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This is just bad all around. Not just for intel, but for the entire industry. I always prefer companies doing well because their products are successful, not be

This is just bad all around. Not just for intel, but for the entire industry. I always prefer companies doing well because their products are successful, not because their competitors fall down. More and more, Apple's timing on their switch to in-house ARM designs seems perfectly timed.

Spooky23 6y ago
The industry is different. Cloud is a huge force and the mega tech companies literally have more money than they can spend. We’re going to move towards AWS, Microsoft, Apple chips. It’s really hard for a company like Intel or AMD to serve hyper scale customers.
vbezhenar 6y ago
Apple should have switched to AMD instead. They would have almost perfect compatibility with Intel hardware and they would not need investing lots of money to develop chips. Now they either need to halt some Mac lines or develop all kinds of CPUs, from mobile (which they probably can do, because they should be similar enough to iPhones) to server-grade (which they have no experience at all). And there's no way Mac Pros would sell enough to offset development costs. I just don't understand how they are going to manage that situation.
- varispeed 6y ago
  I on the other hand hope that Apple will stay away from x86. If they started co-op with AMD it would be a matter of time AMD would have to produce special versions of processors that only Apple could purchase and end users wouldn't be able to do any repairs and a lot of manufacturing power would have been wasted on Macs making it more expensive for other people.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > it would be a matter of time AMD would have to produce special versions of processors that only Apple could purchase How is that supposed to affect anybody else who is still buying the regular stuff, or be better for Apple customers than the same thing but with an architecture transition and the inability to natively virtualize the x64 editions of Windows and Linux? > and a lot of manufacturing power would have been wasted on Macs making it more expensive for other people. Apple and AMD are both TSMC customers. They come out of the same fabs.
    - varispeed 6y ago
      > How is that supposed to affect anybody else who is still buying the regular stuff, or be better for Apple customers than the same thing but with an architecture transition and the inability to natively virtualize the x64 editions of Windows and Linux? For one, these CPUs would make the fabs busy, that means AMD would produce less CPUs for the "masses" and probably that would make it more expensive for everyone. I think the inability to virtualize would kind of fit the walled garden Apple is going for. > Apple and AMD are both TSMC customers. They come out of the same fabs. It's not like you can produce different CPUs at the same time. It requires setup and probably particular fab is able to produce one type of CPU in a batch. The TSMC resources are finite as well.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  They shouldn't. The main point of switching to their own silicon is to unify their entire product range onto the same architecture. Investing in a switch to AMD would be doing literally the opposite of what they're trying to achieve. Plus the shift of the big cloud players moving onto their own ARM chips means they're going to abandon x86 and move into a space that's already gaining traction in server grade. 'Now' they don't need to do anything but build the products. You act as if they only started working on the mac chips after they announced it. They'll have been planning this since the first A processors started performing really, really well.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > They would have almost perfect compatibility with Intel hardware and they would not need investing lots of money to develop chips. With the ARM transition, Apple has perfect compatibility with the iPhone which is arguable more important for Apple than Intel compatibility. Apple is already investing tons of money in CPU design, they are just doing it via proxy with Intel building the chips for them. Bringing it in-house means they can add the features they want to the CPU on the time frames that meet their needs. Going with AMD just shifts who they outsource their chip design to, it doesn't give them the sort of control over their architecture they want.
  - The_rationalist 6y ago
    " With the ARM transition, Apple has perfect compatibility with the iPhone which is arguable more important for Apple than Intel compatibility." You can as much emulate x86 on arm than you can emulate arm on x86, so the point is moot
    - ogre_codes 6y ago
      Indeed. Which begs the question. Why would Apple pay AMD or Intel when you just as easily emulate.
    - solarkraft 6y ago
      Except emulation has a good bit of a performance penalty.

Spooky23 6y ago

The industry is different. Cloud is a huge force and the mega tech companies literally have more money than they can spend. We’re going to move towards AWS, Microsoft, Apple chips. It’s really hard for a company like Intel or AMD to serve hyper scale customers.

vbezhenar 6y ago

Apple should have switched to AMD instead. They would have almost perfect compatibility with Intel hardware and they would not need investing lots of money to develop chips. Now they either need to halt some Mac lines or develop all kinds of CPUs, from mobile (which they probably can do, because they should be similar enough to iPhones) to server-grade (which they have no experience at all). And there's no way Mac Pros would sell enough to offset development costs. I just don't understand how they are going to manage that situation.

varispeed 6y ago
I on the other hand hope that Apple will stay away from x86. If they started co-op with AMD it would be a matter of time AMD would have to produce special versions of processors that only Apple could purchase and end users wouldn't be able to do any repairs and a lot of manufacturing power would have been wasted on Macs making it more expensive for other people.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > it would be a matter of time AMD would have to produce special versions of processors that only Apple could purchase How is that supposed to affect anybody else who is still buying the regular stuff, or be better for Apple customers than the same thing but with an architecture transition and the inability to natively virtualize the x64 editions of Windows and Linux? > and a lot of manufacturing power would have been wasted on Macs making it more expensive for other people. Apple and AMD are both TSMC customers. They come out of the same fabs.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    > How is that supposed to affect anybody else who is still buying the regular stuff, or be better for Apple customers than the same thing but with an architecture transition and the inability to natively virtualize the x64 editions of Windows and Linux? For one, these CPUs would make the fabs busy, that means AMD would produce less CPUs for the "masses" and probably that would make it more expensive for everyone. I think the inability to virtualize would kind of fit the walled garden Apple is going for. > Apple and AMD are both TSMC customers. They come out of the same fabs. It's not like you can produce different CPUs at the same time. It requires setup and probably particular fab is able to produce one type of CPU in a batch. The TSMC resources are finite as well.
breakfastduck 6y ago
They shouldn't. The main point of switching to their own silicon is to unify their entire product range onto the same architecture. Investing in a switch to AMD would be doing literally the opposite of what they're trying to achieve. Plus the shift of the big cloud players moving onto their own ARM chips means they're going to abandon x86 and move into a space that's already gaining traction in server grade. 'Now' they don't need to do anything but build the products. You act as if they only started working on the mac chips after they announced it. They'll have been planning this since the first A processors started performing really, really well.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> They would have almost perfect compatibility with Intel hardware and they would not need investing lots of money to develop chips. With the ARM transition, Apple has perfect compatibility with the iPhone which is arguable more important for Apple than Intel compatibility. Apple is already investing tons of money in CPU design, they are just doing it via proxy with Intel building the chips for them. Bringing it in-house means they can add the features they want to the CPU on the time frames that meet their needs. Going with AMD just shifts who they outsource their chip design to, it doesn't give them the sort of control over their architecture they want.
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  " With the ARM transition, Apple has perfect compatibility with the iPhone which is arguable more important for Apple than Intel compatibility." You can as much emulate x86 on arm than you can emulate arm on x86, so the point is moot
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    Indeed. Which begs the question. Why would Apple pay AMD or Intel when you just as easily emulate.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    Except emulation has a good bit of a performance penalty.