I have zero clue how all the x86 politics work, but couldn't Apple somehow license the x86 architecture (like it did with ARM) and essentially build its own x86-compatible chip solely for its own machines and run with it? That way, Apple could contract with its own, very capable chip suppliers and all Intel has to do is just sit-back, and count the royalty money coming in for doing nothing.
I think it's inevitable that Apple will jettison Intel. Part of me wants that to happen. The writing is on the wall. I think Intel is quietly kicking itself in the backside for essentially ruining numerous opportunities to come out on top. Apple is certainly one of their biggest customers and I think it knows that one day Apple will give Intel the middle-finger for being such a fcuk-up and lose that business for not being able to keep up. I will lose no love over it when that happens.
On the flip side, for me personally I love that I can run Windows on my Macs. It's mandatory for me that it is able to do that. Running ARM with x86-emulation is going to suck, if it is even an option technically. I love macs, but for non-mobile devices, it's gonna be a Windows world.
If Apple licenses and builds its own x86 chips, they'd be awesome I think.
Apple, pls buy AMD for their x86 license @ a big premium over the current share price! (But it's not like Apple to do that.)
Price? Intel charges hundreds of dollars for their processors. Imagine how much cheaper ARM Macs would be?
We already saw the result of Apple depending on Intel for processors - they couldn't launch new iMacs last year, screwing up their whole release schedule which I'm sure Apple lost millions of $$.
Additionally, we don't know that Apple is even going to use the same ARM chips in Macs as they do iOS devices. They might be designing a whole new desktop chip.
@sflocal Intel is one of the most capable chip makers of the world, even if Apple could license them it wouldn't be easy to make them better and quicker.
You're comparing a CPU that has more cores and is about 20x the size of an A8. Apple doesn't need to keep the CPU that small in order to get it into a Mac. Besides, Intel CPUs pack a lot of legacy hardware that Apple doesn't need.
I think you missed the part about normalization of results. This was a very simple attempt to compute the quantity of work that a single core could do per clock cycle.
A single core 3.0GHz Xeon (2012 westmere I believe) could do 60% more work per a unit of time than a 3.0GHz single core A8. To be fair, I should have used an A-series chip that was shipped in 2012. Or, found someone with a 2014 Mac Pro. That would have given a wider performance gap.
In all cases though, the Xeons can do more work per core, per clock cycle than A-series chips released around the same time.
Other issue here is virtual machine capabilities. I run OS X everywhere but rely on a few Microsoft applications that just don't have suitable replacements on the OS X side of the house. Moving from Intel to ARM would most likely kill products like Fusion and Parallels. I don't really get this although it is just a complete rumor and could be nonsense.
I think there also needs to be considered application developers like Adobe, would they need to tune their software for ARM chips, and would they want to? They took years to support the Intel swap, can't imagine they'd be thrilled to again recode.
It's a different story than in 2006. There are so many amazing graphics apps out there now, that Adobe will be forced to recode or die.
They have lost me as a customer completely, why use bloatware with god awful UI when there are so many sleek alternatives.
An ARM based Mac or an IOS based Mac? I can see an IOS based MBA before anything. Perhaps a pseudo hybrid OS in that it allows a mouse / trackpad based cursor, and obviously some kind of multi tasking. We already have iMovie, Pages and Numbers as well as Office and other powerful apps for IOS.
An iOS-based Mac would be a Very Bad Thing. The primary reason for this is that the user experience is quite different, in ways that we tend to forget. Specifically, the user access to the file system is application-based (all the files for an app are stored in the app's folder) whereas OS X gives the user the ability to mix'n'match what app accesses which files. Totally different UI paradigm.
Now, I can well see an ARM-powered MBA. All Apple's apps would be fat-binary (built for both ARM and x86) and many popular apps would quickly follow. For many (most?) it might be a simple recompile since the APIs and system services would be the same. And apps that weren't fat could be run using Rosetta2 - assuming that Apple does it. The reason that Rosetta went away is that the company that built it (Transitive) was acquired and the new owners didn't want to re-license it when the original license expired. But wait - the new owner is IBM. And didn't Apple recently do a major deal with IBM? Certainly did, so I believe it's quite possible that Apple could now license that technology for an x86-ARM version. Or alternatively Apple could build it itself. The work with Swift shows that it now has the ability. The only question is one of resources and priorities.
