Apple's next-gen Macs to have something special under the hood
A new generation of personal computers on the way from Apple Inc. may sport some of the most significant architectural changes since the Mac maker made the jump from PowerPC processors to those manufactured by Intel Corp., AppleInsider has learned.
As part of its move to Intel chips in early 2006, the Cupertino-based company largely abandoned its practice of using custom motherboard chipsets to support the primary CPU in its Macs. Instead, it began to rely on slightly tweaked versions of industry-standard chipsets offered by Intel to the broad range of PC manufacturers that develop Intel-powered systems.
For instance, while Apple's existing line of MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks are unique in that they run the Mac OS X operating system, they're architecturally based on the same run-of-the-mill processors and chipsets from Intel's Santa Rosa mobile platform also employed by Windows-supporting rivals, such as Dell and HP.
However, with Apple striving to maintain Mac sales growth of more than two times the industry average, it's again looking to differentiate the architecture of its personal computer systems through alternative technology that will afford it an advantage beyond the reach of its competition.
As such, people familiar with these plans say an upcoming generation of Macs, lead by a trio of redesigned notebooks, won't adopt the Montevina chipset announced as part of Intel's Centrino 2 mobile platform earlier this month. What's more, those same people suggest the chipset employed by the new wave of Macs may have little or nothing to do with Intel at all. (This should not be confused with the primary CPU, which will continue to come from Intel.)
Exactly what alternative Apple has chosen remains unclear. However it's believed that Intel, which declined to comment for this story, would need to have established a licensing agreement with the firm responsible for manufacturing an Intel-compatible chipset, be it Apple or one of the company's third party suppliers.
Assuming the chipsets in the new Macs are not based on Intel technology, that would leave Apple with only a handful of viable options. The company could return to a practice common during the years of PowerPC-based Macs in which it developed proprietary chipsets to support the primary processors in its systems.
Another option is that Apple could forge a relationship with one of the other established third party chipset manufacturers, such as NVidia, AMD or Via, in a move that would allow the company to build its next-generation systems using technology cherry-picked from the best of both worlds.
A move by Apple away from Intel chipsets may also be tied to concerns over the power-hungry nature of the chipmaker's more recent mobile chipsets. The Mac maker has been working to reduce the size and weight of its notebook offerings while simultaneously extending battery life and introducing new features not accessible to its rivals.
During a recent quarterly conference call, Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer uncharacteristically made references to ongoing investments in new product technologies that would pressure the company's profit margins but leave competitors scrambling by the side of the road.
"We have some investments in front of us that I can?t discuss with you today where we?re going to be delivering state of the art new products that our competitors just aren?t going to be able to match," he said, "and as a result, I would see gross margins being about 30 percent and that?s ? that?s all I can tell you at this point."
Since Apple's new Mac notebooks aren't necessarily following the same rollout schedule as competitive offerings based purely on standard Centrino 2 components, people familiar with the next-generation systems say it will be at least another 6 to 8 weeks before the company makes an official announcement.
An authentic photo of Apple's next-gen MacBook Pro casing.
Apple recently de-committed on notebook inventories for a two-week period to retail partners such as Best Buy, which spurred speculation of imminent upgrades. The move, however, is believed to be a result of orders related to the ongoing educational buying season, which typically puts a strain on Mac supply for a period of several weeks each year beginning in mid July.
As part of its move to Intel chips in early 2006, the Cupertino-based company largely abandoned its practice of using custom motherboard chipsets to support the primary CPU in its Macs. Instead, it began to rely on slightly tweaked versions of industry-standard chipsets offered by Intel to the broad range of PC manufacturers that develop Intel-powered systems.
For instance, while Apple's existing line of MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks are unique in that they run the Mac OS X operating system, they're architecturally based on the same run-of-the-mill processors and chipsets from Intel's Santa Rosa mobile platform also employed by Windows-supporting rivals, such as Dell and HP.
However, with Apple striving to maintain Mac sales growth of more than two times the industry average, it's again looking to differentiate the architecture of its personal computer systems through alternative technology that will afford it an advantage beyond the reach of its competition.
As such, people familiar with these plans say an upcoming generation of Macs, lead by a trio of redesigned notebooks, won't adopt the Montevina chipset announced as part of Intel's Centrino 2 mobile platform earlier this month. What's more, those same people suggest the chipset employed by the new wave of Macs may have little or nothing to do with Intel at all. (This should not be confused with the primary CPU, which will continue to come from Intel.)
