PC makers want cheaper Intel chips to compete with Apple's Air pricing - Page 3

Originally Posted by Jacksons

Now you are just playing with words.

Originally Posted by wizard69

For example the idea that case production is tied up by Apple. Some of the equipment could very well be owned by Apple but it doesn't matter, CNC factories can be set up in matter of weeks. That is if you need to setup a factory at all. There are plenty of job shops to take on that work.

In the end this appears to be an issue of people not wanting to own the infrastructure and the risk that goes with it. In effect they are looking for Intel to make the machines risk free.

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

Honest question:

As I understand it state of the art Intel chips cost around $100-$120 in quantity.

State of the art ARM chips cost $20-$25 in quantity.

Aside, for now, the differences in architecture, 64-bit, etc... Is an intel chip worth 5-6 times an ARM chip?

Why?

Could a 4-ARM motherboard (8 cores, 8 GPUs) compete with a Intel i7 (8 cores and 1 GPU)?

Will the equation change dramatically when ARM goes 64-bit?

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

[...] "...the Wintel alliance will need to do something or else all the related IT player may be gone together," the report said. [...]

Originally Posted by jragosta

Second, aluminum machining capability is available in thousands, if not millions, of shops around the country. There's no way Apple has monopolized the aluminum milling market.

Bottom line is that Apple can do it with Intel's old prices - and still yield a nice margin. There's no intrinsic reason why Ultrabook makers can't do it, too. Even Apple's vaunted volume advantage is not that big a deal. Volume reduces costs dramatically on some things, but not on machined parts. There, the volume savings are much more modest. And most of the other components are industry standard (CPU, RAM, screen, power supply, etc).

Originally Posted by MacRulez

+1

Inept whingers. If I had access to the fabrication Dell has access to, I could solve this problem for them in a day.

Originally Posted by MacRulez

I don't understand this kvetching. Just drop the optical drive and the legacy ports, make it slim, and ship it. Don't talk about it, do it.

A quick visit to NewEgg.com gets me all the components I need for relatively little money; the only things not available off the shelf are the enclosure and the motherboard to fit into it.

The problem is not the CPU. It's the form factor fabrication.

There's nothing stopping them from doing this right now except their own inability to execute.

Inept whingers. If I had access to the fabrication Dell has access to, I could solve this problem for them in a day.

Originally Posted by cameronj

The amazing thing is that someone on a forum and Newegg can say this without blinking. Do you really think there aren't people at Dell who are as good at assembling a computer as you are? It's harder than you think, and I don't pretend to know why, but if your conclusion doesn't add up, check your premises.

Originally Posted by jragosta

This is silly.

First, there are ways to build a computer other than using machined aluminum.

Second, aluminum machining capability is available in thousands, if not millions, of shops around the country. There's no way Apple has monopolized the aluminum milling market.

Bottom line is that Apple can do it with Intel's old prices - and still yield a nice margin. There's no intrinsic reason why Ultrabook makers can't do it, too. Even Apple's vaunted volume advantage is not that big a deal. Volume reduces costs dramatically on some things, but not on machined parts. There, the volume savings are much more modest. And most of the other components are industry standard (CPU, RAM, screen, power supply, etc).

It would be interesting to see why they're finding it so hard. My guess is that they don't get the entire Ultrabook concept and they're trying to jam it full of everything from serial ports to parallel ports to 10Base2 connectors along with Blu-Ray and 100 other things that the machine doesn't need.

Originally Posted by Wiggin

As for lowering the price...sure, it would allow Apple to also lower the price...but would they?

Originally Posted by jragosta

You're both wrong. I've been involved with a good bit of machining, including machining for aerospace parts for the last decade or so. I could find 50 shops within a 20 mile radius that can easily make cases like this. And the material is just aluminum plates - which are once again very readily available.

And there's no way that Apple has monopolized the production capacity for milled aluminum parts. Just do a search for 'milled aluminum' to get an idea of how many different products are made of milled aluminum. Apple's specs don't appear to be anything special compared to aerospace or automotive or hydraulic components.

