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Intel Businesses AMD IBM Apple

Why Apple Picked Intel Over AMD 376

Posted by Zonk from the low-power-and-made-of-chocolate dept.
An Anonymous Reader writes "Macworld has a piece looking at why Apple chose Intel chips over AMD's offerings when it decided to move away from IBM." From the article: "The reason, industry analysts say, is that Jobs has a clear goal in mind: innovative designs. And such designs require the lowest-voltage chips, which IBM and Freescale were not going to make with the PowerPC chip core--and which AMD has not yet perfected 'This is a practical, pragmatic Steve Jobs decision,' says Shane Rau, Program Manager, PC Semiconductors for market research firm IDC. Intel serves up the most complete line of low-power chips for mobile and small form factor computers, and a good-looking future roadmap for it. Also, Intel's mammoth production capacity erases any supply worries. "
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Why Apple Picked Intel Over AMD More

Why Apple Picked Intel Over AMD

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  • Transmetta (Score:3, Funny)

    by hey ( 83763 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:32AM (#13575786) Journal
    In that case, why not use Transmetta!

  • Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by captnitro ( 160231 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:34AM (#13575803)
    Maybe massive, cost-saving volume discounts were a factor too?

    • It's not about Apple... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Chordonblue ( 585047 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @12:49PM (#13577138) Journal
      It's about Dell - Intel's stalwart (yet irritating) partner. Dell has been playing 'footsie' with AMD for the last few years and in the process, getting more consessions from Intel (who is probably responsible for half of their advertising budget). Intel knows that Dell fears Apple (and make no mistake - they do).

      This is really Intel's way of getting some of their leverage back. If Dell tries to pull one of those, "Well... You know... AMD is offering...", then Intel will be in the position to tell them to do what they like.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @01:22PM (#13577560)
      And programers. I've heard there are at least 300-400 people working at Intel on intergration with Apple at the hardware and software level, including programing tools. AMD doesn't have the resources to devote to a niche player like Apple in that regard.
  • With all the talk of voltage and mobility, there doesn't seem to be any mention of the impact, if any, on the bottom-line cost and price factor, which is of obvious importance to both Apple and consumers. Interesting that this comes in just a day or two after the story about Intel chips costing $40 to make.

  • Pragmatic? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:37AM (#13575826)
    I think this is the first time I have seen the words "practical" and "pragmatic" in the same sentence with "Steve Jobs". Remember the reality distortion field?

    • consummate businessman (Score:3, Interesting)

      by toby ( 759 ) *
      I see your point, but when it comes to business decisions don't underestimate how hyper-rational, ruthless and hard-headed Jobs can be. That's how he made his billions.

      In this case, AMD would have been the "don't be evil" warm and fuzzy choice (see AMD-v-Intel suit). Transmeta would have been the cool-tech choice. Picking Intel was pure cold business rationality.

      Jobs doesn't bend other people's reality so much as exercises his power to mould new realities. This is evident in his string of lucrative indust

  • double function (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:38AM (#13575828)
    Because Jobs wants a double function for his new Mactel line... A) The power of a supercomputer B) A space heater since most of the country is transitioning into Fall and eventually winter.

  • beyond thunderdome... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:40AM (#13575847)
    Apple were worried that if AMD were to change the letters in their name around, then they would have some MAD Mac's on their hands! ... sorry i couldn't hold that one back...
    -Sj53

  • AMD and Intel (Score:5, Informative)

    by Exter-C ( 310390 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:40AM (#13575850) Homepage
    The intel range of processors for a long time have held the mainstream mobile processor power/watt and with the Pentium M they have consolidated much of that. however from many sources the new Turion 64 is meant to be very nearly as good in the power area however it does have 64bit memory addressing and all the benefits of the AMD 64 line of processors.

    http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050830/index. html [tomshardware.com]

    • It's all about the Pentium(M)s (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) <Satanicpuppy.gmail@com> on Friday September 16, 2005 @11:02AM (#13576052) Journal
      Considering that AMD's chips are generally faster, cooler, and more efficient than Intel's chips, the choice of AMD would seem like a nobrainer without the Pentium M.

