Bloomberg adds further weight to Apple Mac Arm CPU rumours

[HEXUS]

Apple has 3 Kalamata CPU designs in the pipeline. Will transition at the lower end first.

Read more.

[moshpit]

I wouldn't trust anything from Bloomberg if they said the sky was blue, after their Supermicro debacle. Refusal to provide sources, refusal to provide any proof at all that Chinese spy chips supposedly were infesting Supermicro boards made for several big companies. The accusation with complete refusal to even provide proof to Supermicro when asked so it could be tracked down and dealt with, shows it was irresponsible sensationalism at it's worst.

Quoting Bloomberg as a tech industry source is poor form now. Unless you really believe Supermicro is allowing China to spy? Conspiracy theory rubbish is what that is. Using them as a confirming source will bring this topic back up every time. Once a tech industry liar, always a tech industry liar. Trust is earned, not bought.

[lumireleon]

x86 is still superior due to its maturity

[3dcandy]

I was expecting this years ago.... after Intel started stalling. 8 cores within a small power envelope would help them with battery life and form factor

[LSG501]

x86 is still superior due to its maturity

I wouldn't necessarily agree with that, arm has been around in one form or another since acorn computers, 35 years ago.


In regards to Apple making their own arm 'laptop cpu's'... in all honesty that's been on the card since they signed up so they could make their own cpu's... they've even given adobe a heads up imo as they're reworking photoshop etc for arm cores already.

IMO it's always been on the cards for two reasons, bigger profit and ultimately they can't be straight up compared with windows pc's with essentially the same hardware. Do I think it's a good idea to be changing architecture again... not really but if they can make it as good/seamless as windows on arm (it's not 'that' bad), and I suspect they can considering their control over the OS and hardware, then I doubt the majority of apple users these days will even notice. The ones that might notice will be the professionals again but there's already issues in that department.

[Kato-2]

x86 is still superior due to its maturity

It doesn't really matter to Apple, the bulk of software developers for Apple are Arm based not x86 these days, they have good enough performing internal Arm hardware that be leveraged and reduce the dependency on Intel.

It also allows Apple to go back to being "special" and not just another x86 system.

[DevDrake]

x86 is still superior due to its maturity.

NOT - as a example of Intel the x86 CPUs contains a lot of unnecessary operations that takes the die.
also as pointed by LSG501 ARM is old as well.

Well, lets see how long they will last as ARM CPU based.
And then again RISCV lurking in the darkness

[[GSV]Trig]

This just a ploy to let Apple leverage the cost premium?
When they started using Intel you could build a rig with the same spec for a lot less, now they are looking at other CPU's that cant be done so they can charge what they want and profit a-hoy...

[ik9000]

Well, lets see how long they will last as ARM CPU based.
And then again RISCV lurking in the darkness

haven't people been saying that about RISC for some time now?

[Output]

With the x86 patents imminently expiring, I'm wondering if this is a false flag and that Apple's truly looking in that direction for their own chips instead. Particularly if they could license the x86_64 patents from AMD to add the 64-bit capability that is obviously needed these days.

Or perhaps it could actually even be some sort of mixture of them all in one (again, if they could license x86_64 from AMD)?

[Xlucine]

With the x86 patents imminently expiring, I'm wondering if this is a false flag and that Apple's truly looking in that direction for their own chips instead. Particularly if they could license the x86_64 patents from AMD to add the 64-bit capability that is obviously needed these days.

Or perhaps it could actually even be some sort of mixture of them all in one (again, if they could license x86_64 from AMD)?

The x86 patents expired decades ago? They only last 20 years in the US; the original patents are long gone but the modern additions are what keep up the barrier to entry

[Output]

The x86 patents expired decades ago? They only last 20 years in the US; the original patents are long gone but the modern additions are what keep up the barrier to entry

Maybe it's patents for some later extensions for it that are about to expire then.

Wherever I first heard it mentioned recently, I got the impression that it was thought that whatever was about to expire could be beneficial for any potential future chipmakers.

[3dcandy]

Thing for me is that Apple removing things like USB ports etc. (I'm generalising before someone flames me) means a lot of my friends (re:musicians) have simply not bought a new Mac. Many have actually bought a new Windows laptop at a lot less or gone ipad - and there's part of the conundrum. A laptop that acts like an ipad would be a winner for many people I know...

[DanceswithUnix]

And then again RISCV lurking in the darkness

That would possibly be the forward looking route, but I guess Apple want the same core in their laptops and tablets rather then requiring a new line for laptop/desktop use. Could they go RISC-V in phones? Maybe. But then an open ISA with an ability for them to add their own extensions as required would give Apple control as well as free up some licence fees, both things Apple would like.

haven't people been saying that about RISC for some time now?

I think the RISC-V architecture is just starting to gain momentum. People laughed at the idea that Linux would take over the world, yet other than Windows based PCs and the BSD based Apple products here we are. If RISC-V goes the same way for hardware, then that will shake things up quite a lot.

If you meant RISC rather than RISC-V, well the CISC boat sank some time back. If you want to program a modern x86 chip, you use register to register arithmetic, simple load/store instructions and generally treat it much like a RISC chip or you get a big performance hit. So that makes it like a badly designed, register starved RISC chip. I don't think any other CISC architectures are relevant these days. The 68000 is long gone, VAX is dead.

[philehidiot]

Thing for me is that Apple removing things like USB ports etc. (I'm generalising before someone flames me) means a lot of my friends (re:musicians) have simply not bought a new Mac. Many have actually bought a new Windows laptop at a lot less or gone ipad - and there's part of the conundrum. A laptop that acts like an ipad would be a winner for many people I know...

Indeed. The USB-C ports are probably the future but we're not there yet and it just felt to me like a way of sending the customer out with a million dongles. I bought an Air many moons ago partly as it had a mix of ports but in a compact package. Either go full tablet with a keyboard add on or make a laptop properly functional. I don't like this silly in between stuff. The pro kind of makes sense in that it'll often get docked where it needs to be BUT, what if someone wants to show you an idea on a USB stick and you don't have a dingledangledongle on you? Creatives share ideas and a laptop for a creative which can't natively accept the most common storage medium now in use is just so stunningly "bold" from Apple that it's gone beyond Barking and is now in Upney.

[3dcandy]

Indeed. The USB-C ports are probably the future but we're not there yet and it just felt to me like a way of sending the customer out with a million dongles. I bought an Air many moons ago partly as it had a mix of ports but in a compact package. Either go full tablet with a keyboard add on or make a laptop properly functional. I don't like this silly in between stuff. The pro kind of makes sense in that it'll often get docked where it needs to be BUT, what if someone wants to show you an idea on a USB stick and you don't have a dingledangledongle on you? Creatives share ideas and a laptop for a creative which can't natively accept the most common storage medium now in use is just so stunningly "bold" from Apple that it's gone beyond Barking and is now in Upney.

But USB-C pen drives etc. exist....
Just not as common - Apple's hatred of you being able to share your own data easily, God Forbid it's your data after all is only matched by Facebook's. For many it's just one hoop too many (better analogies exist I'm sure...)