iMac 2015

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited March 2015
http://fudzilla.com/news/processors/37342-skylake-s-desktop-coming-by-october

What are they talking about with 35W parts for the iMac?

Also it would make sense to just jump to Skylake with the iMac would it not or is there enough Broadwell options?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    winter wrote: »
    http://fudzilla.com/news/processors/37342-skylake-s-desktop-coming-by-october

    What are they talking about with 35W parts for the iMac?

    Also it would make sense to just jump to Skylake with the iMac would it not or is there enough Broadwell options?

    The entry level iMacs use lower-end parts. Most use 65W+ parts. The following 15W is in one of them:

    http://ark.intel.com/products/75030/Intel-Core-i5-4260U-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-2_70-GHz

    Intel has been confirming that Skylake is going ahead:

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/2893112/intels-skylake-chips-to-appear-in-tablets-pcs-servers.html

    so they're skipping some Broadwell parts.

    "“We didn’t want to delay it, we talked to our customers, they didn’t want to delay it. Everybody’s just saying no, full speed ahead,” Krzanich said."

    This makes the new Macbook a pretty bad purchase because the Skylake Core M will be out a few months after it ships in April:

    http://www.extremetech.com/computing/199302-intel-confirms-skylake-upgrade-for-core-m-later-this-year

    Intel's launch event for Skylake will likely be IDF in August. There's an Intel event in about 2 weeks where they might show Skylake off some more. Intel is saying it'll be the most innovative platform in 10 years. Wireless charging keeps getting mentioned and this might explain the Macbook design choice with taking out Magsafe. It's said to be based on the following:

    http://www.rezence.com/technology/meet-rezence

    That says they can do wireless charging beyond a mat so you can imagine that Apple's future laptop chargers could come without a cable at all. You'd have a block plugged in and just position the laptop within range and it'll charge with magnetic resonance and not only that, this single charger block would charge iPads and iPhones. At airports, loads of people could just sit near the charging poles and the devices would charge up. No more frayed wires, no more tripped cables, no more plugging in at all.

    Apple's desktops and displays could even be designed as power transmitters so that they can power/charge laptops and mobiles. If they have high bandwidth wireless display tech built-in, they can do that too. When you bring a Macbook home, you can just sit it next to the display and the MB would get the power signal and the display signal would go to the display.

    Wireless power can also mean an end to charging wireless keyboards and mice and VR goggles that don't need a battery or cable.

    Jumping to Skylake should come with a huge performance jump from last year's Haswell machines too. It's like when Apple jumped from Core 2 to a newer core-i, it was 2 generations and it was about 2x performance increase. It might be a mix of lower power plus more performance but Iris Pro 7200 should be pretty good as far as mobile graphics go and then DDR4 on top with higher density, PCIe 4 with double bandwidth, possibly double SSD performance (~2GB/s).
  • Reply 2 of 5
    winterwinter Posts: 1,238member
    I don't even understand the need for the entry level iMac. The $1,299 iMac WAS an entry level machine and you can get it for the price of entry level iMac now in the refurbished store.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,309moderator
    winter wrote: »
    I don't even understand the need for the entry level iMac. The $1,299 iMac WAS an entry level machine and you can get it for the price of entry level iMac now in the refurbished store.

    The refurbs aren't always in stock around the world so the entry one helps maintain a low entry price. That entry price determines the market size they can target, it's a balancing act between volume and profit. Processor performance is reaching a level where entry chips are fine for everyday computing needs so as long as they can maintain the margin, and avoid adversely affecting overall revenue, boosting the unit volume is a sensible move. The Mac line has grown as a result of the cheaper Air and iMac.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    winter wrote: »
    http://fudzilla.com/news/processors/37342-skylake-s-desktop-coming-by-october

    What are they talking about with 35W parts for the iMac?
    Intel has always made a range of desktop processors. The interesting thing here is that a SkyLake edition ought to give the IMac a significant boost in CPU capability along with the integrated graphics boost. It should make for a very interesting iMac upgrade.

    As it is you can't be sure which processor Apple will choose. The chips coming form Intel are more integrated every year which means that a 35 watt chip might significantly lower the over all power used in a system with an older 35 watt chip. It all depends upon what intel delivers and what Apple is willing to use. That being said as can be seen with the iOS devices and the new Mac Book Apple can leverage these new high integrating devices better than just about anybody else.

    Also it would make sense to just jump to Skylake with the iMac would it not or is there enough Broadwell options?

    The Broadwell line up isn't fully rolled out and honestly it looks like they went the route of mobile only. The article seems to indicate the opposite but it really doesn't make much sense to deliver Broadwell based hardware a few months before the supposed SkyLake roll out. The only possibility here is that the Broadwell hardware is to support old sockets and I/O hardware.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    winter wrote: »
    I don't even understand the need for the entry level iMac. The $1,299 iMac WAS an entry level machine and you can get it for the price of entry level iMac now in the refurbished store.

    I'm not sure if I can help here but the entry level machine is very very important in my mind. This especially if you are trying to place iMacs in business where not everyone needs a high performance computer. Also high integration SoC technology means that you don't have to forego performance on an entry level machine.

    Think about what a modern entry level SoC needs to offer to produce a machine that is suitable for an entry level machine these days. In Apples case it needs the CPU, GPU, a couple of specialized execution units, interfaces (PCI, USB and TB) and channels to RAM. That is about it, there may be minor I/O like low speed on board serial ports but the reality is that can all be handled on the SoC these days. More so the I/O becomes a minor part of the landscape of the SoC.

    So what does having most of the system on a SoC do for us? Well it does the following:
    1. Lowers over all power.
    2. Decreases the size of the logic board.
    3. Decreases the size of the power supply.
    4. Decreases the size of the required cooling system
    5. All of the above lead to lower system costs and more flexibility in design.
    6. Generally SoC technology means higher performance at a lower power point due to fewer trips off silicon. In other words there is a performance gain for a given wattage by staying on board the silicon.

    It should be noted too that things like DDR4 and LPDDR4 can also significantly impact the power dissipation of the system. This again offers up saving even if new tech like DDR4 will be expensive in the beginning.

    From a personal standpoint this is why I was waiting for SkyLake and would have up until the logic board going out on my old MBP.

    As for SkyLake itself we don't know exactly what Intels lineup will be, but there have been plenty of indications that they will have high integration solutions in the mix as they move away for more traditional socket chips that needed lots of motherboard support. I also expect that Apple has had some influence on what Intel is designing at least for the mobile space. I could see SoC's that completely drop SATA for example, that provide an I/O compliment that is Mac Book specific. If Apple was up to spending the money I could even see them getting intel to do a full custom spin with say for example Apples custom video camera processor integrated into an Intel SoC.

    At this point I don't know of any custom Intel mobile or desktop processors but they are doing many custom chips for the customers of the Xeon lines. last I heard was that there are 33 custom Xeons either in production of design at Intel so it isn't impossible that we might see custom mobile chips or even desktop chips for big companies like Apple.
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