Wednesday, June 24th 2020
Intel Gives its First Comments on Apple's Departure from x86
Apple on Monday formalized the beginning of its departure from Intel x86 machine architecture for its Mac computers. Apple makes up to 4 percent of Intel's annual CPU sales, according to a MarketWatch report. Apple is now scaling up its own A-series SoCs that use Arm CPU cores, up to performance levels relevant to Macs, and has implemented support for not just new and upcoming software ported to the new Arm machine architecture, but also software over form the iOS and iPadOS ecosystems on Mac, starting with its MacOS "Big Sur" operating system. We reached out to Intel for some of its first comments on the development.
In a comment to TechPowerUp, an Intel spokesperson said "Apple is a customer across several areas of our business, and we will continue to support them. Intel remains focused on delivering the most advanced PC experiences and a wide range of technology choices that redefine computing. We believe Intel-powered PCs—like those based on our forthcoming Tiger Lake mobile platform—provide global customers the best experience in the areas they value most, as well as the most open platform for developers, both today and into the future."
As we mentioned earlier, Apple only makes up a single-digit percentage of Intel's annual sales, and the loss of sales to Apple could mean more silicon that, in our opinion, Intel could divert to the DIY channel. Over the past two years, Intel was embattled with shortages in the DIY retail channel as the OEM channel soaked up the bulk of its silicon allocation.
Could Intel have done more to retain Apple? To begin answering this question, one must dig into possible reasons behind Apple's departure from Intel. Apple's industrial design, since the revolutionary MacBook (2016), has been toward thinner devices with more battery life, lesser compute on the client-end, and more on the cloud. The company sees a future in devices with iPad-like always-on availability, and battery life running into dozens of hours. Apple wants greater control over what its suppliers provide, to attain these goals.
While Intel has managed to bring SoC TDP down to 7 W thru 15 W with its 10 nm U-segment processors, these processors appear to be falling short of Apple's performance/Watt requirements. An example of chip design control Apple expects from its hardware suppliers can be found with AMD. The Sunnyvale-based firm supplies Apple with its most efficient bins of Radeon GPUs, and in cases such as the "Navi 12," Pro 5500, and Pro W5700X, even reserves graphics SKUs exclusive to Apple (not sold to its AIB channel).
In our opinion, Intel could have done more to retain Apple. The engineering department certainly rose to the occasion, developing "Lakefield." While performance numbers are still under the wraps, "Lakefield" is the kind of chip one would expect in an Apple portable - an extremely power-efficient client-segment processor capable of sub 1-Watt idle, high burst performance, and great customization flexibility thanks to its Foveros Packaging that lets system designers pick and choose the I/O components they want specific to their designs. On the other hand, the business-end of Intel may have fumbled with Apple. If designing chips that match Apple's requirements didn't work, Intel could have used the nuclear option - of pitching the x86 machine architecture itself.
Since its inception, Intel has licensed the x86 machine architecture to over a dozen companies. There are currently only two active licensees - AMD and VIA. The rest either withered away, or consolidated (VIA consolidated CenTaur and CYRIX). There have been no new licensees in at least the past 15 years (not if you don't count the sub-licensing of Zhaoxin by VIA or to THATIC by AMD). Apple could have been the first new x86 licensee in a generation, and with a little assistance, could have developed its own x86 SoCs. Apple pays for Unix in the era of Linux, and it would have surely indulged a well-crafted license deal with Intel.
Apple's departure from x86, despite amounting to a paltry percentage of Intel's sales, could reshape the client-computing segment. In our opinion, the success of the Arm machine architecture on Macs presents a greater threat to Intel than even x86 licensee AMD, as it could trigger other semiconductor firms with deep pockets and Arm licenses, such as NVIDIA and Samsung, to develop "high performance" Arm SoCs of their own, for thin-and-light notebooks. The "Wintel" era is long gone, and Microsoft is only too happy to indulge and grow its Windows-on-Arm ecosystem.
The future of Intel's client-segment silicon looks increasingly similar to that of Arm. Highly modular IP blocks, including from third-parties, integrate on innovative new packaging formats, such as Foveros, with an overwhelming focus on performance/Watt, thanks to hybrid cores, idle power-draw, battery life, and performance in bursts. A lot is riding on the success of the tiny "Lakefield."
In a comment to TechPowerUp, an Intel spokesperson said "Apple is a customer across several areas of our business, and we will continue to support them. Intel remains focused on delivering the most advanced PC experiences and a wide range of technology choices that redefine computing. We believe Intel-powered PCs—like those based on our forthcoming Tiger Lake mobile platform—provide global customers the best experience in the areas they value most, as well as the most open platform for developers, both today and into the future."