      Apple seems to be moving hard toward mobile computing now anyway, so going for the Pentium M is a smart move all around, and it doesn't take much imagination to see those in Mac Mini's and the like in the future.

      Myself, I'd have split the difference and gone with AMD for the 64 bit server chips. I think that descision is going to do good things for Sun.
      • Since the chips are compatible for software, if AMD comes out with better chips next year or the year after, its not a big deal for Apple to switch to AMD.
      • I agree that the Pentium M is a nice chip, but so is AMD's Turion -- and the Turion is a 64 bit chip.

        In any case, the deep beauty of the decision to go with the Intel architecture is that Steve Jobs will be able to play Intel off of AMD *at any time* in the future. There's actual competition to be exploited, and you can bet that it will be exploited.

        I am very encouraged to see a focus on efficiency and multi-core processors. It's going to be a wonderful revolution in programming and design.

        Thad Beier

  • Not low voltage but low power (Score:5, Insightful)

    by karvind ( 833059 ) <karvind.gmail@com> on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:41AM (#13575862) Journal
    I disagree that a good innovative design is just about low voltage. A better metric here is energy consumed per operation. I can throttle my design to operate at lower voltage and it will crawl slower than a snail (and in some cases won't work at all). Intel chips boast not only about low voltage but also low power with decently high performance.

    Said that it is worth while to mention that IBM is not incompetent. Their embedded cores which are custom designed are even more energy efficient. But again they are expensive (and task specific) and cost drives the market.

  • Does it really matter much at this point why? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:42AM (#13575868)
    I mean, the decision has been made. They're going with Intel processors. At this point, I don't think it matters much why they chose to make their decision. Regardless of why they made the transition, we're all going to have to live with it. We'll have to port our software, and if we want new systems from them we'll just have to accept that they will have Intel processors inside them.

    Perhaps there are better questions to be asking. Namely, what can we do with these new systems that we could not do before?

  • It's all about the laptops... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ajiva ( 156759 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:42AM (#13575873)
    It's all about the mobile processors. Intel's PentiumM's are FAST, low power usage and did I mention FAST? Seeing as how Laptop purchases are rising faster than desktop purchases, and since Apple's laptops are the most long in tooth, I'm betting that the first new Apple Intel box will be a laptop.
  • re. PC Week:

    "We're sold out on chip sets," Bryant said during a conference call to discuss Intel's third-quarter financial update. "I think chip sets [will] remain tight into the fourth quarter."

    Er, this sure seems like a "supply worry" to me!

    \burt

  • Waiting for OSX on Intel (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pubjames ( 468013 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:44AM (#13575882)

    I'm really looking forward to OSX on Intel and the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned.

    I have a theory as to why Apple aren't coming out with them until sometime next year - I believe they actually want to come out with new machines at the same time as Vista is released. Why?:

    1) Microsoft is going to spend (pinkie to mouth) 100 hundred billion dollars on promoting Vista. That's going to make a lot of noise, which Apple can cheaply ride on the back of. Imagine, loads of mainstream publications will cover Vista, and if Apple launches at the same time they'll surely do comparisons.

    2) It will be switching time for everyone - current Windows users will be thinking - should I move to Vista? If there is another viable option visible at the same time, then they might consider that too.

    3) Steve Jobs may be confident that the next generation of OSX will beat Vista in comparison reviews - hell, the current version (Tiger) has a lot of the features Vista is supposed to have already.

    Anyway, that is my theory, which belongs to me and is mine.

    • hell, the current version (Tiger) has a lot of the features Vista is supposed to have already.

      You mean that the current version has a lot of the features that are going to be dropped before Vista is actually released.

    • 2) It will be switching time for everyone - current Windows users will be thinking - should I move to Vista? If there is another viable option visible at the same time, then they might consider that too.