Everyone seems to forget that the reason why Rosetta worked in the first place is because Intel Core-series chips had so much horsepower in comparison to what Apple had been getting from IBM in the form of PowerPC 970 that they could afford to waste cycles on instruction translation. That is completely not the case with a theoretical x64-to-ARM shift. An ARM CPU that could take a 10-15% overhead to translate x64 to ARM64 and have the same performance simply doesn't exist, and probably won't for quite some time, if ever.
An argument can be made that Apple could just develop a separate translation processor freeing the main CPUs from that task. Having said that, the raw performance of [current] ARM is no where Intel. So for that reason, I don't see it happening.
I have zero clue how all the x86 politics work, but couldn't Apple somehow license the x86 architecture (like it did with ARM) and essentially build its own x86-compatible chip solely for its own machines and run with it? That way, Apple could contract with its own, very capable chip suppliers and all Intel has to do is just sit-back, and count the royalty money coming in for doing nothing.
I think it's inevitable that Apple will jettison Intel. Part of me wants that to happen. The writing is on the wall. I think Intel is quietly kicking itself in the backside for essentially ruining numerous opportunities to come out on top. Apple is certainly one of their biggest customers and I think it knows that one day Apple will give Intel the middle-finger for being such a fcuk-up and lose that business for not being able to keep up. I will lose no love over it when that happens.
On the flip side, for me personally I love that I can run Windows on my Macs. It's mandatory for me that it is able to do that. Running ARM with x86-emulation is going to suck, if it is even an option technically. I love macs, but for non-mobile devices, it's gonna be a Windows world.
If Apple licenses and builds its own x86 chips, they'd be awesome I think.
Because X86 advancement is best done by the creators. AMD is a X86 clone/competitor, and they have a hard enough time. Apple doesn’t NEED X86, but they can certainly benefit from the outsourcing.
A lot of people are considering their needs, not the average consumer that doesn’t know anything but the marketing hype. While many of us advanced/expert users would never even consider a machine with an i3 level of power, a lot of home users would. That is why no one should be predicting Apple would completely ditch Intel. Intel’s pockets are deep, but with no serious competition, they will get lazy and fail to advance the state of the art. With Apple stepping up and saying, “hey, we can’t wait. So, we will have to put our own chips in the consumer grade machines.” Intel would probably renew efforts so as not to lose millions of chip sales. Meanwhile, Pro users will continue to get what Intel Core series in the Pro machines gives. Despite the fact that the MBPs are getting really anemic in terms of professional amounts of storage these days, their performance will be first rate at the high end.
What an in-house designed chip could do is reduce per chip costs and allow Apple to tune the chip’s performance specifically to the OS needs, ad Apple has done with a A series and iOS. Now they have Metal & the GPUs are unlocked as well because they also control the hardware. Also, with less dependency on third parties to advance the state of the art, Apple, would be freer to innovate.
As far as “Windows” compatibility, most home users I have spoken to, either don’t know or don’t care to “hassle” rebooting to use Windows in Bootcamp because they can open Office Files on the Mac (as long as it is not Access). So, consumer grade machines don’t need the feature, while pro-machines can still use it as a selling point, further differentiating the lines.
Also, to the commenter that said that Apple is buying innovation like everyone else:
The difference is, Apple is buying not to catch up to the leader, because they are the leader. So, when Apple buys an innovative company, you can bank on the reason being that it’s to jump further ahead of the competition. Plus Apple still innovates in industrial design; that's why every other company copies them. You can verify all on my claims with a quick walk through the news archives for the last 10-15 years (since OS X came out basically). I only know about all the history because I have been following tech and Apple specifically for over 30 years. I see when companies are repeating history, and this looks more like the Motorola to PPC step, except I don’t foresee Apple completely leaving Intel anytime soon (within 10 years), & instead see it continuing its 2 CPU platform strategy for the foreseeable future. Anyone who doesn’t realize Apple has been in a 2 CPU platform position with the cousins, OS X & iOS, since the iPhone came out in 2007, is not paying close enough attention.
I'm delighted by the possibility of that change. Apple's getting big enough, it could drive that development, particularly since much of it would be covered by iPhone, iPad, and Mac sales. The chip transition could be handled by their compilers. For a time, they could create code for both much as with the Intel transition.
Besides, this will build a fire under Intel to speed up development of low-wattage chips.
----- "It's better to be a pirate than join the navy."
Not so. Have you seen the little garbage scows the pirates off the coast of Africa have. I'd much rather be on an aircraft carrier.
