A few days ago, Intel teased: On May 4th, the company would make “its most significant technology announcement of the year.”
Tongues wagged. Will Intel make ARM chips for Apple? The speculation has roots in reality.
We’ll start with the public breakup of the Wintel marriage. At this year’s CES in January, Steve Ballmer made it clear that x86 exclusivity was done for. With an eye on reentering the tablet market, the next release of Microsoft’s legacy OS, Windows 8, would also run on ARM SOCs. This will “fork” Windows: There’ll be two versions, one on x86 processors, another on ARM chips. Tablets, which introduce UI differences, add a couple more tines to the fork. The impact on application development isn’t clear yet (food for a future Monday Note). Surprisingly, there’s been little talk of Intel “going ARM” to repair the Wintel relationship.
Now let’s consider Intel’s complete absence from the mobile scene. Not a single smartphone contains an x86 processor. Not a single tablet, no GPS device, nothing.
For the past four years Intel has told us we’d see x86 mobile devices Real Soon Now. The company developed its own mobile version of Linux, MobLin, and they made a big deal of joining forces with Nokia’s Maemo to create MeeGo. But Nokia’s new CEO, Stephen Elop, kicked Meego to the kerb, wisely deciding to focus on one software platform, his ex-employer’s Windows Phone 7.
(We’ll see how wise this decision turns out to be. Perhaps Elop should have put his money on the front-running Android horse. Perhaps Microsoft should have “gone Apple” — pardon, “vertical.” They could have acquired Nokia, controlled the hardware and the software. They did so, successfully, with the Xbox and Kinect. Again, more food for future Monday Notes.)
The x86 mobile devices never materialized. Each new low-power processor promise from Intel was matched by ever more attractive ARM development. Now that the PC market is in its twilight, with mobile devices proliferating and stealing growth from the PC, surely Intel has to get into the race.
Then there’s the long-standing relationship between Steve Jobs and Intel — or, more specifically, with Intel co-founder Andy Grove. The relationship flourished at NeXT when Jobs moved the platform to Intel processors. After Jobs returned to Apple, efforts got under way to move the Macintosh away from the PowerPC, which was deemed poorly supported by IBM and Motorola, to the more robust x86 line.
It isn’t hard to imagine Intel offering Apple its advanced 22nanometer fabs, along with some kind of exclusivity and price advantage. And there’s a bonus: They’d be kicking Samsung, an annoying combination of supplier, competitor, and adversary in IP lawsuits. In return, Apple would give Intel the kind of volume the company likes, 100 million ARM chips in 2012.
From there, the train of thought continues to the terminus: the Macintosh line switches wholly to ARM, and Intel supplies the processors. It’s not impossible. Intel hedges its bets, secures an inexpensive ARM license and uses its technology and marketing prowess to grab their share of the explosive growth.
As the rumor site says: “This is going to cause meetings.”
Now, the reality.
What Intel announced last week is a new “3-D” transistor technology. 3-D here doesn’t refer to images but to a design and manufacturing technique: Making transistors in three dimensions, as opposed to today’s “planar” technology where the microscopic silicon circuitry is laid out on a flat surface. Just as you can store more cars in a multi-storey garage than in a flat parking lot, more circuitry can be packed in three dimensions.
The new 22nm semiconductor manufacturing process also helps. The circuitry building blocks are smaller, they waste less electrical power through heat dissipation. All of this — cue the cymbals — is ideal for mobile applications. In plain English: This is Intel’s ARM killer. (Cruelly, Google tells us we heard the same story three years ago. And two years ago. And last year.)
Intel’s press release is firmly planted in hyperbole:
“Intel’s scientists and engineers have once again reinvented the transistor, this time utilizing the third dimension,” said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini. “Amazing, world-shaping devices will be created from this capability as we advance Moore’s Law into new realms.”
The part about “once again” reinventing the transistor is a bit far-fetched. On Intel’s website, you’ll find the company’s own timeline, replete with innovations, and bowdlerization…but nothing about reinventing the transistor. There’s some dispute as to the transistor’s actual invention: when, where, by whom. Most history books credit William Shockley at Bell Labs Research with the first silicon transistor, which was produced in 1954 by Texas Instruments. (At my Breton Roman Catholic boarding school, the Prefect of Discipline was a certified geek. In 1955, instead of looking at religious pictures, we were in his office drooling at this incredible Philips OC 71 germanium transistor…)
We’re meant to be impressed by the promised performance and power dissipation improvements:
The 22nm 3-D Tri-Gate transistors provide up to 37 percent performance increase at low voltage versus Intel’s 32nm planar transistors. This incredible gain means that they are ideal for use in small handheld devices, which operate using less energy to “switch” back and forth. Alternatively, the new transistors consume less than half the power when at the same performance as 2-D planar transistors on 32nm chips.