      This is insightful (hint, hint, mods!) and not something I've seen noted before. Sure, for most people (with pre-2004 computers) moving to Vista will require a new box--in practice if not in theory; at the very least, a PITA clean install--and this presents an opening for Apple. If a bunch of reviewers h

    • Re:Waiting for OSX on Intel (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jht ( 5006 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @11:08AM (#13576095) Homepage Journal
      When Apple announced the switch, the roadmap has the transition beginning with "value" Macs and portables in mid-2006, with the rest of the line transitioning over the next year.

      Basically, they will replace G4-based systems first (eMac, mini, portables), since the G4 Macs are currently the most clock-speed restrained. G4 processors are pretty low on power consumption but top out under 2GHz.

      The G5 desktop roadmap is good enough to keep going for a while, with small clock speed improvements and a probable move to dual-core G5 chips. Apple also makes their highest profits on the G5 desktops, so they've got an incentive to push that as gently as possible. Look for the switch there to be right to dual-core x86-64 processors. Right now, G5 processors are still competitive with their x86 counterparts, so that's the other reason to concentrate on the G4 models first.

      Hopefully they'll change Xserve last. Those things are pretty darned slick as-is.

      Vista is currently due at the end of 2006 (about when Apple plans to release Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard"), so Apple should be well into the transition by then. If Vista slips any further, Apple could even be most of the way through the whole process.
    • I have a theory as to why Apple aren't coming out with them until sometime next year - I believe they actually want to come out with new machines at the same time as Vista is released. Why?:

      (convoluted Apple supremacy, "Teh M$ Windoze KILLA" conspiracy theory deleted)

      Or, it could be that Apple has a roadmap for how long it is going to take to transition their manufacturing capability, finalize OSX on Intel, and give their ISV time to get their code running on the new OS/hardware. Occam's Razor is funny l

  • Apple Management loves Steak, Lobster & Stripp (Score:5, Funny)

    by kianu7 ( 886560 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:44AM (#13575894)
    Everyone knows, except AMD apparently, that the management chain at Apple has a real sweet tooth for steak, lobster, and high-end strippers. The sales force at AMD seemed to have overlooked this key point when they came up with their sales strategy.

    Sure, those AMD sales guys can put together a killer Powerpoint presentation, but the Intel guys know that the real key to making the sale is taking the management out for food, fun, and a night they won't be able to tell their wives about. If AMD doesn't figure this out quickly, their sales will continue to lag behind Intel.

    This is Sales 101, folks.

  • Non-controversy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by etymxris ( 121288 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:46AM (#13575908)
    If AMD comes out with a better chip in terms of power usage, Apple can switch anytime. As such, going with Intel at the start implies no committment. If Intel starts treating them like dirt, they can go over to AMD, or even perhaps VIA. That's a choice they didn't have before with the PPC architecture.

  • Innovate (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fimbulvetr ( 598306 )
    Oh, I see he wants innovative. Since intel has been so innovative the past few years, it's easy to see why it was such a good choice.

    Wait, wasn't it AMD that stepped up with the 1Ghz cpu first?
    Oh, weren't they the ones who got the first high performance, low cost 64 bit processors to market?
    Geez, haven't they also been dominating the performance side?

    Besides, from what I've been reading, the Turion 64 is not far away from the Pentium M. Close enough to call them comparable at least, and the Turion has 64 bi

    • Re:Innovate (Score:3, Insightful)

      by forkazoo ( 138186 )
      If Apple had released the Intel Macs the same day we heard about them, AMD would probably have been a better all around choice. I have an Athlon64 in my main box because for me, it's the best thing available.

      Now, could you please take into account that the Mactels aren't out yet, and are planned based on the roadmaps. Also, who cares who made it to 1 GHz first? Who cares that Intels first 1 GHz chip was horrible, and removed from the market. It doesn't matter any more. It doesn't matter any more than t

  • A possibility (Score:5, Interesting)

    by victim ( 30647 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:48AM (#13575932)
    I wonder if Apple has a preferential deal to get the new, fast parts first. When a new process is being ramped up, there is an initial period where they can make some processors, but not a lot.