I have zero clue how all the x86 politics work, but couldn't Apple somehow license the x86 architecture (like it did with ARM) and essentially build its own x86-compatible chip solely for its own machines and run with it? That way, Apple could contract with its own, very capable chip suppliers and all Intel has to do is just sit-back, and count the royalty money coming in for doing nothing.
I think it's inevitable that Apple will jettison Intel. Part of me wants that to happen. The writing is on the wall. I think Intel is quietly kicking itself in the backside for essentially ruining numerous opportunities to come out on top. Apple is certainly one of their biggest customers and I think it knows that one day Apple will give Intel the middle-finger for being such a fcuk-up and lose that business for not being able to keep up. I will lose no love over it when that happens.
On thwith x86-emulation is going to suck, if it is even an option technically. I love macs, but for non-mobile devices, it's gonna be a Windows world.
If Apple licenses and builds its own x86 chips, they'd be awesome I think.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sflocal
I have zero clue how all the x86 politics work, but couldn't Apple somehow license the x86 architecture (like it did with ARM) and essentially build its own x86-compatible chip solely for its own machines and run with it?
ARM was set up for licensing, and they never did their own fabrication. Intel is totally different.
I think it's inevitable that Apple will jettison Intel. Part of me wants that to happen. The writing is on the wall. I think Intel is quietly kicking itself in the backside for essentially ruining numerous opportunities to come out on top.
Maybe. I can see ARM in highly-portable Macs (e.g. MBAs, maybe some MPBs) but not so much in iMacs. Probably not in Mac Pro.
Apple is certainly one of their biggest customers
Not really. Apple is still in the range 5 - 10% of the PC market. The share is growing but it's still not big.
On the flip side, for me personally I love that I can run Windows on my Macs. It's mandatory for me that it is able to do that. Running ARM with x86-emulation is going to suck, if it is even an option technically. I love macs, but for non-mobile devices, it's gonna be a Windows world.
If you have to be able to run Windows then I agree that x86 is in your future. OTOH, I need only to run some x86 binaries and ARM Rosetta2 would work for me. One scary thought is whether VMware Fusion or Parallels would run on an ARM-based Mac. Scary indeed.
Apple wrote XCode to handle the switch from PPC to Intel. Now we have Swift. Apple didn't spend 3 years writing a new programming language for the hell of it.
I have zero clue how all the x86 politics work, but couldn't Apple somehow license the x86 architecture (like it did with ARM) and essentially build its own x86-compatible chip solely for its own machines and run with it?
Yes, Apple could license the x64 ISA, if one of the companies who "own" it allow that.
And I personally believe that this is the direction Apple will head. The chips they use now are bogged down with legacy logic left in to maintain backwards compatibility for the Windows platform. Apple could very well strip out all of that and produce a core at a significant discount over what they're paying Intel. And I'm sure in a few years they'll do the same to their ARM cores; strip out ARMv7 and only support ARMv8.
ARM was set up for licensing, and they never did their own fabrication. Intel is totally different.
Intel doesn't own the x64 ISA, they own their version of it. It is actually based of AMD's 64-bit extensions to Intel's x86 ISA, which was licensed to AMD and many others. In turn, Intel licensed those extensions from AMD. Apple can either license it from either, or develop their own x64 compatible ISA from scratch.
Because X86 advancement is best done by the creators. AMD is a X86 clone/competitor, and they have a hard enough time. Apple doesn’t NEED X86, but they can certainly benefit from the outsourcing.
I sort of disagree with out here. You're basically saying Apple should've stayed out of the ARM game then and just left CPU design to ARM. Even though Apple's custom core designs have proven to be better than ARMs.
I don't see why Apple couldn't create their own x64 cores and possibly even top Intel's own efforts. Like I said in a previous post... there's a lot of baggage in Intel's designs that Apple just does not need.
I honestly don't see Apple ditching Intel to go only with the AX class of chips. They just are not powerful enough to be able to do all of the computing functions that most people need. Now, that said, I could see them including a set of AX chips with the Intel chips. I am thinking as a sub processor that can help out with Grand Central Dispatch to help boost performance. Also, with the AX chips in the machines it would be a huge boon for iOS development (instead of emulating what would happen with the simulator) and the potential that some iOS apps could actually be ran natively on the Mac.
