“The latest news out of Fudzilla has some information on the new line of CPUs from Intel, code-named Haswell,” Tom Luongo writes for Seeking Alpha. “Haswell is supposed to be the chip that once and for all buries AMD under an avalanche of better graphics performance that will negate the only advantage Chipzilla’s struggling rival has left in the market.”
“For more than a year it’s looked, thanks to the rumor mill and Intel’s PR staff, that the harder AMD tried to regain relevance by advancing its APUs, the closer it would be flying into ‘coffin corner’ versus the inevitability of Intel’s superior everything else. And Haswell’s improved graphics performance would be the cause for AMD to finally stall and spiral to its death,” Luongo writes. “But it is looking more and more that Haswell may be the chip that finally reveals just how far off course Intel is in its designs and causes Intel, and not AMD, to fall precipitously.”
“Haswell as blueprinted was going to be everything to all people and, when one looked at everything Intel had planned, it was hard to argue with that conclusion. But the problem with blueprints is that eventually it has to meet with the reality of the cost of production. So, over the course of development in the past 16 months, initial features of Haswell got lopped off,” Luongo writes. “In a nutshell Haswell is beginning to look DOA to me as a product… Apple will pay for Intel’s best parts because their margins are high enough to absorb their cost but everyone else is trying to figure out how to compete with tablets at a lower price point than an iPad.”
Much more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Intel demos 4th-gen ‘Haswell’ processors bound for Apple’s MacBook lineups – January 7, 2013
Apple MacBook Pro, MacBook Air to get new ‘Haswell’ processors in June 2013, go all-Retina? – December 28, 2012
Intel just announced new chips that will let future MacBooks have practically infinite battery life – September 13, 2011
Wow. Soap opera of a story. Chipzilla is right. Remember those lame little stickers that proclaimed some outdated chip moniker?
Go AMD !
“Apple will pay for Intel’s best parts because their margins are high enough to absorb their cost but everyone else is trying to figure out how to compete with tablets at a lower price point than an iPad”
This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Apple uses Intel in their Macs (as do most other PC vendors). They don’t use Intel in their tablets- they use ARM (as does pretty much everyone else except Microsoft). Intel competes (AFAIK) with AMD in the desktop and laptop market, not the tablet market.
The whole idea of AMD was to undercut Intel. If AMD dies, Intel will have a monopoly and we will all see computer prices rise and Intel can then set any price they want…
They don’t use Intel in their tablets- they use ARM (as does pretty much everyone else except Microsoft)
Even Microsoft made the attempt to go ARM with their Windows RT Surface thing. RT of course is a lousy lummox, making the entire venture yet-another MS lo$$ leader.
The Surface Pro thing uses Intel in order for it to actually have software to run and because it’s actually Windows 8 with the added touchy stuff thrown in.
What’s significant is the near total FAIL of the Intel Atom chips. Just about no one wanted them. They made the ARM chips look brilliant by comparison, thus the run to ARM.
And no trolls, I’m not going to accept arguments to the contrary. If you think the Intel Atom was a success or has any future, go tell it to the birds and the trees, not me.
What he is saying is that Apple can afford the price premium Intel charge for the CPUs in their desktops and laptops. Whereas the players in PC market already have tight margins, because of the highly competitive market. Now that the iPad and other tablets are eroding the PC market, PC makers have to compete with this market as well. And yes Microsoft also use ARM chips in their Windows RT tablets.
ARM chip, SMARF chip IPad’s use A4 & A5 chips going on A6. To be precise a modified ARM chip that is so modified that it is no longer the same ARM chip that the other PC makers use. Only MS have paid ARM a licence fee to modify the chip in the way Apple inc. has.
Actually Apple licenses the ARM instruction set and rights to implement that. The A5 through A6 barely resemble the ARM chips.
“So, over the course of development in the past 16 months, initial features of Haswell got lopped off, …”
What *exactly* has gotten “lopped off”? Haswell still is supposed to give better integer and floating point performance than either Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge. Haswell is still supposed to give *drastically* better graphics performance than Ivy Bridge. The integral memory controller will still support higher memory bandwidths than either Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge. What’s significant (or even insignificant) that’s getting “lopped off”?
Yes, there was a recently announced issue of a USB 3.0 bug, but that’s par for the course in new chip development. Haswell is a new architecture in the 22 nm fab. Until it is in full production (probably June or later) we will hear stories of bugs and issues. As long as Intel avoids another Pentium Floating Point issue, Haswell *will* sell well.
Maybe the ULV Haswell chips will try to compete with the high end ARM based chips, but that’s NOT Intel’s core market for Haswell — that’s laptops and ultrabooks, not tablets. Broadwell is expected to try to take on the tablet and high end smartphone markets about 18+ months from now.
This article is 100%, pure, unadulterated FUD.
Mac Pro & Intel Haswell chip still going to come to market?
Total blowhard. When Anand Lal Shimpi says it’s DOA, he’ll say it with far superior reasoning. AnandTech is well-liked by MDN and its readers, and Anand says it’s 2/3 awesome, the other 1/3 is just a question of how low the TDP can be dropped. 8W? 10W? Only time will tell. So, yeah. It’s badass.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6355/intels-haswell-architecture