Alleged Intel source: "Apple scares us more than AMD"

[Colstan]

So, while listening to leaks on the PC side of the street, "Moore's Law is Dead" had a few interesting quotes that he purports to be from a source within Intel. Normally, I wouldn't give much credence to inside sources if it were from someplace incompetent like Digitimes, but I've been watching this guy for a couple of years and he's quite accurate. Plus, the PC guys leak all over the place, unlike Apple's much vaunted secrecy.

He's got two interesting quotes from what he claims is an Intel source, one of which we already heard from Bloomberg's Gurman, but I thought I'd post both here:

"Honestly Apple scares us more than AMD at the moment. They aren't sitting still, and we are worried they have far greater ambitions than most people are currently assuming...not to mention they get the latest nodes before AMD!"

"We also expect Apple's upcoming chip for the Mac Pro to comprise of 32 big cores and 8 little cores. Massive IPC."

The video is mostly about Alder Lake, because his audience are primarily PC enthusiasts, but you can see the two Apple mentions starting around the 21:50 minute mark.

I think the PC guys underestimated Apple, much like Ed Coligan's infamous quote when he was CEO of Palm, back in the day before the iPhone. Intel and AMD probably won't go extinct, but Apple have shown that the industry doesn't need to keep the x86 shackles to be successful.

 

[leman]

Regardless of any of this, I doubt that Apple is a significant threat to Intel or AMD. They are not interested in selling their chips to a third party, they do not target the server market, and they only offer products in the premium consumer segment. I think that long-term Apple might dominate the premium consumer as well as the mobile workstation and desktop video editing market, but I doubt they will surpass 15-20% of the PC market share.

 

[cmaier]

Regardless of any of this, I doubt that Apple is a significant threat to Intel or AMD. They are not interested in selling their chips to a third party, they do not target the server market, and they only offer products in the premium consumer segment. I think that long-term Apple might dominate the premium consumer as well as the mobile workstation and desktop video editing market, but I doubt they will surpass 15-20% of the PC market share.

Apple has proven that x86 isn’t necessary. That;’s a huge threat to intel, who hasn’t show they can do anything else.

 

[09872738]

Apple has proven that x86 isn’t necessary. That;’s a huge threat to intel, who hasn’t show they can do anything else.

Indeed. Apple has show what is possible. Samsung, Qualcom et al are likely to take a closer look and follow suit.
The spell is broken…

 

[bsamcash]

Apple has proven that x86 isn’t necessary. That;’s a huge threat to intel, who hasn’t show they can do anything else.

Exactly. ARM was believed to be an embedded or specialty use chip up until the M1. This will change the industry.

 

[JMacHack]

Apple has proven that x86 isn’t necessary. That;’s a huge threat to intel, who hasn’t show they can do anything else.

Intel is probably in the biggest bind right now, they wouldn’t be able to switch to ARM to catch up, they’d have to fix their issues with their fabs.

 

[velocityg4]

Regardless of any of this, I doubt that Apple is a significant threat to Intel or AMD. They are not interested in selling their chips to a third party, they do not target the server market, and they only offer products in the premium consumer segment. I think that long-term Apple might dominate the premium consumer as well as the mobile workstation and desktop video editing market, but I doubt they will surpass 15-20% of the PC market share.

As far as I'm aware. Apple dominates the premium consumer market already. What I'd be most worried about is Apple releasing a $400 desktop with 8GB RAM and an iPhone 11/12 equivalent CPU.

That's definitely doable. Would fit within their profit margin targets. Has plenty of CPU performance for the average user.

I'm thinking an ultra mini. About the size of a 2.5" SSD with two USB C ports, bluetooth and WiFi.

On the high end. They'll only really cut into the workstation market if the software is made. As there is more uses to workstations than video production.

At any rate I can see why Intel would be worried. Apple can afford an R&D budget greater than the total government spending of a decent sized nation.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Intel shouldn’t be afraid of Apple, but should be afraid of the industry.