The flip side to this is the licensing of X86/64 and creating a processor that is ARM based but with the X86/64 sub processor in it. After all, this being a desktop/laptop chip, it probably wouldn't be an AX chip, but a new type of chip overall (let's call it D1). As a way to keep Intel somewhat happy by this turn of events, they could even help in the fabrication of it. This leaves the AX chips as their Mobile chips, SX chips as their wearable chips, MX chips as their motion chips, and now the new D1 as their Desktop/Laptop chips. This is a definite possibility especially since ARM was designed to be grouped together and run in a multi-threaded/multi-processor environment. They could design it in such a way that would allow for Boot Camp to utilize the X86 chips only (and at a higher clock speed), unless Windows has somehow figured out how to run in both ARM and X86 at the same time.
I honestly only see these two scenarios as realistic possibilities. Obviously, the third scenario is that this whole rumor is hog-wash, and should be treated as such.
Comments
I have zero clue how all the x86 politics work, but couldn't Apple somehow license the x86 architecture (like it did with ARM) and essentially build its own x86-compatible chip solely for its own machines and run with it? That way, Apple could contract with its own, very capable chip suppliers and all Intel has to do is just sit-back, and count the royalty money coming in for doing nothing.
I think it's inevitable that Apple will jettison Intel. Part of me wants that to happen. The writing is on the wall. I think Intel is quietly kicking itself in the backside for essentially ruining numerous opportunities to come out on top. Apple is certainly one of their biggest customers and I think it knows that one day Apple will give Intel the middle-finger for being such a fcuk-up and lose that business for not being able to keep up. I will lose no love over it when that happens.
On the flip side, for me personally I love that I can run Windows on my Macs. It's mandatory for me that it is able to do that. Running ARM with x86-emulation is going to suck, if it is even an option technically. I love macs, but for non-mobile devices, it's gonna be a Windows world.
If Apple licenses and builds its own x86 chips, they'd be awesome I think.
Apple, pls buy AMD for their x86 license @ a big premium over the current share price! (But it's not like Apple to do that.)
Hmm...I'm still skeptical.
It's blatantly going to happen. I would put money on it.
I think you missed the part about normalization of results. This was a very simple attempt to compute the quantity of work that a single core could do per clock cycle.
A single core 3.0GHz Xeon (2012 westmere I believe) could do 60% more work per a unit of time than a 3.0GHz single core A8. To be fair, I should have used an A-series chip that was shipped in 2012. Or, found someone with a 2014 Mac Pro. That would have given a wider performance gap.
In all cases though, the Xeons can do more work per core, per clock cycle than A-series chips released around the same time.
I think there also needs to be considered application developers like Adobe, would they need to tune their software for ARM chips, and would they want to? They took years to support the Intel swap, can't imagine they'd be thrilled to again recode.
It's a different story than in 2006. There are so many amazing graphics apps out there now, that Adobe will be forced to recode or die.
They have lost me as a customer completely, why use bloatware with god awful UI when there are so many sleek alternatives.
An ARM based Mac or an IOS based Mac? I can see an IOS based MBA before anything. Perhaps a pseudo hybrid OS in that it allows a mouse / trackpad based cursor, and obviously some kind of multi tasking. We already have iMovie, Pages and Numbers as well as Office and other powerful apps for IOS.
An iOS-based Mac would be a Very Bad Thing. The primary reason for this is that the user experience is quite different, in ways that we tend to forget. Specifically, the user access to the file system is application-based (all the files for an app are stored in the app's folder) whereas OS X gives the user the ability to mix'n'match what app accesses which files. Totally different UI paradigm.
Now, I can well see an ARM-powered MBA. All Apple's apps would be fat-binary (built for both ARM and x86) and many popular apps would quickly follow. For many (most?) it might be a simple recompile since the APIs and system services would be the same. And apps that weren't fat could be run using Rosetta2 - assuming that Apple does it. The reason that Rosetta went away is that the company that built it (Transitive) was acquired and the new owners didn't want to re-license it when the original license expired. But wait - the new owner is IBM. And didn't Apple recently do a major deal with IBM? Certainly did, so I believe it's quite possible that Apple could now license that technology for an x86-ARM version. Or alternatively Apple could build it itself. The work with Swift shows that it now has the ability. The only question is one of resources and priorities.
Will Apple be fool enough to make the same mistake again? Hopefully not, because x86 is a must for compatibility with the world (Windows).
Nope. Windows is on 13% of all computing devices.