Exactly what alternative Apple has chosen remains unclear. However it's believed that Intel, which declined to comment for this story, would need to have established a licensing agreement with the firm responsible for manufacturing an Intel-compatible chipset, be it Apple or one of the company's third party suppliers.
Assuming the chipsets in the new Macs are not based on Intel technology, that would leave Apple with only a handful of viable options. The company could return to a practice common during the years of PowerPC-based Macs in which it developed proprietary chipsets to support the primary processors in its systems.
Another option is that Apple could forge a relationship with one of the other established third party chipset manufacturers, such as NVidia, AMD or Via, in a move that would allow the company to build its next-generation systems using technology cherry-picked from the best of both worlds.
A move by Apple away from Intel chipsets may also be tied to concerns over the power-hungry nature of the chipmaker's more recent mobile chipsets. The Mac maker has been working to reduce the size and weight of its notebook offerings while simultaneously extending battery life and introducing new features not accessible to its rivals.
During a recent quarterly conference call, Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer uncharacteristically made references to ongoing investments in new product technologies that would pressure the company's profit margins but leave competitors scrambling by the side of the road.
"We have some investments in front of us that I can?t discuss with you today where we?re going to be delivering state of the art new products that our competitors just aren?t going to be able to match," he said, "and as a result, I would see gross margins being about 30 percent and that?s ? that?s all I can tell you at this point."
Since Apple's new Mac notebooks aren't necessarily following the same rollout schedule as competitive offerings based purely on standard Centrino 2 components, people familiar with the next-generation systems say it will be at least another 6 to 8 weeks before the company makes an official announcement.
An authentic photo of Apple's next-gen MacBook Pro casing.
Apple recently de-committed on notebook inventories for a two-week period to retail partners such as Best Buy, which spurred speculation of imminent upgrades. The move, however, is believed to be a result of orders related to the ongoing educational buying season, which typically puts a strain on Mac supply for a period of several weeks each year beginning in mid July.
Comments
but another 6 to 8 weeks
well, that's still in Q3, as mentioned by Oppenheimer.
they already have to write code in universal binary to be used on intel and powerpc chips... are they going to now need to write code in universal tertiary?
I'm sure the changes will just be upgraded motherboards of some sort, but after juse getting intel processor on board in the last few years, it makes absolutely zero sense to abandon them this quickly for a new type processor.
And what would altered chipsets mean for Parallels, VMWare, and other programs that run Windows?
nothing, because there windows runs from within the mac OS, nothing to do with chipsets..
the story might be different for bootcamp though, I don't know. but as apple is advertizing bootcamp themselves they would make sure that it stays compatible..
oh, and I already ran parallels on my PPC 12" powerbook..
Apple can move to amd very easy they just need to make drivers for the chipset.
What's more, those same people suggest the chipset employed by the new wave of Macs may have little or nothing to do with Intel at all.
I don't see that happening at all. Not one mention of P.A. Semi in all that BS talk of IBM, AMD and Via.
A move by Apple away from Intel chipsets may also be tied to concerns over the power-hungry nature of the chipmaker's more recent mobile chipsets.
WTH! The new Centrinos are the most power efficient processors for notebooks at that speed.
sounds interesting!
but another 6 to 8 weeks
well, that's still in Q3, as mentioned by Oppenheimer.
The average refresh rate for MB and MBPs is still 6 weeks away. If they are switching designs they will most likely milk the old design a little longer.
The Mac Touch/ smaller MacBook Air though... ah that is a tricky one because if it is not Intel... then what CPU? It has to have some level of Intel compatibility no?
Unless the Mac Touch/ smaller MacBook Air is no Intel at all, all PA Semi etc.
Ah I don't know my crystal ball is full of muck right now can't see sh*t...
all we need is a bottle opener built in and its all cool, man.
A tea maker would be nice.
Is anyone else rolling their eyes and saying "here we go again?" Apple tried going their own way for years, and mostly what they got out of it was being slower than the competition and having serious supply constraints. If this article is true, I wouldn't want to be long on Apple.
Are you the official naysayer, or just filling in?
Apple going Proprietary again?
AMD knows better than Intel (about intel CPUs)?
PA Semi knows better than Intel & AMD combined?