Could Intel have done more to retain Apple? To begin answering this question, one must dig into possible reasons behind Apple's departure from Intel. Apple's industrial design, since the revolutionary MacBook (2016), has been toward thinner devices with more battery life, lesser compute on the client-end, and more on the cloud. The company sees a future in devices with iPad-like always-on availability, and battery life running into dozens of hours. Apple wants greater control over what its suppliers provide, to attain these goals.
While Intel has managed to bring SoC TDP down to 7 W thru 15 W with its 10 nm U-segment processors, these processors appear to be falling short of Apple's performance/Watt requirements. An example of chip design control Apple expects from its hardware suppliers can be found with AMD. The Sunnyvale-based firm supplies Apple with its most efficient bins of Radeon GPUs, and in cases such as the "Navi 12," Pro 5500, and Pro W5700X, even reserves graphics SKUs exclusive to Apple (not sold to its AIB channel).
In our opinion, Intel could have done more to retain Apple. The engineering department certainly rose to the occasion, developing "Lakefield." While performance numbers are still under the wraps, "Lakefield" is the kind of chip one would expect in an Apple portable - an extremely power-efficient client-segment processor capable of sub 1-Watt idle, high burst performance, and great customization flexibility thanks to its Foveros Packaging that lets system designers pick and choose the I/O components they want specific to their designs. On the other hand, the business-end of Intel may have fumbled with Apple. If designing chips that match Apple's requirements didn't work, Intel could have used the nuclear option - of pitching the x86 machine architecture itself.
Since its inception, Intel has licensed the x86 machine architecture to over a dozen companies. There are currently only two active licensees - AMD and VIA. The rest either withered away, or consolidated (VIA consolidated CenTaur and CYRIX). There have been no new licensees in at least the past 15 years (not if you don't count the sub-licensing of Zhaoxin by VIA or to THATIC by AMD). Apple could have been the first new x86 licensee in a generation, and with a little assistance, could have developed its own x86 SoCs. Apple pays for Unix in the era of Linux, and it would have surely indulged a well-crafted license deal with Intel.
Apple's departure from x86, despite amounting to a paltry percentage of Intel's sales, could reshape the client-computing segment. In our opinion, the success of the Arm machine architecture on Macs presents a greater threat to Intel than even x86 licensee AMD, as it could trigger other semiconductor firms with deep pockets and Arm licenses, such as NVIDIA and Samsung, to develop "high performance" Arm SoCs of their own, for thin-and-light notebooks. The "Wintel" era is long gone, and Microsoft is only too happy to indulge and grow its Windows-on-Arm ecosystem.
The future of Intel's client-segment silicon looks increasingly similar to that of Arm. Highly modular IP blocks, including from third-parties, integrate on innovative new packaging formats, such as Foveros, with an overwhelming focus on performance/Watt, thanks to hybrid cores, idle power-draw, battery life, and performance in bursts. A lot is riding on the success of the tiny "Lakefield."
52 Comments on Intel Gives its First Comments on Apple's Departure from x86
Why is this kind of grandiose, emotional corporate bullsh** so common nowadays? Why can't they just say "we have many other areas to cover besides Apple"? Nobody cares about best experiences and the exciting future and all that cr@p. :kookoo:
Apple never had a problem opening up bits and pieces (even their OS kernel is open source) as long as you could only use those bits and pieces to bolster their ecosystem. By buying their hardware, paying a developer subscription to deploy your product or straight up selling it through their store.I don't think PR guys can speak plain English. It must be in their job description or something.
Not to mention their so-called Genius Bars, where pretty much every fault is beyond the dollar-store jacka**es Apple calls "technicians" to diagnose let alone fix, so almost every "repair" ends up being "replace the entire mainboard". Since everything in a MacBook is soldered to the mainboard - including your data drive - guess what, a mainboard replacement is horribly expensive! Never mind the pollution that Apple isn't creating because it sources components responsibly - it's creating pollution when it unnecessarily has to manufacture ENTIRE SYSTEMS to replace a single mainboard! Not to mention the millions of discarded Apple mainboards that could be made to work again with the replacement of a single component, but have to be discarded instead - which is the very reason why Apple is against right-to-repair legislation, because it means they wouldn't be able to rip off customers and create as much pollution.
