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Apple Reportedly Looking To Move From Intel To ARM Processors (Very unlikely?)

15 points by EwanToo 16y ago

pilif 16y ago
I hope this stays a rumor. While I certainly prefer Mac OS to Windows, there's still some development left to be done under Windows (Windows CE based barcode scanners) and there are still more games available for Windows than for the Mac. Right now I can do the windows development in VMWare at acceptable speeds and the gaming in bootcamp at excellent speeds. If they move to ARM, that means no more gaming with Bootcamp and very, very slow development if VMWare should decide to even begin emulating Intel processors. This would possibly force me to move away from Macs again which I would really, really hate to have to do. Please, Apple, think this through before rushing it.
- AllenKids 16y ago
  I think this is just a far fetched rumor. But, didn't Microsoft just demo Windows running on ARM and supposedly Windows 8 will be native on both architectures?
nextparadigms 16y ago
This is the original article: http://semiaccurate.com/2011/05/05/apple-dumps-intel-from-laptop-lines/ http://semiaccurate.com/2011/05/05/apple-dumps-intel-from-la... "Now you realize why Apple is desperately searching for fab capacity from Samsung, Global Foundries, and TSMC. Intel doesn’t know about this particular change of heart yet, which is why they are dropping all the hints about wanting Apple as a foundry customer. Once they realize that Apple will be fabbing ARM chips at the expense of x86 parts, they may not be so eager to provide them wafers on advanced processes."
metageek 16y ago
A more plausible direction, which could have been twisted into this rumor, would be an iPad with a keyboard. It could invade the laptop niche, without the support horrors of introducing an incompatible Mac.
DanBlake 16y ago
ARM's only advantage over x86 is power usage and licensing costs. In every other factor, x86 absolutely blows it away. Alot of the newer tech coming from intel is very, very sexy as well. ARM has its place and is making great strides. But I for one wont be buying a ARM apple anytime soon.
- MatthewPhillips 16y ago
  Intel's newer tech is all vaporware though.
- protomyth 16y ago
  Customization and access to the actual bus are pretty big also.
- wladimir 16y ago
  Another advantage of ARM is a simpler and more straightforward instruction set, unburdened by level after level of legacy. This makes both compilers and chips simpler, more efficient, easier to design and less bug-prone. There is nothing superior about x86, the Intel advantage is not because of the instruction set but because of Intel's design/production processes. If Intel produced ARM chips they'd blow everything away.
ssp 16y ago
Part of this is probably Apple trolling Intel, but this one is pretty believable because Apple generally don't care about protecting their developers' investments, and because they can design ARM chips themselves.
nextparadigms 16y ago
I think it's more likely Apple moves to ARM for Macs than moving from ARM to Intel chips for iPhones and iPads, like it was rumored a few days ago. ARM chips will be powerful enough for Apple notebooks in a couple of years, so I could definitely see an ARM chip in a future Macbook Air sometime in the next 2 years.
- sasvari 16y ago
  it might also be that Intel will gain some momentum with the recent introduction of their new 3D transistor approach leaving ARM behind even in regard to power consumption. this could discourage apple from making a major processor switch again, especially with the high overall costs (compatibility etc.) a switch would introduce.
  - nextparadigms 16y ago
    Intel's big breakthrough with the 3D chips is that they can continue Moore's Law at a steady pace, even when they can't shrink the transistors anymore. But it's not a breakthrough in performance. So in regards to that they are still behind ARM as always. Intel is still moving at Moore's Law's pace, not faster. For now at least, ARM chips seem to be moving faster, doubling in performance every 12 months. I think Apple is planning to move to ARM once they have their (most likely) quad core A6 chip.
    - jcarreiro 16y ago
      > But it's not a breakthrough in performance. The tri-gate transistors have lower gate delays (they can switch more quickly) and can operate with lower voltages. How is that not a breakthrough in performance?
      - nextparadigms 15y ago
        It's mostly a performance improvement along Moore's Law. Are you saying that now with the tri-gate Intel's chips will double in power every 12 months or every 6 months? And if this is just a one time only "big" jump in performance, then even if it's 100% increased performance over sandy bridge, it's still not that much. ARM chips double in performance every 12 months. That's my issue with this. Because most people seem to think Ivy Bridge puts Intel so much closer to ARM, but it doesn't. Let's say that without 3D, the jump from 32nm to 22nm would give them 30% increased energy efficiency. Now with the 3D it gives them 50% increase, so an additional 20%. As I said,the jump in performance is nice but not a world changer.
melling 16y ago
We can't be more than a few years away from the iPad or iPhone becoming a full computer. Slide it next to a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and it transforms into a desktop.
- zyb09 16y ago
  Not unless they significantly open up iOS.
  - mambodog 16y ago
    Your definition of what constitutes a "full computer" may differ greatly from that of a regular, non-technical user.
    - tomjen3 16y ago
      Can you run skype in the background while browsing a website in iOS? If not, it isn't really a real computer.
      - refulgentis 16y ago
        Not sure you were asking seriously, but yes, since July of last year. http://blogs.skype.com/en/2010/07/iphone_multitasking_3g.html http://blogs.skype.com/en/2010/07/iphone_multitasking_3g.htm...
        tomjen3 16y ago
        Okay that surprised me, I assumed it was only allowed for music playing.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
    - zyb09 15y ago
      Well yes, but either it's a "full computer" and fulfills every bodys needs and wishes, or it's not a full computer...
mberning 16y ago
It seems unlikely for high end laptops and desktops. Intel continues to dominate that performance category and doesn't show any sign of letting up. When it comes time to crunch hours upon hours of video and audio you are going to want a high end Intel processor. The lower end portables in Apple's lineup I can definitely see incorporating ARM processors.
- EwanToo 16y ago