AND, if they're not clever enough to find any of the thousands of places that can do this type of work, there's no reason they couldn't make them out of stamped metal, plastic, or walnut, if they wish.

Originally Posted by bigpics

This Ars Technica article totally nails the corner they've all worked themselves into - and the massive difficulties they face in working themselves out: http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news...own-game.ars/2

Originally Posted by addabox

I'm sure you could find 50 shops in a 20 mile radius, just as, per your previous post, there are probably many thousands of such globally.

But the question would be how many of those shops have anything like the capacity that Apple requires? Are you saying that there are 50 shops in a 20 mile radius capable of churning out millions and millions of milled aluminum chassis? That have access to the infrastructure to expedite the delivery of the raw materials and the shipping of finished product, in huge quantities? That can coordinate with the rest of Apple's supply and manufacturing chain?

Lots and lots of "shops" don't really have any bearing on the kind of facilities that Apple needs-- facilities that must have extremely large capacity while maintaining extremely tight tolerances within very tight schedules. I don't really think the aerospace industry is much of an analog, since no one needs millions of nozzles or combustion chambers.

Originally Posted by solipsism

1) I think the bottom line is that Apple has found a way to make it economical, simply having access to milling isn't enough.

Originally Posted by solipsism

2) I think you grossly underestimate Apple's economics of scale.

Originally Posted by SockRolid

The quick and dirty short-term solution: make Apple pay more for their Intel chips.

The long-term solution: none.

Why is there no long-term solution? Because sooner or later (probably sooner) Apple will transition their MacBook Air line to ARM-based CPUs. No, that won't hurt Intel much. Apple is just one of many Intel customers. But establishing a trend toward ARM among mobile device vendors will hurt Intel greatly. Even Microsoft is threatening to port Windows 8 Tablet (and Office) to ARM.

Apple designs their own ARM-based chips, which allows them to avoid the off-the-shelf pricing for Intel chips, and they're going to leverage that advantage. ARM-based chips give longer battery life and they cost Apple less. Those are huge advantages. Transitioning the MacBook Air to ARM will give the consumer a better experience (longer battery life, cooler operation) and allow Apple to maintain their profit margins for another decade. It's a no brainer. It *will* happen.

Let's pre-empt a few arguments against an ARM-based MacBook Air:

1. "ARM-based chips don't have enough power"

The A6 (or A7) will have quad cores, which will provide enough CPU power to run OS X just as well as Intel's power-hungry, hot-running CPUs. And sharing the processing workload with the GPU through OpenCL will help immensely, as it does now in OS X. There's no hurry. Apple can pick their spot. They can choose the most convenient time to transition to ARM-based chips.

2. "It would be too hard for Apple to port OS X from CISC to RISC"

Apple has already ported OS X from RISC (PowerPC) to CISC (Intel x86/x64). I wouldn't be surprised if Apple has maintained a RISC version of OS X since the Intel transition. And Apple has proven again and again that they can manage CPU and OS transitions brilliantly. Been there, done that. Oh, and if 3rd party developers (lookin' right atcha, Adobe) drag their feet, then Apple can and will develop their own apps to replace theirs.

3. "ARM would mean no Windows on MacBook Air"

Probably not, unless users are willing to put up with a horrendously slow hardware architecture emulator. Microsoft has done that in the past with Virtual PC, which ran Windows on PowerPC machines. But really, the vast majority of MacBook Air customers are consumers, and they don't care about running Windows native or emulated. The original MacBook Air fell into the "frequent flier and executive status symbol" category. Not the new one. The 11.6" MBA is Apple's entry-level laptop now.

4. "But what about Office and all those other Windows apps?"

How many of you consumers out there are actually running Office on your MacBook Air? Hold up your hands!

Yeah, didn't think so. Again, if Apple sees that users are waving flaming pitchforks and screaming for a particular 3rd party app that only runs on x86 (highly unlikely), then Apple could do their own version. For ARM. Or they could wait for a less-entrenched developer to do it for them and fill in the vacuum. Whatever.