They chose not to experiment with ARM in mainstream PC products and that is what has cost them. Had they pushed the idea of ARM as a future platform years ago, things might be different.

Having said this, Apple’s advantage was that the Mac has such a small market share compared to Wintel, there was far less risk involved. They didn’t have the same legacy to preserve compatibility like Windows, and they already had experience of designing chips from the A-series.

 

[Realityck]

Apple scares Intel mainly because they have the developer community to exploit why ARM has not become mainstream with desktop computing. If other manufacturers start looking at ARM as a perfect substitute to Intel inside because Apple succeeds, why wouldn’t they be very worried.

 

[mi7chy]

Can't see why Intel would be scared of four core M1 disregarding the four wimpy efficiency cores vs AMD that has the whole CPU stack from mobile to desktop to workstation and server where the big bucks are. AMD currently has 64-core 128-thread Threadripper and Epyc CPUs and soon to have 96-core 192-thread refresh on 5nm.

https://wccftech.com/amd-zen-4-powe...n-64-cores-epyc-embedded-3004-up-to-64-cores/

 

[maternidad]

Can't see why Intel would be scared of four core M1 disregarding the four wimpy efficiency cores

The claim was that Intel found likely Apple’s future processors (supposedly the Mac Pro’s in particular) would hurt them financially.

You‘re very insistent in making efforts to impoverish people’s beliefs about M1. Is the purpose of your signature that as well, or have you not traded your MBA yet? M1 is impressive and the good Apple has been done in response to its release is deserved.

 

[JouniS]

They chose not to experiment with ARM in mainstream PC products and that is what has cost them. Had they pushed the idea of ARM as a future platform years ago, things might be different.

That would not have made any business sense. There is no profit in being yet another ARM manufacturer. Intel either has to try something else, which is likely to fail, or switch to a line of business that creates more added value than making chips for others.

The same thing happened with Nokia, which used to dominate the phone market. They could have become a successful Android manufacturer, but that would have guaranteed failure. The competition between Android manufacturers is so fierce that there is almost no profit to be had. Nokia instead tried its luck with Windows Phone, which also failed in the end.

 

[robco74]

Apple has shown a great proof of concept. Nobody else has the vertical integration to really pull off an upset. MS would need to sink more resources into making WoA better, along with trying to bring developers (developers! developers!) along. Maybe something will happen if Nvidia puts some of its IP into ARM designs, or something interesting will come from the new partnership between Samsung and AMD.

As for Intel's server dominance, that's also threatened, but not by Apple. It will be a while before another provider can ramp up to Intel's levels of production and support, one of the issues AMD is facing.

At some point, Dell, HP, Lenovo, et. al. will want something to compete with Apple's offerings. I'm just not sure who will be able to supply them. I suppose Intel should be grateful that a successful antitrust suit to break up Apple and force them to spin off their chip division and supply their designs to competitors is highly unlikely.

 

[leman]

Can't see why Intel would be scared of four core M1 disregarding the four wimpy efficiency cores vs AMD that has the whole CPU stack from mobile to desktop to workstation and server where the big bucks are. AMD currently has 64-core 128-thread Threadripper and Epyc CPUs and soon to have 96-core 192-thread refresh on 5nm.

https://wccftech.com/amd-zen-4-powe...n-64-cores-epyc-embedded-3004-up-to-64-cores/

M1 is just a technology preview with a limited scope. It’s the scalable IP behind it that’s important. If you had even a tiny bit of comprehension of how CPUs work and scale, you’d understand what the implications of this IP are and why Intel might be worried. My hope in regards to this is however dwindling by the minute…

 

[bobcomer]

Intel worried about profit margins is a good thing as far as I'm concerned, it tends to drive innovation, but they really aren't worried about not selling x86/64 processors, even in the long term, there's so much software that only runs on them that pure momentum will keep it going for decades.