  I agree - a Macbook Air and an iMac running iOS makes some sense, but not things like the Macbook Pro and the Mac Pro - tools like Photoshop (and even things like iMovie) would be crippled by the reduced CPU power.
- nextparadigms 16y ago
  That's exactly what I think, too. Obviously they won't start putting ARM chips in iMacs and Macbook Pro's anytime soon. But a quad core ARM chip in a Macbook Air would be good enough for most people. It's not like Macbook Air has the latest Intel chips in it or have a very high clock frequency anyway.
primeMover2010 16y ago
.. original post on semiaccurate is filed under the category "humor" and backed by the "fact" that previous rumours mentioned on sa turned out to be "true".
Construct 16y ago
It seems very unlikely to me that they'd switch the MacBook line to ARM and rely on an emulation layer to run current applications. ARM processors are getting faster all of time, but catching up to full Intel CPUs is going to be a very difficult task. Meanwhile, Apple would have to support ARM-based MacBooks and Intel-based workstations until ARM became fast enough to replace workstation-level processors. While software makers caught up to the new architecture, MacBooks would lose much of their 'desktop replacement' status unless they truly could emulate x86 and x64 code with impressive speed. I really doubt that Apple would split the architectures of their laptop and desktop lines.
- nextparadigms 16y ago
  If Microsoft can move to ARM, so can Apple. ARM chips don't have to beat Intel's most powerful chips from the start. They just need to get good enough for a Macbook Air, and then transition them to the other notebooks once they become more powerful over the coming years.
  - ecuzzillo 16y ago
    A key selling point of the Air is that it is a full-fledged Mac computer. If it has to run normal Mac applications in an emulation layer, which will undoubtedly be slow because the Air's processor is not powerful, this will not be true.
- seanm 16y ago
  They've already switched platforms twice (68XX->PPC, PPC->i386) pretty successfully, why can't they ship ARM/i386 fat binaries? Also, this is the whole endgame of the A* series of chips that are currently in the phone and iPad. Whose to say that the A5 or A6 won't be multicore laptop/desktop chips? Apple would be fools to tie their future Intel's roadmap if they can possibly avoid it. It's not like Apple buys in sufficient quantities to force Intel to meet their specific requirements in chip designs, and even if they did, there would still be a year turnaround to get something from Intel to market. Imagine if the iPad was dependent on the Intel Atom? We never would have seen the iPad. (btw. an iPad based on the Atom was an actual early prototype according to a friend of a friend that I have no reason to disbelieve).
jamaicahest 16y ago
Please don't change the title of the article when submitting it, to argue your point. Make a comment instead.
demallien 16y ago
At first look, there would appear to be two substantial roadblocks to this happening. The first is simply performance. For computers (as opposed to iPads) performance is king, and Intel is the undisputed champion of performance, at least at the moment. We would need to see substantial advances in performance by ARM manufacturers that we just aren't seeing yet - maybe NVidia has the capacity to make it happen? The second problem is that trying to take an application that runs on a powerful Intel chip, and then emulate the Intel instruction set on an ARM chip would be just diabolically slow. Apple have already changed the processor family twice for the Mac (68000->PowerPC, PowerPC->Intel), but in both cases the new architecture was substantially more powerful than the predecessor. That is not the case with a transition from Intel to ARM. Of course, this time around there is a potential game-changer, the Mac App Store. Applications built for the App Store are at least in theory very easy to rebuild for another CPU architecture, and then push to users. You have an app bought for your Intel Mac, you "upgrade" to an ARM Mac, and the App Store automatically grabs the ARM version of your software for you. Still, the two problems are showstoppers, each in its own right. Power has to improve substantially, and the Mac App Store needs to cement itself as the way to distribute software on the Mac before any such transition could be envisaged. Which is not to say that Apple doesn't already have a build of Mac OSX running on an ARM motherboard - indeed I would think it likely that they do have such a beast in the lab - but its purpose would be more as a bargaining chip with Intel, and as an interesting future direction, rather than as an actual product.
- protomyth 16y ago
  > Performance is king Not so much for laptops. Given the existence and usage of the Atom, there are plenty of people that would be fine with battery life, heat, and weight changes that could be brought by the ARM. If the Macbook / Macbook Air switched to ARM (I would guess an A-15 Cortex), then they would fit in fine and app developers would get their software recompiled. Heck, cross platform developers need to be ready for W8 on ARM.
  - demallien 16y ago
    I don't think that Apple see the world that way. If I'm reading the Steve Jobs tealeaves correctly, from Apple's perspective anyone that is happy with an Atom-based laptop today is tomorrow's iPad user, and Macs are going to be reserved for those cases where you really need some power under the hood.
mahrain 16y ago
Apple was on Motorola 68k for some 10 years, then on PowerPC for some 10 years and now they're five years on Intel. If this is a pattern, they may be working on the "next big thing" in a lab somewhere. We know that OSX is very welcoming to architectures, with it's NeXT roots supporting four architectures simultaneously. A situation of a low-power ARM and high-performance Intel similarly to the dual-GPU architecture seems more likely.
joev 16y ago
Consider that Apple has neglected the non-Pro MacBook for quite a while: it still uses a Core 2 Duo processor, and the MacBook Pro line includes a small-form-factor 13" machine that uses the i5 and i7 chips. If this rumor has any legs, I can definitely imagine Apple moving to ARM for the MacBook Air and MacBook, to which will greatly benefit in terms of battery life and size along with its iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV bretheren. Most of these customers will be using the App Store, so the "fat binary" problem is probably much less of an issue, since Apple can mandate that submitted apps must be bundled for both platforms, which shouldn't be much of a problem if XCode supports it. They will remain with Intel for the MacBook Pro and desktop lines, for customers who need the CPU power, and are less sensitive to power usage.

