Apple has deeper pockets than anyone else on the planet, and they have considerable experience doing this kind of thing –literally, decades.
Say what you will about Apple; this is a strong point for them.
But I'm still waiting for the M2 before I upgrade. I'm also interested in new form factors. Right now, they are still relying on the currently-tooled production line for their shells. They now have the ability to drastically change their forms.
I also feel like Intel's depth is also limited by the breath of CPUS they must develop. With every release they are shipping tons of specific sets of cores and clock speeds to meet their market. Then you have the raw investment in Fab that has turned out to be just lighting cash on fire for Intel. They make all kinds of claims and then fail over and over, plus they are hemorrhaging key talent. I think their soul really isn't in the game.
Apple has the luxury of building two or three chips total per year and simply funding TSMC fab. All of this is to fund the largest grossing annual product launch. If their chips fail at being world beaters, hundreds of billions of dollars are on the table. All in, Apple spends an incredible amount of money here, ~$1 billion. Per chip design shipped, Apple is probably spending much more but also getting their return on investment. It's such a tight integration that if TSMC were ever delayed by say, four months, I have no idea what Apple would do.
AMD is playing smart, fast and loose. Best chip CEO by a wide margin. AMD's gains really are on Apple's back, their chip design is brilliant and they get to reap the leftovers when Apple turns out their latest chip. They don't have to fund Fab, they don't have to make crazy claims to appear relevant like Intel does. They just ship great bang for the buck and the fab gains and their own hard work has given them best performance title too. Going Fabless was one of the most controversial choices ever made in the industry...and wow, was it the right move.
Intel's architectures have been massively delayed by process issues. They're still shipping Skylake (Aug 2015) architecture processors on the desktop and server because they waited too long to change strategy. About a year ago they announced they're going to start decoupling the microarchitecture from the manufacturing process. 2021 will be show the first fruits of that labor with Rocket Lake, which is Ice Lake (Sept 2019) backported to 14nm. If they had done that at the first sign of manufacturing trouble (2014?) they could have 2 more generations of IPC improvement and still be ahead in every way except efficiency. I guess Intel management was more concerned with not rocking the boat.
Probably right. I have family that works for Intel, and I have heard stories about the amenities and infrastructure (like "Air Intel," a fleet of corporate jets that take employees between Intel campuses).
Do you have an example of what they could do differently? Shrink the Mini, but what could you do with a laptop where the form is largely influenced by size of screen, needing it to sit up, keyboard and so on.
Apple has deeper pockets than anyone else on the planet, and they have considerable experience doing this kind of thing –literally, decades.
Say what you will about Apple; this is a strong point for them.
But I'm still waiting for the M2 before I upgrade. I'm also interested in new form factors. Right now, they are still relying on the currently-tooled production line for their shells. They now have the ability to drastically change their forms.