Report: Apple Considering Switch Away from Intel CPUs

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Apple bought a few companys with the technology and IP to build their own version of an ARM chip. Apple just licenseed the ARM instruction set, and taped out their own specialty ARM core wilh an Imagination Technologies GPU! Come on power users, if you need an Apple laptop to have more CPU or GPU power
just buy an external Thunderbolt PCI over thunderbolt connector an plug a more powerful CPU or GPU into your Apple Laptop! I am sure in the future If Apple switches to ARM 64 Apple will probably have a very good graphics processor on it! And if the ARM chip does not have enough horse power just get a thunderbolt expansion box and put a desktop graphics processor in it or an extra CPU, and be good to go!
Intel is trying ot charge too much for it's CPUs, so do not expect Apple to pay, Yes I would rather Apple go to AMD, but give up on Uncle Sam ever letting Apple or any other major player get AMD, it will not happen for antitrust reasons! AMD will probably be bought up by one of those Huge private equity firms, like the one that bought Chrysler, This equity firm will take AMD private and invest the money, long term, that is needed to keep AMD in business, AMD's IP is to valuable as a whole for AMD to be split up! AMD is also beginning to work om ARM designs for APU built around ARM and AMD graphics! P.S. one of tha companys tha Apple bought had some very good Power PC designs, which Apple now owns, Apple has been smartly buying a whole $hit Load on IP pver the past few years!
 
TeveTobs:

"Once upon a time the Motorola 68000 series compared very favorably to their 286/386/486 contemporaries, and the early IBM PowerPCs could beat the Pentiums clock for clock, but the architecture started to fall behind around the year 2000 and was so thoroughly obsolete by 2006 that Apple had no choice but to go x86."

That's total, UN-adulterated, genuine BS! PPC never, ever became obsolete! The decision was made to switch to intel way back around '98-00 by none other than Steve F#**ing Jobs! When he came back to the company, he wanted to change it so much because of his hatred for Apple, that nothing would be the same! Apple logo, changed, OS dev., terminated, switched to Unix, CPU arc., changed, all external projects CANCELED! Steve Jobs killed Apple for us old timer's out there.

You go and tell IBM, Motorola, or freescale that PPC is "obsolete", I want to see how hard they laugh at you. The POWER series is just about the most powerful commercial CPU's produced in todays market. Apple could have made the easy switch to POWER from PPC, but Steve Jobs said NO! Just like he did with the OS, Apple was all setup to transition to BeOS, but part of the bring steve jobs back BS was that Apple move to the NeXT OS, ie UNIX.

Grrrr... It really gets under my skin when people say sh*t like PPC is obsolete! It really takes true ignorance to say something like that. Is Curiosity, sitting on the surface of Mars powered by Sh*tel, Hell no! PPC 603e/G3 baby!

Ignorant....
 
Someone better fix the patent system soon. Once Apple starts making there own CPUs, who knows what BS they gonna try to patent to go after Intel.
 
v90k is so frade for his wittle Intel!
Aww! poor little Intel, oh it is like you do not have your share of skeletons in the closet, oH Intel your clean and fare business practices, those business practices that have kept the DOJ lawyers so busy! Now Apple is no angel, but to expect any sympathy for the Company that gave us the Utrabook that was going to be so much! And the company, Intel, that is Keeping thunderbolt technology out of the windows laptops, so that it can fruther milk more profits from this technology, after its Ultrabook fiasco! oh poor Intel!!!
 
Apple should purchase AMD!

A merger (hostile takeover) would be the best thing for AMD, and Apple could benefit greatly from the APU technology. Apple could take the AMD brand to the next level and give Intel some serious competition.
 
gallidorn, the DOJ will not allow Apple to buy AMD, For antitrust reasons. AMD is the only other supplier of x86 based CPUs, other than Intel! All takovers have to be reviewd by the DOJ, to see if the takeover will reduce competition! Read the privious posts, AMD will most likely be bought by a private equity firm, and made into a private not publicly traded company! AMD is a good long term investment for such a company, and AMD's technology and x86 license are very valuable, despite AMD's poor stock value!
 


AMD's x86 license doesn't transfer with a sale. I believe AMD would also forfeit their x86-64 patent to Intel. Intel owns x86, AMD owns x86-64. Both companies need both parts to make modern x86 CPUs.

Nobody will be buying AMD's CPU division and making x86 CPUs without Intel's approval.
 
[citation][nom]tolham[/nom]buy AMD -> invest $10B in R&D -> dethrone intel.[/citation]

I've got 5000 shares of AMD, and as much as I like the idea of the price going up, I don't think I could stomach it being Apple that bought them.

Besides, Apple can beat weaklings and failures like Microsoft, but they'd be out of their league against Intel. Intel doesn't mess around, they're the real deal, not a abysmal failure like Microsoft, that goes from one failed design to another.

There's a reason no one wants to take Intel on, not even AMD. It's not because they suck at what they do.

Apple would need much more volume to compete, and they'll never get it.
 