15 points by EwanToo 16y ago

pilif 16y ago

I hope this stays a rumor. While I certainly prefer Mac OS to Windows, there's still some development left to be done under Windows (Windows CE based barcode scanners) and there are still more games available for Windows than for the Mac. Right now I can do the windows development in VMWare at acceptable speeds and the gaming in bootcamp at excellent speeds. If they move to ARM, that means no more gaming with Bootcamp and very, very slow development if VMWare should decide to even begin emulating Intel processors. This would possibly force me to move away from Macs again which I would really, really hate to have to do. Please, Apple, think this through before rushing it.

AllenKids 16y ago
I think this is just a far fetched rumor. But, didn't Microsoft just demo Windows running on ARM and supposedly Windows 8 will be native on both architectures?

nextparadigms 16y ago

This is the original article: http://semiaccurate.com/2011/05/05/apple-dumps-intel-from-laptop-lines/ http://semiaccurate.com/2011/05/05/apple-dumps-intel-from-la... "Now you realize why Apple is desperately searching for fab capacity from Samsung, Global Foundries, and TSMC. Intel doesn’t know about this particular change of heart yet, which is why they are dropping all the hints about wanting Apple as a foundry customer. Once they realize that Apple will be fabbing ARM chips at the expense of x86 parts, they may not be so eager to provide them wafers on advanced processes."

metageek 16y ago

A more plausible direction, which could have been twisted into this rumor, would be an iPad with a keyboard. It could invade the laptop niche, without the support horrors of introducing an incompatible Mac.

DanBlake 16y ago

ARM's only advantage over x86 is power usage and licensing costs. In every other factor, x86 absolutely blows it away. Alot of the newer tech coming from intel is very, very sexy as well. ARM has its place and is making great strides. But I for one wont be buying a ARM apple anytime soon.