Note the Alternatively: it’s either more performance or less power dissipation.
We’ll have to wait a year to see how this markitecture translates into actual devices.
Will this be enough to unseat ARM? Most observers doubt it. The big news was received with an equally big yawn. Wall Street didn’t pay much attention. We’ve been here before: The “product” of the announcement is the announcement. (And there’s the suspicion that “breakthrough” revelations are an attempt to mask a lack of spanking new products.)
But let’s return to the rumor, from SemiAccurate, that the Mac and Intel will soon be “arm-in-ARM.” (That bad pun isn’t mine.)
First, let’s consider the name of the website.
Second, what will Apple do at the high-end, for media creation and editing? What about Photoshop, FinalCut, and other applications, including CAD where the Mac is getting back in the game? There’s no roadmap for ARM chips to beat Intel in these computationally intensive areas.
Today, going ARM is technically feasible on entry-level Macs. Tomorrow, newer multicore ARM chips might work for middle-of-the-line Macintosh products. But will Apple abandon the faster x86 processors at the high end just to avoid the kind of forking that awaits Windows in its own move to ARM? If not, we’ll again see Universal applications (a.k.a. fat binaries–two versions inside the same container), just as we did with the PowerPC to x86 transition. Microsoft is doing it because it must; Apple did it because the PowerPC didn’t have a future. But now?
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On a related note…and more food for thought: I’d love to know how the iPad line will evolve. For example: will pressure-sensitive stylus input ever happen? Eschewing stylus input in the early days was a thoughtful move. Perhaps it’s time to relax the restriction and thus enable richer media creation applications.
The next iOS and OS X releases will shed more light on the relative roles of Apple’s tablet and PC product lines, how they will coexist, what they’ll have in common and what will keep them apart. We should know in about a month.
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30 Comments
Would there be an advantage to Apple to put an A5 (and follow-on) on Macs in addition to the Intel chips? The A5 is rumord to cost $25. OS X could certainly take advantage of the A5 as additional compute resource.
In addition, Apple could contract Intel to provide the millions of custom iDevice ARM chips at newer fab technology — giving Apple a price and performance advantage that competitors could not match.
@ Dick Applebaum: Hmmm… Let’s look at past transitions at Apple: 68000 to PowerPC, PowerPC to Intel: in both cases the switch didn’t involve dual-chip hardware. Reasons? We can think of complexity, cost, power dissipation and motherboard space. Especially on laptops. Plus Dear Leader’s love of Less Is More… JLG
I was too enamored with Intel in my comments on your MondayNote “Intel’s bold bet against ARM”. Intel fully expected Nokia to stick with Meego, and their Atom-unit head got the sack when that changed. Intel internally will be betting on a ultra power efficient 22nm Atom, along with their port of Android to x86 turning around their woes. This is not going to help. It will only further the fragmentation claims against Android. I also don’t see Intel becoming a foundry even for a customer like Apple, especially for ARM-based cores, egos are too big all around to see that happen.
Intel will have the datacenter market all bet sewn up, for the foreseeable future. AMD has a chance with their Fusion to grab some part of the tablet/notebook space, if and only if Windows 8 is compelling to the public (which I doubt). Everyone is too shellshocked by the success of iOS to realize that hardware alone is not going to win the battle, the software which governs the user experience is paramount.
Who knows, maybe WebOS will surprise everyone, because as for now Blackberry Tablet OS, Windows Phone, and Android are all genuinely lacking.
I would have loved to see what Be would have evolved into had it not prematurely devoted itself to “Internet Appliances”. Today tablets are simply that, internet appliances. The technology wasn’t there then, but it is now.
Technology, as life, is interesting that way. Timing is everything.
