Apple to replace Intel and move to ARM - *** Confirmed as "Apple Silicon" ***

ZP9 said:
I can see them developing special chips for the iMac series, but not sure about laptops. The Macbook air im sure will just be a A14x with the pro's maybe getting a different one.
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According to Gruman (Bloomberg) they're going to announce 13 inch Air, Pro and 16-inch Pro. I don't expect these would all have the same chip as the iPads. So we're likely to see some difference in the chips.

I'm guessing:

4 Big cores, 4 Little cores, for 13-inch Macbook Air
6-8 Big cores, 4 Little cores for 13-inch MBP
8-12 Big cores, 4 Little cores + dedicated GPU for 16-inch MBP

So probably 3 different chips, plus a dedicated GPU. So we may see 5 different major chips from Apple this year, although some may just be the same chips with some cores disabled, as it's common.
 
LiE said:
The rumour of the 16" is interesting, can't wait to see what they deliver.
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Yeah, I'm most curious about the GPU option on the 16-inch MBP. There have been rumours about a dedicated Apple GPU, but I'm unclear if we'll see that. But again, releasing a 16-inch MBP with a GPU downgrade would not be good PR for Apple, so if they're releasing something (they don't have to), I'm expecting to be surprised on GPUs.

So can the Apple GPU match or beat the Radeon 5600M (best GPU in MBP right now). The Radeon 5600M is about 3x more powerful than the A14 GPU in metal benchmarks.

Radeon 5300M (baseline GPU in 16-inch MBP) is about 2x as powerful as the A14 GPU. So I'm expecting the A14X type GPU (usually 2x as large as A14's) would match the baseline dedicated GPU.
 
HACO said:
According to Gruman (Bloomberg) they're going to announce 13 inch Air, Pro and 16-inch Pro. I don't expect these would all have the same chip as the iPads. So we're likely to see some difference in the chips.

I'm guessing:

4 Big cores, 4 Little cores, for 13-inch Macbook Air
6-8 Big cores, 4 Little cores for 13-inch MBP
8-12 Big cores, 4 Little cores + dedicated GPU for 16-inch MBP

So probably 3 different chips, plus a dedicated GPU. So we may see 5 different major chips from Apple this year, although some may just be the same chips with some cores disabled, as it's common.
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Very possible, but I thought they would start quite slow in terms of the amount of different chips that they have. I cant see them all of a sudden having loads of new ones when even the iphones/base ipads use the same chip.

I can see the Macbook air and ipad pro both using A14x. But its also possible that the macbook air can run off a regular A14 as its currently only got a dual core or a quad core intel processor, and the regular A14 is step up from it regardless.

Lets wait and see anyway, im very curious.
 
Will be replacing my 15" MBP if they do release a 16" providing the spec/performance is decent. Really want them to do an Apple silicone Mac Mini at some point as I'm keen for a desktop option rather than using my MBP in clamshell mode all the time
 
Sounds like the rumours are that the chassis design won’t change much, if at all. I hope that’s wrong, it would be great for them to completely redo everything to kick off this new phase.
 
Apple never change for change’s sake. If the MacBook is ever redesigned then there will have to a good reason for it. I can see them becoming thinner with smaller screen bezels but that’s about it - the fundamental design will remain the same. Which is no bad thing IMO...
 
The bezels on the 13 MBP definitely need shrinking like they did for the 16 MBP. Other than that I can’t see a radical redesign. They may add more colours.
 
If you look at (last years?) the Mac book air redesign, its internal layout and cooling solution really looks like it had Apple silicon in mind rather than intel.
 
Only design change I want to see is smaller bezels on the 13" models similar to that of the 16"
 
I've got a work MacBook Pro 15" which is due to be changed in two years. They give us full access to them so I use it as my personal machine as well. The current one in the system which I would be eligible for is the i9 16" so I'll be getting whatever the equivalent is at the time.

I am however tempted to get a 'normal' MacBook for travel as the 15" is quite a lump. Then share it with my mrs (who to be fair probably won't use it much).
 
Maybe mentioned in the previous 14 pages but are they going to actively cool the Apple Silicon chip so they can get more performance out of it? Or is the fanless setup from iPhone/iPad going to mean a more sleeker design overall for the computers?
 
ic1male said:
Maybe mentioned in the previous 14 pages but are they going to actively cool the Apple Silicon chip so they can get more performance out of it? Or is the fanless setup from iPhone/iPad going to mean a more sleeker design overall for the computers?
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There'll be a fan. If you run the iPhone at 100% CPU for a while it gets incredibly hot and I believe it can overheat if it's sustained.
 
I’ve used the wrong terminology here maybe. What I meant was, it sounds like this is perhaps ‘simply’ a processor switch, maybe some internal hardware being shifted around but nothing major. The same but better.

Next year, potentially a brand new design (potentially the same chassis design, perhaps not) but I mean more that I could see a lot of new hardware feature and capabilities..

I would prefer to experience MacBook’s when Apple has said ‘okay, we are no longer constrained by X, lets do Y’ but I have to upgrade ASAP.
 
ChrisD. said:
There'll be a fan. If you run the iPhone at 100% CPU for a while it gets incredibly hot and I believe it can overheat if it's sustained.
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Anandtech also actively cooled the Apple (and Snapdragon) chips in their sustained SPEC benchmarks to make it a more fair comparison with Intel/AMD.

chef-borjan said:
I’ve used the wrong terminology here maybe. What I meant was, it sounds like this is perhaps ‘simply’ a processor switch, maybe some internal hardware being shifted around but nothing major. The same but better.

Next year, potentially a brand new design (potentially the same chassis design, perhaps not) but I mean more that I could see a lot of new hardware feature and capabilities..

I would prefer to experience MacBook’s when Apple has said ‘okay, we are no longer constrained by X, lets do Y’ but I have to upgrade ASAP.
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Rumours suggest that it's the same design, just new chips. I think that's a pretty sensible approach for the first generation of products.

Passively cooled Macbook Air that's faster than the current 16-inch Pro, with 24 hours of battery life, that's when it gets super interesting.
 
This is just the first phase and I'm pretty impressed with what they've been able to achieve.

Looking forward to see the beefier versions of the M series chips down the line
 
ChrisD. said:
There'll be a fan.
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50% right it seems, with the fanless Air :D it will be interesting to see what extra grunt the M1 has in the Pro with it's active cooling and if the trade off is worth it. Personally I'm a huge fan of passive cooling.
 
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