[maercsrats]

Here is a conspiracy theory I've got, and I think this article and Apple releasing the app store for mac backs it up: Apple is going to drop Intel chips in the next 3 years. My time may be off but I really think this is what's going on.

All of this fighting between Intel and Nvidia is really only hurting customers; namely Apple. So what can Apple do? Create an app store that makes devs standardize on an API and shift the underlying arch. An arch that 67% of their product sales are using.

Don't get me wrong, this is going to be a difficult transition, I think apps like Steam are really going to get screwed, but this is Apple's end game. They control not only all the software but also all the hardware.

[msbarnett]

It certainly meets the "improbable and kooky" parts of a conspiracy theory. There are several problems with it:

1) Apple already managed one processor transition without herding everyone onto a standardized API. Surely they'd go that route again.

2) If they weren't going that route, then surely they'd be trying to herd as many people as possible onto the standardized API. But the App Store as Stealth API Standardizer doesn't hold water; if that's what it were intended to do, they would have tried to make it appeal to every important vendor on the platform. Instead, it's squarely aimed at small indie developers and excludes or is otherwise not strategically interesting to important 3rd party vendors like Adobe, Valve, VMWare, Mathworks, Microsoft, etc, etc. Are they not coming along to the transition?

3) What is Apple going to transition to? ARM? Seriously? They're great low-powered CPUs, but they're not within a million miles of Intel's Core i* CPUs for the "truck" computing that Apple's pro machines are used for. Compiling software on a 1 GHz A4 would be painful; editing video on it would be downright insane. This may change in years to come, but we're nowhere near close enough for it to happen any time soon.

[metageek]

1) Apple already managed one processor transition

Two, actually. 68k to PPC to x86.

[msbarnett]

Good point.

[maercsrats]

1) Good point. Using the backdoor of the app store would just be easier for them to do (I would imagine).

2) Maybe they will be bringing along the big guys, in the future. Java is being deprecated (http://bit.ly/cFp0GX) in the future the may require apps to use the standard API.

3) ARM chips are getting much better. The A-15 is going to be multicore and be up to 2.5 GHz (http://bit.ly/bhVKBP). It is totally possible for apple engineers, gotten from PA Semi, to string together more cores to make a more powerful process. Difficult and costly, but possible.

The problem I see with this line of thinking is that ARM is only a 32 bit arch right now and I don't know of any plans on changing that. Also, having the big guys convert their software over to using ARM instructions over intel (point 2) would be really painful, I think. LLVM and some good virtualization might help mitigate this, but I would have to research that more.

Also, I'm probably completely wrong and I'm fine with that. You have very good points and I appreciate all of them.

[unexpected]

I was thinking about this yesterday as well. I know Apple bought their own processors for the iPhone. I'm not sure they'd run their desktops off an apple A4 chip - but I mean - look at AMD. Market cap is $5 billion. Apple has $50 billion in cash.

Apple could buy them and REALLY control the computer, end-to-end.

[bsk]

This is not as easy as it sounds. AMD will loose it's x86 license if acquired without Intel permission. Designing an efficient parser for a different instruction set can take years.

[wtallis]

I'm pretty sure that the patent situation between AMD and Intel is one of mutually assured destruction, given that AMD created the 64-bit extensions to x86. Intel could complain a lot and file some lawsuits, but if they seriously tried to block the acquisition of AMD, they would be putting their whole patent portfolio at risk and opening themselves up to billions of dollars of punitive fines from antitrust regulators.

[bsk]

Not really: "However, the agreement[43] provides that if one party breaches the agreement it loses all rights to the other party's technology while the other party receives perpetual rights to all licensed technology."

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/X86-64

http://contracts.corporate.findlaw.com/operations/ip/802.htm...

[wtallis]

That sentence doesn't seem to be supported by the citation as redacted and posted online, or I just can't find the relevant language. It looks to me like the list of sections that survive the termination of the agreement doesn't include section 3, which is the actual cross-licensing section. I'm not a lawyer, though, so please point me to the section that has that effect.

Even if the agreement does stipulate that AMD's patent license to Intel becomes perpetual upon termination due to change of control, I really doubt that it is legal in the US, since it basically means that a third party can't buy their way in to the market unless they bribe both AMD and Intel to weaken the duopoly. That would seem to amount to a cartel.

[caf]

Exactly. Both Intel and AMD require licenses from the other to produce current x86 chips.

[msbarnett]

I can't see Apple buying AMD; like in the G4/G5 days, they'd just have to get up on stage every year and acknowledge the large performance gap between themselves and Intel and insist that it would be reduced sometime in the upcoming year. (Edit: And as a sibling post points out, this isn't even practicable. Without an x86 license they'd be dead in the water).

