I’m still following Apple and developments in hardware and software
in general as it is still somewhat of a hobby of mine (having started my professional
career developing on NeXT). Even after I have given Apple bad grades here
and here,
I think yesterday’s announcement that Apple is moving to their own Arm chips,
is something that had long been coming and I think it will potentially alter
the computing landscape. While I’m certainly no longer able to have insight
knowledge or even be able to follow the last development in chip design, I do
believe in phases or cycles of evolution and revolution in technology and I
think that’s true for information technology as it is for cars or anything else
for that matter. Apple just started to ramp up on a revolution cycle.
Reading the opinion of analysts regarding Apple’s risky move
from Intel to their own Chips left me bewildered. After all, this is Apple’s
third processor architecture change – from the Motorola 68K to the PowerPC and
then on to Intel. Three different instruction sets and every time the migration
worked without too much hassle. So, for Apple this has always worked out and it
gotten better and easier. The move from PowerPC to Intel was especially smooth
given that in the best case, a simple recompile of the app was all the
developers needed to do – Apple had already experience not just because they moved
previously but also because the company (NeXT) they acquired and that brought
Steve Jobs back to Apple had offered its operating system (NEXTSTEP) for four
different platforms: Intel x86, Motorola’s 680x0, PA-Risc (HP) and Sparc (Sun)
– so there is, and probably continues to be, tremendous experience with a
multi-processor landscape. So, let’s instead focus on what it means for Apple
and the wider ecosystem:
1st and foremost, the big losers are chip OEMs such as Intel
and AMD (and probably others as well). Intel primarily because it had been the sole
CPU provider since 2005. For AMD it’s a double whammy. On one hand it has been
providing the GPUs for the Mac lineup but also, and in my opinion the bigger
loss in the long-term, an opportunity to “steal” the thunder from Intel and to
position themselves with their own intel compatible CPUs. AMD’s Ryzen and
Threadripper platforms have started to outperform Intel where it counts. Keep
in mind, Apple is no longer the niche PC and Laptop producers it once was, today
it has roughly 10% of the desktop and laptop global market share. Those 10%
will be felt by Intel and AMD.
2nd, the other PC OEM’s that are somewhat
significant will feel this in the price pressure, this includes the likes of
Dell, Lenovo and HP that use chips from both Intel and AMD; they are still dependent
on these chips for as long as there is no smooth migration plan for Windows to
make a clean transition to Arm or any other chip architecture. And we should
note that it’s not for lack of trying, as Microsoft has tried (and so far,
failed) to move Windows to anything other than Intel x86. There was, for
example, a push to move to PowerPC in the 90’s (failed), then there was a push
to move to Arm with their first generation of Surface products (failed), and
there is another attempt to move to Arm with their latest Surface iteration.
Microsoft has repeatedly failed at this for two reasons: a) fear of
cannibalization and b) they simply do not have the tools and frameworks in
place to make this transparent to the users. Where Apple shines is in their
run-time layer, libraries and SDKs that have been mostly architecture neutral
(thanks to NEXTSTEP), whereas in the case of Windows, it was never designed to
be neutral. However, the move that Apple is planning will force the three big
players to rethink their strategy because they will not be able to keep up with
Apple in the mobility computing space as they will never reach the performance-per-watt
levels of an Arm chip. So, Apple’s new MacBooks with Arm chips will not only be
faster than the competition, they will also be thinner and possibly without a
fan (no noise). I did an assessment on my spouse’s iPhone 11 Pro Max (geekbench)
and that thing is already 3 times faster than my Intel based Microsoft Surface
from 2017 (geekbench)!
3rd, given the realities outlined above, Apple’s
move has the potential to usher in a whole new computing paradigm. Over the years,
we have seen some movement away from Intel and to break with long standing traditions.
For example, Facebook started to design their own chips (link)
and last year, Tesla started to build cars with their own chips (link),
the data center behemoth Amazon (link)
is designing its own custom silicon and not to be left out, Google is creating
a new AI chip (link)
as well as a chip for their upcoming phone. But when it comes to the
Wintel-duopoly at the workplace or at home, nothing was able to make a dent. This
might finally change that.
While I’m still not crazy about how Apple is taking control
of every aspect in their ecosystem, I have to admit, I’m grateful that they are
all-in on their own chip design and that I hope this will send a clear and
strong signal that now is the time, to start thinking out of the (chip design)
box and improve computing well beyond the small incremental changes that we had
to endure over the last decade.
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