“Writing for Seeking Alpha, Mark Hibben suggests that Apple might enlist the semi-custom design services of struggling chipmaker, Advanced Micro Devices, to build a custom-tailored processor for Apple’s MacBooks. In fact, he pegs those chances as ‘good,'” Ashraf Eassa writes for The Motley Fool. “I, on the other hand, think that this is highly unlikely.”
“One key argument that Hibben makes is that Intel’s PC processor designs are designed in a ‘one-size fits all’ fashion to serve the requirements of a wide range of PC customers,” Eassa writes. “By commissioning a semi-custom chip from AMD, Hibben argues, Apple could get exactly what it wants/needs without any of the additional ‘bloat’ present to support other PC makers’ designs.”
“Although Hibben argues that Apple might be better served with custom-tailored parts for the MacBook, I disagree,” Eassa writes. “Another issue here is that AMD’s notebook processors haven’t been competitive with Intel’s for a while, all things considered.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Unless AMD has something transformative up their sleeve, we don’t see it. AMD hasn’t done much interesting for a very long time.
Apple has better chip designers than AMD. It’s more likely that were Apple to dump Intel for anything, it’d be for Apple processors, not AMD.
AMD is valuable, we suppose, for keeping Intel somewhat honest with pricing, etc.