

There will be blood: why Apple and Intel are destined to clash - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/07/there-will-be-blood-why-apple-and-intel-are-doomed-to-clash.ars

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wtallis
I think that Ars is over-thinking it. The simple fact is that Intel's roadmaps
lately haven't been all that well aligned to Apple's product lines. Back
during the days of the Apple-Intel transition, Intel was all about killer
laptop chips, which was the biggest weak point of the PPC chips of the day.
Apple and Intel were a good match.

When it came time for Intel to introduce the successor to the Core 2
microarchitecture, they did it with the i7, a high-end desktop chip. Apple
doesn't make a high-end desktop. They make small form-factor desktops and they
make workstations. It shouldn't surprise anybody that the desktop i7 didn't
get picked up by Apple quickly. When the Nehalem-based Xeons were released,
Apple was the first to use them, in the Mac Pro. Much later, Apple was able to
get the i5 and i7 into only the biggest of the iMacs, which have always (in
the Intel era) been MacBook Pros at heart.

Things have been a bit different in the laptop department because of Intel's
anti-competitive behavior with respect to graphics chips. First, they refuse
to grant NVidia the licenses they need to make chipsets for the mobile Nehalem
processors. Then, they refuse to release a mobile i7 that doesn't contain
their pathetic integrated graphics that to Apple (who is trying to ensure all
their customers can have GPU-accelerated video decoding and OpenCL) is just a
big lump of wasted silicon. Thanks to Intel, Apple's laptops need to add an
extra graphics chip to their already-crowded motherboards. That's why none of
the 13" machines have gotten an i5 yet: they're too small. In order to put an
i5 in a MacBook, Apple would have make a major compromise or get really clever
during a complete re-design of the internal layout.

Ars tries to partially attribute Apple's continued use of the Core 2 to a lack
of engineering resources due to a focus on the iOS devices, but that sounds
absurd given Apple's recent financial numbers. I think it can be entirely
explained by the differing and conflicting interests of Apple and Intel. They
undoubtedly are watching each other's mobile strategies, but that's not
necessary to explain what's happening with the desktops.

~~~
djcapelis
> Thanks to Intel, Apple's laptops need to add an extra graphics chip to their
> already-crowded motherboards.

Not precisely. In the latest generation of chips this is in on-die. Apple
doesn't have to add Intel's integrated graphics to their motherboard, Intel
ships all their chips with their integrated graphics cores inside them, sort
of (but technically slightly different than) how they ship their chips with L2
caches inside them already.

Intel may well be being dicks about licensing, but to ask for a westmere i7
without Intel's integrated graphics is asking for them to spin a different die
process. (Though they did do that for Apple once IIRC.)

Overall, the fact that it's there isn't a huge issue, people who don't like it
just turn it off and use an off-package graphics card. I think this is more
about the licensing issues than Intel needing to offer another die.

~~~
wmf
No, the point is that Apple has to add an extra _non-Intel_ GPU because the
integrated Intel GPU _sucks_. What was a two-chip system (Core 2 Duo + NVidia
9400) is now a three-chip system (i5 + PM55 + NVidia GPU).

~~~
djcapelis
Right, but that isn't because Intel won't release a different mobile i7 die.
It's because they're not letting nvidia legally ship a chip that interfaces
with the new Intel chips.

It's a licensing issue, not a die construction issue. The fact that all the
mobile i7 dies happen to contain Intel's integrated graphics is irrelevant.

------
jsz0
I can't make much sense of this article. Based on his assumptions you would
think Apple is completely intolerant of doing business with any company that
might compete with them even on a theoretical basis. What about Samsung? They
have their own SmartPhone platform (Bada) and also produce Android
SmartPhones. No way Apple would do business with them right? Of course they do
though. Samsung provides LCD panels for the iPad and fabricates the A4
processor. Software differentiates platforms these days. It doesn't really
matter if the new 8" Motorola Droid 3 that comes out in the future uses an x86
chip or not. Apple is still competing directly against Google in that context.
Even if MeeGo was very popular in the future I don't see any strong connection
between mobile and PCs.

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watmough
Put a 12-core ARM chip in a MBP and you may not notice the difference. I
started out programming on the Acorn Archimedes (ARM4 - 8Mhz), and it wiped
the floor with the PC-class 12MHz 80286 hardware available at the time ('89
ish). Maybe we'll come full circle and multi-core ARM chips will once again
outperform the Intel competition.

With NEON, floating point performance is coming along, and Apple have invested
heavily in getting Grand Central (multi-threading) accepted by app(lication)
developers.

Cocoa apis are moving heavily towards blocks, and towards being architected
with efficient exploitation of multiple cores. There are likely further
changes, such as tagging enumerations with 'can-parallelize', that will
further increase app performance.

I believe there is a WWDC 2010 session on how to make your code run into the
future. I will watch that with interest to see if there are any more clues,
but in truth, we probably already have them.

