juanrga (nospam.delete@this.juanrga.com) on August 4, 2014 2:05 am wrote:
> Yuhong Bao (yuhongbao_386.delete@this.hotmail.com) on August 3, 2014 2:24 pm wrote:
> > http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/08/03/macintel-the-end-is-nigh
>
> I expect Apple to switch about 2016 or so, when Xeon-class ARM SoC was
> ready; the mentioned 3GHz frequency for the 'A10' looks about right.


If they've been working on this for a few years, it could be ready tomorrow, so I don't know why it would have to wait for the A10. It all depends on when the project would have started.

I agree with those who are saying that Apple could design a much faster ARM if they were designing it for running at up to 30 watts or so than the current one which is of course targeted at the iPhone where they make most of their profit. I don't think they could get full x86 performance, but getting say 75% of it (at the same power envelope) which is basically where AMD is should be attainable.

However, I don't think the ability to run Windows can be so easily dismissed as Maynard Handley does in the comments. I think they'd need to keep a real x86 CPU in the "Pro" line for business users. Especially now with their deal with IBM that might help them finally penetrate the Fortune 500 market they shouldn't wish to immediately rule out the Mac from consideration. The IBM deal is mainly focused on mobile devices, but surely the hope is that it might lead to Macs used in the enterprise, but there is no way any large company will go Windows free, so any Macs used there would have to be capable of running Windows applications. The rest of the non-Pro line could go ARM only and run x86 via emulation. Yes, that's slow, but consumers would generally have little need to run x86 apps, and those that they run would not be performance sensitive.

How hard would it be for Apple to include a ARM and a x86 CPU in the same product, and have them capable of running at the same time? The x86 would operate alone if you booted Windows directly, but when booted into OS X the OS would run on ARM but Windows VMs or other x86 apps would run on the x86 CPU. Is this feasible? Being able to run processes on two different CPUs at the same time won't be easy, but perhaps the fact OS X uses the Mach microkernel would make this slightly easier than it would be for Linux or Windows to attempt such a thing.

The cost difference adding the ARM CPU could be made up by using a slightly less expensive x86 CPU, since it wouldn't have the overhead of running OS X and could devote 100% of its resources to running x86 apps.