[citation][nom]hapkido[/nom]AMD's x86 license doesn't transfer with a sale. I believe AMD would also forfeit their x86-64 patent to Intel. Intel owns x86, AMD owns x86-64. Both companies need both parts to make modern x86 CPUs.Nobody will be buying AMD's CPU division and making x86 CPUs without Intel's approval.[/citation]
I said the same thing and got down voted 🙁
 
ta152h, A private equity firm will probably buy your 5000 shares and the shairs of all the other stock holders of AMD, then Take the money you and the other shareholders expect in profits or higher stock value, and spend that money turning AMD around! Look what private equity did for chrysler, and you and the other stockholders, if you have enough votes can turn to a private equity takover, as a way to keep AMD research funded and the company saved! Once AMD is turned around, and their technology improved to better compete in the market, AMD can once again be turned into a public stock company! All this can be done while the computer market is down, beacuse a private company does not have the short term profit pressures that a public stock company has!
 
Apple moving away from Intel inside! is a good thing! Be it PowerPC, or AMD, or ARM! Most computer users
do not need the hi end Intel CPUs for their daily computing needs! For those that still want Apple laptops with Intel inside, maybe Apple can create a higher priced SKU for an Intel based laptop. I am sure that, not to far in the future, that there will be many external PCI thunderbolt expansion boxes (GUS II, and Lucid), so that anyone with a laptop that has Thunderbolt ports, or the AMD equivalent, will be able to add a graphics card or cpu to their laptop!
 
[citation][nom]PoorWittleIntel[/nom]v90k is so frade for his wittle Intel!Aww! poor little Intel, oh it is like you do not have your share of skeletons in the closet, oH Intel your clean and fare business practices, those business practices that have kept the DOJ lawyers so busy! Now Apple is no angel, but to expect any sympathy for the Company that gave us the Utrabook that was going to be so much! And the company, Intel, that is Keeping thunderbolt technology out of the windows laptops, so that it can fruther milk more profits from this technology, after its Ultrabook fiasco! oh poor Intel!!![/citation]

Actually I like Intel. They done me no wrong since my first 486 back in the 90s. And like you said, Apple is no angel, but at least people aren't jumping off buildings to make make there components. Why you so mad about Thunderbolt? You heavily invested in the technology or something? Nice troll though and BTW roleplaying is the other way.
 

the CEO of AMD is ceasing the fight against intel, so what are you talking about? AMD doesn't have the funds or the inclination to make a new chip to rival the i7 and its future generations. if a big tech company were to buy AMD and invest big money into R&D, *then* AMD could compete with intel again. i'd rather it'd be google, but apple is suitable too.
 
v90k, any time a company gets too much of the market, like Intel, thay just sit on the technology or overprice it! Thunderbolt is an Intel technology that allows the PCI and displayport signals to be transmitted outside of a laptop or any computer and can be used to give a laptop an external expansion bus for any PCI compatable device, like a external GPU or CPU. AMD is working on a version of this based on AMD technology! Intel uses this dominence in the market to force OEMs to use the Intel based Thunderbolt, even though PCI signals can be Tunneled (sent) over other technologies such a ethernet, The cloud computing servers use PCI over 10 gigabit and faster etehrnet! beacuse Intel controlls too much of the market Intel can scare OEM's into only using thunderbolt and no other technology, this allows Intel to overprice their techology! Apple does not like being price gouged by Intel, and Apple is big enough to do something about it!
 
I'll go with AMD, I do no need Intels high priced chips, maybe ultra gamers can not live without Intel, but I can! Ultra Gamers if you need the performence get ready to pay big bucks to Intel for your gaming, but do not expect the rest of the computer using public to fund Intel's Arms race any more! Yes Intel won the x86 arms race using everybodys money for many years, but the average computer user does not need or use x86 anymore, Just look a the people using smart phones and tablets. Apple makes most of its billions selling non x86 devices, and Apple has more Billions than Intel! The new low power race to ARM is on, and AMD is also going to be developing ARM based solutions for the rest of us. I hope AMD can get their version of a high speed external PCI connection on the market to compete with Intel's thunderbolt!
 
This would be such a dumb move, the amount of money it cost Apple in RD would be crazy. Tho i guess they make it back in users buying new mac's and expiation card's. I wounder if AMD and nvidia would make supporting driver's

And people stop saying buy AMD as would end the x86 licence.
 
It seems since Steve Jobs Died, the company has been having more and more dubious moves. Its hard to imagine that one person can have such an influence over a company, but it sure looks like it is possible.
 
For those keeping track:

Original Mac: Motorola 68000 series CPU

Power Mac (original imac): IBM PowerPC series CPU

Current Mac: Intel x86 series CPU

Future Mac: "Apple" series CPU

They really don't like to stay with one platform for long do they?
Must be a bear to be a Mac developer.
 
chewy1963, not really a bear, unless you are an assembly language programmer, Most OSs and applications are developed in C, or C++ and a few other languages. and there are VMs for all the brands of CPU. There are loads of software librarys and conversion tools for porting native code from one CPU type to the other! And while the software is being ported, there are plenty of emulators available to ease the migration from one CPU brand to the other! The underlying machine code may change but the APIs remain the same, so most of the developers will not notice much difference!
 
PowerPC never was hopelessly outdated as some people have stated---IBM simply had difficulties delivering an affordable G5 that consumed low enough power for notebooks. Otherwise, we might be using Macs with POWER7+ cpus right now---which at least, would make Macs something other than a high priced x86 PC in a shiny case, IMHO.
 
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