 

[macguy2021]

Both are a threat to Intel. I think AMD might actually be a bigger threat as someone mentioned, Apple isn't going to sell M series CPUs. AMD will and the PC market that uses CPUs like that ala carte or in different builds will be taking over.

Apple Silicon is the future in the Mac. AMD's Ryzen will beat the pants off of Intel's Core i series on any PC/Windows machine. Intel has every reason to be worried. They should be. They need to get off their *** and do something about it if they want to be relevant more than just their server class chips. The consumer and professional workstation market will be hurting! If you use Mac, M series ARM Apple Silicon is the only way to fly. If you want a PC (not that I do, but looking at it from that perspective), absolutely go with AMD and the Ryzen family of CPUs. I used to be afraid of AMD in Windows and compatibility issues but that was eons ago. AMD is now what you want to use if you are going to build a gaming/editing desktop PC or if you want a fast laptop PC. Core i3/i5/i7/i9 are on their way out unless Intel steps it up.

 

[Hexley]

Apple can easily eat into ~80% desktops selling at $699 or more and ~80% laptops selling at $999 or more.

Anything below that then Intel and AMD can fight over it.

 

[cmaier]

Both are a threat to Intel. I think AMD might actually be a bigger threat as someone mentioned, Apple isn't going to sell M series CPUs. AMD will and the PC market that uses CPUs like that ala carte or in different builds will be taking over.

Apple Silicon is the future in the Mac. AMD's Ryzen will beat the pants off of Intel's Core i series on any PC/Windows machine. Intel has every reason to be worried. They should be. They need to get off their *** and do something about it if they want to be relevant more than just their server class chips. The consumer and professional workstation market will be hurting! If you use Mac, M series ARM Apple Silicon is the only way to fly. If you want a PC (not that I do, but looking at it from that perspective), absolutely go with AMD and the Ryzen family of CPUs. I used to be afraid of AMD in Windows and compatibility issues but that was eons ago. AMD is now what you want to use if you are going to build a gaming/editing desktop PC or if you want a fast laptop PC. Core i3/i5/i7/i9 are on their way out unless Intel steps it up.

Apple is the bigger threat, because it’s the catalyst that will lead every other intel customer to switch to Arm. AMD is the short term competitive threat. But, in the end, they are both in trouble.

 

[macguy2021]

Apple is the bigger threat, because it’s the catalyst that will lead every other intel customer to switch to Arm. AMD is the short term competitive threat. But, in the end, they are both in trouble.

True. But since I don't see Apple selling their chips, someone will have to come in with ARM chips for Windows machines on the same level, and I don't know if that will happen soon or not. Microsoft's attempts at ARM chips have been not so hot (Surface/Surface Pro X) For those who need x86 type processing, then AMD remains the choice for now.

I think either way Intel's ship is sunk in the consumer market. Unless they pull a rabbit out of the hat here real soon.

 

[Feyl]

I'd say this is good news.

 

[MrGunny94]

Honestly the whole x86 vs ARM for the casual consumer market is tiresome, with the M1 we know ARM is the way for folks who want mobility and portability.

For now heavy duty tasks, x86 is still needed.. However for like 90-95% of the workloads M1 and the future MX or M2X systems will be more than enough.

 

[turbineseaplane]

"My brothers wife's friends sister who knows someone who works at Intel....said Intel is more scared of Apple than AMD"

 

[v0n]

Gents, gents, you are going overboard as usual... Please don't get me wrong - I love M1 browsing performance and speed of opening calculator as much as the next guy. But you have to stop this madness. Apple silicon/macos on arm is not a threat to anything or anyone at the moment. And it wasn't meant to be.

I understand your thinking process - we've been overpaying for **** graphics multiplied by terrible opencl performance and paired with severely thermally throttled, overheating CPUs by a **** design for the sake of thinness and weirdness for so long that to us - mac users - an iPad chip running properly optimised macOS seems like a whole new world. Lovely. But you have to return to Earth for a second.

