6 ms·
Well for decades Intel's competitive advantage was the fabs. They executed well and it was hard to compete. There's been dozens of projects to compete with In
by sliken 8y ago
Well for decades Intel's competitive advantage was the fabs. They executed well and it was hard to compete. There's been dozens of projects to compete with Intel that failed to deliver, largely because they couldn't compete with Intel's fabs. I always felt bad for AMD, they often ended up competing with Intel using fabs that were a generation behind.
However the latest stumble does show the weakness of that approach. Nothing is stopping Intel from using a 3rd party fab, however every chip they farm out is one less to amortize their fab related R&D over.
- dzhiurgis 8y agoIs there any chance Apple would switch from Intel to AMD or it’s own x86 design made by TSMC? Do they need to licence x86 fiest or some sort of other good nuff reason?
- sliken 8y agoSeems pretty much impossible for anyone but AMD and Intel to make an x86 without causing IP related issues, at least in the USA. AMD did recently try to subvert this with a complex setup of partnerships for a CPU that will only be sold inside of China. Not sure what x86 has to offer Apple though. Their control of their platform would allow them to switch architectures, just like they have twice before. It's widely rumored that Apple will migrate their x86 products to Arm based products. They have invested pretty heavily in Arm.
- monocasa 8y agoI mean, x86_64 came out in 2000. The basic patents behind it should be expiring right about now.
- bonzini 8y agoThere are many patents around microarchitectural optimizations and also features like performance monitoring, virtualization, etc. It happened a few times to me to see a new, still undocumented, feature mentioned in Intel slides, and consult the patent to learn more about it.
- monocasa 8y agoIt's not like AMD and Intel agree on how to do performance monitoring and virtualization. What's a third implementations in the grand scheme of things?
- ksec 8y agoFor the roughly 150M New iPhone Unit sold every year, Apple needs just one SoC. One. And it could be reused next year. For the roughly 25M Mac sold every year, Apple needs lots of design with different TDP. Fanless TDP sub 10W for MacBook, 15 - 25W for MacBook Air like. 35W for MacBook Pro, Upto 100W for iMac, and up to 200W for iMac Pro and Mac Pro. That is around 5 design variation for the 25M unit. I still don't see how Apple would do it. Especially for the Pros, why would you design CPU aimed at 100W+ when they represent less than 2.5M unit per year. A lot easier just switch to AMD Zen 2 when the timing is right.
- abrowne 8y agoYou forgot the 15-inch, so make that six.
- tormeh 8y agoApple doesn't have the rights to design x86, and it will never* get them. Only Intel, AMD and Via can do that. Intel and AMD cross-license each other's patents. Not sure how Via got the rights, but I think a successful blind reverse engineering effort and a court was involved at some point. So Apple would either have to get licenses from Intel _and_ AMD or it would have to go the same route Via did. Both sound unlikely. At the same time, Apple has an excellent ARM architecture going. *Never is a dangerous word
- tromp 8y agoHow about Apple buying Via?
- AmericanChopper 8y agoApple actually has enough cash to buy Intel. Or AMD 10 times.
- tormeh 8y agoAMD's licenses from Intel have some strings attached. I think they basically cannot be bought while keeping the rights to x86. A bought AMD could possibly threaten to no longer grant licenses to Intel, but I'm sure Intel's lawyers have thought of that. Apple buying Intel could work, I guess (anti-trust might get involved), but I don't think it would be a wise investment. Apple doesn't have the volume to keep Intel busy alone.
- AmericanChopper 8y agoI don't think they'd do it either, or that they'd even need to. I just think it's kinda funny that Apple has enough cash to outright buy both Intel and AMD.
- scotty79 8y agoApple could buy Intel for the tech, AMD just to close it. Then stop selling CPUs or licences altogether. Just ramp up selling Mac's. Then PC dies. :)
- giobox 8y agoThey'd surely try an in-house ARM design long before considering an x86 chip of their own design, especially given Apple's enormous success with their own ARM designs in the cellphone space. Rumor mill has been suggesting such a move for a while too. Apple have successfully managed major instruction set transitions in the past, I think x86 to ARM would probably be the "easiest" one yet.
- snaky 8y agoIntel could bet on technologies that allow leverage their design-fab close relationships. Like integrating more non-CPU things into the CPU. FPGA, neural coprocessors, DSP, and stuff. FPGA is on the way, but while just couple together CPU and FPGA connecting them by QPI is great, but it's not the things I'm talking about. What we could wait from Intel is coprocessors real-time offloading, automagically done by (very sophisticated as on Intel x64) CPU control unit. Tight coupling might allow very fast (partial) reconfiguration of that FPGA-like coprocessors - and that's when you need your own fab to make that coupling really tight, and optimize everything down to the last bit.
- guiriduro 8y agoI've been wondering what Intel's moves will be now they own Altera (FPGA). Was tinkering with dev boards with Cyclone V FPGA with embedded ARM - but if Intel kills that then they lose me to Xilinx zynq, I'm not interested in the Intel ISA.
- snaky 8y agoIntel released Xeon Gold 6138P processor with a built-in Altera Arria 10 GX 1150 FPGA recently. Considering the all obstacles on the way to merge two big companies, that was almost fast.
- guiriduro 8y agoIt's good (and expected) that Intel merge their cores with Altera's FPGAs. My worry is that Intel will drop ARM (given the earlier StrongARM market exit) and leave the market that Altera created for FPGA-ARM SoCs. Of course, they can assuage that fear by making a concrete public commitment to a 5 year roadmap which includes ARM, for example. But in default of that, you have to wonder if investing in learning their tooling and ARM integration will be a waste of time. Which will be their loss, and Xilinx's gain.
- snaky 8y ago> the market that Altera created for FPGA-ARM SoCs Wasn't it Actel with SmartFusion?