@ Adrian: Yes, timing is important: “Internet Appliances” are everywhere now, including GPS devices getting updates, BMW cars using Google Earth, Eye-Fi equipped cameras and home security… Tomorrow medical devices…
On your point: “Everyone is too shellshocked by the success of iOS to realize that hardware alone is not going to win the battle, the software which governs the user experience is paramount.” There an intellectual footfault at work here: Apple’s bizmodel is hardware, but they kill with software.
Jean-Louis,
I wasn’t considering it as a transition chip — rather a chip that could deliver additional, exclusive, capability to the Macs.
To address the points you raise:
– Complexity – Apple already has their OS and some apps running on both chips. Further, both are supported with GCD and OpenCL. The ARM addition to the Mac would add additional CPU and GPU cores. that could be easily exploited, no?
– Cost – Apple aready has economies of scale on the ARM chips – possibly they could reduce costs even further by including an ARM chip on each Mac.
– Power dissipation and motherboard space – because of the ARM’s size and low power this should not, really, be an issue on anything but laptops.
Certainly, there would have to be an advantage to putting 2 CPU chips on a single computer to warrant the additional expense and complexity.
I can envision several possibilities:
– offloading processing such as video encoding to the ARM chip (ProRes APIs are already implemented on iOS/ARM).
– instant on for all Macs – especially advantageous to laptops, where the Mac, instead of going to idle (or off) goes to ARM instant Off/On state.
– headless (display off), low-power background operation – as opposed to running x86 mode – for things like:
—- serving iTunes media/apps/content to other Macs and iDevices
—- backup to external TimeMachine
—- staging files between the local devices and the cloud
—- downloading content
—- downloading and installing app and OS updates
Possibly, by adding an ARM, each Mac could do more with less!
The thing that I can’t judge is whether the advantages woukd justify the implementation.
For Honest-to-God semiconductor porn, you can’t beat http://gallery.vibada.com/v/Cool_Pictures/first+transistor.gif.html
which I recall as the image of the first transistor (not at the time, since it was from my birth year, but in old Scientific Americans that my dad kept around).
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Regards the possibility of new technological shifts: they’re simply an inevitability. Apple has prospered greatly from introducing disruptive technology to atherosclerotic industries, and there are plenty of other markets to go for. Trouble is, besides TV, most of them are outside the developed world. If, as I have recently argued, Apple’s business is technological disruption (and also pace Asymco’s latest), they MUST find strikingly new solutions that will take competitors years to replicate.
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Apple, IMHO want to repeat their last 5 years’ growth, in which they essentially went from 10 million to 100 million customers, through playing Shiva. To get to a billion in 5 years, they will have to offer a range of sweet spots in performance/watt, in display clarity versus power level, in battery power. These three, plus the tradeoff of local storage versus communications, are the 5 top cost/performance issues that stand in the way of an Apple-branded device in a billion people’s hands.
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The “Intel tax” stands in the way of the lower-cost 90% of potential users, so it’s inevitable that X86 will NOT power the majority of these devices, even if today’s power users, the top 10%, demand it. (I note that this 2010 MacBook runs comparable programs 8X – 10X the iPad2′s speed.) But Apple’s attention to software tuning puts it in the lead to use LESS RAM; LESS CPU power and carefully-targeted GPU and displays. Note that the iPhone 4 makes do with a slower (more battery-efficient) CPU and half the RAM memory of its Android equivalents to deliver superior results.
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I don’t have any clue about Apple’s near-term plans but absolutely, in 2 years, there will be ARM-based devices doing things that today people buy X86 laptops or desktops to do. They may be made in Intel foundries or with third-party foundries licensing Intel’s IP, or not. But Apple will be pushing this direction.
I agree with Walter French and I ask: Do ‘the rest of us’ really need workstation class processors and operating systems for our ‘personal computing’?
Of course MS will not port Windows as we know it to ARM and Apple will not port Mac OS X as we know it to ARM.
But iOS has grown from phone to tablet. Can it keep on growing? Will Apple re-invent the PC? Will they go for market share? If the iPad is any indication, the transition from pure skimming to skimming + penetrating seems to have already begun.
Re: high end, consider Apple’s dropping of the Xserve line, and the consistent focus on higher volume products like mp3 players and smartphones.
Intel holds an ARM license, it has a special one, that allows it to make architectural changes.
I guess the questions for Intel become:
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1) Will they be satisfied to dominate a market (non-mobile) with a decreasing growth rate.
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2) Do they think they can compete in the mobile market with their product plan? When?