    Apple being a relatively small consumer of Intel parts could be quite happy with this small volume of fast parts and put out machines that trump the wintel vendor's clock rates.

    It is a lesson that Apple learned back in the dark days of Mac clones. Since Apple only refreshes a Mac design a couple times a year people know when it is coming and will hold off for the newer version. When that version comes out there is a big demand spike. To avoid long backorders Apple has to have enough processors in hand to cover the initial orders and enough capacity to keep up with the flow after that. The clone vendors, being a tiny fraction of the Mac market could introduce models with the faster processors as soon as they became available in limited quantities. The double nasty effect was that the clone vendors got the reputation for faster machines since they could bring theirs to market faster and they delayed Apple's ability to get the new xxMhz 68030 to market because instead of stockpiling chips for Apple, Motorola would be selling them to the cloners.

    • Re:A possibility (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jht ( 5006 )
      The cloners only made PowerPC-based Macs, not 680x0. Plus they had to buy their chipsets from Apple as well - they just tweaked them for higher performance than Apple was willing to do. Apple still sold the vast majority of MacOS systems (I think the total clone marketshare never exceeded 15% or so), but the thing that bit Apple about it was that that clone market (especially PowerComputing and Umax) was taking the highest-end part of the Mac market. And that was where the biggest profits were.

      Jobs used

    • Re:A possibility (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sebastopol ( 189276 )
      Apple doesn't want the latest fastest parts. They want the low power parts. Not everyone is a boutique consumer, only hardcore gamers care about the top of the line. Don't believe me? Just look at the volumes being sold. Boutiques is 1%.

  • Yeah, right (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:53AM (#13575976)
    Innovative designs, that means they need hot, slow chips.

    And they sell such huge quanitites that supply is a very important issue. Not.

    Intel bunged them in the form of huge discounts, simple as that. No one in their right mind would use Intel processors for desktop machines at the moment and, for that matter, there's no reason Apple couldn't have gone with Intel for the laptops and AMD for the desk.

    ALL of which is beside the point that the problem with the PowerPC seems to have been on the compiler side, not the hardware.

    TWW

    • And they sell such huge quanitites that supply is a very important issue. Not.

      I'm not drinking the Kool Aid as far as "innovation" goes. From any businessman that's just filler -- the word MicroSoft uses to justify abusing monopoly power. We won't know what it means to Jobs until we see what comes out of Apple's design labs using Pentium Ms.

      But to say Apple hasn't had problems with supply is really pretty staggeringly wrong, no offense intended. Anyone who's ever tried to order the latest cool PowerBook

    • Re:Yeah, right (Score:3, Insightful)

      by diamondsw ( 685967 )
      No one in their right mind would use Intel processors for desktop machines at the moment

      Funny, I don't see Apple shipping any Intel desktops right now. I see them shipping Intel desktops sometime next year, and even later for their pro line. Coincidentally, this is when Intel will ship their Pentium-M-derived desktop chips, and their 64-bit versions. You will not see a Pentium-4-based chip in any production Intel Mac.

      ALL of which is beside the point that the problem with the PowerPC seems to have been on th

  • MDF MDF MDF (Score:4, Insightful)

    by andydread ( 758754 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:53AM (#13575978)
    When will people ever learn. Ok now lets think for a minute. Apple can use Intel or AMD. Intel is able to guarantee more volume than AMD at the moment. This will change when AMDs new fab comes online this year. Intel also promised Apple a taste of the ol' MDF pie. MDF (Market Development Funds) as they like to call it helps Apple compete better with the likes of Dell in this space. MDF also guarantees that Apple will use only Intel CPUs. Now unless our heads have been buried under rocks for a while we all know that AMD technology is superior to Intel in sevral ways at this point. But Apple chose the inferior technology because Intel promised it massive $$$ kickbacks. Intel basically "buys" its customers. This is not rocket science folks. My prediction. After the move to x86 is stabilized Apple will then be free to use AMD as a tool to get better deals from Intel as Dell currently does. Due to their volumes they will not be able to get the prices that Dell gets so they will unlike Dell introduce a line of AMD cpus in the future. For two reasons. To have the MAC daddy of all X86 PCs and to stick it to Intel.

