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Intel sold low core count, repackaged CPUs for ridiculous prices for years, because they didn't have any competition. Now AMD's managed to claw black some of t

Intel sold low core count, repackaged CPUs for ridiculous prices for years, because they didn't have any competition. Now AMD's managed to claw black some of the market for itself, but it is still at a huge disadvantage compared to Intel. And AMD's only lucky that IBM insisted on two independent OEMs for its PC CPU's and that Intel wanted that deal bad enough. When it comes to the desktop CPU market itself, x86 has an unquestionable monopoly and no new player can attempt to design x86 chips without getting sued. But without x86 there's no point designing desktop chips in the first place.

scarface74 6y ago
Apple designs plenty of chips that have better performance than most computers shipping today. No one really cares about the desktop anymore. Apple alone sells more devices using its own chips than all PC sells combined and they are less than 15% of the market. Even when it comes to the better margin server market there is a move toward both AMD and custom ARM chips.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  For consumption? Sure. For creative work? Not so much. As for the performance, we don't really know yet. Single core benchmarks of a CPU with low core count may play out differently with tens or hundreds of cores, 5GHz frequencies, active cooling etc. You can't extrapolate benchmarks in a linear fashion. No doubt the A Series is impressive, however it hasn't really been tested in a "Mac Pro" yet, so we'd have to see. Then there's the issue of compatibility and I fail to see how Apple plans to break the Wintel monopoly on the desktop. Sure, it may be able to transition to ARM with the Mac, but unless its chips are available to everybody, (unlikely), there's hardly a route I see for Apple to end x86 dominance.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    There is plenty of software for “creative” work for iPads. Adobe in particular has shown how much better performance is on ARM chips than Intel. The vast majority of consumers are running Mac Pro level hardware. In fact, most computers that are sold are laptops. Why would Apple care about “dominance” in the PC market? It cares about going after the most profitable share of the market. It’s not like most PC makers are making money hand over fist selling consumer PCs. In the server market, both Amazon and Google are creating their own Arm chips for their data centers.
    - AsyncAwait 6y ago
      We're talking about x86 being a monopoly. Without Windows & major developer buy in, Apple's ARM platform would not affect x86 desktop dominance in a significant way. It would be a platform with a significant niche of macOS users, but x86 would remain dominant. Windows' deployed in places Mac never visited, like the majority of world's government institutions, schools, (Chromebooks aren't big outside U.S. & Western Europe). You may argue that Apple will have the "high-value" market, but in terms of sheer numbers I don't see them competing with x86 anytime soon. As for the iPad being "pro", once you're able to develop serious software on the device itself, we may have a discussion, (I am aware of rumors that XCode is present in iPad OS 14, really curious about that). The existing "Pro" apps still lag behind desktop in many areas and no serious programmer or video editor uses iPad OS full time. To be clear, am not doubting Apple's ARM chips being really competent, just doubt it will unseat x86 on the desktop. As for ARM on the server, probably eventually it will be the majority, but I'd guess another decade. Current efforts are more experiments than anything. My fear is also that if something does displace x86, it won't be a clearly superior, relatively open platform to develop for, but rather a patchwork of workload specific vendor ARM chips with entirely proprietary ways to interact with them. In that scenario, I'd rather take x86.
      - scarface74 6y ago
        Despite the HN bubble, there are a lot bigger markets for pro users than developers. I would venture to say that from a profit motive, it makes little sense to bring development to the iPad. There is no money in development tools. For places that must have bespoke internal apps, a lot of them are moving toward dumb clients and some type of Citrix solution. In terms of “sheer numbers”, the desktop market is minuscule, the laptop market could easily go to ARM if MS could ever figure out a good transition strategy, and the server market runs Linux where power is big as important as overall power consumption. Don’t you think that Intel would rather be in ARMs position than what it is now? I don’t have numbers on the server market, but outside of that Apple ships more chips than Intel. Edit: this was just submitted to HN showing the performance of Intel chips to Amazon’s custom designed ARM chips. https://blog.min.io/intel_vs_gravitron/ https://blog.min.io/intel_vs_gravitron/

scarface74 6y ago

Apple designs plenty of chips that have better performance than most computers shipping today. No one really cares about the desktop anymore. Apple alone sells more devices using its own chips than all PC sells combined and they are less than 15% of the market. Even when it comes to the better margin server market there is a move toward both AMD and custom ARM chips.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
For consumption? Sure. For creative work? Not so much. As for the performance, we don't really know yet. Single core benchmarks of a CPU with low core count may play out differently with tens or hundreds of cores, 5GHz frequencies, active cooling etc. You can't extrapolate benchmarks in a linear fashion. No doubt the A Series is impressive, however it hasn't really been tested in a "Mac Pro" yet, so we'd have to see. Then there's the issue of compatibility and I fail to see how Apple plans to break the Wintel monopoly on the desktop. Sure, it may be able to transition to ARM with the Mac, but unless its chips are available to everybody, (unlikely), there's hardly a route I see for Apple to end x86 dominance.
- scarface74 6y ago
  There is plenty of software for “creative” work for iPads. Adobe in particular has shown how much better performance is on ARM chips than Intel. The vast majority of consumers are running Mac Pro level hardware. In fact, most computers that are sold are laptops. Why would Apple care about “dominance” in the PC market? It cares about going after the most profitable share of the market. It’s not like most PC makers are making money hand over fist selling consumer PCs. In the server market, both Amazon and Google are creating their own Arm chips for their data centers.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    We're talking about x86 being a monopoly. Without Windows & major developer buy in, Apple's ARM platform would not affect x86 desktop dominance in a significant way. It would be a platform with a significant niche of macOS users, but x86 would remain dominant. Windows' deployed in places Mac never visited, like the majority of world's government institutions, schools, (Chromebooks aren't big outside U.S. & Western Europe). You may argue that Apple will have the "high-value" market, but in terms of sheer numbers I don't see them competing with x86 anytime soon. As for the iPad being "pro", once you're able to develop serious software on the device itself, we may have a discussion, (I am aware of rumors that XCode is present in iPad OS 14, really curious about that). The existing "Pro" apps still lag behind desktop in many areas and no serious programmer or video editor uses iPad OS full time. To be clear, am not doubting Apple's ARM chips being really competent, just doubt it will unseat x86 on the desktop. As for ARM on the server, probably eventually it will be the majority, but I'd guess another decade. Current efforts are more experiments than anything. My fear is also that if something does displace x86, it won't be a clearly superior, relatively open platform to develop for, but rather a patchwork of workload specific vendor ARM chips with entirely proprietary ways to interact with them. In that scenario, I'd rather take x86.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      Despite the HN bubble, there are a lot bigger markets for pro users than developers. I would venture to say that from a profit motive, it makes little sense to bring development to the iPad. There is no money in development tools. For places that must have bespoke internal apps, a lot of them are moving toward dumb clients and some type of Citrix solution. In terms of “sheer numbers”, the desktop market is minuscule, the laptop market could easily go to ARM if MS could ever figure out a good transition strategy, and the server market runs Linux where power is big as important as overall power consumption. Don’t you think that Intel would rather be in ARMs position than what it is now? I don’t have numbers on the server market, but outside of that Apple ships more chips than Intel. Edit: this was just submitted to HN showing the performance of Intel chips to Amazon’s custom designed ARM chips. https://blog.min.io/intel_vs_gravitron/ https://blog.min.io/intel_vs_gravitron/