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3) Can they afford to bet the farm on that plan?
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4) Can they ignore the burgeoning ARM mobile market for 1-2 years (or more)?
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Egos aside, the best business strategy for Intel might be: “if we are going to have competition — it might as well be from us!”
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Sent from my mobile A5 device
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I’ve been saying this all over but people don’t seem to believe me. Intel’s 37% gain in performance is NOT a big deal, yet most people act as if Intel just announced a chip that is an order of magnitude more powerful or an order of magnitude more energy efficiency, which would be far from the truth.
This innovation from Intel will “merely” help continue Moore’s Law, but it doesn’t help them much in the battle with ARM. ARM isn’t in a hurry to build 3D chips yet, because they are a bit behind Intel in transistor size anyway, so they haven’t gotten yet into the problems Intel is starting to face with such small 22nm transistors. ARM has a bit more time than Intel before Moore’s Law slows down for them.
@Tom Foremski: Thanks for the tip. I recall Intel getting a StrongARM license through a complicated settlement. See this June 2010 Monday Note http://bit.ly/m5GnWj. As we all know, Intel flipped the Xscale business to Marvell in 2006. What I didn’t realize is Intel had kept an ARM license. And with architectural modification rights. Fascinating.
I still can’t believe Intel plans to wait until 2012 to get back in the mobile race with x86 processors. Something’s not right. They’ll say it’s my mind
@Angel Lamuno: I think you’re in the right track. It’s easier to grow an OS than to shrink it. Try squeezing WIndows on a smartphone… I know, Ballmer says “it’s WIndows” when brandishing a WinPh 7 device.
The fascinating iOS story is Apple took bits from OS X but didn’t try shoehorning the desktop OS into a much smaller machine. The result is small, limited, remember the first iPhone, and can “re-grow” free of (most of) the ancestor’s past sins, free from the accumulated layers of software silt the inevitably plague all OS over time.
Apple has already begun integrating iOS back into OS X. First was the OS X App Store. Now, in the Lion betas they have elements such as an iOS-like app selector, default scrolling matching iOS (pulling down goes up), and other stuff. Besides, OS X and iOS have the same code underneath, it is only the UI layer that was ever different, and that appears to be merging. Steve is being careful in not doing anything to quick and stupid (he has said that a touch-screen laptop won’t work). Instead they are steadily moving at a moderate pace towards convergent evolution. And really, it’s quite sensible. The main reason people love their iOS devices is the intuitiviteness of the interaction. Apple can take the user-centric design they’ve learned from the blue-sky experiment platform they’ve had with the iPhone and “bring it back to Mac”.
Funnily enough, Microsoft seems to be moving towards the same model, from a slightly different direction. Reading the tea leaves, it sounds like Windows 8 will be a multi-platform OS with a new GUI approach that will allow it to adapt and flow to fit different form factors, from phone to tablet to laptop (to PC, if anyone still cares about those) (Windows Phone 7, while a cool sounding experience, is going to die due to infighting within MS and a lack of any compelling hardware packages thus far). However, Microsoft has a massive problem with their inability to cut out cruft and stop supporting old technology in Windows – something about which Apple has been ruthless. Microsoft is also hamstrung by their lack of a vertically integrated model. Apple has very few products, so they can laser-focus into creating the best possible user experience. Microsoft will not be able to get the same focus with Windows 8. Expect a parade of diappointing Windows 8 devices, in all shapes and sizes, from the usual gang of misfits.
Microsoft should have bought Nokia and integrated vertically. However, they tried that before with Danger and got burned. It’s just not in Microsoft’s blood to quickly put together a great integrated user experience like Apple does, where hardware + OS + apps + online all work in lockstep.
And if Intel achieve to make New Atoms power efficient with these 3D transistors, why Apple wouldn’t switch iOS devices to Intel x86 ?
That would allow Apple to stop use Samsung processors… I bet Intel would be ready to gives Apple some exclusivity in exchange for such a big market in mobile devices, giving them credibility.
I called BS when I saw the disingenuous performance comparison of 22nM to 32nM. That takes an apples-to-oranges comparison and attempts to disguise it as an apples-to-apples comparison. Scale and topology affect performance, so a comparison where they both change confuses the impact of either. And, frankly, 37% isn’t a big difference for a node change of either much less both. Recall the claimed 100% CPU and 900% GPU performance improvements for A5 vs A4. (Note my artful dodge of ignoring going from single-core to dual-core;-)
How is Thunderbolt going to get on Apple’s SoC’s if Intel doesn’t fab them? Who else can fab 250 million in a year, which Apple will need very soon?
