Apple Computer Or The Use Of Self Research Chip ARM And Intel Architecture War To Open?

Apple has been working on chips for a long time.

According to media reports, Apple will announce its Mac computer from the Intel processor to the self-developed ARM based chip at the 2020 Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 22nd.

This is not surprising. As early as 2 years ago, there was news of Apple's self processing computer processor. At that time, the first product of the industry was expected to be released in 2020. Now it seems likely that Apple will announce it at the end of this month.

The report also said that the first batch of Mac processors will have eight high-performance kernels (code name Firestorm) and at least four high efficiency cores (internal code Icestorm), which will adopt 5nm process technology. As part of Apple's self research chip "Kalamate" project, Apple has at least three Mac processors equipped with ARM.

In terms of Apple's business, apple is a "conservative and prudent" enterprise. Its product line is not large, and the replacement of suppliers will not suddenly make such risky decisions.

What brought apple to this stage? The core is to improve the performance of computers, but also can not be tied up by Intel. The fundamental logic of Apple ecosystem is to make a closed loop system. From iOS, macOS to A series and other chips, Apple has always integrated key links. Apple can optimize its system to the present level. It shows that the deeper the better the combination of hardware and software, the better the ARM can continue to contribute to Apple's self research. Apple may be able to improve its computing power and performance based on the ARM architecture.

Apple's choice

First of all, Apple's choice of Mac self matching chip with ARM architecture is not a overnight decision. It should be said that self research product is Apple's long-term strategy. In order to maintain the good experience of the system, it is Apple's foundation to design hardware products and find the best manufacturer's OEM to achieve integration of hardware and software.

Apple has been using its own chip in mobile products since its start from the A6 chip, but now it relies heavily on Intel for its Mac. With Apple's checks and balances, many suppliers will be looking for its products. Apple also hopes to break Intel's monopoly on computer processors.

Apple has indeed "abandoned" a number of partners on its own chip. In 2005, apple abandoned the PowerPC chip that it collaborated with IBM and Motorola, and turned it into a more powerful Intel chip. In iPhone, apple and ARM jointly developed the chip, then no longer adopted the high pass processor; in 2017, Apple also replaced Imagination Technologies with self developed products. Group's graphics processing chip; in 2019, Apple bought $1 billion for Intel's smart phone baseband chip department, which could foresee its replacement for Qualcomm products.

Secondly, behind the "Kalamate" self chip project is Apple's big plan to open up three kinds of product systems like iPhone, iPad and Mac. At present, iPhone and iPad both use the iOS system, using the apple self developed ARM architecture chip, while the Mac computer carries the x86 chip of Intel, and the system is macOS. If the self developed ARM chips are successfully used in Mac computers, apple mobile terminals and PC products will be more easily linked.

Prior to this, Yao Jiayang, an analyst at Ji Bang Tuo Industry Research Institute, told the twenty-first Century economic news reporter: "in the past, the market came out, and Apple might have the design of its own processor to move to Mac. With the maturity of ARM in the 64 bit ecosystem, plus the fact that Apple has always been reluctant to be restricted by suppliers, the design of its own processor has been adopted. It can avoid Intel's containment, and it can also satisfy the optimization of system design.

Moreover, inadequate performance is the biggest pain for apple. "Even though Intel has customized many products to apple, there is almost no room for optimization in the existing Intel structure. Apple has dried up Intel on its performance," a senior software industry analyst told the twenty-first Century economic news reporter. "Why can Adobe market value be hovering between $150 billion and $200 billion? Because of Windows or iOS, performance has been drained under the current computer architecture. Adobe and other companies also want to provide users with more productivity tools, but they are no longer able to make greater optimization. With the combination of the existing traditional operating systems and chips, Adobe has been able to call the graphics card directly, and its capability and performance have reached the extreme.

But users also want to further improve their performance. "Now the speed of opening software is not fast enough, and the speed of exporting a video is not fast enough. For example, we need to export a 5 minute video, high-precision rendering is good for several minutes or even more than ten minutes, but the existing computing power can only go to this level." The software personage said.

