoC from Cavium that I mentioned above is not the fastest known, the fastest is Vulcan from Broadcom

http://www.linleygroup.com/newsletters/newsletter_detail.php?num=5065

8 instructions per cycle, 180-entry ROB, 2,048-entry TLB, 4-threads per core (SMT4),... are some elements of a powerful ARM microarchitecture that provides about 90% of single thread performance of Haswell Xeon and about 80% more throughput than IB Xeons.

 

[juanrga]

It was not long ago that amd had faster chips before core 2 duo. May be that amd will surprise us hopefully.

That AMD is gone and will not return, unless someone acquires the company and gives them a 10x increase in funds. But I don't know any company would be interested in that for fighting Intel on a declining x86 market.

 

[bmacsys]

The ARM processors are "good enough" for most peoples needs. They are also $20 as opposed to $200. Pretty sure in five to ten years the cheap, "good enough" cpu's will be the norm.

Uh? The 80W ARM SoCs have more performance than 10-core Xeons and cost much more than $20.

I note after your multiple pleas to close the thread you are posting triple posts... welcome!

We are talking about the tens of millions ARM units that are in high end phones and tablets. Nobody is talking about niche cpu's. Some other people make some decent points. You ain't one of them lol!

 

[juanrga]

The ARM processors are "good enough" for most peoples needs. They are also $20 as opposed to $200. Pretty sure in five to ten years the cheap, "good enough" cpu's will be the norm.

Uh? The 80W ARM SoCs have more performance than 10-core Xeons and cost much more than $20.

I note after your multiple pleas to close the thread you are posting triple posts... welcome!

We are talking about the tens of millions ARM units that are in high end phones and tablets. Nobody is talking about niche cpu's.

ARM is used beyond tablets and phones. And servers/HPC is one of the markets with the higher potential grow. Reason why AMD is developing K12, Nvidia is selling hardware in collaboration with APM, Cray is collaborating with Cavium, Broadcom is developing Vulcan, and Qualcomm just announced will also enter the server market...

ARM Holdings counts 16 partners as server SOC licensees. The reason why so many companies are interested is because it is not a niche market. It is a market with a full potential of ~10000000 units per year.

 

[-Fran-]

ARM is used beyond tablets and phones. And servers/HPC is one of the markets with the higher potential grow. Reason why AMD is developing K12, Nvidia is selling hardware in collaboration with APM, Cray is collaborating with Cavium, Broadcom is developing Vulcan, and Qualcomm just announced will also enter the server market...

ARM Holdings counts 16 partners as server SOC licensees. The reason why so many companies are interested is because it is not a niche market. It is a market with a full potential of ~10000000 units per year.

That was not his point, Juan.

Until ARM gets out of the server market with a full blown desktop CPU (or SoC) that can carry out gaming or programming and other current CPU-level tasks, it won't matter they can make an 80W CPU (or 300W beast) that consumers can't get and use on PCs and lappies. And no, Google's lappies don't count, since they're glorified tablets.

Cheers!

 

[jdwii]

ARM is used beyond tablets and phones. And servers/HPC is one of the markets with the higher potential grow. Reason why AMD is developing K12, Nvidia is selling hardware in collaboration with APM, Cray is collaborating with Cavium, Broadcom is developing Vulcan, and Qualcomm just announced will also enter the server market...

ARM Holdings counts 16 partners as server SOC licensees. The reason why so many companies are interested is because it is not a niche market. It is a market with a full potential of ~10000000 units per year.

That was not his point, Juan.

Until ARM gets out of the server market with a full blown desktop CPU (or SoC) that can carry out gaming or programming and other current CPU-level tasks, it won't matter they can make an 80W CPU (or 300W beast) that consumers can't get and use on PCs and lappies. And no, Google's lappies don't count, since they're glorified tablets.

Cheers!

Not sure i agree 100% with this one. I see your point however.

Pretty sure we might see a day were Intel is the only one making X86, not saying i like that just claiming the monopoly thing might not be a problem. X86 for gaming(on PC only) is honestly the future we might see. I doubt the whole united states will really give 2 cents about PC gaming only.

Then we might ask the question why don't we just run Arm CPU's in are gaming rigs(if or when they show great single core performance to handle it).

To bad we can't figure out backwards compatibility to. Without driving down performance.

 

[-Fran-]

Not sure i agree 100% with this one. I see your point however.

Pretty sure we might see a day were Intel is the only one making X86, not saying i like that just claiming the monopoly thing might not be a problem. X86 for gaming(on PC only) is honestly the future we might see. I doubt the whole united states will really give 2 cents about PC gaming only.