Will Apple be fool enough to make the same mistake again? Hopefully not, because x86 is a must for compatibility with the world (Windows).
What is Windows? Never heard of it.
Everyone seems to forget that the reason why Rosetta worked in the first place is because Intel Core-series chips had so much horsepower in comparison to what Apple had been getting from IBM in the form of PowerPC 970 that they could afford to waste cycles on instruction translation. That is completely not the case with a theoretical x64-to-ARM shift. An ARM CPU that could take a 10-15% overhead to translate x64 to ARM64 and have the same performance simply doesn't exist, and probably won't for quite some time, if ever.
An argument can be made that Apple could just develop a separate translation processor freeing the main CPUs from that task. Having said that, the raw performance of [current] ARM is no where Intel. So for that reason, I don't see it happening.
I have zero clue how all the x86 politics work, but couldn't Apple somehow license the x86 architecture (like it did with ARM) and essentially build its own x86-compatible chip solely for its own machines and run with it? That way, Apple could contract with its own, very capable chip suppliers and all Intel has to do is just sit-back, and count the royalty money coming in for doing nothing.
I think it's inevitable that Apple will jettison Intel. Part of me wants that to happen. The writing is on the wall. I think Intel is quietly kicking itself in the backside for essentially ruining numerous opportunities to come out on top. Apple is certainly one of their biggest customers and I think it knows that one day Apple will give Intel the middle-finger for being such a fcuk-up and lose that business for not being able to keep up. I will lose no love over it when that happens.
On the flip side, for me personally I love that I can run Windows on my Macs. It's mandatory for me that it is able to do that. Running ARM with x86-emulation is going to suck, if it is even an option technically. I love macs, but for non-mobile devices, it's gonna be a Windows world.
If Apple licenses and builds its own x86 chips, they'd be awesome I think.
Because X86 advancement is best done by the creators. AMD is a X86 clone/competitor, and they have a hard enough time. Apple doesn’t NEED X86, but they can certainly benefit from the outsourcing.
A lot of people are considering their needs, not the average consumer that doesn’t know anything but the marketing hype. While many of us advanced/expert users would never even consider a machine with an i3 level of power, a lot of home users would. That is why no one should be predicting Apple would completely ditch Intel. Intel’s pockets are deep, but with no serious competition, they will get lazy and fail to advance the state of the art. With Apple stepping up and saying, “hey, we can’t wait. So, we will have to put our own chips in the consumer grade machines.” Intel would probably renew efforts so as not to lose millions of chip sales. Meanwhile, Pro users will continue to get what Intel Core series in the Pro machines gives. Despite the fact that the MBPs are getting really anemic in terms of professional amounts of storage these days, their performance will be first rate at the high end.
What an in-house designed chip could do is reduce per chip costs and allow Apple to tune the chip’s performance specifically to the OS needs, ad Apple has done with a A series and iOS. Now they have Metal & the GPUs are unlocked as well because they also control the hardware. Also, with less dependency on third parties to advance the state of the art, Apple, would be freer to innovate.
As far as “Windows” compatibility, most home users I have spoken to, either don’t know or don’t care to “hassle” rebooting to use Windows in Bootcamp because they can open Office Files on the Mac (as long as it is not Access). So, consumer grade machines don’t need the feature, while pro-machines can still use it as a selling point, further differentiating the lines.
Also, to the commenter that said that Apple is buying innovation like everyone else:
The difference is, Apple is buying not to catch up to the leader, because they are the leader. So, when Apple buys an innovative company, you can bank on the reason being that it’s to jump further ahead of the competition. Plus Apple still innovates in industrial design; that's why every other company copies them. You can verify all on my claims with a quick walk through the news archives for the last 10-15 years (since OS X came out basically). I only know about all the history because I have been following tech and Apple specifically for over 30 years. I see when companies are repeating history, and this looks more like the Motorola to PPC step, except I don’t foresee Apple completely leaving Intel anytime soon (within 10 years), & instead see it continuing its 2 CPU platform strategy for the foreseeable future. Anyone who doesn’t realize Apple has been in a 2 CPU platform position with the cousins, OS X & iOS, since the iPhone came out in 2007, is not paying close enough attention.
Besides, this will build a fire under Intel to speed up development of low-wattage chips.
-----
"It's better to be a pirate than join the navy."
Not so. Have you seen the little garbage scows the pirates off the coast of Africa have. I'd much rather be on an aircraft carrier.
