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According to Bloomberg News, Apple plans to launch its Mac computer with a proprietary development processor next year. Bloomberg further noted that Apple is currently working on three Mac processors, which are based on the chip developed by the A14 processor used in the next-generation iPhone. People familiar with the matter said that the first Mac processor will be better than the iPhone and iPad. It is much faster. In a Bloomberg report, they called Apple’s most ambitious computer chip program.
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We know that in the past ten years, Apple not only released its A-series chips used in mobile phones, but also introduced A-series derived chips used in iPad, H-series Bluetooth chips used in airpods, and Apple Watch. W series chips. In addition, there are T series chips for security and modem chips in development. As for other types of chips, like power management chips, that’s even more important.
After this new series of chips came out, all of Apple’s hardware used self-developed chips.
The not mysterious “Kalamata” plan
We can see from the Bloomberg report that Apple calls its Mac computer chip design based on the Arm architecture “Kalamata”. Kalamata is the tenth largest city in Greece, perhaps derived from the Greek “kala ommata”, which means “beautiful eyes”. This is not the first exposure of Apple’s Mac chip program.
According to Bloomberg, as early as 2018, Apple developed a Mac chip based on the iPad Pro A12X processor and conducted internal tests. The test results were reportedly very good, and because Arm has been promoting the design of high-performance chips, which makes Apple engineers trust this plan.
People familiar with the matter said that Apple will use TSMC’s 5nm production line to make new chips for Mac. This is the same process that Apple will use chips in the next generation iPhone and iPad Pro. The first batch of processors Mac will have eight high-performance cores (codenamed Firestorm) and at least four power-saving cores (internally called Icestorm). At the same time, Apple is exploring Mac processors with more than 12 cores for further development.
According to the news, Apple has begun designing the second-generation Mac processor, which will follow the A15 chip architecture developed for the iPhone 2021. This shows that Apple wants to put its Mac, iPhone, and iPad on the same processor development cycle.
In accordance with Apple’s plan, its Mac chips will be tested in a new MacBook series because the performance of its processor is currently not comparable to the Intel processors currently used in MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac Pro Comparable desktop computers.
Despite the unified chip design with the iPhone and iPad, Bloomberg said, Apple’s Mac, which uses a self-developed Arm processor, will continue to run the macOS operating system instead of iOS software for iPhone and iPad. Apple is also exploring the development of a tool to ensure that applications developed for older Macs based on Intel processors can still run on new machines. But this is not an easy task. Microsoft has tried to move the Windows system to an Arm processor based computer, but has been unsuccessful.
In addition, the company also has a technology called Catalyst, which enables software developers to run applications developed for iPad on Mac computers.
“Intel’s change is very complex and requires close cooperation between Apple’s software, hardware and component procurement teams. Given the current state of the global supply chain, this change may be delayed,” stressed people familiar with the matter. .
Which abacus is Apple playing?
In the history of the Apple Mac,The CPU architecture has been transferred three times:
The first was in 1984, with the release of the Macintosh 128k, Apple changed the 6502 8-bit processor from Apple II to the 68k processor architecture of Motorola; the second platform migration was in 1994, Apple stopped using Motorola 68k processing. Switch to Power PC processor; the third time was in 2005, at that year’s WWDC conference, Jobs, Apple’s then CEO, announced that IBM’s Power PC architecture would be discontinued and Intel’s X86 architecture would be converted. This is the fourth time.
According to Steve Jobs, the reason they chose to migrate their hardware platforms was primarily disappointment with IBM’s development progress in Power PC technology.
Relevant information shows that in June 2003, Steve Jobs promised to launch the Mac equipped with the Power PC G5 processor in 12 months to increase the clock frequency of the Power PC processor to 3 GHz. In fact, even after two years, Apple and IBM failed to commercialize the 3 GHz Power PC processor. Market rumors believe this embarrassing situation is caused by the poor performance of the chipset derived from IBM’s POWER4. In addition, the Power PC processor equipped in the Mac laptop, the great heat generated during operation, has also been widely criticized by the industry in the same period.
Intel now faces the same dilemma as IBM. Due to the impact of manufacturing process updates, the gap between Intel, TSMC, and even Samsung is widening even further, affecting the frequency of updates to their processors. This may also be a reason that led Apple to switch to the Arm processor.
According to the Bloomberg report, we can see that for Apple, developing its own computer processor has many advantages.
Firstly, this will also reduce Apple’s dependence on Intel.The recent news that Intel processors are out of stock will surely make everyone’s memories fresh. If Apple chooses the Arm processor, they can seek help from TSMC or even Samsung.
Second, self-developed processors can better control the performance of their devices and set them apart from competitors.Compared to other major Intel products, Apple MacBook differs more through software. But if they can join a more differentiated competition in hardware, or help them open up a new battlefield.
Third, if Mac, iPhone, and iPad run the same core technology, it will be easier for Apple to unify its app ecosystem and update its computers more frequently.And such a consistent system experience, whether developers or consumers, will be highly interested, which will also become Apple’s competitiveness.
Fourth, this will also give Apple a huge cost advantage.According to Apple analyst Guo Mingzhi, if Apple uses its own CPU Arm, it can save 40-60% of the cost of the processor, but it can still get the expected performance and increase battery life. Guo Mingchi further noted that after cutting costs, it will give Apple the opportunity to launch a MacBook Air for less than $ 1,000. This will help Apple shake up the market with lower priced products based on its excellent ecology.
Intel will bear the brunt
Only from a revenue perspective, even if Apple’s Mac products are turned to Arm processors, the performance impact of Intel is only 5%. But for the semiconductor giant, the power of the role model is infinite.
Looking back on today’s personal PC market, Intel is an absolute big winner, helping them make huge profits in the past over a long period of time. In the past two years, in addition to AMD trying to compete with Intel in the PC market through the new X86 architecture, Qualcomm has also launched a new series of Arm processors, and also hopes to take a slice of the PC market. But the latter has not been successful. The book primarily related to the Arm processor in terms of system experience and application ecology cannot shake Wintel’s country.
But given Apple’s glorious past three architectural moves, in case they really can succeed here. Qualcomm and its partners will be very confident. Huawei, which is now a computer and many chips at the same time, do you have one more idea about it? This may have a profound impact on the future of Intel.
In the last ten years, Arm and Intel have not stopped fighting. With the great success of the embedded field, the former has penetrated the field of server chips all the way. In the past two years, under the impetus of Ampere computing, Marvell, Huawei, Feiteng and Amazon, it seems to have begun to show a new dawn. If Apple chips can succeed on PC this time, it will help them go to the next city. In contrast, Intel, even if they spend a lot of money on mobile chips, but ultimately cannot avoid the fate of the fiasco.
According to Apple’s active chip plan, we can also see that in the 1980s, due to the rapid increase in chip performance requirements and the sharp rise in production line investment costs, the makers of IDM they gradually switched to Fabless and Fab split mode. But in the second decade of the 21st century, the prosperity of IP manufacturers and manufacturers such as Arm and TSMC has given system manufacturers the ability to customize their chips at relatively low cost to create more differentiated products on the market. fiercely competitive, they kill blood.
For some chipmakers, it’s time to think about how to survive in today’s competitive environment.