Then we might ask the question why don't we just run Arm CPU's in are gaming rigs(if or when they show great single core performance to handle it).

To bad we can't figure out backwards compatibility to. Without driving down performance.

I don't think OEMs will like Intel as the only supplier for their core markets. Even more, I don't think OEMs will support that idea at all. There's a reason why IBM told Intel to let AMD license X86. It's not even a "monopoly" thing, it's OEMs not wanting Intel as the only supplier. I'm sure OEMs are scratching their heads now, because it's a period where there's no clear future and every path is a gamble: if you go ARM (notice how they're not putting 65W CPUs in regular PCs yet?) and start playing the tablet/phone game you already have Samsung, Nokia, Apple and LG/Sony already kicking it hard (you can also say Xiao-asdfasdf and Huawei); just ask Dell and Amazon. If they lock themselves with Intel, there IS a trend that PCs are being replaced by tablets because there is ZERO incentive to move from the old Pentium Dual or Athlon 64 X2 to a more recent PC/Lappy (I've seen a lot of Turion 64 CPUs around alive and kicking), making OEMs burn money on designs and other products that are bound to not meet sale targets, hence lose the investment. Google is the only one trying with a radically different mix, but it's slow (to say the best) in adoption rate.

All in all, OEM are not even trying to sell PCs and Lappies with the "this thing is more powerful than ever before" slogan anymore. They're trying to do the "this is a gorgeous PC! look how shiny it is!", trying to mimic Apple's way of selling new shiny stuff.

So, in short, until someone using ARM comes out of the closet and gets into PC territory for real, Intel will still charge 200 greenies for a mediocre i3 or i5 locked, plus PC sales will continue the downward trend unless more computing power is actually needed. I hope the VR movement makes a jump. I have high hopes with Windows 10 to up the stakes a bit in favor of actually making an upgrade a real necessity. Games as well, but they'll be tied to console level until next gen, so no great hopes there.

Cheers!

 

[bmacsys]

ARM is used beyond tablets and phones. And servers/HPC is one of the markets with the higher potential grow. Reason why AMD is developing K12, Nvidia is selling hardware in collaboration with APM, Cray is collaborating with Cavium, Broadcom is developing Vulcan, and Qualcomm just announced will also enter the server market...

ARM Holdings counts 16 partners as server SOC licensees. The reason why so many companies are interested is because it is not a niche market. It is a market with a full potential of ~10000000 units per year.

That was not his point, Juan.

Until ARM gets out of the server market with a full blown desktop CPU (or SoC) that can carry out gaming or programming and other current CPU-level tasks, it won't matter they can make an 80W CPU (or 300W beast) that consumers can't get and use on PCs and lappies. And no, Google's lappies don't count, since they're glorified tablets.

Cheers!

Not sure i agree 100% with this one. I see your point however.

Pretty sure we might see a day were Intel is the only one making X86, not saying i like that just claiming the monopoly thing might not be a problem. X86 for gaming(on PC only) is honestly the future we might see. I doubt the whole united states will really give 2 cents about PC gaming only.

Then we might ask the question why don't we just run Arm CPU's in are gaming rigs(if or when they show great single core performance to handle it).

To bad we can't figure out backwards compatibility to. Without driving down performance.

How do you think it would be if we had one car manufacturer? Or one supermarket chain? Or one gas retailer? Or just Comcast for TV and as an ISP? I think it wouldn't be pretty for the consumer. It would in fact get ugly really, really quick.

 

[bmacsys]

Not sure i agree 100% with this one. I see your point however.





So, in short, until someone using ARM comes out of the closet and gets into PC territory for real, Intel will still charge 200 greenies for a mediocre i3 or i5 locked,

Cheers!

Pretty sure Apple is going to be the company that shakes things up with an ARM powered Mac with some kind of emulation mode.

 

[jdwii]

ARM is used beyond tablets and phones. And servers/HPC is one of the markets with the higher potential grow. Reason why AMD is developing K12, Nvidia is selling hardware in collaboration with APM, Cray is collaborating with Cavium, Broadcom is developing Vulcan, and Qualcomm just announced will also enter the server market...

ARM Holdings counts 16 partners as server SOC licensees. The reason why so many companies are interested is because it is not a niche market. It is a market with a full potential of ~10000000 units per year.

That was not his point, Juan.

Until ARM gets out of the server market with a full blown desktop CPU (or SoC) that can carry out gaming or programming and other current CPU-level tasks, it won't matter they can make an 80W CPU (or 300W beast) that consumers can't get and use on PCs and lappies. And no, Google's lappies don't count, since they're glorified tablets.