It's not "if" but "when." Apple will ship ARM-based MacBook Airs. It's just a matter of fitting it into their schedule.

Oh, and there's one more thing. Let's say that the $300 million Intel lavished on their Ultrabook "initiative" actually works. Say it creates a huge market for Ultrabooks. Let's play along for a second and assume that a new "race to the bottom" will start at the high end of the Wintel laptop market. (And yes, I am the new King of Sweden!) Well, there will be the inevitable price wars between the Ultrabook makers. They'll cut corners everywhere, they'll try to nickel-and-dime each other off the low-margin cliff.

Let's imagine that in 2 years, all those Ultrabook competitors manage to bring the price down from $1000 to $800. They will have finally managed to undercut the MacBook Air price by 2013. Unfortunately for them, by that time Apple will have released an A7-based MacBook Air that allows them to maintain a 30% margin while selling the 11.6" model for $800 too. It'll be next-gen thin, next-gen light, next-gen cool, and the Wintel crowd will never be able to catch up. Not while they use Intel chips.

Originally Posted by addabox

I'm sure you could find 50 shops in a 20 mile radius, just as, per your previous post, there are probably many thousands of such globally.

But the question would be how many of those shops have anything like the capacity that Apple requires? Are you saying that there are 50 shops in a 20 mile radius capable of churning out millions and millions of milled aluminum chassis? That have access to the infrastructure to expedite the delivery of the raw materials and the shipping of finished product, in huge quantities? That can coordinate with the rest of Apple's supply and manufacturing chain?

Lots and lots of "shops" don't really have any bearing on the kind of facilities that Apple needs-- facilities that must have extremely large capacity while maintaining extremely tight tolerances within very tight schedules. I don't really think the aerospace industry is much of an analog, since no one needs millions of nozzles or combustion chambers.

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

I want to discuss your answers further -- you appear to have hardware expertise that I lack. I don't want to challenge your statements, rather to understand how they affect the computing world as I see it.

I realize that 64-bit has little or no effect on hardware performance. But it can have a significant effect on OS and app performance (paging memory, video rendering, parallel operation, etc.). Based on the work being done by the user, 64-bit and additional RAM can affect the perceived power and speed of the "hardware".

I think I knew the answer to that, before I asked it.

However, Apple has done a lot of work to make their OS(es) and apps (including apps by 3rd-party developers):
-- largely independent/abstracted from the underlying hardware
-- to use OpenCL and GCD wherever possible
-- to exploit parallelism using any available CPU and GPU cores
-- for lack of a better phrase distributed processing

If Apple has done its job well, I believe that a power computing solution, for the near future, would be a series of "compute boxes" daisy chained on a thunderbolt cable along with RAID Storage, peripheral docks, wireless stations, and Displays.

These "compute boxes" would consist of:
-- enough SSD to run a minimal OS
-- RAM
-- CPUs and GPUs
-- an internal power supply
-- a fan if needed
-- small packaging like the Mac Mini or AppleTV 2

The theory is that as your compute needs grow -- just add another "compute box" to the daisy chain.

These "compute boxes" could contain whatever CPU and GPU architecture that provided the required price/performance.

The only problem I have with your last paragraph -- is that for ARM chips to be used in low-end, cheap computers and laptops.

As I understand Windows 8, in order to run legacy x86 apps the device will require an x86 CPU. This would appear to eliminate the use of ARM in low-end, cheap computers and laptops.

Further, developers might be discouraged from rewriting their x86 apps for Metro/ARM because of the disincentive of paying MS 30% for the privilege.

I have no problem with the curated Metro store or the 30%...

But I think it is a chicken/egg thing -- without a lot of Metro apps there won't be any Metro tablets (and low-end, cheap computers and laptops) -- and without the Metro tablets et al, there won't be any incentive to port x86 apps to Metro/ARM.

Finally, I don't know this, but based on past performance, I suspect it is true:

Say there is a breakthrough and a new computer architecture suddenly arrives on the scene. Apple is in a good position to migrate their OSes and apps, natively, to exploit that new platform. And through something like rosetta, existing iOS, OS X and Windows apps could run at normal speed in emulation. Third-party iOS and OS X could run native with a simple recompile.