MatthewPhillips 16y ago
Intel's newer tech is all vaporware though.
protomyth 16y ago
Customization and access to the actual bus are pretty big also.
wladimir 16y ago
Another advantage of ARM is a simpler and more straightforward instruction set, unburdened by level after level of legacy. This makes both compilers and chips simpler, more efficient, easier to design and less bug-prone. There is nothing superior about x86, the Intel advantage is not because of the instruction set but because of Intel's design/production processes. If Intel produced ARM chips they'd blow everything away.

ssp 16y ago

Part of this is probably Apple trolling Intel, but this one is pretty believable because Apple generally don't care about protecting their developers' investments, and because they can design ARM chips themselves.

nextparadigms 16y ago

I think it's more likely Apple moves to ARM for Macs than moving from ARM to Intel chips for iPhones and iPads, like it was rumored a few days ago. ARM chips will be powerful enough for Apple notebooks in a couple of years, so I could definitely see an ARM chip in a future Macbook Air sometime in the next 2 years.

sasvari 16y ago
it might also be that Intel will gain some momentum with the recent introduction of their new 3D transistor approach leaving ARM behind even in regard to power consumption. this could discourage apple from making a major processor switch again, especially with the high overall costs (compatibility etc.) a switch would introduce.
- nextparadigms 16y ago
  Intel's big breakthrough with the 3D chips is that they can continue Moore's Law at a steady pace, even when they can't shrink the transistors anymore. But it's not a breakthrough in performance. So in regards to that they are still behind ARM as always. Intel is still moving at Moore's Law's pace, not faster. For now at least, ARM chips seem to be moving faster, doubling in performance every 12 months. I think Apple is planning to move to ARM once they have their (most likely) quad core A6 chip.
  - jcarreiro 16y ago
    > But it's not a breakthrough in performance. The tri-gate transistors have lower gate delays (they can switch more quickly) and can operate with lower voltages. How is that not a breakthrough in performance?
    - nextparadigms 15y ago
      It's mostly a performance improvement along Moore's Law. Are you saying that now with the tri-gate Intel's chips will double in power every 12 months or every 6 months? And if this is just a one time only "big" jump in performance, then even if it's 100% increased performance over sandy bridge, it's still not that much. ARM chips double in performance every 12 months. That's my issue with this. Because most people seem to think Ivy Bridge puts Intel so much closer to ARM, but it doesn't. Let's say that without 3D, the jump from 32nm to 22nm would give them 30% increased energy efficiency. Now with the 3D it gives them 50% increase, so an additional 20%. As I said,the jump in performance is nice but not a world changer.

melling 16y ago

We can't be more than a few years away from the iPad or iPhone becoming a full computer. Slide it next to a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and it transforms into a desktop.

zyb09 16y ago
Not unless they significantly open up iOS.
- mambodog 16y ago
  Your definition of what constitutes a "full computer" may differ greatly from that of a regular, non-technical user.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    Can you run skype in the background while browsing a website in iOS? If not, it isn't really a real computer.
    - refulgentis 16y ago
      Not sure you were asking seriously, but yes, since July of last year. http://blogs.skype.com/en/2010/07/iphone_multitasking_3g.html http://blogs.skype.com/en/2010/07/iphone_multitasking_3g.htm...
      - tomjen3 16y ago
        Okay that surprised me, I assumed it was only allowed for music playing.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - zyb09 15y ago
    Well yes, but either it's a "full computer" and fulfills every bodys needs and wishes, or it's not a full computer...

mberning 16y ago

It seems unlikely for high end laptops and desktops. Intel continues to dominate that performance category and doesn't show any sign of letting up. When it comes time to crunch hours upon hours of video and audio you are going to want a high end Intel processor. The lower end portables in Apple's lineup I can definitely see incorporating ARM processors.

EwanToo 16y ago
I agree - a Macbook Air and an iMac running iOS makes some sense, but not things like the Macbook Pro and the Mac Pro - tools like Photoshop (and even things like iMovie) would be crippled by the reduced CPU power.
nextparadigms 16y ago
That's exactly what I think, too. Obviously they won't start putting ARM chips in iMacs and Macbook Pro's anytime soon. But a quad core ARM chip in a Macbook Air would be good enough for most people. It's not like Macbook Air has the latest Intel chips in it or have a very high clock frequency anyway.

primeMover2010 16y ago

.. original post on semiaccurate is filed under the category "humor" and backed by the "fact" that previous rumours mentioned on sa turned out to be "true".

