Apple planning to ditch Intel chips in Macs for its own custom silicon in 2020
Apple is expected to ditch Intel's x86 architecture using its own chips in the Mac as soon as 2020, with the fruits of project "Kalamata" similar to a move that it has pulled twice before.
According to Bloomberg, "Kalamata" is in the early stages, and is part of a larger strategy to make Apple devices work with more integration than they currently do. At first glance, the project appears to be similar to the "fat binary" approach Apple has taken in the past, both with the shift from 68K processors to PowerPC, and then with PowerPC to x86 with Rosetta.
The transition is said to be "multi-step" -- but few details are known at present.
Prior to a shift in hardware, Apple plans to lay groundwork with software as part of its Project Marzipan initiative. Aside from a new code name, today's report offers little in the way of new information.
The prediction isn't revelatory, given Apple's history. Apple internally started the shift to PowerPC chips in 1991, with the transition happening for consumers a bit more than two years later. Additionally, the company had Mac OS X builds for Intel chips since nearly the launch of the operating system, with that shift happening about five years later.
Rumors that Apple plans to switch away from x86 to its own custom silicon have been circulating for a decade. Rumblings have been heard since at least since 2008, when the tech giant purchased chip designer PA Semi for a reported $278 million.
After specifying several iterations of ARM-based system-on-chip packages for use in early iPhone models, Apple purchased chipmaker Intrinsity in 2010 and released its own mobile processor design in the A4.
Industry scuttlebutt concerning inevitable integration in Mac followed in 2011, when a report claimed Apple would deliver a desktop version of its 64-bit ARM platform within one to two years, gossip seemingly backed up by a buy-in into a chip fabrication plant in 2013. That hearsay bore no fruit, but Apple's work toward a first-party solution continued.
In late 2010, Apple began a concerted effort to build out its CPU design group, a years-long project involving rounds of poaching, including former Texas Instruments engineers, and new acquisitions like efficient chipset maker Passif.
Other key moves include the purchase of a chip fab once owned by Maxim and the establishment of SoC-related research and development facilities in Israel and beyond.
Rumors of an ARM-based Mac cropped up again last September, when a report claimed the company was looking to cut back on its reliance on Intel.
Apple's A11 Bionic processor has a single-core processor speed of 4205, with a multi-core speed of 10122. The results are very similar in performance to the 2016 and 2017 i7 MacBook Pro for single-core performance, and the multicore performance of the original 15-inchMacBook Pro with Retina Display.
According to Bloomberg, "Kalamata" is in the early stages, and is part of a larger strategy to make Apple devices work with more integration than they currently do. At first glance, the project appears to be similar to the "fat binary" approach Apple has taken in the past, both with the shift from 68K processors to PowerPC, and then with PowerPC to x86 with Rosetta.
The transition is said to be "multi-step" -- but few details are known at present.
Prior to a shift in hardware, Apple plans to lay groundwork with software as part of its Project Marzipan initiative. Aside from a new code name, today's report offers little in the way of new information.
The prediction isn't revelatory, given Apple's history. Apple internally started the shift to PowerPC chips in 1991, with the transition happening for consumers a bit more than two years later. Additionally, the company had Mac OS X builds for Intel chips since nearly the launch of the operating system, with that shift happening about five years later.
Rumors that Apple plans to switch away from x86 to its own custom silicon have been circulating for a decade. Rumblings have been heard since at least since 2008, when the tech giant purchased chip designer PA Semi for a reported $278 million.
After specifying several iterations of ARM-based system-on-chip packages for use in early iPhone models, Apple purchased chipmaker Intrinsity in 2010 and released its own mobile processor design in the A4.
Industry scuttlebutt concerning inevitable integration in Mac followed in 2011, when a report claimed Apple would deliver a desktop version of its 64-bit ARM platform within one to two years, gossip seemingly backed up by a buy-in into a chip fabrication plant in 2013. That hearsay bore no fruit, but Apple's work toward a first-party solution continued.
In late 2010, Apple began a concerted effort to build out its CPU design group, a years-long project involving rounds of poaching, including former Texas Instruments engineers, and new acquisitions like efficient chipset maker Passif.
Other key moves include the purchase of a chip fab once owned by Maxim and the establishment of SoC-related research and development facilities in Israel and beyond.
Rumors of an ARM-based Mac cropped up again last September, when a report claimed the company was looking to cut back on its reliance on Intel.
Apple's A11 Bionic processor has a single-core processor speed of 4205, with a multi-core speed of 10122. The results are very similar in performance to the 2016 and 2017 i7 MacBook Pro for single-core performance, and the multicore performance of the original 15-inchMacBook Pro with Retina Display.
Comments
Apple continues working on shoring up the custom ARM based CPUs of its own design and still licenses the IP in order to produce them has nothing to do with leaving macOS to fend for itself on ARM based only instruction sets.
More importantly, the effort to create OS X even with decades of x86/PPC/Moto/SPARC expertise took 5 years to get a limped version out the door, and that was already with a platform native on x86. The Rosetta was a compatibility layer on top of it.
The logical solution moving forward is for Apple to license IP from AMD to have them build custom ASIC designs of SoC APUs and use their discrete CPUs/GPUs with the upcoming Thunderbolt licensing [now royalty free] to have a custom Thunderbolt controller designed by Apple on their boards, that are compatible with AMD's x86 chipsets, thus freeing Apple from relying solely on Intel.
I also feel like by the vagueness of this rumor, it’s more likely an iPad Pro that runs Mac OS then a MacBook necessarily switching off intel, but I feel they would switch the regular MacBook and not the MacBook Pro first, which askews the update cycle.
2- should give Apple some extra room to improve security.
3- how much you want to bet we will see fat binaries again?
They certainly could, but I don't think they have to. With the advent of the Mac App Store and all the advancements they've been making to make coding easier to developers to support multiple architectures I'm guessing that it'll be a fairly simple process for developers to compile for an Intel and ARM Mac, and I assume that it's not some all-or-nothing event that will wipe out Intel Macs. I expect we'll see ARM-based Macs for the low-end with the high-end being Intel Macs.
Question is then if they can avoid falling behind with such blunders on their own, but their A series execution has been excellent year over year.
5x in just two years sounds pretty optimistic, even with how impressive they've been. Say they manage another 80% MP boost every year, we're more like at ~3x at 30K multicore if it manages very good scaling, but we've more often seen one year with a big boost, one year with a minor boost, alternatively.
Now, this is all without active cooling so far, so if we're talking about a clamshell or desktop with active cooling on top of their already impressive uArch designs maybe. I wonder what a Xeon W equivalent A series would look like...