M1 is not a competition to Intel or AMD. It's barely a tech demo across a fraction of devices within a 6 percentile margin of a niche market. It's also not anything that the "big boys" haven't seen before - to a general PC market M1 running macOS is nothing more than another Chromebook with Tegra or Windows running on Snapdragons. And just as relevant to the needs of general public. Useless to gamers. Useless to corporate market running specific productivity suites on policy locked networks. Not particularly useful to pro, you know - the Pro in Mac Pro, what 'the Pro' in mac world stood for before 'a pro', as in Macbook Pro, was made available to the rest of pro's looking at the Pro's in envy. (wink, wink, do take a joke before you touch that keyboard, yeah, I'm looking at you, stand down soldier). That reminds me. M1 - Great Starbucks machines though - up to 17 hours of venti lates and forum warmongering apparently. (now you can slay me).

Back on track. The only true impact such devices could possibly have on general PC market is if somehow they provided better mass productivity than typical Intel/AMD chip with AMD/Nvdia dGPU. And I'm sorry, but M1s don't and won't in the short run provide such productivity.
It should be quite clear to all of us by now - 9 months from launch - that porting or writing new productivity software to take advantage of M1 whimsical powers is not coming along as smoothly as expected. Especially not if you need to write for two architectures in the same time. Even publishing giants like Adobe are struggling to push their ports for arm out of beta.

Yes, we have brilliantly optimised Logic Pro and FCPX. Well done Apple. But they're crippled, toothless without native plugins. And 99% of stuff that didn't work on day one still doesn't work today. Yes, we have Rosetta, most of stuff can just about be run stable enough in Rosetta, but all the speed and advantages of Apple Silicon is gone at that point.

It really is almost 9 months later. And we don't have software to do natively on M1 what Intel macs can do using dGPU. And seemingly almost noone writes for Silicon. So, my M1 Mac Mini at the moment is just a brilliantly fast browsing portable device, with little memory, with almost no expansion ports, next to no native IO for video or audio capture, tons of hardware issues, and a ******* headache to anyone who just needs to do their work (beside daily drool from Apple adoration channels on YouTube).

Don't worry your head if a single chip from iPad can cause any damage to Intel's or AMD's business. It can't. It won't. They won't even feel it. And it's OK. It's not a game of us vs them.

Let's focus on something productive - like forcing Apple to get this pos working properly for all of us without flickering screens, hiccuping sound, disconnecting keyboards, slow external drives and jumping through hoops of dongles or asking your neighbour to sync your files across the internet every time you want to edit a few tiktok videos from SD card on your pink iMac. Once we get that done, we'll then ask developers very nicely to finally start porting software to arm. Cause there is nothing worse than good hardware without any useful software.

Love and peace.

 

[JMacHack]

Gents, gents, you are going overboard as usual... Please don't get me wrong - I love M1 browsing performance and speed of opening calculator as much as the next guy. But you have to stop this madness. Apple silicon/macos on arm is not a threat to anything or anyone at the moment. And it wasn't meant to be.

I understand your thinking process - we've been overpaying for **** graphics multiplied by terrible opencl performance and paired with severely thermally throttled, overheating CPUs by a **** design for the sake of thinness and weirdness for so long that to us - mac users - an iPad chip running properly optimised macOS seems like a whole new world. Lovely. But you have to return to Earth for a second.

M1 is not a competition to Intel or AMD. It's barely a tech demo across a fraction of devices within a 6 percentile margin of a niche market. It's also not anything that the "big boys" haven't seen before - to a general PC market M1 running macOS is nothing more than another Chromebook with Tegra or Windows running on Snapdragons. And just as relevant to the needs of general public. Useless to gamers. Useless to corporate market running specific productivity suites on policy locked networks. Not particularly useful to pro, you know - the Pro in Mac Pro, what 'the Pro' in mac world stood for before 'a pro', as in Macbook Pro, was made available to the rest of pro's looking at the Pro's in envy. (wink, wink, do take a joke before you touch that keyboard, yeah, I'm looking at you, stand down soldier). That reminds me. M1 - Great Starbucks machines though - up to 17 hours of venti lates and forum warmongering apparently. (now you can slay me).

