Could Apple step in the enterprise chip market with Apple Silicon?

[Oculus Mentis]

Now that Apple has proven its capability in designing and producing Silicon for their own products and with Intel struggling on the innovation front, wouldn’t it make sense for Apple to enter the enterprise data center chip market for AI and HPC?

Just like Nvidia, Apple could design CPU and GPUs to be produced by TSMC then to be deployed in cloud HPC data centres of their own or to be sold to AMZN, meta, googl etc.

Warren Buffet announced a few weeks ago that he’s investing in TSMC, since he already is a large Apple shareholder, I do wonder if he knows something is moving in that direction…

Apple certainly has the resources and the technology to make a big splash in the AI and HPC markets.

 

[maflynn]

wouldn’t it make sense for Apple to enter the enterprise data center chip market for AI and HPC?

Could they? Yes, will they? Who knows. Does it make sense? Only they can answer that question.

It takes more then an efficient processor to enter the HPC market, and is there the level of profit that makes it a worthwhile endeavor for apple?

I'm not saying its a bad or good idea for market but rather its not as simple as having a fast chip so now they can conquer the world

 

[Oculus Mentis]

​

How Warren Buffett Made a Bet on Apple Without Buying More Apple Stock​

(Nasdaq)

Tim Cook says Apple will use chips built in the U.S. at Arizona factory​

(CNBC)

 

[Zest28]

This is not going to happen. Apple doesn't care about the server market, they have literally exited it.

Besides, if you want to use M1 servers, Amazon is already offering that.

 

[leman]

I am skeptical about such perspectives. Apples current technology is very expensive. This is ok for premium personal computing or even workstation market, but enterprise is a whole different market. It would also require Apple to make considerable investment in software stack. All in all, it’s a huge risk.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Apple certainly has the resources and the technology to make a big splash in the AI and HPC markets.

Could you list what resources and technologies Apple has that are superior to other companies?

 

[velocityg4]

While it is possible. I think it is doubtful.

To make the server market happy. They'd have to redesign the chip for a ton of PCIe lanes. As they're going to want to connect servers to high speed SSD and HDD arrays. Also they'll want fiber optic connections faster than 10 Gb.

No one will want to run OS X server. So, Apple will have to release open source drivers for Linux. Perhaps release a Linux distro with an OS X GUI.

I just can't see it happening. The enterprise market is a tough nut to crack. It takes many years of proven reliability to start making inroads. Even though AMD Epyc has generally had much better bang for the buck compared to higher end Xeon (PCIe lanes, speed, core counts, efficiency). It took several years until AMD started making significant inroads against Intel. While companies want speed and efficiency. They don't want downtime.

 

[Gudi]

Could you list what resources and technologies Apple has that are superior to other companies?

macOS, arm64, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

macOS, arm64, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch.

Except ARM64, which is available to any company, how could the other things help Apple make a big splash in the AI and HPC markets?

 

[Gudi]

Except ARM64, which is available to any company, how could the other things help Apple make a big splash in the AI and HPC markets?

Sure, it's "available" to "everyone" including me. Please wait until I've transitioned a major PC operating system to ARM like Apple did with macOS. I also need some time to ink the treaties with TSMC. Call me back in 30 years! I will be totally competitive with the Mac Studio by then.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

Please wait until I've transitioned a major PC operating system to ARM like Apple did with macOS.

Neither ARM64 nor an ARM64-capable operating system brings any competitive advantage to Apple, as other companies can do it.

 

[Sami13496]

Why would they do that. That has nothing to do with their business. Being technology provider is not Apple's business model. For Apple chips are only part of their main product - that product is great design, great usability, great experience. Actual hardware are just means to the end. Now it's smartphones, later it will be glasses, whatever. Servers are just "sweaty" tools, there's no "cool" factor in there. Maybe if Apple fails like Nokia they can start selling chips for servers after that. Like Nokia started to provide network stuff after their mobile business failed.

 

[leman]

Sure, it's "available" to "everyone" including me. Please wait until I've transitioned a major PC operating system to ARM like Apple did with macOS. I also need some time to ink the treaties with TSMC. Call me back in 30 years! I will be totally competitive with the Mac Studio by then.

You are aware that there are ARM servers available today, right?

 

[mr_roboto]

Sure, it's "available" to "everyone" including me. Please wait until I've transitioned a major PC operating system to ARM like Apple did with macOS. I also need some time to ink the treaties with TSMC. Call me back in 30 years! I will be totally competitive with the Mac Studio by then.

Piling on with @leman - You are aware that both major PC operating systems (Linux and Windows) are available on Arm today, right?

(In fact, they were available on Arm before macOS was!)

 

[Gudi]

Piling on with @leman - You are aware that both major PC operating systems (Linux and Windows) are available on Arm today, right?

(In fact, they were available on Arm before macOS was!)

You are not sufficiently aware that Apple is transitioning to an ARM-based OS. They don't make it available, they make it mandatory. The only two Intel Macs still available are the Mac Pro (2019) $5,999 or the mid-tier Mac mini (2018) $1,099. The later one in competition to the new M1 Mac mini (2020) for just $699. Apple has effectively stopped selling x86 products. As a result all software developers are targeting Apple Silicon and can be sure to have certain hardware features at their disposal like an Image Signal Processor and a Neural Engine.