Cheers!

Not sure i agree 100% with this one. I see your point however.

Pretty sure we might see a day were Intel is the only one making X86, not saying i like that just claiming the monopoly thing might not be a problem. X86 for gaming(on PC only) is honestly the future we might see. I doubt the whole united states will really give 2 cents about PC gaming only.

Then we might ask the question why don't we just run Arm CPU's in are gaming rigs(if or when they show great single core performance to handle it).

To bad we can't figure out backwards compatibility to. Without driving down performance.

How do you think it would be if we had one car manufacturer? Or one supermarket chain? Or one gas retailer? Or just Comcast for TV and as an ISP? I think it wouldn't be pretty for the consumer. It would in fact get ugly really, really quick.

Actually we have things that are only made from one company. Its not like Intel is the only one making CPU's, just X86 CPU's. Hell I bet Intel would even be willing to give Amd money for Amd's X64 lease. If Amd could just make Arm CPU's(WAY cheaper) and GPU architectures i could actually see them being pretty darn successful compared to them today.

 

[Gaidax]

It would be really weird for Lisa Su to sell the company in her first year.

You'd be surprised. It's not terribly uncommon for CEOs to come in, sell the company, and make a boatload on stock options when the stock jumps by 20%. It happens ALL THE TIME.

Also, why would they develop a new x86 architecture with Zen if they would lose the license in a buyout?

Keeping revenue flowing. They need a product to sell in the interem.

If that was the plan Rory would have been the man to do it. Anyway CEO's don't make that kind of decision unless they own the company. They can only bring that proposal forward. The Board of Directors has the final say.

I am pretty sure that at this stage, buyout is a viable option. AMD is headed to the murky waters zone, future is uncertain, who knows maybe in two-three years from now they will come up with some absurd alien technology that will turn then into Apple 2, but the chances of them becoming the new Blackberry in two-three years are higher really.

CEO could just tell them that this is the best course of action - sell business while it is still alive.

 

[bmacsys]

ARM is used beyond tablets and phones. And servers/HPC is one of the markets with the higher potential grow. Reason why AMD is developing K12, Nvidia is selling hardware in collaboration with APM, Cray is collaborating with Cavium, Broadcom is developing Vulcan, and Qualcomm just announced will also enter the server market...

ARM Holdings counts 16 partners as server SOC licensees. The reason why so many companies are interested is because it is not a niche market. It is a market with a full potential of ~10000000 units per year.

That was not his point, Juan.

Until ARM gets out of the server market with a full blown desktop CPU (or SoC) that can carry out gaming or programming and other current CPU-level tasks, it won't matter they can make an 80W CPU (or 300W beast) that consumers can't get and use on PCs and lappies. And no, Google's lappies don't count, since they're glorified tablets.

Cheers!

Not sure i agree 100% with this one. I see your point however.

Pretty sure we might see a day were Intel is the only one making X86, not saying i like that just claiming the monopoly thing might not be a problem. X86 for gaming(on PC only) is honestly the future we might see. I doubt the whole united states will really give 2 cents about PC gaming only.

Then we might ask the question why don't we just run Arm CPU's in are gaming rigs(if or when they show great single core performance to handle it).

To bad we can't figure out backwards compatibility to. Without driving down performance.

How do you think it would be if we had one car manufacturer? Or one supermarket chain? Or one gas retailer? Or just Comcast for TV and as an ISP? I think it wouldn't be pretty for the consumer. It would in fact get ugly really, really quick.

Actually we have things that are only made from one company. Its not like Intel is the only one making CPU's, just X86 CPU's. Hell I bet Intel would even be willing to give Amd money for Amd's X64 lease. If Amd could just make Arm CPU's(WAY cheaper) and GPU architectures i could actually see them being pretty darn successful compared to them today.

What consumer items are made by only one company? I can't think of one thing offhand.

 

[Cazalan]

I've been through this three times over the past six years where I work. Investors care only about stock price. If they can pump it to a premium and bail, they'll do it without a second thought, even if they destroy the company in their wake.

And that there is the fundamental flaw with capitalism run a muck.

 

[Cazalan]

I am pretty sure that at this stage, buyout is a viable option. AMD is headed to the murky waters zone, future is uncertain, who knows maybe in two-three years from now they will come up with some absurd alien technology that will turn then into Apple 2, but the chances of them becoming the new Blackberry in two-three years are higher really.

CEO could just tell them that this is the best course of action - sell business while it is still alive.

