@KimmoK

Quote:

I don't understand why some people persist in laughing at this thought?!

Already today (or rather since *last fall* even), Apple has live products *on the market* based on its Cyclone ARM CPU architecture. Go back to page 27 in this very thread and read about it, or at least this article:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7910/apples-cyclone-microarchitecture-detailed

"Apple didn't build a Krait/Silvermont competitor, it built something much closer to Intel's big cores. At the launch of the iPhone 5s, Apple referred to the A7 as being 'desktop class' - it turns out that wasn't an exaggeration."

The article also suggests that it's somewhat of an overkill for mobile phones and tablets, there simply aren't (yet) any available apps to fully harness all this new CPU power, that this CPU didn't really position itself as a competitor to other current mobile CPU's, it's way ahead. Which is all true.

Also read the posts from JuLieN in that same page, and the scores the CPU's got from that chess engine he tested. Those results are impressive. He also compared it to his Intel Core i7 laptop, and if you remove the differences in number of cores and clock frequency from the equation, what does the result tell you?

But the main point is (and here is where everyone falls short in their thinking), you are using *today's* technology to predict *future* products, which isn't very logical, is it? You are saying: "ARM is too slow [today], so Apple could never use it in desktop/laptop [future]". Even though the A7 CPU is somewhat of a "downgraded" (only 2 cores, less cache, etc) and "underclocked (1.3GHz/1.4GHz) Core ix class" CPU (note, I'm not really saying that the A7 is *comparable* to Core ix, but is closer to it than most other ARM CPU's currently in production, and it's not wrong to call the Cyclone design "desktop class")! Today! Not in a "distant future" as you put it, but *today*!

It takes a couple of years to design a CPU (at least from scratch). The Cyclone implementation we see in current products probably started its development a few years back. And given the technology evolution Apple is maintaining, I'd say they have been initiating new development projects on a yearly basis ever since. The products/CPU's we will see *this* fall has been in development for a while (they are probably in production as we speak), and Apple is most certainly already developing the CPU's for 2015's and 2016's product releases right now as well.

The A7 chips that currently powers the iPhone 5s, iPad Air and iPad Mini 2:

• is 64-bit
• is in many aspects similar to desktop/Core ix class CPU's per design
• has 2 cores
• has 64KB(I)+64KB(D) L1 cache, 1MB L2 cache (shared by the 2 cores), 4MB L3 cache
• runs at 1.3GHz or 1.4GHz
• is made in 28nm
• is completely *passively cooled*

This is what is here today (was developed a few years back).

What if:

• Apple moved it to a 20nm process?
• put 4 cores or 6 cores (or more) on each chip instead of just 2? (2MB/3MB L2 cache)
• Dropped the "passively cooled" requirement in favor of powerful, traditional desktop cooling?
• Clocks it at 3+ GHz or more? 4GHz even?
• (+ all kinds of additional on-chip controllers/accelerators and interfaces of course)

What would you have then? How would JuLieN's Stockfish chess engine benchmark, you think? I believe that one (or two ) of these CPU's in a desktop or laptop could potentially make a perfectly fine foundation for "OS XI"...

Bottom line, what I wanted to say was that Apple already has the Cyclone design (it was developed years ago already), it's clearly a paradigm shift in the ARM context and somewhat of an overkill for "only" mobile applications, and if only a decision is made (or was made a few years ago, we don't know that), I'm quite confident that the Cyclone (or a later derivative or forked design, that by all means could already be finished as well) could be scaled up quite easily to produce true desktop class CPU chips that no-one would sneer at. Apple has everything they need, they have the IP and technology, the competence and they have the money. And they would gain a great deal of obtaining complete control over the entire ecosystem. So I have a little difficult understanding those who laughs at this thought?

Apple has changed ISA before. Twice, actually! The last one went very quick, from the announcement that struck the world (and AFAIK even big parts of Apple employees) in 6th of June 2005, it only took a little over a year to switch out their entire product line:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple's_transition_to_Intel_processors

Very fast indeed. And they did it just fine!





[ Edited by takemehomegrandma 13.08.2014 - 20:16 ]