Is any one can do large delivery of silicon for Apple other than Intel?
what the heck going on?
stock going to be taken down again, sigh
What I think would happen: some internal hardware that is geared for media (possibly built in super H.264 encoder or the next generation of such) that will make mac hardware finally "distinguishable" from regular PC parts (come on folks, you have to admit, the only things Apple has in their machines that are different from all other Winblows boxes are EFI the TPM chip, and really looking nice thin cases). PA semi conductor purchase will make the chip, being in Apple's control. With this, Apple will finally be able to knock back out the Psystar and Open Machine peoples since those machines will never be able to have the Apple made hardware chip. And the Winblows side of the mac won't be able to take advantage of this new media encoder chip. Just an idea... Elgato may blow a circuit though... haha.
Unless of course Apple is saying "Lets all convert again! In fact, we've had a THIRD OS X in testing, even in more secret than the x86 version of all OS X all this time. Programmers, go have fun!" Yeah right.
Please let it be some sort of media HW accelerator to make our machines ready for Broadcast!
The article doesn't suggest a move away from Intel PROCESSORS (though Apple might certainly add other compatible processor brands to the mix one day).
The article is about the chips that ACCOMPANY and support the main processor. That's what "chipset" refers to.
And the idea that Apple might add custom chips around the Intel processor sounds good to me. No need for Apple to limit themselves just because Wintel clones can't do that.
And this would seem to fit nicely with Snow Leopard's plans too. (At least assuming performance benefits, and not just power-efficiency.)
If they move significantly away from the Intel platform such that OSes like Windows/Linux/et al run slower (or not at all) they can pretty much kiss their marketshare gains goodbye. The sole reason I and other IT folks are recommending Macs to family and friends now is because they have a failsafe: if necessary, they can boot up Windows and run at native speed.
I wouldn't worry about that theory too much. The processors are still from Intel. And if there's any overhead from dealing with the other, less-standard chips that accompany the processor, I have little fear that computers will be fast enough to still provide a productive Windows or Linux experience.
The only reason to worry about Windows performance is if somehow the new custom chipsets would be SO much slower than the old ones that this actually offsets the ongoing performance increases of each generation of Intel processors. And offsets those increases to SUCH a large extent that Windows performance is no longer "good enough." Then the failsafe you mention would be threatened. But it doesn't seem likely. Especially since Apple actively SUPPORTS that failsafe via Boot Camp.
Again, this doesn't sound like whole new incompatible processor architectures--that would make little sense. This is about chips alongside the main processor, boosting performance for certain things. Maybe Windows and Linux won't take advantage of those benefits the way OS X will, but those other OS's will still have a nice fast Intel CPU to run on.
Anyway, it's all rumor, but I find it plausible.
nothing, because there windows runs from within the mac OS, nothing to do with chipsets..
it is entirely to do with chipsets. Paralells/VMware Fusion do not emulate the x86 instruction set, they simply provide an environment for an x86 OS to run. They pass the instructions directly to the processor. If Apple switched to a processor that wasn't x86 based, Parallels and VMware Fusion wouldn't work, as the processor wouldn't understand the x86 instructions.
oh, and I already ran parallels on my PPC 12" powerbook..
No you didn't. You may have used Virtual PC, but Parallels does not emulate the x86 architecture on a PPC machine. Emulating a different processor architecture is very processor intensive, which is why x86 software was slow on a PPC computer.
Honestly, it would be a bad move on Apple's part to move from Intel to someone else, especially if they were not Intel compatible. Only two years on one architecture? That would be insane for programmers, and a headache for us end-users.
What I think would happen: some internal hardware that is geared for media (possibly built in super H.264 encoder or the next generation of such) that will make mac hardware finally "distinguishable" from regular PC parts (come on folks, you have to admit, the only things Apple has in their machines that are different from all other Winblows boxes are EFI the TPM chip, and really looking nice thin cases). PA semi conductor purchase will make the chip, being in Apple's control. With this, Apple will finally be able to knock back out the Psystar and Open Machine peoples since those machines will never be able to have the Apple made hardware chip. And the Winblows side of the mac won't be able to take advantage of this new media encoder chip. Just an idea... Elgato may blow a circuit though... haha.
Unless of course Apple is saying "Lets all convert again! In fact, we've had a THIRD OS X in testing, even in more secret than the x86 version of all OS X all this time. Programmers, go have fun!" Yeah right.
Please let it be some sort of media HW accelerator to make our machines ready for Broadcast!
Same x86 processors, perhaps even Intel's, but not necessarily Intel's PLATFORM. Let's not get too ahead of ourselves here.