Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) made a huge shift back in 2005 when it announced that it will use Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s microprocessor chips in its Macintosh line of machines instead of PowerPC chips. Since then, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has been relying heavily on Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) microprocessor chips, but experts are now predicting another big shift by Apple which will likely make it self-sufficient in the processor manufacturing for Macs. In an article on Quartz, Jean-Louis Gassée, a venture partner with Allegis Capital in Silicon Valley, said that time is not far away when Apple will be making its own ARM-based processors.
According to Gassée, the primary reason behind this switch will be costs. Apple is paying huge amounts of money because of this dependency on Intel. Intel charges $378 for the i7 chip in the new high-end 15 inch MacBook Pro. If Apple succeeds in producing their own processors, it will deplete this cost dramatically.
Power dissipation is the second most important reason why Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) would like to make a switch to ARM chips. Gassée thinks that x86 architecture is becoming obsolete and cannot sustain the emerging instruction sets and software demands. It needs piles of extensions and assembly level revamps to harness the evolving needs of latest software and programs. Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) chips have more transistors which results in more power dissipation. On the other hand, ARM chips are seamless, straight forward and adaptable as they don’t have any complexity of backward compatibility.
Gassée also said that ARM’s System-on-Chip (SoC) architecture is far better and faster than Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s X86 architecture because ARM architecture has the capacity to adapt any change. ARM processor will help Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) to design that ecosystem which it is advocating for a long time. Apple’s cost in making macs will be reduced and the company will have more prospects to look for if it breaks up with Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) in the hardware domain.
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