In other words, in the computing world today, there are bottlenecks in computing power and bottlenecks in core processors. Apple realized this and wanted to collaborate more systematically with hardware to further enhance its performance.

However, Apple's commercial development of the chip itself is not easy. It involves the stability of the large-scale chips, the compatibility of the upper layer applications, and the reintegration of the hardware and software systems. It is understood that Apple's first customized Mac chip has lower performance and can not meet the needs of high-end computers, so it may be used in entry-level products, such as lightweight notebooks, and there is a view that it may be combined with the flat iOS.

Intel VS ARM

Although Apple wants to replace Intel's computer processor, the impact on Intel is still limited, because Apple's Mac sales are not high. According to IDC data, apple ranked fourth in the world PC shipments in 2019, with a shipment volume of 176 million 840 thousand units, occupying only 6.6% of the market share. Another analyst pointed out that Intel earned less than $4 billion per year on Apple's computers and accounted for little of Intel's total revenue. Moreover, the proportion of Intel from PC in recent years is decreasing, and the revenue of data center is growing.

"We believe that even if Apple launches its own processor, in the short term, it may be a parallel operation between Intel and its own two versions, mainly because the ecosystem of software is highly related to its holdings. It is not possible to switch seamlessly between x86 and ARM instruction set in the short term. Therefore, we believe that the impact on Intel will be relatively limited in the short term. Yao Jiayang said.

The bigger impact is the change in the industry chain brought by apple. With the help of apple, other PC brands are likely to exert power on the computer processor chip of the ARM architecture. In fact, the combination of Windows and ARM has already appeared in the market. Microsoft, Lenovo, Samsung, HP, ASUS and other companies have already launched notebook computers based on ARM chips, but the market is not ideal.

"The embarrassment of Windows PC is that even the current Windows system does not optimize the computing power of the processor, because it has to be compatible with different hardware and has to contact various kinds of memory and chips. Its customers include DELL, Lenovo, HP and so on. Once you start to consider compatibility, you lose your performance, "the software analyst said." if you can use ARM to call more capabilities, apple can still get higher performance than Windows's "high energy consumption low output" mode through the "low energy consumption in output" mode.

On the other hand, the strong rise of the ARM architecture chip is not only reflected in the computer side, but also in the server chip, Intel also has HUAWEI, Amazon, Qualcomm and other competitors. For example, HUAWEI's Kun Peng chip is HUAWEI's ARM based CPU, including servers and PC chips. The latest generation is the Kun Peng 920 processor. Of course, in the field of PC and server chip, Intel has built up a x86 architecture.

But a new round of competition has begun. According to the data displayed by HUAWEI, in 2020, the ARM of the mainstream processors exceeded x86, and accelerated the transformation of computing power. HUAWEI chip and hardware strategy Fellow Ai Wei analysis: "from the development of computing power in the past 20 years, x86 ranked first in the total power of mainstream processors in 2000, and the total output reached 70% of the world's total. Today, there has been a reversal. The largest computing power in the world has become the ARM platform, and the total output of the processor based on ARM instruction has reached 82% worldwide. The whole process is accelerating. "

Ai Wei also said: "many people may say that these ARM are still relatively low performance. But in the history, the PC machine started to rise in 1980s. By 1993, we saw that the total output of PC was larger than that of UNIX. At that time, it was also in the lower bound. Until 1998, the processor was launched. After reaching the server level, the mass conversion was transformed into qualitative change. Now X86 occupies more than 90% of the total market share of the data center. The whole process is entirely subversive and subversive, and this history may be repeated again. "

Another reason for the increasing number of Intel competitors is that there are more and more customized scenes. Intel used to work closely with Microsoft, but now there are more B and B companies, and they want to be more customized. In the middle, ARM will be able to help customize flexibly. Coupled with the decline in the cost of chip production today, the number of companies that can design and produce chips is increasing, and the market space has increased.

In the future trend of heterogeneous computing, how will the pattern of architecture change and there will be wonderful stories.

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