  • Chipset shortage (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yep right, no supply worries there, just ask any taiwanese OEM who wants to buy Centrino bundles ...

  • Sorry but (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:56AM (#13576005)
    I don't believe the article.

    I think it came down to money- in some fashion intel offered them a better deal. I have intel and amd computers and amd has a dramatically better cost/performance ratio. I bet that there is no hard technical reason why Mac couldn't have run on both- if they are going to be Intel only it is for political/financial reasons instead of technical ones.
    • Among the market Apple hopes to secure, I suspect the name Intel is better known & respected than AMD.

      We geeks know that AMD has some good stuff, but I'm sure we can all remember when AMD provided chips like the K6/2 which while technically sound (100mhz front-side bus before the Pentium-2 became common, right?), tended to be sold cheap and built into PCs which also used cheap chipsets and reliability suffered as a result.

      Back in the day, the P2 and early P3 and the K6/2 and K6/3 were only really

  • Relying on roadmap is risky (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lonewolf666 ( 259450 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:56AM (#13576008)
    If TFA is correct, Apple is planning to use the low-power Chips promised for next year, rather than the AMD64 which are pretty good right now. Which is fine if Intel can deliver, but I would not like to bet the company on it. If I was in Steve Jobs' shoes, I might do it the other way round:
    Use AMD64 now, switch to Intel later if they keep their promises.
    • The PowerPC 970 already competes well with the Opteron. What Apple needs is something that will compete well with the Pentium M. At the moment, the only thing that competes well with a Pentium M is another Pentium M.

      If they switched to AMD64, then they would only be able to switch the top-end, which is where IBM does very well, not the bottom end, where they are currently losing out.

    • With Yonah and Dothan, Intel is already ahead on power in the category of "non top speed chipset". So I don't see how Apple is making a mistake here.

      Apple is taking a risk that Intel will not be able to reform their top of the line chips to match AMDs superb offerings. But honestly, tower configurations don't account for much of Apple's sales anyway, so it's not a huge risk.

      Anyway, I as I've said before, I think there are other reasons Apple chose Intel over AMD. To get Northbridges with integrated graphics

  • Obvious... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ChrisF79 ( 829953 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:57AM (#13576010) Homepage
    Did anybody else notice that Jobs in his keynote addressed why they're switching to Intel, and now however many weeks later the analysts put pen to paper and write down what he said as the reason they think they're switching?

    • Hey, analysts have to eat (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Friday September 16, 2005 @12:02PM (#13576620) Homepage Journal
      Did anybody else notice that Jobs in his keynote addressed why they're switching to Intel, and now however many weeks later the analysts put pen to paper and write down what he said as the reason they think they're switching?

      They're analysts. They're smarter than us. Examples:

      "I believe this is a purely negotiating move by Apple to grab some attention and headlines and to point out that they're feeling underappreciated by IBM" - Evin Krewell, editor in chief of the Microprocessor Report, quoted in the Mercury News, May 24, 2005, a few days before Apple announced a switch from IBM to Intel processors.

      "You just wouldn't do that. You wouldn't do something that disruptive.'' - analyst Tim Bajarin, quoted in the Mercury News, May 24, 2005, a few days before Apple announced a switch from IBM to Intel processors.

