

Apple in advance discussions to adopt AMD chips - ssp
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/16/apple_in_advanced_discussions_to_adopt_amd_chips.html

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iamcalledrob
It seems to make sense for Apple to talk to alternative suppliers, if only to
keep Intel on their toes.

I wonder though, whether there are any places in Apple's lineup where AMD
chips are a better fit than Intel. I can't really think of any.

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osivertsson
Many reasons:

* Intel vs nVidia legal battles have hurt Apple for sure.

* Delays in new mobile chips.

* Price

* Apple hoped Larrabee would be a hit and introduced Grand Central Dispatch etc. only to have Intel cancel it. Did Intel communicate early enough that Larrabee was not going to be feasible?

* nVidia is not doing very well in the graphics department with their new Fermi parts being power hungry and slow compared to AMD/ATI's chips.

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hga
Hasn't Intel just delayed Larrabee as a graphics solution, not officially
given up on it? I.e. the current parts missed their marketing window, so
they're only useful in the HPC market, but they hope to do better with later
ones.

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josefresco
This leak is merely a public negotiating tactic to get a better deal from
Intel. I doubt they'd drop Intel for AMD even if this generation's chips are
faster/better.

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gaius
I'd like to see Apple move to POWER7 in Xserves. Then we'd really be cooking
with gas. The only issue would be how happy IBM would be with a(nother)
competitor Unix.

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ZachPruckowski
Steve Jobs holds a grudge though, so I think it's unlikely they'll use IBM
chips again after the 3GHZ G5 failure.

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maerek
From a marketing perspective, you have to wonder what sort of dilution effect
this would have on the Apple brand. Apple is (generally) known for producing
high quality products with plenty of power underneath the hood. The
introduction of cheaper, slower performing chips to create a sub-tier of
macbooks, etc., doesn't really gel with the current Apple brand image.

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wisty
Apple is already running C2D on the MacBookPro (13 inch) and iMac (all but the
top tier 27 inch).

They could find great replacements in AMD's line-up for a lot less. Nothing as
good as an i7, and I've heard that TPD is a bit high, but AMD chips are fine
if you don't want bleeding edge performance.

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maerek
But that's the problem - most Apple consumers don't need bleeding edge
performance, but the brand is known for having high quality components in
their products. Perhaps AMD could find a socket in the Mac Mini, which is
already positioned as a low-cost starter machine.

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hackermom
If anything, the talks concern GPUs, _NOT_ CPUs.

However much I dislike Intel, and however much I like AMD, the fact is that
today AMD just cannot compare to Intel in the mobile segment in terms of power
consumption and heat dissipation. There is just no way that Apple would make
this kind of "switch" for their desktops or laptops. The closest plausible
scenario would be a switch for their XServe segment, to bring more cores to
them at a lower cost.

I am 100% certain that the next time Apple makes a brand/manufacturer switch
of CPU in their desktop/laptop segment, you will see ARM written all over it.

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notauser
That's going to depend a lot on what AMD have in their combined chip road map.

Who apart from AMD could offer a single chip with laptop-class performance?
Nvidia lack a CPU and Intel's graphics are not in the top tier (yet).

If they could save 15% of their power budget for the CPU _and_ the graphics
card by putting it all on one chip then that might be something that would
work, even though a direct CPU to CPU comparison wouldn't.