I don’t think it hurts Intel’s ego to fab Apple’s SoC’s. Less than 50% of A5 is the ARM cores. Apple still needs GPU, I/O, RAM, flash, and Intel does all of that, too. And Intel’s ego is attached to volume. In 2015, there will probably be more iPads sold than all notebook PC’s, so does Intel want to see someone else making more PC chips than them, or do they want to do both the notebooks and the iPads?
Apple is about halfway to saving up to buy Intel anyway. Don’t put it past them.
> Do ‘the rest of us’ really need workstation class
> processors and operating systems for our ‘personal
> computing’?
Yes. History shows that we do. The operating system core in an iPhone 4 is workstation class OS X, and iPhone 4 has more computing power than the fastest Mac workstation from a decade ago. And this year the computing power in the iPhone will double and the operating system will improve again.
An iPad with Retina Display is a 2K screen, an iMac with Retina Display is 4K, and both have secondary screens to run. 4K movies are already supported on YouTube. We routinely use large maps and other datasets. We need much more computing power as we go forward. We’re just getting started.
classic…
“There an intellectual footfault at work here: Apple’s bizmodel is hardware, but they kill with software.” – Jean-Louis Gassée
Its amazing so many PC and Mobile OEMs do not understand this. …even now.
-Tek
Agreed, Apple understands that software development is not a “cost center” to be scorned. Unlike other hardware companies like HP that consistently produce crapware software that they force down customers’ throats, Apple actually produces good software that enhances the user’s exerpience.
JLG;
Sometimes you go beyond commentary or reportage and add a little unexpected ‘joy and delight’ of your own to your articles – to quote a little from Tim Cook. When I read your reminiscences of the ubiquitous OC71, I almost fell off my chair. We must be of an age + or -. As a young man I persuaded a girlfriend to ask her friend who worked at Siemens in Paris to get me a ‘bunch’ of silicon. I used American part numbers for some transistors and early i.c. gate devices. What I received, among other things, were about 50 Siemens branded OC71s, with their little metal helmet tops. I showed all the signs of a geek in the making, but it was not to be.
Back on topic though, allow me to float a thought or a line of twentyish thoughts.
Many here have said that Apple must move in directions that no competitor can follow.
Hardware ideas are not that direction, since most hardware componentry can be acquired by any competitor at a price.It is not a game of hardware specs. Software is the killer, as you have said.
So, imo, software is the only path where Apple can walk in ways that others can only talk about and struggle to follow. But how to get Apple there, from here?
Well, you have said that ‘He who must be obeyed’ likes a simple world in which less, with some gifted engineering, can indeed become more; sometimes much more.
Apple has two computing platforms: Mac OSX and iOS.
The latter was derived from the former.
Two is more than one, and less is always better.
From the outset, Mac OSX was offered on Power PC but also ran on Intel chips in the lab until the day arrived to make the switch.
iOS devices have a modus operandi that is all the rage in the world and the obsession of all of Apple’s competitors. Everyone says that iOs is the future and the future is post-PC.
The Mac is PC too, so do we anticipate its decline and eventual demise?
Well, we don’t because many people will continue to need a powerful workhorse; the truck that SJ spoke about at All Things Digital.
Less is more.
The son can be the father to the man as the latter ages.
There are many signs that iOS features are being implemented in Mac OSX 10.7 Lion.
Apple seems keen to wean its users away from mice and keyboards for common computing tasks.
Is it possible then that Apple can use its software assets to put itself beyond easy competition for at least five years by doing something rather simple?
iOS came from MacOSX and so there is every reason to believe that there are iOS Macs running in the Lab.
So my point is this.
Instead of a dual chip (x86 and Apple A’X') on the motherboard, why not a dual OS Mac (say an iMac to begin with) that switches from OSX to iOS and back again seamlessly, at the flick of a ‘switch’ or just by tilting the screen from the vertical to the horizontal?
How many iOS customers who don’t own a Mac might be tempted to reach for their wallets to own a large-screen computer on which they get added ROI on their app investments and their iOS skill sets?
And who could compete with that in a hurry?
Just my 2p worth Jean-Louis.