      "Stick a fork in 'em - this Apple is cooked." Robert Thomson, Financial Post, 2/20/2003

      "For those who love Apple's products, this is all just so typical. This company has made an art of innovation -- from the personal computer itself to the point-and-click operating system -- only to invariably surrender the high sales ground to the boring knock-off artists who copy Apple's best ideas into a new and slightly cheaper model. So it's not surprising Wall Street is already bracing for another disappointment." - Steve Maich, Macleans.ca, 2005/05/09

      Count David Goldstein, president of the Dallas-based growth-strategy consulting firm Channel Marketing Corp., among the critics of Apple's retail plans. "It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for them to open retail stores," he says. - May 01, 2001 Macworld Magazine

      I collect quotes like these, to remind myself why trusting analysts about anything is generally unwise.

  • Wrong (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16, 2005 @10:57AM (#13576012)
    This has been dissected before, by an ex-Apple engineer. Apple went with Intel simply because of cost. AMD makes low-power CPUs, too (HE and EE Opterons), and they run circles around Intel's, but they cost more than twice as much to manufacture.

    By using x86 CPUs, Apple has effectively lost the possibility to claim that their systems are magically faster than PCs (they never were, but they could claim it, because some people will fall for anything). So why pay more when the best they could aspire to was a claim that they were "on par with the fastest PCs"?

    And, of course, there's another element: DRM. Intel cut Apple a good deal because it gives them a chance to start edging their hardware-based DRM into the market (think iTunes). Apple is happy to include DRM as long as they get a discount on the hardware.
  • Besides all that has been said, since AMD will have either simple or enhanced clones of the Intel chips, Apple can either switch to AMD later, or just use the threat of switching to get concessions from Intel.

    Such a switch would require a hardware change, but probably not a software change, given AMD's history of trying to provide backward opcode compatibility.

    A wise decision by Apple, even tho this is old news.

  • The analysis is missing a crucial point (Score:3, Interesting)

    by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @11:03AM (#13576054)
    And that is, platform and chipsets.

    Yes, Intel has more offerings and better roadmap, and volume discounts, and programmers, and prestige....

    But this particular analysis is not mentioning the fact that Intel can give you a system, head to toe. That will allow Apple to move the R&D cost of mobo desing to something else, like SW engineering, or industrial design.... go figure...

    Now, if I put on my aluminum-foil-thinking-cap, I can think of the following arrangement:

    Intel debuts a new and improved processor/chipset combo, and gives it to Apple with, let's say, six months advantage over everyone else, as beta testers.... If there are no bugs in the combo, all is nice and dandy. If there are bugs in the combo, Intel correts them in the silicon, for all the PC bunch to use, and Apple, having more control over the platform than anyone else in the indutry, corrects the errors via a BIOS/OS patch, intead of a more costly recall.... Match made in heaven! Apple gets a six months edge, Intel gets a HUGE and cheap field trial of new silicon!

    Just my two cents anyway....

    In the end, there was not just ONE magic reason, but a host little thing that made Apple choose Intel over AMD, Transmeta, VIA/Cenatur and all the others out there...

  • It's about future roadmap and delivering on time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @11:05AM (#13576067) Journal
    Intel have a public roadmap into 2007, so their private roadmap must extend even further.

    AMD have a public roadmap into 2006, but nothing long term. Privately, it may be different.

    IBM have a roadmap into next week if you're lucky. Privately it may be different, but 3GHz G5s?

    AMD has Intel beat at the moment on power consumption on the desktop, we all know that. However Yonah and Merom (and server variants thereof?) are what Apple are interested in. Yonah will come in many variants, with an ULV single core at 5.5W, and dual-core LV at 15W alongside the 35W dual-core standard processor. AMD have Turion however, and it isn't that bad in comparison with the current Pentium M, and 65nm should help them along even more.

    It will be interesting to see how next year's processors compare. I think that AMD will remain leading in terms of performance at the high end, but the mobile arena will become very interesting with dual-cores from both company, new 65nm processors, and more to boot.

  • I'd imagine AMD could be easily integrated. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rindeee ( 530084 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @11:10AM (#13576105)
    In the future. I'd imagine that Apple could fairly easily add AMD to the line where it fits (an Opteron in their server line perhaps). I can't believe that Apple has taken a completely "Intel only" approach on this...but I'm usually wrong on this sort of thing.

