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I think the difference here is that Microsoft used essentially an off the shelf phone cpu with some minor mods where as Apple built their cpu from the ground up

I think the difference here is that Microsoft used essentially an off the shelf phone cpu with some minor mods where as Apple built their cpu from the ground up. It's got a lot of stuff shared with the Axx processors, but seems to be more targeted at laptops with 10+W tdp not phones. Just now have to see if Qualcomm or someone else can pull the finger out and build a laptop/desktop processor on Arm.

smileybarry 6y ago
I hope Microsoft eventually make a "real" chip instead of the Qualcomm 8cx rebrands known as SQ1/SQ2. I wanted to buy a Surface Pro X but performance was a showstopper, not to mention the weird price increase.
- tiernano 6y ago
  Not sure it will be Microsoft building the chip... unlike Apple, they don't have a big enough market for it. Unless they use it in their cloud or Xbox line. The surface line is too small... now, Qualcomm going and building a bigger, faster chip to compete with Apple might be more reasonable. And if Microsoft put their weight behind it and add that security stuff mentioned earlier in the week, allowed windows on Arm to be purchasable by end users and maybe, just maybe, added windows server support, we might be getting there...
  - dangus 6y ago
    I basically said the same that you did. Interestingly, making a custom Microsoft chip for Xbox is a proposition that I haven’t heard before. It could provide some of the volume needed to justify custom designs. But still, the Xbox is not iPhone volume, and you can kind of see that both consoles have architectures that are barely different than a standard x86 PC these days. Their AMD hardware is best described as semi-custom, perhaps not unlike the surface SOC. And here’s the other thing, designing your own chip isn’t a guarantor of better performance. A great demonstrator of that concept is Qualcomm. There really isn’t much reason that Qualcomm’s chips can’t be just as impressive running Android as Apple’s chips are at running iOS. I mean, they KNOW that Qualcomm smartphone chips basically just run Android and nothing else. So why aren’t Qualcomm chips blasting Intel in benchmarks? (I will say, Qualcomm’s improvement line is still moving faster than Intel - but there’s still not much explanation as to why Apple is so far ahead in the first place. From the outside it seems to basically boil down to enlightened management and engineering.) So Microsoft could sink tens of billions of dollars and years into chip design and basically end up with “something that’s just about as good as Intel” rather than Apple’s basically perfectly executed decade of hardware R&D.
    - macintux 6y ago
      As to why Qualcomm can’t match Apple, I think a lot of it boils down to vertical integration. Apple can create software targeting the hardware and hardware targeting the software. Qualcomm has no real control over Android, and no control over what its customers add to their phones.
- dangus 6y ago
  They will never do it because they don’t have Apple’s massive scale. Some quick googling tells me: Surface Q2 2020 revenue is estimated at $2 billion. iPhone brings a little less than $200 billion a year (so probably a variation of something shy of $50 billion a quarter) (2019) Mac brings in $25 billion a year (2019) iPad brings in $21 billion a year (2019) So basically, Microsoft has a hardware business 1/10th the size of Apple’s Mac business. Which means it’s less than 1/100th the size of Apple’s total hardware business (and technically, I didn’t even include wearables, speakers, Apple TV, and other side businesses that use Apple-designed chips). It is very possible that Apple brings in more revenue selling Apple TV’s than Microsoft does selling Surface products. Given its low price, I doubt it, but if that was a true fact it wouldn’t shock me at all.

smileybarry 6y ago

I hope Microsoft eventually make a "real" chip instead of the Qualcomm 8cx rebrands known as SQ1/SQ2. I wanted to buy a Surface Pro X but performance was a showstopper, not to mention the weird price increase.

tiernano 6y ago
Not sure it will be Microsoft building the chip... unlike Apple, they don't have a big enough market for it. Unless they use it in their cloud or Xbox line. The surface line is too small... now, Qualcomm going and building a bigger, faster chip to compete with Apple might be more reasonable. And if Microsoft put their weight behind it and add that security stuff mentioned earlier in the week, allowed windows on Arm to be purchasable by end users and maybe, just maybe, added windows server support, we might be getting there...
- dangus 6y ago
  I basically said the same that you did. Interestingly, making a custom Microsoft chip for Xbox is a proposition that I haven’t heard before. It could provide some of the volume needed to justify custom designs. But still, the Xbox is not iPhone volume, and you can kind of see that both consoles have architectures that are barely different than a standard x86 PC these days. Their AMD hardware is best described as semi-custom, perhaps not unlike the surface SOC. And here’s the other thing, designing your own chip isn’t a guarantor of better performance. A great demonstrator of that concept is Qualcomm. There really isn’t much reason that Qualcomm’s chips can’t be just as impressive running Android as Apple’s chips are at running iOS. I mean, they KNOW that Qualcomm smartphone chips basically just run Android and nothing else. So why aren’t Qualcomm chips blasting Intel in benchmarks? (I will say, Qualcomm’s improvement line is still moving faster than Intel - but there’s still not much explanation as to why Apple is so far ahead in the first place. From the outside it seems to basically boil down to enlightened management and engineering.) So Microsoft could sink tens of billions of dollars and years into chip design and basically end up with “something that’s just about as good as Intel” rather than Apple’s basically perfectly executed decade of hardware R&D.
  - macintux 6y ago
    As to why Qualcomm can’t match Apple, I think a lot of it boils down to vertical integration. Apple can create software targeting the hardware and hardware targeting the software. Qualcomm has no real control over Android, and no control over what its customers add to their phones.
dangus 6y ago
They will never do it because they don’t have Apple’s massive scale. Some quick googling tells me: Surface Q2 2020 revenue is estimated at $2 billion. iPhone brings a little less than $200 billion a year (so probably a variation of something shy of $50 billion a quarter) (2019) Mac brings in $25 billion a year (2019) iPad brings in $21 billion a year (2019) So basically, Microsoft has a hardware business 1/10th the size of Apple’s Mac business. Which means it’s less than 1/100th the size of Apple’s total hardware business (and technically, I didn’t even include wearables, speakers, Apple TV, and other side businesses that use Apple-designed chips). It is very possible that Apple brings in more revenue selling Apple TV’s than Microsoft does selling Surface products. Given its low price, I doubt it, but if that was a true fact it wouldn’t shock me at all.