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> In the case How is the Macbook different to iPad Pro with Keyboard? Why is this a problem? Maybe they phase one of them out when they make the change? Or may

by Steko 7y ago

> In the case How is the Macbook different to iPad Pro with Keyboard? Why is this a problem? Maybe they phase one of them out when they make the change? Or maybe leave them as slightly differentiated products like the jumble of different laptops they already have. > Is Apple going to spend hundreds of millions a year just to invest into Mac Desktop / high performance CPU, for [Pro] This seems like a number you just made up. Here is a comparison of last year's A12 ($50?) and a 2017 Xeon 8176 ($5K?): https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/9midcx/apple_really_undersold_the_a12_cpu_its_almost/ https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/9midcx/apple_really_... > If Apple want to lower its reliance on Intel ( After it has all of its modem and wireless patents sort out with Intel ), why not just use AMD to leverages the price or switch to AMD. AMD gets the PR win for Apple using it, win win for both companies. Well they're fed up with Intel and there's the price gap but the primary reason is that the chip performance is rapidly converging so there is a massive opportunity to create a unified platform. Further they've been able to create a year plus performance gap between themselves and the competition in mobile on a commodity platform and with third party fab - if they do the same thing in desktop the Mac platform could really take off and they could go after the console market too.

ksec 7y ago
>This seems like a number you just made up. Here is a comparison of last year's A12 ($50?) and a 2017 Xeon 8176 ($5K?): You will have R&D just for the high TDP CPU, you don't just magically scale up your Phone CPU and expect it to work in a Server / Workstation. And that CPU has comparatively small volume. I.e The Unit Economics does't work. The only Unit Economics would work better is to follow a similar strategy as AMD, where you have a single die and they are replicated across the 45W to 220W product line. This is a small sub 100mm2 Die Size with 4M yearly unit. But that is excluding the complexity of I/O where EPYC had a 400mm2 I/O die.

by Steko 7y ago

ksec 7y ago

>This seems like a number you just made up. Here is a comparison of last year's A12 ($50?) and a 2017 Xeon 8176 ($5K?): You will have R&D just for the high TDP CPU, you don't just magically scale up your Phone CPU and expect it to work in a Server / Workstation. And that CPU has comparatively small volume. I.e The Unit Economics does't work. The only Unit Economics would work better is to follow a similar strategy as AMD, where you have a single die and they are replicated across the 45W to 220W product line. This is a small sub 100mm2 Die Size with 4M yearly unit. But that is excluding the complexity of I/O where EPYC had a 400mm2 I/O die.