  • Power... YES... and so much more (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mitchell_pgh ( 536538 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @11:12AM (#13576127)
    Other Advantages would be that it permits Apple to
    - ride the tide of CPU speed (no more "megahertz myth").
    - pass on processors (try telling IBM that you aren't interested in their minimal speed bump when you are their only client)
    - use PC graphics cards without modification
    - diversify their product line (if you haven't noticed, the dual G5 is nearly on par with the top of the line Intel... but the middle and lower end systems from Apple aren't even in the ballpark)

    As a Mac user, it's a bit hard to swallow that I'm going to have an "Intel Inside" but there are simply too many advantages to overlook. Intel seems very interested in having their processors in everything from handheld devices to super computers... IBM does as well, but do they have the resources?
    • Mac's already use PC video cards, only difference is a slightly different BIOS just to impose Mac only conditions on them. 90% of a Mac is a PC these days anyways, only the 10% dedicated to CPU bus is different. It made so much sense for Apple to adopt a 100% PC internal core although it will be customized enough (with BIOS and Firmware, etc) to remain "uniquely" Apple.
  • After years of "No really! 68k chips are faster than Intel chips!" followed by years of "No really! PowerPC chips are faster than Intel chips!", maybe Apple just plain didn't want to deal with "No really! AMD chips are faster than Intel chips!"

    Going with Intel means they no longer have to waste time arguing that their chips are really faster even though the clock rates are lower. Which, granted, wouldn't have been quite such a big issue now that Intel's finally stopped marketing entirely on cycles-per-secon

  • Power Consumption (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tji ( 74570 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @11:32AM (#13576348)
    The article refers to the lowest voltage chips.. This, of course, is one factor that contributes to the real issue: low wattage. The system needs to consume less power and generate less heat.

    They also claim that Freescale (former Motorola chip division) cannot achieve these low power levels. I'm not sure where they get this impression from. The PowerPC has always been a low power processor. They are most commonly used in embedded devices, like routers and switches. They keep ratcheting up performance, while trying to keep it under 10Watts.

    While the PowerPC's from Freescale won't be at GHz par with the Intel P4's. They aren't far behind the more comparable Pentium M's in clock speed.

    IBM, on the other hand, makes CPUs primarily for their workstations. So, their power usage has always been much closer to Intel's..

  • You guys are totally missing it. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 787style ( 816008 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @11:53AM (#13576531)
    This will probably get lost because it's so deep in the comments, but the reason isn't technical, it's personal.

    Apple was unhappy about the direct attacks AMD was making against Apple on the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) front. Look at all the inroads AMD is making into the music and video business, and some of the negative comments that were made toward Apple. It's not hard to see why they wouldn't get in bed with AMD.

  • Slight error in business analysis (Score:3, Interesting)

    by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @12:01PM (#13576597) Journal
    Intel's mammoth production capacity erases any supply worries.

    Um, no.

    Intel has been a constraint on supply to customers in the past, and will be again, because they're not clairvoyant, and maintaining enough capacity to handle 100% of the distribution of order-rate excursions is wasting money (for those who slept through Technology Policy of the Firm: it's like building an 80,000 seat stadium for a basketball team; sure, once every 30 years you'll fill it, but the rest of the time, you're eating your hat).

    It may have mammoth production capacity (ever try to keep a mammoth down to class-1 cleanroom standards?) but that capacity is not monolithic nor is it readily fungible. It takes years to do some kinds of process changes, and most chip designs are tuned to a single process and could not be simply adapted to be fabricated on another process.

    What this means, if Jobs is any kind of mogul with any sense of supply management, is that Intel will have to build capacity tailored Apple's needs.

    Which is good++ for Intel, because their real business is building and filling fab lines; designing and marketing chips is a cost to them.