Apple is a scam, and people who use its products should be ashamed of themselves.Because Apple has figured out that if you make your system open, someone who needs drivers for it will eventually write those drivers for free. Then Apple can claim their system supports SO MANY DEVICES, except of course that unless you are using official Apple drivers any problems you have are yours, not theirs. In fact, I'm willing to go further and say that if at any point you install a non-official driver on your system, Apple will declare any and all warranties null and void.
It's probably also an attempt to deflect from the numerous looming antitrust investigations around the App Store.
That's why all phones and tablets switched to built-in, non-replaceable batteries and nobody batted an eye. Our phones work just great, maybe exactly because everything is seamless and soldered together and you can't just open it and move s**t around to break it.
Why don't you go cry that your Intel CPU's don't have right to repair, why don't you have the right to repair your own transistors if something happens with them. It's called a black box. Some things can actually be built so well and reliable that you really shouldn't have the need to ever open and tinker with them. Millions of products are like that. Electronics in general aren't that prone to just breaking, if you have a good quality control in their production. Apple also coincidentally has an amazing quality control for all their products and uses highly binned parts.
The only reason electronics really EVER break is from water getting into them (or sometimes a much more serious design flaw). Not from dropping, not from heat or cold, not even from high pressure. Yea, if that's the only reason, maybe you should just try not to spill your drink on to them or throw your Mac into the bathtub, then it should theoretically work for decades. Only thing that should get a replacement every 10 years or so it the battery, and Apple coincidentally has an incredibly cheap battery replacement and recycling program where it costs just 125$ to replace and recycle your old battery outside of any warranty and they send it back to you. That's pretty good if you ask me.
Here's the point: you can cry all you want about right to repair, but people don't actually need it in most cases, unless it's something like a Mac Pro or a powerful desktop machine (which has replaceable parts). You don't need it for a laptop or anything below, those things should just work unless you do something really stupid. If you buy a 3000$ MacBook and spill coffee on it you are the jacka**s, I'm sorry. You should literally be a minimalist hipster at that point who has a completely clear desk with only the MacBook, it's your responsibility if it breaks at that point. Unless it's a faulty unit and fails inside warranty, but outside it's all on you. Something doesn't just become a faulty unit after two years of working perfectly.
Or this:
Got it - it's about control. About removing user choice.
The reason it's not stupid is that you have a lot or non-reparable things in your household. And some things are just better that way. If you could open everything up and tinker with it, all these modern designs wouldn't exist that you like so much. You have no idea how much tech is stuffed in a modern MacBook Pro in such a small space. If you would just use screws for everything instead of glue and solder, you'd have a much thicker and uglier machine. And for what? There's literally no sense in being paranoid that your phone will go off in flames for no good reason. How many people with modern electronics like phones experience that? You're not actually saving the planet with your paranoia.That doesn't prove anything. His videos are clickbait trash for people like you who hate anything with an Apple logo. Every video starts with some edgy joke about how you should never buy Apple although like 99.9% of his viewers probably never even owned an Apple product. Like I said in the argument that just got ignored by most here, electronics don't just break for no reason, they're HIGHLY reliable in the grand scheme of things. You post three broken Mac examples from some guy who repairs them and call this proof against what I say? NASA's Opportunity rover was expected by NASA to last 90 days on Mars but it exceeded that prediction by 16 years, 57 days and was fully functional up until that point, surviving countless sandstorms and radiation. That's the kind of toughness you expect from electronics. It's not a mechanical watch with moving and fragile parts, it's just not even the same species..
And that is exactly my own experience. I never had a phone just die for no reason, I dropped and crashed my phones on the ground. I dropped laptops to the ground and they worked fine. The worst than can happen are scuffs and scratches or a screen replacement. But really, if you're worried about cosmetics, just don't drop it. I used to lose my hats all the time as a kid but then I just learned not to lose them and now I haven't lost one in over 20 years. And you can learn not to drop s**t if you don't want scratches or broken glass, it's that easy.Right to repair is the stupidest name for it. Of course you have the right to repair yourself. You bought it! You can go out and become an expert and literally repair everything yourself. Louis can do it, so why can't you? I don't get that whining. You mean you don't get to keep your warranty, if you tinker with it yourself? That's a whole different argument and it's still silly to expect. But they can't literally stop you from repairing anything yourself, so have the right to repair, there you go! I just gave it to you. Maybe ask for something more specific next time or maybe tell Louis Rossmann who seems to be at the forefront of this argument. But then again, how would he make his money?This is your first post, so I'll give you a pass. Here's the real world: you only need to replace a battery on your laptop maybe once in its lifetime. 100$ where the manufacturer does it for you properly and sends it back and recycles your old battery is chump change compared to the cost of some of those MacBooks. That's really cheap actually and only has to be done once. Yea, real world my ass.I already made the argument for some things like PCs for editing and servers being repairable. Obviously cars too. But once cars become electric I don't see much of a reason. Like I don't see a reason for making it easy to replace the LED light bulbs in my desk lamp that's rated at 20 years lifespan! I know those thing will never go out after 3 months like old incandescent light bulbs, can you just except that at least? Now I can also just enjoy the thin, minimalist design. Because you know what, I know I won't need to replace that light bulb, so I don't care about it being non-replaceable. These light bulbs won't even exist in 20 years... They could make it replaceable and add a different cover and more screws and some more materials to make it safe to stick your hands in there, but that would be just a waste of those materials you're so afraid of wasting. Yea, I don't get how people can be so paranoid about their electronics. Maybe Louis Rossmann has something to say about it.