Apple has bet the farm (and won) on this kind of revolutionary migration -- no other OS or hardware mfgr has.

Originally Posted by jragosta

Furthermore, there are 4 PC vendors who sell more computers than Apple.

Originally Posted by solipsism

I don't know what that has to do with anything. They sell more by offering an excessive number of models. There is no economics of scale for the casings of a $400 Dell notebook and $1,200 Dell notebook trying to compete with Apple's offerings.

Originally Posted by jragosta

So you don't think that Dell or Acer sell any of their devices in large enough quantities to get economies of scale? If that's really what you think, you're kidding yourself.

But even if you dig very hard to find a grain of truth in your thought, it's irrelevant. Everyone is saying that Apple is untouchable because they have locked up aluminum part production (!) or some magical design stuff. What you're saying is that it's simply a matter of not proliferating your product. So any vendor who is willing to sell one or two versions of their Ultrabook instead of 1,000 versions would have the same advantage. Their model proliferation is self-inflicted and could easily be fixed with just a couple of corporate decisions.

The problem is that the PC industry, particularly the large OEMs, just aren't set up to produce this kind of machine. The PC industry is built around an idea of almost infinite variation: different Wi-Fi adaptors, different Ethernet chipsets, different GPUs, different USB3 controllers. This variety is then reflected in the systems available from manufacturers—and more importantly, it's reflected in the way the systems are actually built.

Consider Lenovo. Lenovo offers a range of different Wi-Fi adaptors in many of its systems. Instead of designing several different motherboards, each with a different integrated adaptor, it puts the adaptors themselves onto daughtercards and plugs them into a socket on the motherboard. The upside is that Lenovo can offer a lot of diversity, and the daughter cards can be standard Mini-PCIe components that anyone can use. The downside is that Lenovo has boards that are less integrated—hence larger—with more components and more complex manufacturing.

... For example, Apple's laptops use custom-sized lithium polymer batteries. These allow Apple to make the battery exactly fit the space available, maximizing battery life and minimizing space, but there's a downside of sorts: Apple can't use standard battery modules. Similarly, the MacBook Air uses a highly integrated motherboard, with almost all functionality built-in. This makes the board smaller and cheaper to produce, but it means Apple doesn't offer a wide range of processors, GPUs, WiFi adaptors, etc.....

Sell a million identical laptops a quarter and you can afford to change the way you build the machines. You can afford to spend more on design or manufacturing infrastructure. Apple never had a huge range of different systems, so reducing the variation and streamlining its manufacturing was probably more palatable than it would be for others. The traditional PC OEMs insist on a kind of pointless diversity, which means that they sell relatively low numbers of lots of models. They have no option but to stick with less highly integrated, less efficient processes. And this impacts their entire supply chain; it's set up to produce commodity parts assembled in standard ways, not specialized custom components.

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil

Given that they've just seen the U.S. government illegally stop companies from failing, they're pretty much justified in their mindset of "talk to a U.S. company to get free crap for doing absolutely nothing and whining about it long enough."

Originally Posted by d-range

Sure, no problem

CPU architectures have always been one of my favorite tech topics by the way, I graduated university on reconfigurable VLIW processor architectures, and after that I've worked in the EDA industry (software for IC design and production), and now for the worlds largest supplier of optical lithography gear, so I think I can safely say I've been always been pretty close to the fire ;-)



There really is only one way a 64-bit CPU would significantly affect performance (measurable or perceived), and that would be when the combined memory requirements of all the tasks you have running on the system exceeds 4 GB, and there is no way to stuff more RAM into the machine. I think you can safely say this only becomes an issue if you are a power user, but it's an issue anyway.

That said, there are ways to address over 4 GB of RAM on 32-bit CPU's, such as physical address extension (PAE) on x86. I'm pretty sure something similar could be included in future 32-bit ARM designs.

