“Word has reached SemiAccurate that Apple is going to show Intel the door, at least as far as laptops are concerned. It won’t be really soon, but we are told it is a done deal,” Charlie Demerjian reports for SemiAccurate.
“Apple is moving the laptop line, and presumably desktops too, to ARM based chips as soon as possible,” Demerjian reports. “Think mid-2013. At that point, Apple can move to ARM without worrying about obsoleting code with an ISA that is on the verge of changing, and no memory overhead worries either. Basically, it looks like the perfect time. Ironically, SemiAccurate’s moles tell us that the boys on infinite loop are planning to move laptops to ARM at about that time.”
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Demerjian reports, “So short story, x86 is history on Apple laptops, or will be in 2-3 years. In any case, it is a done deal, Intel is out, and Apple chips are in. The only question left is if they will use their own core, a Samsung core, or the generic ARM black box. My bet is on generic for the first round, with a custom uncore, and moving to progressively more proprietary features with each successive generation.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As anyone with an iPad 2 can tell you, Apple’s A5 is quite an extraordinary performer. Imagine an Apple A6 (or even an A5) with access to much more than the 512MB RAM found in iPad 2 and coupled with high-performance SSDs. It’s easy to imagine a setup like that running a full-blown Mac OS X very well.
UPDATE: 11:11am EDT: As per concerns about Boot Camp / Windows Virtualization: Microsoft has already announced that their next version of Windows will support SoC architectures from ARM, as well and Intel and AMD. So, provided Microsoft follows through and ships, Boot Camp and Windows Virtualization on Macs could still be possible of Apple ARM-based Macs. See related articles below for more info.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
IDC: ARM chips to own 13% of PC market by 2015 – May 6, 2011
Mysteries abound in analysis of Apple’s bold new iPad-powering A5 – April 14, 2011
Apple’s big, bad A5 whips Nvidia Tegra 2 handsomely in independent tests – April 8, 2011
Apple A5 chip production drives $3.6-billion Samsung fab expansion – March 30, 2011
Apple has become a formidable chip company – March 26, 2011
Teardown of iPad 2 WiFi shows recently-minted Apple A5 SoC, 512 MB RAM – March 13, 2011
RUMOR: Apple inks deal with TSMC foundry for A5 processor; possible setback for Samsung – March 9, 2011
ARM co-founder: Wintel faces obliteration – January 7, 2011
Microsoft to support SoC architectures from Intel, AMD, and ARM for next Windows version – January 5, 2011