Back on track. The only true impact such devices could possibly have on general PC market is if somehow they provided better mass productivity than typical Intel/AMD chip with AMD/Nvdia dGPU. And I'm sorry, but M1s don't and won't in the short run provide such productivity.
It should be quite clear to all of us by now - 9 months from launch - that porting or writing new productivity software to take advantage of M1 whimsical powers is not coming along as smoothly as expected. Especially not if you need to write for two architectures in the same time. Even publishing giants like Adobe are struggling to push their ports for arm out of beta.

Yes, we have brilliantly optimised Logic Pro and FCPX. Well done Apple. But they're crippled, toothless without native plugins. And 99% of stuff that didn't work on day one still doesn't work today. Yes, we have Rosetta, most of stuff can just about be run stable enough in Rosetta, but all the speed and advantages of Apple Silicon is gone at that point.

It really is almost 9 months later. And we don't have software to do natively on M1 what Intel macs can do using dGPU. And seemingly almost noone writes for Silicon. So, my M1 Mac Mini at the moment is just a brilliantly fast browsing portable device, with little memory, with almost no expansion ports, next to no native IO for video or audio capture, tons of hardware issues, and a ******* headache to anyone who just needs to do their work (beside daily drool from Apple adoration channels on YouTube).

Don't worry your head if a single chip from iPad can cause any damage to Intel's or AMD's business. It can't. It won't. They won't even feel it. And it's OK. It's not a game of us vs them.

Let's focus on something productive - like forcing Apple to get this pos working properly for all of us without flickering screens, hiccuping sound, disconnecting keyboards, slow external drives and jumping through hoops of dongles or asking your neighbour to sync your files across the internet every time you want to edit a few tiktok videos from SD card on your pink iMac. Once we get that done, we'll then ask developers very nicely to finally start porting software to arm. Cause there is nothing worse than good hardware without any useful software.

Love and peace.

8 paragraphs to say “I’m unaware that the M1 is only the first step of Apple’s new processor lineup.”

 

[jdb8167]

M1 is not a competition to Intel or AMD. It's barely a tech demo across a fraction of devices within a 6 percentile margin of a niche market. It's also not anything that the "big boys" haven't seen before - to a general PC market M1 running macOS is nothing more than another Chromebook with Tegra or Windows running on Snapdragons. And just as relevant to the needs of general public. Useless to gamers. Useless to corporate market running specific productivity suites on policy locked networks. Not particularly useful to pro, you know - the Pro in Mac Pro, what 'the Pro' in mac world stood for before 'a pro', as in Macbook Pro, was made available to the rest of pro's looking at the Pro's in envy. (wink, wink, do take a joke before you touch that keyboard, yeah, I'm looking at you, stand down soldier). That reminds me. M1 - Great Starbucks machines though - up to 17 hours of venti lates and forum warmongering apparently. (now you can slay me).

It's too bad all these people think that Apple will design additional SoCs after the M1. Clearly they can't. Apple will stop here with the M1 and then concentrate on iPhones. Right? Or am I missing something?

Back to reality.

Apple silicon isn't competition for traditional desktop PCs and notebooks to Intel or AMD right now. If you think Apple's ambition is stopping at this first desktop SoC, well I think you might be surprised in the near future. Apple will be on TSMC 3nm before Intel gets its entire lineup to 10nm. AMD is a bit better at only a single TSMC node behind Apple. Apple ships over 250 million Apple silicon SoCs per year and it is increasing. If Intel isn't afraid of that market power they are idiots.