The new chips would build on processor design from ARM, a chip company owned by SoftBank Group, according to Bloomberg.
Photograph by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty ImagesApple is planning to announce a shift to its own processors for at least some of its Mac personal computers, supplanting Intel components, Bloomberg reports, citing “people familiar with the plans.”
The announcement is expected as soon as Apple’s (ticker: AAPL) virtual Worldwide Developers Conference, which starts June 22. The new chips would build on processor design from ARM, a chip company owned by SoftBank Group (9984.Japan).
The Bloomberg story reports that the new Macs would roll out in 2021. Apple has been using Intel (INTC) processors in Macs since 2006.
Apple has a long history of using in-house processors and other key components for iPhone, iPads, AirPods, and Apple Watches. And this isn’t the first report suggesting that Apple will switch to ARM-based processors for the Mac; Bloomberg has written stories along the same lines several times over the past 12 months.
Both Intel and Apple declined to comment on the report. ARM referred questions on the story to Apple.
“This is one of the worst-kept secrets out there,” Patrick Moorhead, president of Moor Insights and Strategy, told Barron’s in an email. “Apple has been gearing this up for over five years, and with the deceleration of Intel’s client road map the past few years, Apple saw the opportunity and appears to be taking it.” That said, Moorhead isn’t convinced that Apple should be abandoning Intel processors.
“It’s a risky and expensive move for Apple, and right now I’m scratching my head on why Apple would do this,” he says. “There’s no clear benefit for developers or for users, and it appears Apple is trying to boost profits. All things equal, Apple’s new CPUs would need to outperform Intel’s to translate the X86 (Intel/AMD) world to ARM. To get a strategic benefit, Apple needs developers to rewrite applications...which is a heavy lift.”
In an April research note, New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu chronicled a lengthy list of stories and research reports about Apple planning a switch to ARM-based processors that goes back as far as 2011.
“We have seen numerous reports about Apple moving its Mac product line to ARM processors in recent weeks,” Ferragu wrote in the report dated April 28. “This story has been going on for about a decade, resurfacing regularly. This is the breaking news of the decade in the sense that it has been breaking out almost continuously for a decade without ever turning into anything tangible.”
That said, he added that “there is rarely smoke without a fire, though, and there have been a couple of concordant sources, which may be enough to suspect something might happen next year.”
Ferragu adds in the report that “Apple engineers like to develop their own chips for good reasons, and they would do it for all their products if they could. With in-house chips, Apple can offer the best user experience. In particular for small devices, with limited user interface (the small screen of a phone or a watch, the single push-button of the AirPods) and high interoperability constraints (connect to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, operate with dozens of different cellular networks), the tight integration of chips and the operating system is very important.”
But in a note to clients Tuesday morning, Ferragu’s colleague Antoine Chkaiban wrote that New Street isn’t convinced that Apple will entirely phase out the use of Intel processors. “We expect at best a low end SKU based on ARM [to be] announced,” he writes. “We understand Apple will try and increase the scope of its own chips, but don’t believe it will make sense for Apple to phase out x86 [a reference to Intel processors.] For higher end laptops and desktops, having an Intel main CPU is key.”
In that April research note, Ferragu writes that what matters most to PC users isn’t average performance, but “its performance in the worst case, at the worst time of the day, i.e. on the most complex and non-anticipable thread...if your computer processes your average spreadsheet calculations 25% slower, you won’t even notice it. If it gets stuck 45 seconds in larger spreadsheets that you open only once a day, or even once a week, it will drive you mad and you will have it replaced by a better PC as soon as you can afford it.”
He adds that “when it comes to dealing with a complex thread, nobody comes close to Intel. The company has been spending billions of dollars for decades on that single problem: how to accelerate the damn worse thread of the day.”
Apple has only about 10% of the PC market, and the loss would be a relatively minor hit for Intel. Intel shares are down 0.7%, at $63.20, in recent trading. Apple shares are up 2.4%, at $341.40, and are on track to reach a new all-time high. The S&P 500 is down 0.9%.
Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com
"chips" - Google News
June 09, 2020 at 11:05PM
https://ift.tt/2UutaKJ
Apple Reportedly Plans Switch to ARM-Based Chips for Some Macs - Barron's
"chips" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2RGyUAH
https://ift.tt/3feFffJ
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Apple Reportedly Plans Switch to ARM-Based Chips for Some Macs - Barron's"
Post a Comment