Some very specific tasks will benefit from 64-bit registers by the way, but I honestly don't think the lack of 64-bit ARM designs is holding back the platform. Sure enough when ARM goes 64-bit, it will make another big step up in performance, but it won't be because of the 64-bitness. Just progress as usual .



This definitely true. However, for now, Apples OpenCL and GCD efforts are not really paying off yet. There's not a whole lot of applications using OpenCL, and the ones that do are relatively specific (video coding, some forms of scientific computing, etc). GCD is mainly a tool to make it easier for developers to write code that would benefit from multi-core/multi-processor setups, but it doesn't allow anything that wasn't already possible otherwise. For example Intel itself has their Threading Building Blocks technology, which is more or less meant to solve the same problem.



Very interesting thought. I was about to write how I personally don't share the same vision, but now that I come to think of it, what you describe would definitely have some interesting applications, and we may actually see something similar in the future.

I don't think it would be something people would have at home though, it makes much more sense in the context of the typical distributed computing that big-iron compute clusters are used for now. The idea of clustering computers, adding and removing nodes to increase the total computational capabilities of the cluster are not new of course, but with a ridiculously fast port like optical Thunderbolt (100 GBps) you could imagine 'miniature' compute clusters that don't take racks of big computers and expensive network infrastructure, yet largely eliminate the difficulties that compute clusters have. In a traditional compute cluster nodes don't share the same memory, so every job has to be chopped up, distributed and the results have to be assembled afterwards, which means the network infrastructure between the nodes becomes a huge complication and bottleneck, to the extent that it rules out many interesting use cases because the communication overhead far outweighs the computational gains. Thunderbolt could greatly increase the set of viable distributed computing use cases, because it reduces communication overhead by a very large factor.

That said, stuff like this only makes sense for computing tasks that take a long time and can easily be chopped up smaller pieces, or if you have many tasks running concurrently. With 'running concurrently' in this case, I don't mean just having 20 applications sitting on your desktop, because usually only one or two will actually be using the CPU, with the rest sitting idle most of the time. I can't really imagine a whole lot of garden-variety use cases that require massive parallel CPU power, except if you like doing video editing at home and such.

For speeding up single, dual, quad or even 8-threaded applications, a CPU with multiple cores/multiple hardware threads will always be faster than a cluster of compute boxes, no matter how fast the interconnect is. Nothing beats on-die scheduling and execution of tasks, with a direct data path to shared system memory. Even if I really try my best to get my quad-core i7 iMac to its knees doing large multi-process Xcode compiles with a Linux VM running in the background while playing a video, the CPU is hardly the bottleneck. Ivy Bridge will provide a comparable performance level at a TDP around 40 Watts next year, even with the cheaper entry-level parts.

Of course nobody knows what kind of applications we might see in the future that would map favorably to a compute cluster, but right now, my impression is that we've already eliminated the requirement for faster CPU's for home/office use a few years ago. This is exactly why Intel should be worried about losing out on the 'low-end' and mobile side of computing, because soon, any ARM CPU will reach the same baseline level of performance, and Intel will have a really hard time convincing people they need faster CPU's.



Personally I think tablets and possibly Chromebook-like devices (the 'low-end') will replace laptops for many tasks, with 'real' laptops/desktops marginalized for all the other, 'serious' computer tasks (the 'mid-range/high-end'). This will almost inevitably mean ARM for 'low-end' computing, x86 for everything else. So I'm not sure if the lack of backwards compatibility with x86 desktop Windows is really going to be a big deal in the future.

If I were in charge at Microsoft I would restrict Windows 8 for ARM to Metro apps, and force all Metro apps to be universal binaries (i.e.: ARM + x86 compatible) by the way. I don't see why anyone would want to run x86 desktop apps on mobile hardware.



Yes, there's no denying that. Apple has proven they know how to switch architectures and are not afraid to actually do it. I would not be surprised if at some point, they would release a MacBook with an ARM CPU in it, just not one replacing the x86 CPU, but adding it alongside, allowing you to boot or even switch on the fly to ARM or x86 OS X, depending on your computing needs. Imagine a MacBook Air that would do 12 to 20 hours in 'ARM-mode', but still have the performance of a fast laptop in 'x86-mode', using universal binaries and/or ARM emulation for interoperability.

