| Yep, the real give away was the A12Z. It isn't shit all faster than the A12X with the exception of the added GPU core. The A12X was so fast when it came out, reviewers were like "holy shit, this is nearly as fast or faster as comparable x86 laptop," and that was what... two years ago? Apple's ARM processors are likely _so fucking fast_ that they'd absolutely be showing their hand if they put one in a tablet right now. Reviewers would probably be like "uhh this is faster than a 13" macbook pro and it's a fucking tablet?!" Not to mention, that'd be the nail in the coffin for a good (for Apple) relationship with Intel until they're totally ready to transition. My guess is Apple is probably just not "quite" there yet for it's highest-end products or we'd see them this year. It's pretty lucky for them their custom silicon to-date has been so far ahead of everyone else or (appearing to be) sitting on their asses for a year or so might hurt. TSMC is already capable of taking a shit on Intel (Ryzen 3000) and Apple is obviously capable of making very fast custom CPUs. It's a pretty dangerous combo if you're Intel right now and already getting hammered by AMD. For me, the real question, and pipe dream, will Apple partner with AMD during the transition and perhaps make some some hybrid AMD x86/Apple ARM machines since they're both being built by TSMC? |
There is an interesting thought. Apple could embed one AMD-chiplet with up to 8 cores into their designs, where Apple provides the ARM-CPUs as well as the io-hardware the chiplets require. This would retain the ability to run x86-code, while the system would use the ARM-hardware for most task.