With Qualcomm's recent setback with Samsung I could see them maybe want to buy AMD. They have more than enough cash and they've bought AMD IP before and done very very well with it. Being a US company they'd have an easier time buying than Korean Samsung.

 

[jdwii]

ARM is used beyond tablets and phones. And servers/HPC is one of the markets with the higher potential grow. Reason why AMD is developing K12, Nvidia is selling hardware in collaboration with APM, Cray is collaborating with Cavium, Broadcom is developing Vulcan, and Qualcomm just announced will also enter the server market...

ARM Holdings counts 16 partners as server SOC licensees. The reason why so many companies are interested is because it is not a niche market. It is a market with a full potential of ~10000000 units per year.

That was not his point, Juan.

Until ARM gets out of the server market with a full blown desktop CPU (or SoC) that can carry out gaming or programming and other current CPU-level tasks, it won't matter they can make an 80W CPU (or 300W beast) that consumers can't get and use on PCs and lappies. And no, Google's lappies don't count, since they're glorified tablets.

Cheers!

Not sure i agree 100% with this one. I see your point however.

Pretty sure we might see a day were Intel is the only one making X86, not saying i like that just claiming the monopoly thing might not be a problem. X86 for gaming(on PC only) is honestly the future we might see. I doubt the whole united states will really give 2 cents about PC gaming only.

Then we might ask the question why don't we just run Arm CPU's in are gaming rigs(if or when they show great single core performance to handle it).

To bad we can't figure out backwards compatibility to. Without driving down performance.

How do you think it would be if we had one car manufacturer? Or one supermarket chain? Or one gas retailer? Or just Comcast for TV and as an ISP? I think it wouldn't be pretty for the consumer. It would in fact get ugly really, really quick.

Actually we have things that are only made from one company. Its not like Intel is the only one making CPU's, just X86 CPU's. Hell I bet Intel would even be willing to give Amd money for Amd's X64 lease. If Amd could just make Arm CPU's(WAY cheaper) and GPU architectures i could actually see them being pretty darn successful compared to them today.

What consumer items are made by only one company? I can't think of one thing offhand.

Maybe over you thinking of a whole product instead of one component

 

[juanrga]

I don't think OEMs will like Intel as the only supplier for their core markets. Even more, I don't think OEMs will support that idea at all. There's a reason why IBM told Intel to let AMD license X86. It's not even a "monopoly" thing, it's OEMs not wanting Intel as the only supplier. I'm sure OEMs are scratching their heads now, because it's a period where there's no clear future and every path is a gamble: if you go ARM (notice how they're not putting 65W CPUs in regular PCs yet?) and start playing the tablet/phone game you already have Samsung, Nokia, Apple and LG/Sony already kicking it hard (you can also say Xiao-asdfasdf and Huawei); just ask Dell and Amazon. If they lock themselves with Intel, there IS a trend that PCs are being replaced by tablets because there is ZERO incentive to move from the old Pentium Dual or Athlon 64 X2 to a more recent PC/Lappy (I've seen a lot of Turion 64 CPUs around alive and kicking), making OEMs burn money on designs and other products that are bound to not meet sale targets, hence lose the investment. Google is the only one trying with a radically different mix, but it's slow (to say the best) in adoption rate.

All in all, OEM are not even trying to sell PCs and Lappies with the "this thing is more powerful than ever before" slogan anymore. They're trying to do the "this is a gorgeous PC! look how shiny it is!", trying to mimic Apple's way of selling new shiny stuff.

So, in short, until someone using ARM comes out of the closet and gets into PC territory for real, Intel will still charge 200 greenies for a mediocre i3 or i5 locked, plus PC sales will continue the downward trend unless more computing power is actually needed. I hope the VR movement makes a jump. I have high hopes with Windows 10 to up the stakes a bit in favor of actually making an upgrade a real necessity. Games as well, but they'll be tied to console level until next gen, so no great hopes there.

Cheers!

How many server OEMs chose AMD Opterons instead Intel Xeons?
How many boutique OEMs chose AMD Centurion instead Intel DC?
How many laptop OEMs chose AMD Jaguar/Steamroller instead Intel Silvermont/Haswell?
And so on.

Many of them don't have a choice in practice. Thus we are already in that situation where there is almost a single supplier of x86 chips. Do you believe Cray is happy by being forced to use Intel chips? Do you believe Apple is happy by being forced to use Intel chips?

What are doing Cray and Apple? Are waiting for an inexistent AMD comeback to the x86 market? Nope. The former has associated with Cavium and will start building clusters based in ARM SoCs. Apple is developing its own desktop class CPUs, and the last rumor is that Apple is preparing to replace Intel by its own CPUs after Broadwell.