What if Apple decided to release their “M” series processors a desktop CPUs? How would that change the market?
It would also be interesting to see Samsung Foundry release desktop Exynos chips or maybe Qualcomm “X” processors for desktop that are more powerful than the laptop chips.
p.s. I know they would never do anything like that, but it would be interesting to imagine how the market would change with more competitors
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I wonder what a motherboard designed by Apple would look like…
also, given Apple, they would probably try to make everything proprietary (non-standard motherboard shapes, non-standard connecters, etc)
Years ago, I built a hackintosh. So gigabyte mobo with Intel cpu. At that point, I learned you couldn’t legally buy apple software (OS), independently of their hardware.
Apple has no interest in people screwing with their stuff, and I’ve never looked at them since. I’m an Android , Linux guy. Apple can kick rocks.
I suppose if some sort of critical mass is reached, it could push the world from x86-64 to arm? Every modern OS supports it at this point and emulators have come a long way for older software that needs them.
The Exynos, M series, and Qualcomm chips are all ARM architecture, as opposed to the AMD and Intel CPUs, which are x86.
Because of this, the majority of software wouldn’t natively work on them. Apple has obviously developed versions of many programs that function on their laptops, and could extend the same treatment to the hypothetical desktop product. The other chip companies do not have this benefit, and would have to develop supported software from the ground up
also, it would be really tricky to get people to buy new, probably expensive ARM motherboards (especially with Apple involved)
How is it different from thier laptops? The new ones have the M processor.
Dell is already releasing Qualcomm SoC Latitudes. There are bound to be compatibility issues, but performance wise it’s kinda undeniable that this is where the market is going. It is far more energy efficient than an Intel or AMD x86 CPU and holds up just fine. The main downsides you’ll see could likely be resolved with ASICs, which is how Intel keeps 4k video from being choppy on low end APUs for example. Compared to M4, Qualcomm’s offering is slightly better at multithreaded performance and slightly worse at single thread. The real downside to them is really the reliance on raw throughput for tasks that both brands of CPUs have purpose built daughter chips for.
it’s kinda undeniable that this is where the market is going. It is far more energy efficient than an Intel or AMD x86 CPU and holds up just fine.
Is that actually true, when comparing node for node?
In the mobile and tablet space Apple’s A series chips have always been a generation ahead of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips in terms of performance per watt. Meanwhile, Samsung’s Exynos has always been behind even more. That’s obviously not an instruction set issue, since all 3 lines are on ARM.
Much of Apple’s advantage has been a willingness to pay for early runs on each new TSMC node, and a willingness to dedicate a lot of square millimeters of silicon to their gigantic chips.
But when comparing node for node, last I checked AMD’s lower power chips designed for laptop TDPs, have similar performance and power compared to the Apple chips on that same TSMC node.
Do you have a source for AMD chips being especially energy efficient? I don’t consider them to be even close. M3 is 190 cinebench points per watt whereas Ryzen 7 7840U is 100. My ppw data doesn’t contain snapdragon x yet, but it’s generally considered to be a multithreading king on the market and it runs as signifcantly lower tdp than AMD. SoCs are inherently more energy efficient. My memory of why is the instruction sets on x86 allow for more complicated process but ARM is hard restricted to using less complicated processes as building blocks if complexity is required.
Like I mentioned though, there are tasks that x86 cannot be beat on but it’s because they use ASICs on-chip for hardware accelerated encoding/decoding and nothing is more efficient at a task than a (purpose-built, task specific*) ASIC /FPGA.
You mean as stand alone parts for purchase?
Because Apple does have m series chips in desktop configurations already- the Mac Studio and iMac.
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