Disruption to Intel’s laptop market?: Apple move away from Intel? SiFive and RISC-V, ARM Windows 10 laptops...

Disruption to Intel’s laptop market?: Apple to develop own chips and move away from Intel, SiFive funding adds weight to RISC-V instruction set and an update on Windows 10 ARM laptops

Yesterday, we started seeing numerous reports that "Apple will dump Intel and use its own chips in Macs, sources say", suggesting Apple will move to its own ARM based chips from industry standard Intel processors and instruction sets. Intel’s shares fell, so the market consensus is it’ll be bad for them. But would this be a smooth ride for Apple and its existing customers? Moving away from a majority technology is a big step.

This is an announcement that echoes what Apple have done to many extents in their mobile market. A couple of months ago I wrote about the new Windows 10 ARM based laptops for Brianmadden.com that were appearing based around Qualcomm ARM based technology. Some of the points and challenges raised give a very useful insight into what may become if the current Apple headlines are to be believed. The challenges of:

·       Performance

·       Application compatibility

·       Cost

·       Windows 10 limitations on ARM relative to Intel

In the last few weeks some real end-user reviews have appeared, which have been decidedly mixed on non-Intel laptops. Whilst promising many seem not quite convinced, it’s worth reading a few from:

·       Engadget.com: https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/30/asus-novago-review/

·       Onmsft.com: https://www.onmsft.com/news/first-reviews-for-windows-10-on-arm-pcs-are-out-and-theyre-not-great

·       Theverge.com: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17143554/microsoft-windows-snapdragon-always-connected-qualcomm-pc-review-asus-novago

·       Laptopmag.com: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/arm-powered-windows-laptops-not-ready-for-primetime

How many of these challenges will emerge if Apple do pursue this option? Will they face the same challenges of Windows 10 in running MacOS etc. on ARM?

Moving from Intel to ARM based architectures is a move from one closed, proprietary instruction set though and a second much quieter announcement yesterday around SiFive and the open-source RISC-V instruction set should be noted. SiFive have attracted more than $50 Million Series C funding to develop open instruction based chips, that would be an alternative to ARM/Intel (x86) instruction.  It was a blink and you’d have missed it amongst the other chip news, I only saw it thanks to a tweet from chip guru Stacey Higgenbotham advising folks to take note – headlined with a strong “Pay Attention”! (one to follow!). We covered an overview on RISC-V back in the BrianMadden.com February article for those who want a little more info.