~~~
protomyth
Unless they do something really funky, that 32-bit address space / 4Gig limit
would be a real pain now that the MBP can have 8 gigabytes and 64-bit software
is making an appearance.

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apower
Intel doesn't have a good track record in non-hardware (or non-cpu) endeavors.
The way they can win in the phone arena is to provide the whole hardware
aspect of the phone and leave the software parts to its partners, including
Apple.

~~~
solutionyogi
Well, Intel is the one who came up with the killer SSD, which Linus himself
raved about.

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dsspence
_"Apple will be happy to take PC reference designs from Intel (or AMD?) and
repackage them in nice mobile and desktop enclosures—effectively outsourcing
PC R &D to the chipmaker—while focusing its own engineering efforts on
differentiating its post-PC products from the rest of the market... a market
that will soon include Intel-made smartphone reference designs."_

Since when has Apple outsourced R&D of anything recently? Pretty sure the iPad
A4 chip is not a repackaged Intel chip. The research and design that went into
the unibody macbook pros doesn't seem like they are raising the white flag
just yet either.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Isn't the A4 just the Intrinsity/Samusung Hummingbird SoC as used in the new
Samsung phones, except the Galaxy S _et al_ have a better GPU than the Apple
stuff. (Apple did buy Intrinsity but what impact that will have is for the
future).

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stretchwithme
"There's no way that Apple is going to sit idly by while Intel builds a
hardware/software platform to compete with iOS, and then gives that platform
away to Apple's competitors."

Yep. Apple won't sit idly by. No matter what Intel does.

Is Apple concerned if somebody makes a cheap, one-size-fits-all platform to
compete with the iPhone. I highly doubt it.

Isn't Apple designing its own microprocessor for iPhone now so they optimize
exactly what they want optimized? Why would they care if people believe the
opposite strategy is better?

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wisty
I don't get why Intel is pushing x86 so hard in the mobile market. I
understand them wanting to keep x86 for desktops, as desktop apps need to be
compatible. But mobile apps still need to be customized. Nobody will want to
install Excel (for PC) on their mobile, even if their mobile has the
horsepower to run it.

~~~
wtallis
It is particularly odd behavior given that in 2006, Intel sold off the mobile
portion of the XScale line of ARM chips, but not the rest of the XScale line.
Either they've since had a complete change of heart about the wisdom of going
after the handheld market, or the 2006 deal was the result of a really huge
outbreak of Not Invented Here syndrome.

~~~
megablast
I think Intel, like Microsoft missed the big move to mobile.

Intel want x86 on the phones, since there are so many developers out there
used to it, so many tools, so much software that would only need a small
tweek.

~~~
mishmash
> so many tools, so much software that would only need a small tweek.

I'm not sure about that. ISA is an implementation detail, a popup in your IDE.

Any existing Windows or Mac app that needs to go mobile will in the least need
an interface overhaul (true for iOS and WP7) and at most need to adopt
completely new mobile APIs.