Construct 16y ago

It seems very unlikely to me that they'd switch the MacBook line to ARM and rely on an emulation layer to run current applications. ARM processors are getting faster all of time, but catching up to full Intel CPUs is going to be a very difficult task. Meanwhile, Apple would have to support ARM-based MacBooks and Intel-based workstations until ARM became fast enough to replace workstation-level processors. While software makers caught up to the new architecture, MacBooks would lose much of their 'desktop replacement' status unless they truly could emulate x86 and x64 code with impressive speed. I really doubt that Apple would split the architectures of their laptop and desktop lines.

nextparadigms 16y ago
If Microsoft can move to ARM, so can Apple. ARM chips don't have to beat Intel's most powerful chips from the start. They just need to get good enough for a Macbook Air, and then transition them to the other notebooks once they become more powerful over the coming years.
- ecuzzillo 16y ago
  A key selling point of the Air is that it is a full-fledged Mac computer. If it has to run normal Mac applications in an emulation layer, which will undoubtedly be slow because the Air's processor is not powerful, this will not be true.
seanm 16y ago
They've already switched platforms twice (68XX->PPC, PPC->i386) pretty successfully, why can't they ship ARM/i386 fat binaries? Also, this is the whole endgame of the A* series of chips that are currently in the phone and iPad. Whose to say that the A5 or A6 won't be multicore laptop/desktop chips? Apple would be fools to tie their future Intel's roadmap if they can possibly avoid it. It's not like Apple buys in sufficient quantities to force Intel to meet their specific requirements in chip designs, and even if they did, there would still be a year turnaround to get something from Intel to market. Imagine if the iPad was dependent on the Intel Atom? We never would have seen the iPad. (btw. an iPad based on the Atom was an actual early prototype according to a friend of a friend that I have no reason to disbelieve).

jamaicahest 16y ago

Please don't change the title of the article when submitting it, to argue your point. Make a comment instead.

demallien 16y ago

At first look, there would appear to be two substantial roadblocks to this happening. The first is simply performance. For computers (as opposed to iPads) performance is king, and Intel is the undisputed champion of performance, at least at the moment. We would need to see substantial advances in performance by ARM manufacturers that we just aren't seeing yet - maybe NVidia has the capacity to make it happen? The second problem is that trying to take an application that runs on a powerful Intel chip, and then emulate the Intel instruction set on an ARM chip would be just diabolically slow. Apple have already changed the processor family twice for the Mac (68000->PowerPC, PowerPC->Intel), but in both cases the new architecture was substantially more powerful than the predecessor. That is not the case with a transition from Intel to ARM. Of course, this time around there is a potential game-changer, the Mac App Store. Applications built for the App Store are at least in theory very easy to rebuild for another CPU architecture, and then push to users. You have an app bought for your Intel Mac, you "upgrade" to an ARM Mac, and the App Store automatically grabs the ARM version of your software for you. Still, the two problems are showstoppers, each in its own right. Power has to improve substantially, and the Mac App Store needs to cement itself as the way to distribute software on the Mac before any such transition could be envisaged. Which is not to say that Apple doesn't already have a build of Mac OSX running on an ARM motherboard - indeed I would think it likely that they do have such a beast in the lab - but its purpose would be more as a bargaining chip with Intel, and as an interesting future direction, rather than as an actual product.

protomyth 16y ago
> Performance is king Not so much for laptops. Given the existence and usage of the Atom, there are plenty of people that would be fine with battery life, heat, and weight changes that could be brought by the ARM. If the Macbook / Macbook Air switched to ARM (I would guess an A-15 Cortex), then they would fit in fine and app developers would get their software recompiled. Heck, cross platform developers need to be ready for W8 on ARM.
- demallien 16y ago
  I don't think that Apple see the world that way. If I'm reading the Steve Jobs tealeaves correctly, from Apple's perspective anyone that is happy with an Atom-based laptop today is tomorrow's iPad user, and Macs are going to be reserved for those cases where you really need some power under the hood.

mahrain 16y ago

Apple was on Motorola 68k for some 10 years, then on PowerPC for some 10 years and now they're five years on Intel. If this is a pattern, they may be working on the "next big thing" in a lab somewhere. We know that OSX is very welcoming to architectures, with it's NeXT roots supporting four architectures simultaneously. A situation of a low-power ARM and high-performance Intel similarly to the dual-GPU architecture seems more likely.

joev 16y ago

Consider that Apple has neglected the non-Pro MacBook for quite a while: it still uses a Core 2 Duo processor, and the MacBook Pro line includes a small-form-factor 13" machine that uses the i5 and i7 chips. If this rumor has any legs, I can definitely imagine Apple moving to ARM for the MacBook Air and MacBook, to which will greatly benefit in terms of battery life and size along with its iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV bretheren. Most of these customers will be using the App Store, so the "fat binary" problem is probably much less of an issue, since Apple can mandate that submitted apps must be bundled for both platforms, which shouldn't be much of a problem if XCode supports it. They will remain with Intel for the MacBook Pro and desktop lines, for customers who need the CPU power, and are less sensitive to power usage.