Opinion: Apple Should Have Gone With Intel Instead of TSMC 229
itwbennett writes "Apple is planning to have its ARM processors manufactured by TSMC — a move that blogger Andy Patrizio thinks is a colossal mistake. Not only is TSMC already over-extended and having trouble making deadlines. But Intel was clearly the better choice: 'Intel may be struggling in mobility with the Atom processors, but Intel does yields and manufacturing process migration better than anyone,' says Patrizio. 'While TSMC wrestles with 28nm and looking to 20nm, Intel is at 22nm now and moving to 14nm for next year. This is important; the smaller the fabrication design, the less power used.'"
Re:Poor premise (Score:2, Informative)
You mean the ones that are getting the crap beaten out of them by ARM on a performance-per-watt basis?
Re:Intel isn't a foundry (Score:5, Informative)
Intel *is* a foundry. They make chips for third parties. They have a whole "Intel Custom Foundry" division dedicated to this. They make chips for Cisco, Netronome, Altera, etc. Some of those chips even have ARM processors.
Re:Poor premise (Score:2, Informative)
Fragmentation is an Android feature. There's no compelling reason to change to any other chip, so why would Apple do it?
Over the 30 years of the Mac they've changed architecture twice. But only when the old architecture was dying. ARM is the most popular mobile CPU architecture in the world. There's no reason to change iOS devices away from it. Even if other architectures were more attractive (and they're not).
Re:Ultrabook II? (Score:4, Informative)