At 8:37 AM +0000 5/7/2011, Wallace Adrian D'Alessio wrote:
An opinion. [zdnet link]
LOL. This was all done in the press as minor stories back in
January. It's only now that they've picked it up again during this
slow news cycle.
Ok... The facts:
ARM is an up and coming architecture whoze implementation is getting
faster and faster with each generation. However, it is currently
32-bit only.
Back in January, at CES in Las Vegas, ARM made the announcement that
they're going 64-bit and their intention is to get into the
server-grade processor market. ETA for delivery is a year or less.
At that same CES, Microsoft announced they're going to port Windoze
to ARM. No ETA commitment.
A few microseconds later, a loud *plotz* was heard from one end of
Intel's management to the other, and the higher mucketies probably
choked on their skittles.
So much for the facts. Now the guesswork, however founded it may be:
Apple has little tolerance for companies that fail to make their
commitments. eg: It is believed the main reason for the switch to
Intel x86 is that IBM/Moto/Freescale fell behind their own delivery
commitments, unable to produce faster low-power (laptop) class
processors etc. eg2: Last year's MBA had the same'ole Core 2 Duo a
second time around. hum.
Apple's experience with the 68x->ppc and ppc->x86 transitions have
given it the tools necessary to make moving onto another platform
soooo easy. IOW, Apple is pretty much architecture independent. All
that matters is performance - speed and power. Of course, that makes
Intel's recent "3d transistor" announcement silly hype. The bottom
line is what's fastest.
iOS is based on a stripped down fork of Mac OS X. And quite a few
touch-screen type features are being moved from iOS into Lion (OS X
10.7). ETA this summer. Now, why would Apple have any interest in
maintaining *two* operating systems? That's a lot of unnecessary
work! And remember that patent for the touch-screen iMac? Yea,
baby! After Lion, or perhaps during Lion's life cycle, there will
be a complete merge of iOS' features into OS X.
So... The "state of the art by this summer" will be... 32-bit ARM
at the low end, and 64-bit Sandy Bridge x86 at the high end. Atom is
a joke. Ivy Bridge is coming. Faster ARM is coming. 64-bit ARM is
coming!
My bet:
IF Intel gets its butt in gear and is on time delivering Ivy Bridge
and its follow-ons -- ie, faster low power x86 processors, then Apple
will stick with them. But if Intel blinks, and 64-bit ARM beats one
of their that x86 generation, Apple will move ARM into the MacBook,
MacBook Pro, and iMac lines during the next release cycles. That's
right... iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, MacBook Pro, and iMac will
become the same product line, +/- a few peripherals and a dock.
As to the speculation of who fabricates what... pfffft. Doesn't
matter. ARM makes no chips! All that fabrication is out-sourced
anyway, generation by generation. As Atom fails, Intel will have
more and more fabrication capacity available. Bidding war. Yea,
Intel will make ARM processors for whoever pays.
*yawn*
- Dan.
--
- Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth.
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