And the upgradability argument... Upgrade your RAM, updgrade your Storage on a laptop. Sure, OR just buy what you NEED in the first place. It's a laptop! Like if you're buying an i3 then you probably will never need 32GB or 8TB or storage. It's a laptop! Just buy a balanced system in the first place. Simply don't buy a 10-core processor in your laptop and only 8GB of RAM. It's a laptop! If you really need 64GB RAM, you're not the type of user who asks "do I need this upfront"? It's a laptop! Maybe kind of get what I'm saying here? Please, do your research up front before buying a $ 3k+ machine. And keep in mind, it's still just a laptop!
Your passive aggressive comments also show me that you're really itching to get in the ring. I'm waiting for your arguments.
It's not like being intelligent is a bad thing. ;)
This is no different and certainly not a surprise given how good Apple's in-house SOCs are.
Intel knows that they are being threatened in the CPU space, and thus, you see them starting to acquire other companies to diversify their portfolio. Their main competition from my perspective is actually ARM, and less of AMD for now. Bigger companies like Amazon and Apple, have been building their in house chip based off ARM processors. I am not surprise that Google is doing so as well. And as more starts transitioning to ARM based chips, Intel has got a lot to lose. In fact, I feel Intel's failure to transition to 10nm timely have cost them dearly because this basically acted as a catalyst for more companies to move away from Intel due to high cost, high power consumption (high heat), stagnant performance, over the last few years. To add on to the insult, the number of severe security flaws over the last 2 years is probably the last straw.
Play nice and be civil.
Have a nice evening and follow the Guidelines.
You have to weigh out the amount of extra material you'll have to use to make everything extremely repairable and upgradable against the actual benefit. Most people are somehow conditioned to be way more paranoid about their electronics breaking all of a sudden for no reason at all. This is quite ludicrous and doesn't happen nearly as often as people fear.
I can't even remember the last time some electronic product just stopped working for no reason since 2003 or something and that was an old CRT TV that got discolored and was probably made way before 2000. All my old LCD monitors still work that I have been buying since 2004 or so. I only threw my 15" and 17" LCD monitor away since they just go that old, not because they were broken. This is almost always how it works these days, you throw it away because it gets too old, not because it breaks. My first smartphone I bought still works just fine, it just has a 3" screen and is stuck on Android Gingerbread, so I would rather just throw it away. It sucks, but what do you suggest there? Macs for all their hate have an amazing track record for being used sometimes 10+ years, resold and bought second hand very frequently and continue to hold their value many more years than most laptops. I bet if you go to any big garbage pile you'll find many more cheapo notebooks that are way more repairable than MacBooks, but people just don't bother with them because maybe they are just garbage products in the first place like those old monitors I didn't want to use anymore. Even if they still worked just fine. Have you thought about that? At least Apple doesn't make their phones and tablets suddenly obsolete through software like everybody else does. Some others maybe are learning this right now but Apple has been supplying even their oldest products consistently with updates for years. That's every Android user's wet dream right there. Apple also makes products that you want to almost cherish and collect, that's how much the design is like a work of art. There's a totally different connection people can have with Apple products to the point where I would have no problem hanging them on my wall after they get too old. But at that point we really just need to advance recycling technology and use highly recyclable materials to really make some difference for the planet. We don't need a grand illusion about some "right to repair" that will suddenly solve everything. It really might just make things even worse coupled with a nice, warm feeling that you're doing something for the planet. Perfect!
TL;DR
That's the real problem that needs solving. How do we recycle these things, not how to make everything repairable that doesn't even break all that often. Again, think about all the EXTRA materials you have to put into all the things just to make everything repairable.
The simple truth is this is just about costs: Apple cuts costs by not having to support that many configurations while getting to charge whatever they want for the most minor of fixes.