I have zero clue how all the x86 politics work, but couldn't Apple somehow license the x86 architecture (like it did with ARM) and essentially build its own x86-compatible chip solely for its own machines and run with it? That way, Apple could contract with its own, very capable chip suppliers and all Intel has to do is just sit-back, and count the royalty money coming in for doing nothing.
I think it's inevitable that Apple will jettison Intel. Part of me wants that to happen. The writing is on the wall. I think Intel is quietly kicking itself in the backside for essentially ruining numerous opportunities to come out on top. Apple is certainly one of their biggest customers and I think it knows that one day Apple will give Intel the middle-finger for being such a fcuk-up and lose that business for not being able to keep up. I will lose no love over it when that happens.
On thwith x86-emulation is going to suck, if it is even an option technically. I love macs, but for non-mobile devices, it's gonna be a Windows world.
If Apple licenses and builds its own x86 chips, they'd be awesome I think.
Quote:
I have zero clue how all the x86 politics work, but couldn't Apple somehow license the x86 architecture (like it did with ARM) and essentially build its own x86-compatible chip solely for its own machines and run with it?
ARM was set up for licensing, and they never did their own fabrication. Intel is totally different.
If you have to be able to run Windows then I agree that x86 is in your future. OTOH, I need only to run some x86 binaries and ARM Rosetta2 would work for me. One scary thought is whether VMware Fusion or Parallels would run on an ARM-based Mac. Scary indeed.
Apple wrote XCode to handle the switch from PPC to Intel. Now we have Swift. Apple didn't spend 3 years writing a new programming language for the hell of it.
I have zero clue how all the x86 politics work, but couldn't Apple somehow license the x86 architecture (like it did with ARM) and essentially build its own x86-compatible chip solely for its own machines and run with it?
Yes, Apple could license the x64 ISA, if one of the companies who "own" it allow that.
And I personally believe that this is the direction Apple will head. The chips they use now are bogged down with legacy logic left in to maintain backwards compatibility for the Windows platform. Apple could very well strip out all of that and produce a core at a significant discount over what they're paying Intel. And I'm sure in a few years they'll do the same to their ARM cores; strip out ARMv7 and only support ARMv8.
ARM was set up for licensing, and they never did their own fabrication. Intel is totally different.
Intel doesn't own the x64 ISA, they own their version of it. It is actually based of AMD's 64-bit extensions to Intel's x86 ISA, which was licensed to AMD and many others. In turn, Intel licensed those extensions from AMD. Apple can either license it from either, or develop their own x64 compatible ISA from scratch.
Because X86 advancement is best done by the creators. AMD is a X86 clone/competitor, and they have a hard enough time. Apple doesn’t NEED X86, but they can certainly benefit from the outsourcing.
I sort of disagree with out here. You're basically saying Apple should've stayed out of the ARM game then and just left CPU design to ARM. Even though Apple's custom core designs have proven to be better than ARMs.
I don't see why Apple couldn't create their own x64 cores and possibly even top Intel's own efforts. Like I said in a previous post... there's a lot of baggage in Intel's designs that Apple just does not need.
I honestly don't see Apple ditching Intel to go only with the AX class of chips. They just are not powerful enough to be able to do all of the computing functions that most people need. Now, that said, I could see them including a set of AX chips with the Intel chips. I am thinking as a sub processor that can help out with Grand Central Dispatch to help boost performance. Also, with the AX chips in the machines it would be a huge boon for iOS development (instead of emulating what would happen with the simulator) and the potential that some iOS apps could actually be ran natively on the Mac.
The flip side to this is the licensing of X86/64 and creating a processor that is ARM based but with the X86/64 sub processor in it. After all, this being a desktop/laptop chip, it probably wouldn't be an AX chip, but a new type of chip overall (let's call it D1). As a way to keep Intel somewhat happy by this turn of events, they could even help in the fabrication of it. This leaves the AX chips as their Mobile chips, SX chips as their wearable chips, MX chips as their motion chips, and now the new D1 as their Desktop/Laptop chips. This is a definite possibility especially since ARM was designed to be grouped together and run in a multi-threaded/multi-processor environment. They could design it in such a way that would allow for Boot Camp to utilize the X86 chips only (and at a higher clock speed), unless Windows has somehow figured out how to run in both ARM and X86 at the same time.
I honestly only see these two scenarios as realistic possibilities. Obviously, the third scenario is that this whole rumor is hog-wash, and should be treated as such.