Apple considering AMD?

[Muffin Man]

Apple considers moving across to AMD :: TweakTown

"It's no secret that Apple has been using Intel processors for several years now. However, a story over at AppleInsider hints that perhaps Apple's relationship with Intel isn't as strong as it seems.

Rumour has it the company is considering jumping ship to AMD and has even been testing AMD based chipsets in their labs. But there's no form of substantial evidence to support this as yet.

Apparently there are two main reasons for why Apple might decide to do this. The first is due to Apple having to push back the launch date for their latest MacBook Pro line-up with Core i5/i7 based processors because of chip shortages. This had Apple pretty steamed and they are concerned repeats will occur with future refreshes.

Secondly, due to disputes between Intel and NVIDIA, Apple is settling for Intel based IGPs in their MacBook Pro range which as most everyone knows is inferior both in performance and features to what AMD can provide Apple thanks to owning ATI.

One other possible reason that comes to my mind is another excercise in cost-cutting to maximize profits; not like Apple hasn't tried to do this multiple times before, after all.

But as mentioned, this is all rumour mill stuff at this point and while Apple might very well be in discussions about it, it's probably being thrown about at this stage as more of a threat tactic toward Intel to give better support rather than actual happenstance."

 

[kmote]

I would be astounded if a big company like Apple hadn't already thoroughly investigated their options and will continue to do so. While those are all good reasons to go AMD, I'll wait till I see a product on the market before I get too excited.

 

[wafflehammer]

I'm sort of surprised that they haven't gone with AMD. Great performance and cheaper prices..which means more profit for them lol (because you know they wouldn't lower the price just because they got cheaper parts lol)

 

[35g700]

I don't think Apple will go from core i3, i5, and i7 architecture down to the slower Phenom II and Athlon II architecture anytime soon.

 

[Apokalipse]

The main reasons for going with AMD is for cheaper prices and better graphics performance, as well as avoiding the Intel-Nvidia chipset fight.

Also, 6-core thuban has about the same performance as 4 core i7 with about the same power consumption.
Bulldozer may have caught their interest aswell.

 

[35g700]

It would be nice to see Apple selling their products for a lower price... But it is Apple. I wouldn't be surprised to see them go with the cheaper AMD chips while keeping the price of the product the same as it was.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

The main reasons for going with AMD is for cheaper prices and better graphics performance, as well as avoiding the Intel-Nvidia chipset fight.

Also, 6-core thuban has about the same performance as 4 core i7 with about the same power consumption.
Bulldozer may have caught their interest aswell.

The Intel nvidia chipset fight is a thing of the past, nvidia no longer makes chipsets for any Intel processors.

Considering Apple promotes the battery life of their laptops going with AMD would be a odd choice seeing as their mobile chips use more power than Intel's and aren't competitive from a performance standpoint.

It would make a lot more sense to just use dedicated ATI cards but keep using Intel processors.

 

[Apokalipse]

Like I said, the main reasons would be price and graphics performance - At least if they're going to use K10.5 chips. Those are the areas where AMD are best currently.
And there is no 780G/785G/790GX/880G IGP for Intel CPU's.

Also, given that Apple release a new line every 6 months, they could just be planning to launch AMD based systems with Bulldozer/Bobcat in about a year.
AMD says Bobcat will have 90% of mainstream perfomance and can use less than 1W, while bulldozer is looking very interesting for the high-end.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Like I said, the main reasons would be price and graphics performance - At least if they're going to use K10.5 chips. Those are the areas where AMD are best currently.
And there is no 780G/785G/790GX/880G IGP for Intel CPU's.

Also, given that Apple release a new line every 6 months, they could just be planning to launch AMD based systems with Bulldozer/Bobcat in about a year.
AMD says Bobcat will have 90% of mainstream perfomance and can use less than 1W, while bulldozer is looking very interesting for the high-end.

The Intel HD graphics built into Clarkdale cpu's are fairly competitive with 790gx and the on die graphics for Sandy Bridge will have double the stream processors and clock speed.

I'm not sure if Bulldozer will be significant enough for Apple to abandon their traditionally limited platform or not, depending on when it actually makes it to market it will have serious competition from Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge as well as Gulftown which will have had non extreme edition version available for a while.

Bobcat is interesting although we don't really know if it will be able to beat Atom form a power usage standpoint or not. Either way Apple seems to be fairly commited to using ARM SOCs in their mobile devices.

 

[Apokalipse]

From what I've been reading about Bulldozer, it may just be the biggest single architectural change AMD has done. The changes are definitely bigger than K8 and K10.
In terms of architectural differences, K10 and K10.5 was really just a stepping stone from K8, and K8 a stepping stone from K7.
So yeah, Bulldozer will be interesting. I only wish I knew how fast it would be. People say that it will have a higher IPC than i7 at least (but no figures on how much).

But I think what will be more interesting about Bulldozer is exactly how multithreading will change. It has a completely different approach than Intel's Hyperthreading.

Remember hearing about a possible "reverse hyperthreading"?
As it turns out that might not be far from the truth about how Bulldozer Modules work.


Bobcat will use 'bulldozer module(s)' instead of cores.
When AMD says it will have 90% of 'mainstream' performance, I'm guessing they mean 90% of Athlon II X2 level performance using a single 'bulldozer module' (core).
So I would say that Bobcat will most likely leave Atom in the dust as far as performance (especially given Atom isn't exactly performance oriented). And if that's the case, it should really be compared against the ULV Pentium or lower end Core 2 Duo chips instead of Atom in terms of performance.

As far as power consumption goes, AMD says it can run at less than 1W. That figure might just be idle though. And if that's the case, load power consumption is likely to be ~10W. Which would still put it at about the level of the Atom.