On the other hand I could see them buying NVidia and taking control of their GPU woes directly. Intel Integrated graphics aren't going to stop sucking, and OS X isn't going to stop growing its dependency on a real GPU anytime soon.

[barclay]

Given that apple is in a much different place now then it was during the PowerPC days, maybe this isn't such a terrible idea. (And PPC wasn't apple so much as moto/ibm). They're proving it works right now with the A4... so maybe you're right.

That sad, I'd hate to have them go down the sun route, and just get left behind if/once intel gets off their ass.

[masklinn]

I don't think Apple has any reason to buy AMD (too much of a bother, they're already busy with their fabless ARM acquisitions, and they're not into big buys), but they sure as hell could "orient" AMD's future decision making, especially when it comes to LV/ULV CPUs and IGPs.

[fragmede]

AMD spun off their fab business in mid-2008, so an acquisition of AMD wouldn't put Apple into the fab business.

[icefox]

Why not ship an A4 process along with intel chips? It only costs $10.75 for the A4 v.s. over $100 for the intel chip.

[masklinn]

> Here is a conspiracy theory I've got, and I think this article and Apple releasing the app store for mac backs it up: Apple is going to drop Intel chips in the next 3 years.

With all the Intel/NVidia crap going on, that's pretty likely. But not to a different architecture.

> All of this fighting between Intel and Nvidia is really only hurting customers; namely Apple. So what can Apple do? Create an app store that makes devs standardize on an API and shift the underlying arch. An arch that 67% of their product sales are using.

Uh no, that's not going to work unless they mandate that everything on the MacStore be UB x86/ARM, in which case you'll see the transition coming from a solar system away. Furthermore ARM chips simply don't have the oomph to drive big systems right now, you can put as many Cortex-A9 cores as you want on a chip, you won't be building something that can rival the current 12-core mac pro.

[chc]

Moving to Intel was the best thing that ever happened to the Mac. Literally — look at the sales charts for the past decade. Apple would have to be insane to drop them.

Beyond that, Apple has already done more to make devs standardize on an API than the App Store ever could. Cocoa is the sole API that can create 64-bit apps on Mac OS X, and lots of system APIs are now only available through Cocoa. I don't see how the App Store adds any pressure at all, to be honest.

[steveklabnik]

The fact that the iPad uses a new processor and Apple's continued interest in LLVM would seem to support this, as well.

[calloc]

I don't see how LLVM has anything to do with this. LLVM is just a replacement for GCC which is woefully bloated with almost no good way to extend the functionality and is locked into the GPL.

That being said, Apple employs the guy that builds LLVM/clang, so it only makes sense that they have an interest in it :P

[steveklabnik]

> LLVM is just a replacement for GCC

You're confusing LLVM and clang. LLVM is a bunch of tools to build compilers with, one of which is clang. With Apple moving to tools that support LLVM, they could easily switch out backends to generate, say, ARM rather than x86_64 instructions, allowing them to keep the same software, but run it on different hardware.

[calloc]

No, not really confusing them at all. I know what LLVM is, I used it in the more broader terms in that clang is a subproject of LLVM and wouldn't exist without it.

LLVM in the strictest sense is replacing GCC in that clang is being brought in, along with various other tools that are normally part of GCC.

Also, GCC currently compiles for ARM, what makes LLVM somehow better for generating ARM code than GCC? Your logic here makes absolutely no sense what so ever.

[steveklabnik]

I was speaking in generalities about ARM. One of the main aims of the LLVM project is to be as modular as possible, and GCC's plugin architecture is less than stellar, as others have pointed out in this thread. Embracing flexibility would enable Apple to make this move, and they've jumped processor architectures twice in the past, and once with the iPad, so it's not out of the question that they wouldn't do it again.

[calloc]

Still has nothing to do with choosing LLVM over GCC. Currently GCC is happily generating object files for me that contains i386, x86_64, and ppc:

file x.o x.o: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures

x.o (for architecture i386): Mach-O object i386

x.o (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit object x86_64

x.o (for architecture ppc7400): Mach-O object ppc

Going to another architecture doesn't mean changing the compiler at all, just like they didn't change the compiler when going from PowerPC to Intel. Back on PowerPC it was GCC and now on Intel it is GCC. I believe that GCC is also used to compile for the iPhone/iPad.

Please don't get me wrong, I am really happy Apple is embracing LLVM with the various tools surrounding it and is moving away from GCC, however that is not a sign that they are planning on moving CPU architectures again.