snow66
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Steve Jobs predicted the Mac's move from Intel to ARM processors
Apple isn't moving to ARM to avoid physical obstacles of CPU design. Apple is doing this to manage processor costs and to control the processor development path. Intel has a terrible record of delivering against their own processor roadmap for some time now. This has been a significant problem for Apple, who doesn't just refresh their Mac lineups with the latest and greatest chips every x months the way some hardware manufactures do. By taking processor control in house Apple will have the same type of advantage they have today with iPhones where they control the timeline and feature set so it is much easier to release on a schedule. Using their own ARM chips will also increase Apples ability to differentiate their products from the competition.samrod said:I hope Apple doesn't transition Macs to ARM chips. The benefit of having a POSIX *n*x running on the same hardware as the rest of the world is hard to overstate. The thinking with the transition is that since ARM chips are so powerful sipping such little energy on iOS devices, imagine the workhorses they'd be on desktops? Sure? Maybe? But this would only be a short-lived advantage until the same physical obstacles affecting Intel come up. The reason to transition is that progression on the Intel architecture has decelerated. But this is universal and will affect the ARM architecture as well. The laws of physics won't give Apple's ARM engineers any advantages over Intel engineers. ARM may have a head start, but it WILL hit the same limits at 4nm process with yield problems, etc.