À la semaine prochaine!
The margins in the smartphone/Tablet markets are not that great. Intel is making 60% plus margins, it has to go for the server chip market with every new architectural push. It has to wait until later before targeting new “3D” Atoms at the ARM market. But by then switching costs might be too large for many manufacturers (but not Apple – Apple could switch from ARM…another possible scenario).
Universal applications are not needed now as we are used to installer programs, i.e. we no longer move installed application directories from a machine to another. What is needed is Universal Installer, which is not so bad.
Additionnally new compilation techniques (see Google Native Client use of LLVM) allows late compilation so that the translation to either x86, x86-64 or whatever flavour of ARM architecture could theoretically be done at installation time.
@ Dick Applebaum: bi-processor architectures are hard to program. To deal with it, I’d say the ARM would act as main processor, managing the HMI, delegating intensive-CPU tasks to the x86. Even imagine the x86 acting as a “local cloud processor”, so that the ARM chip would run iPxD-like apps and the x86 would act as the remote server.
@Eric Dujardin
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Since the latest XCode 4 system for Mac OS X and iOS uses LLVM, I suspect that “late compilation” could easily be supported.
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Your suggestion to use the ARM processor (in a bi-processor system) as the main processor; human/machine interface processor; and router — appears to be an elegant solution.
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I can envision an implementation where a Mac, with the addition of an inexpensive ARM chip, could exploit the best capabilities of each chip — with little/no downside.
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1) you would not sacrifice any x86 capability — still be able to run Mac OS X, Windows, Linux apps.
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2) Legacy x86 apps would be passed through and run unchanged
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3) Current apps, with a recompile, would take advantage of the bi-processor implementation
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4) Virtual Machines (e.g. Parallels) could use the bi-processor implementation as applicable
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5) iOS and ARM-only apps could run on the ARM chip as they do now — or have processor-intensive segments dispatched to the x86
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On systems with ARM chips only:
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a) iOS apps run as they currently do
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b) Certain Mac apps could be implemented so that they would run on: an x86-only Mac; x86/ARM Mac; ARM-only iDevice. (Things like iLife and iWork — possibly some FCPX apps).
@Chandra, I imagine that Apple engineers kick these ideas around a lot but they were interesting here; thank you for tickling my fancy.
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One idea that I would add, emphasizing Apple’s near-total control of its software development environment and its flexibility: a merging of the two OSs, with fine graduations specific to the hardware capabilities. One doesn’t want want constant indexing of files as a background process on a phone, so that OSX service, and the ability to find data within files, wouldn’t be appropriate to a nano-class phone. (I think it’s not far out of reach for the high-power phones.) Voice recognition might be done at a data center for tiny phones, but likely wouldn’t need much of an assist for anything as beefy as an iPad2.
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Apple has made an art out of having exactly one SKU appropriate to any given use, and as they reach for more and more customers they will have a wider range, leveraging every one of their talents that fits on the appropriate hardware.
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I think the notion of an ARM controller for a laptop that occasionally wakes up OSX for the heavy lifting is not too bad an engineering challenge… but a UX disaster; the user has to form a mental model of what is going on underneath that screen, what’s in charge at any time.
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A close acquaintance confessed yesterday that in her short time with the iPad, she is now trying to pinch even paper to zoom in on something; using her BlackBerry has become tedious and requires her to constantly think, “how do I do …?”. Apple has created tremendously powerful metaphors for shaping how we think and interact with our environment in the touch interface. This is indeed a threat to the mouse.
I think Apple engineers would respond to the notion of integrating two processors in one product with “we can do that better with two boxes” Magically export application windows from Mac OS devices to iOS display devices. Seamlessly run iOS apps natively on Mac OS devices (All apps do this now in development running in the emulator. Emulation performance isn’t an issue going from iOS class devices to Mac OS class devices. Or Apple could support an SDK for Intel.) In my (perhaps overactive) imagination, I see this as the route for Apple to take over the Windows user experience. Essentially overnight export the app library to that can run on Windows (inside an emulator, if need be). Then when the billion current Windows users are ready to get a new computer, they have less unfamiliarity to overcome to choose an Apple device. I really do think that Windows succeeds only due to the low expectations engendered in so many people. If Apple can raise users’ demands for quality user experiences, then they’ll know only Apple can deliver (at least until some other company figures out how to focus on the customer. I don’t expect it to be any of the incumbents). Everybody wins (at least in the short-term;-)
@Walt French
“I think the notion of an ARM controller for a laptop that occasionally wakes up OSX for the heavy lifting is not too bad an engineering challenge… but a UX disaster; the user has to form a mental model of what is going on underneath that screen, what’s in charge at any time.”