I'm not sure we'll see any big breakthroughs in computer architectures anytime soon though. You'd expect at least some hints pointing in this direction in the form of research papers and such, but apart from quantum computers, I'm not aware of any such thing. But who knows what could happen...

Originally Posted by SockRolid

The quick and dirty short-term solution: make Apple pay more for their Intel chips.

The long-term solution: none.

Why is there no long-term solution? Because sooner or later (probably sooner) Apple will transition their MacBook Air line to ARM-based CPUs.

No, that won't hurt Intel much. Apple is just one of many Intel customers. But establishing a trend toward ARM among mobile device vendors will hurt Intel greatly. Even Microsoft is threatening to port Windows 8 Tablet (and Office) to ARM.

Apple designs their own ARM-based chips, which allows them to avoid the off-the-shelf pricing for Intel chips, and they're going to leverage that advantage. ARM-based chips give longer battery life and they cost Apple less. Those are huge advantages.

Transitioning the MacBook Air to ARM will give the consumer a better experience (longer battery life, cooler operation) and allow Apple to maintain their profit margins for another decade. It's a no brainer. It *will* happen.

Let's pre-empt a few arguments against an ARM-based MacBook Air:

1. "ARM-based chips don't have enough power"

The A6 (or A7) will have quad cores, which will provide enough CPU power to run OS X just as well as Intel's power-hungry, hot-running CPUs.

And sharing the processing workload with the GPU through OpenCL will help immensely, as it does now in OS X. There's no hurry. Apple can pick their spot. They can choose the most convenient time to transition to ARM-based chips.

2. "It would be too hard for Apple to port OS X from CISC to RISC"

Apple has already ported OS X from RISC (PowerPC) to CISC (Intel x86/x64). I wouldn't be surprised if Apple has maintained a RISC version of OS X since the Intel transition. And Apple has proven again and again that they can manage CPU and OS transitions brilliantly. Been there, done that. Oh, and if 3rd party developers (lookin' right atcha, Adobe) drag their feet, then Apple can and will develop their own apps to replace theirs.

3. "ARM would mean no Windows on MacBook Air"

Probably not, unless users are willing to put up with a horrendously slow hardware architecture emulator. Microsoft has done that in the past with Virtual PC, which ran Windows on PowerPC machines. But really, the vast majority of MacBook Air customers are consumers, and they don't care about running Windows native or emulated. The original MacBook Air fell into the "frequent flier and executive status symbol" category. Not the new one. The 11.6" MBA is Apple's entry-level laptop now.

4. "But what about Office and all those other Windows apps?"

How many of you consumers out there are actually running Office on your MacBook Air? Hold up your hands!

Yeah, didn't think so. Again, if Apple sees that users are waving flaming pitchforks and screaming for a particular 3rd party app that only runs on x86 (highly unlikely), then Apple could do their own version. For ARM. Or they could wait for a less-entrenched developer to do it for them and fill in the vacuum. Whatever.

It's not "if" but "when." Apple will ship ARM-based MacBook Airs. It's just a matter of fitting it into their schedule.

Oh, and there's one more thing. Let's say that the $300 million Intel lavished on their Ultrabook "initiative" actually works. Say it creates a huge market for Ultrabooks. Let's play along for a second and assume that a new "race to the bottom" will start at the high end of the Wintel laptop market. (And yes, I am the new King of Sweden!) Well, there will be the inevitable price wars between the Ultrabook makers. They'll cut corners everywhere, they'll try to nickel-and-dime each other off the low-margin cliff.

Let's imagine that in 2 years, all those Ultrabook competitors manage to bring the price down from $1000 to $800. They will have finally managed to undercut the MacBook Air price by 2013. Unfortunately for them, by that time Apple will have released an A7-based MacBook Air that allows them to maintain a 30% margin while selling the 11.6" model for $800 too. It'll be next-gen thin, next-gen light, next-gen cool, and the Wintel crowd will never be able to catch up. Not while they use Intel chips.