Now please don't compare that to the rubbish that is Windows on ARM. Not only didn't Windows make the transition yet, they'll likely never make it. Like they failed to establish a mobile OS, despite having one long before the iPhone and buying Nokia out of all the cellphone makers! Microsoft failed in the phoneOS market, in the tabletOS market, in the laptop market and now they're clinging to their horrible copy of the Macintosh. If you see a bright future for them, I don't.

 

[kitKAC]

Now please don't compare that to the rubbish that is Windows on ARM. Not only didn't Windows make the transition yet, they'll likely never make it

The lack of any decent ARM chips to run Windows is the problem there.

 

[bobcomer]

Piling on with @leman - You are aware that both major PC operating systems (Linux and Windows) are available on Arm today, right?

(In fact, they were available on Arm before macOS was!)

But there's no server version of Arm based Windows.

 

[bobcomer]

The lack of any decent ARM chips to run Windows is the problem there.

That and people don't really want ARM based Windows. They have faster/cheaper Windows on intel.

 

[theorist9]

I suspect the premise behind this question is that efficiency is king in the server market, and AS's ARM-based chips are far more efficient than current X86 designs, so wouldn't this give AS a great competitive advantage if it were redesigned for server use (which would include full native Linux support)? But efficient ARM-based chips are already being used in the server market, like AWS's Graviton series:

"Amazon has thus chosen to use TSMC’s cutting edge 5 nm process to reduce power consumption. TSMC’s 7 nm process already did wonders for low power designs, and 5 nm would take this even further. While Graviton 3 is a beefier core than N1, it’s nowhere near as ambitious as Intel’s Golden Cove, and should still be considered a moderate design. Such a core running at 2.6 GHz on 5 nm should absolutely sip power. That in turn lets AWS pack three of these chips into a single node, increasing compute density. The final result is a chip that lets AWS sell each Graviton 3 core at a lower price, while still delivering a significant performance boost over their previous Graviton 2 chip."

Graviton 3: First Impressions

In late May of 2022, AWS released Graviton 3 to the general public. Graviton 3 was the first ARM CPU to introduce the SVE instruction set to a widely accessible server CPU. Before Graviton 3’…

chipsandcheese.com

That's not to say a hypothetical AS server chip wouldn't offer advantages over Graviton (for instance, I think Graviton instances typically use discrete NVIDIA GPUs, which are probably much less efficient that Apple's on-die GPU's) but just that the market is already competitive and challenging. And, as others have said, this would divert Apple's attention away from its core market.

 

[kitKAC]

That and people don't really want ARM based Windows. They have faster/cheaper Windows on intel.

Is there evidence that people don't want ARM-based Windows machines? If Apple had moved to ARM using the processors that are currently available from Qualcomm, would people be rushing out to buy those?

 

[bobcomer]

Is there evidence that people don't want ARM-based Windows machines?

Yes, just look at the sales numbers. They sell *far* less of them than x86 PCs. I know I wouldn't buy one (not even used and cheap) and I'm more friendly towards ARM than most.

If Apple had moved to ARM using the processors that are currently available from Qualcomm, would people be rushing out to buy those?

No, it's still the same problem. Compatibility is important in the x86 market, and the most compatible, is, you guessed it, x86. Apple doesn't care about backwards compatibility, it's a whole different theory than what drives the x86 market.

 

[Xiao_Xi]

If Apple becomes a cloud service provider, it will compete with AWS/Azure/GCP. What innovations could Apple bring to the table to compete against companies that have been developing an infrastructure, software stack and customer base for 15 years?

If Apple sells SoCs for data centers, it will compete with AWS (Graviton) or Ampere (Altra) in CPUs, with AWS (Trainium/Inferentia), GCP (TPUs), Habana Labs (Gaudi/Greco) in ML accelerators, and Nvidia in GPUs. Could Apple offer a more cost-effective and efficient solution than any of those companies?

If Apple sells macOS, it will compete with several Linux-based operating systems. What would be the advantage of using macOS over RHEL or Ubuntu? Would programs run faster or be more cost-effective on macOS? Would Apple provide better support than Red Hat or Canonical?

In recent years, Apple has launched new products and quickly captured significant market share because those products created new markets. But data centers and HPC is a mature market and Apple will find it much more difficult to capture significant market share.

P.S: I seem to have misunderstood the topic of the thread. What does Windows on ARM64 have to do with data centers and HPC?

 

[velocityg4]

That and people don't really want ARM based Windows. They have faster/cheaper Windows on intel.

Most people don’t care. It could be RISC-V or PowerPC even. All they care is that it is cheap, fast and works. They don’t really have any clue as to what is in their computer. Unless they remembered something written on the side of the box. When someone told them which computer to buy.

 

[bobcomer]

Most people don’t care. It could be RISC-V or PowerPC even. All they care is that it is cheap, fast and works. They don’t really have any clue as to what is in their computer. Unless they remembered something written on the side of the box. When someone told them which computer to buy.

Businesses care, and that has a strong influence on what people buy -- it's a known quantity.

 

[falainber]

But there's no server version of Arm based Windows.

There is no server version of macOS for any architecture, period.