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But, does it need to be a UX disaster? Consider:
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1) Reports are that Lion provides “gentle persuasion” for the user to move away from the melange of MOWs (Multiple, Overlapping Windows) of OS X towards the single, “in your face” window (with panels) of iOS (like on the iPad). Another Lion feature is the automatic saving of files (in addition to overt saving) where the user need not be concerned with losing files or changes.
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2) Most laptops have 17″ or less displays — so the MOW capability is less practical on this form factor.
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3) As suggested by @Eric Dujardin, the ARM would be responsible for the HMI, the UX (UI, View Layer, Presentation Services, whatever) and route “heavy” processing to the x86 as needed.
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So, one use case is a laptop with a few concurrent apps running — with a tendency for a single app to monopolize the display and the UX at any one time.
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Say, the laptop is number-crunching a large spreadsheet and/or rendering video on the x86. The user could switch to another window/app to surf, check email, etc. knowing that he will be notified when the x86 apps complete. These “light” apps (surfing, email) could be handled entirely (or mostly) by the ARM (transparent to the user).
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Should the user finish before the x86 processes complete, he could switch back to, say the spreadsheet window (handled entirely by the ARM HMI. Or, just let the ARM put the display to sleep. As the x86 processes complete, the ARM updates the app windows to reflect this.
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Without further action from the user, the ARM puts the x86 to sleep, then “instant OFFs” itself..
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Later, when the user returns, he clicks or taps and “instant ONs” the ARM which shows the app windows just as he left them — updated to reflect completed processes.
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While the user readjusts to what he was doing and where he was — the ARM wakes up the x86 in anticipation of continued work,
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This is complex to explain, but could be implemented in such a way that it is very intuitive — and the user need not be concerned with what’s happening under the hood.
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Requisite to this type of solution are better task switching and better notifications (at the very least). No longer would it be acceptable for the user have to select from every app he’s ever run — nor be expected to respond to a modal dialog from a hidden window..
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The above could be a refinement of the iOS task bar combined with the Command-Tab app switcher — together with an elegant system-wide notifications. Why must I switch to Final Cut, just to see if the render is complete (or not)?
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We should have [system] apps for that!.
“Second, what will Apple do at the high-end, for media creation and editing?”
Presumably they will sell you a cloud solution so your ultralight, ultraportable, ultra long lasting macpad pro can also muscle through tasks in a fraction of the time that a high end local chip would take.
@Steko, if you look at the competency of the iPad I imagine you’ll find very few actual use cases where the cost of shuffling data around is worth the savings in CPU responsiveness. Google is maybe a year or two ahead of Apple in cloud services but I don’t see cloud functions exceeding what the A4 is capable of. The cloud is for sharing, synchronizing, ubiquity, not processing e cept for very unusual cases (e.g., SETI).
Walt, you may very well be right but here is why I harp on this idea:
re: cost of shuffling data around
How can these costs be any different from what netflix and hulu and youtube HD do? Playing a cloud World of Applecraft for 2 hours can’t be significantly different then watching a 2 1/2 hour movie on netflix.
re: cloud not for processing
Try OnLive. The quality is way better then expected and 2 years down the road I can certainly see this being ready for prime time and the entire software market (not just games) being ripe for someone like Apple to come in with a massively disruptive business model.
Again I might be wrong. Thin client consumer laptops may be 10 or 5 years away. But watching Google’s IO I’d say we’re a lot closer.
@Steko, by “cost of shuffling data around” I meant time, not money. I use two virtual desktops (Outlook thru “VDI”) and it is awful in terms of tooltips in the way, drag/resize like a rubber steering wheel. Yes it need not be this bad but this over a *wired* connection, not 3 or 2.5G. The A4 and even more the A5 has the moxie to do anything, just not to be running a couple dozen background apps or daemons.
Let’s see what WWDC has. What with me getting appointments duplicated and other hassles, I think Apple has a lot to prove before these ideas are feasible. (and the early status og the I/O betas are as incomplete as GoogleTV was a year ago.)
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