Apple replaces Intel CPUs with its own processors

[15:23 Wed,10.June 2020 by Thomas Richter]

According to a report by the industry service Bloomberg, Apple will announce at its next developer conference WWDC on June 22nd that it will completely abandon Intel CPUs in its products in favor of processors developed in-house.

The "Kalamata" project, christened "Kalamata", has been running for a good 2 years now, whose aim is to better integrate all classes of devices (Macs, iMacs, iPhones and iPads) and to give Appple greater control over the heart of its computers by ending Apple&s partnership with Intel, which began in 2005.

These will be based on the same technology already used by iPhones and iPads for about 10 years: processors licensed by ARM, optimized by Apple and manufactured in external factories by TSMC. One advantage of having dedicated processors for Macs would be independence from Intel&s rigid and very small-scale development roadmaps, making it easier to implement new features that allow Apple to differentiate itself from its competitors.

Mobile Macs, for example, could benefit from the greater energy efficiency of ARM CPUs, which would enable lighter MacBooks. Apple was also dissatisfied with Intel&s slow progress in processor performance - a fear that was not diminished by AMD&s achievement of Intel&s performance crown. According to internal tests, the new Apple CPUs are expected to become significantly faster than their Intel counterparts.

Apple A13 ARM CPU

Apple is developing at least three versions of its own Mac-CPUS, at least one of which is based on the A14 processor of the next iPhone, which will be presented at WWDC. As there, in addition to the central main processing unit there will be a graphics processing unit and a neural engine for machine learning. However, the operating system for the new Macs will still be macOS, not iOS of mobile systems.

Now all developers of software for Macs have work to do, because all programs written for Intel CPUs so far will have to be ported to the new processors before 2021, when new Macs with Apple CPUs will be released.

With Apple&s move, Intel will lose not only market share, but prestige as well, since Macs have always been a premium product that Intel could use as CPU suppliers.

more infos at bei www.bloomberg.com

deutsche Version dieser Seite: Apple ersetzt Intel CPUs in Macs durch eigene ARM Prozessoren