------
jteo
Never underestimate Intel when it has decided to focus on a market.

Intel has money, and its strength in semiconductor architecture engineering
and process technology. Eventually, x86 will be ARM competitive. The real
question is, will it be in time to catch Apple?

~~~
protomyth
Will Qualcomm, NVidia, Samsung, and Apple have the same relationship with
Intel that they have with ARM? The indications are no and that means Intel is
not just competing with one company.

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theBobMcCormick
Sigh... if their analysis is correct, and it seems to me Arstechnica is almost
always correct, it _really_ , really saddens me if Apple is sort of abandoning
the Mac lineup for the iOS line up. Even though I no longer have an OSX
machine, I still feel very fondly for that OS. :-(

~~~
loewenskind
And why would they do that? So everyone who develops for their one (iOS)
platform must do so on someone else' OS? That would be a brilliant strategy.

Right now when you develop for iOS you're going to have the best experience on
Mac with XCode. But as part of that, porting your app to e.g. Android probably
means a total rewrite. If you had to use e.g. Linux for developing _iOS_
applications then it would be easy to write in some language and have the IDE
have different phone backend targets. Do you think Apple would like that?

~~~
theBobMcCormick
Your argument doesn't make any sense.

1) I don't think anyone ever claimed Apples was _discontinuing_ OSX, just that
it seems clear that it's taking a back seat, both marketing _and_ engineering
wise, to the iPhone/iOS line of products.

2) _If_ Xcode did run on Linux or Windows, that wouldn't reduce the lockin
between Xcode and iOS. The inability to write iOS applications in a higher
level language and target different phone backends has absolutely _nothing_ to
do with XCode running on OSX, and everything to do with the iPhone developer
agreement specifically preventing you from doing so.

------
borisk
AMD market cap: 5.4 B, Apple: 230 B. Apple can probably just buy AMD.

~~~
megablast
He talks about this in the last paragraph of the article. If Apple believe
that desktops are going nowhere, and they aren't going to start building cloud
stuff, there is no reason they would want AMD.

~~~
protomyth
Interesting that today's Mac (iMac and Mac pro) switch back to ATI graphic
chips (no, I don't believe they will buy AMD, just interesting). I think Apple
believes in the cloud, but hasn't got it down. The new Macs would seem to
indicate that there is real engineering money being spent in the Mac line.

~~~
Tamerlin
Most that engineering money is someone else's. Apple hasn't been designing its
own machines since the x86 switch, really; they contracted their laptop
manufacturing to the Big 3 (4?) laptop makes like everyone else. I remember
the announcement when Asustek won the contract for one of the laptop lines (I
think it was the MacBook) back when Apple launched its first generation x86
laptops.

Odds are, they're headed in either the same direction with their PC line, or
they're finally going to give it up altogether and start finding partners to
OEM the OS. They'd have a HUGE leg up at getting into datacenters that way --
contracting companies like RackSaver, Boxx, and other similar vendors (which
does, in spite of recent news, still include Dell) would help enormously with
that. It's already at a point where other than the pretty case and the OS, the
mac is just another PC, and I would argue that the part that matters for the
non-mobile PC's isn't the hardware or the pretty case.

~~~
protomyth
Are you confusing construction contracts with the actual design? Because they
seem to take real pride in the design of their machines. For reference, check
all the videos they made of their aluminum manufacturing process for the
MacBook Pro. Like almost every PC maker they contract out the manufacture, but
the design is still theirs.

~~~
Tamerlin
Nope, I'm not confusing them at all. I should have been clearer though, I was
referring to the hardware inside.

Apple does the industrial design, and then solicits RFP's to get the system
board. The laptop OEM builds the motherboards and all that, and I'm guessing
that they deliver the internals to Apple, rather than fully-assembled
machines, so that they do the final integration and burn-in testing and that
sort of thing.

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hackermom
One word: ARM.