  • Perhaps what some people are missing is ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rocketship Underpant ( 804162 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @12:27PM (#13576873)
    Apple isn't just going to Intel for CPUs. Intel has all kinds of other chips and technologies, and at last they have a PC-making partner that will actually use cutting-edge stuff.

    And don't forget EFI. I doubt Apple's going to want a crufty old BIOS designed for 8086 machines. Intel has been working on superior alternatives to BIOS (although perhaps not as good as OpenFirmware, but still...).

    AMD makes ... CPUs.

  • Jobs ain't stoopid (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sebastopol ( 189276 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @12:46PM (#13577097) Homepage
    Look, 10 years ago in '95, Jobs was behind the campaign that promised the new PPC machines were 100x faster than Intel. Remember? He compared SpecINT running a 486 to the latest PPC (or was it a 486 compiled binary, I forget.) Point is: Jobs knows the marketing game, and for him to work with a company he tried to beat in the numbers game means he can TRULY see through the bullshit that other makers ... *dell* **cough cough** cannot.

    I know y'all hate Intel, but maybe, just maybe, they got something right and Jobs can smell it.

  • EVERYONE KNOWS WHY APPLE CHOSE INTEL!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PortHaven ( 242123 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @01:12PM (#13577419) Homepage
    It's simple...

    Intel has vast software and development resources specifically to help assist in migration to it's processors from rivals. (Although this may be the biggest such case.)

    Their resources in the software, compiler, etc. arenas is unparalled. AMD might be pumping out some great chip designs but I seriously doubt they could offer the transition resources of Intel.

    However, once Apple is transitioned to x86 and their exclusive contract (5-10 yrs I would guess) with Intel expires. They will then be in place to take opportunity with whichever manufacturer has the better offer at the time.

    So essentially, it was a wise long term strategy. Choose the one who can offer the easiest transition as in 2-4 yrs (after they fully transition) who knows who's chips will be faster/cooler/cheaper? After that time. If there is a better alternative chip it would be minimal work to allow for using an AMD x86 as opposed to an Intel x86.

    Plain, simple, intelligent....

  • Laptops outsell desktops _right now_ (Score:5, Insightful)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @01:18PM (#13577511) Homepage
    And Intel has better laptop processors. That's why SJ chose Intel as a primary supplier. When AMD gets its act together wrt laptop processors and kicks Intel's butt there, I won't be surprised to see AMD chips in Apple products side by side with Intel (unless Intel cut them a really hefty discount in return for exclusive contract).

  • I'm sure IBM could have met the requirement (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @01:46PM (#13577816) Homepage Journal
    With 4 billion dollars, 5 years and 575 project managers matrixed over a 700,000 step process. I'm sure that the day they succeeded they would all be downsized anyway.

    See for all its tough talk about innovation, IBM and I suspect any other large command and control organization that's tried to outmanage and outprocess itself out of every dilemna by becoming even more bureaucratic really can't move quickly to do the right thing. And even when it succeeds at moving at all, it's typically the wrong solution poorly executed and overloaded with everyone's personal agenda items.

    Moving to a company like Intel which for the most part makes chips and nothing but chips is usually the wise choice for a company looking to use chips. At best IBM's chip division, while capable and smart is only a division and one that gets the shaft more often than not because it's a supplier to all of the other IBM hardware units which are themselves victims of their own bureaucracies.

    And if truth were told, if IBM thought there was money to be made in low power chips they would have done it already. Clearly IBM made a decision that Apple's goals did not fit with their own business model.

  • Xscale? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Davorama ( 11731 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @02:54PM (#13578516) Journal
    It would be nice if someone who knew more than me would comment on how the xscale processors may have figured into Apple's decision.

    I think Cringely may have brought it up a few weeks back.

  • Why not x86_64? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nukem996 ( 624036 ) on Friday September 16, 2005 @05:40PM (#13580470)
    I always wondered why Mac decided to change from PPC to x86 and not x86_64? You would think if there going to change they would go with a 64bit arch. I know Intel has 64bit desktop CPUs and the mobile 64bit CPUs should be out soon.

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