Intel not dismissing rumors of Apple’s notebook transition to ARM chips

Earlier today my colleague Jordan Kahn told you about a story ran by the Japanese hit-and-miss blog, Macotakara, which in a nutshell calls for a brand new Mac product family. It is being described as radically “different from current products”, so much different in fact that Apple might market the mysterious products under a new product name. Well, Intel’s hearing those rumors as well! Their Ultrabook director Greg Welch specifically told CNET they’re very well aware of the reports involving MacBook prototypes rocking Apple’s own silicon based on ARM’s processor blueprints:

We hear the same rumors and it would be remiss of us to be dismissive. We endeavor to innovate so they’ll continue to look to us as a supplier.
We wouldn’t bet on the “continue to look to us as a supplier” part. So thought IBM until Apple ditched the PowerPC architecture and made a bold switch to Intel processors in 2005. So, is 2012 going to be like 2005? Only time will tell, but it’s intriguing that an Intel executive would actually comment on the rumors, don’t you think?

That, in and of itself, is significant enough to warrant a post for the sake of the discussion. If you do believe your rumors, Apple’s testing ultra-thin MacBook prototypes that sport ARM chips and might not contain Intel’s Ivy Bridge platform at all. The benefits?

Think thin, really thin, and power-savvy. ARM Holdings, a UK-based fables silicon firm, is known for power-efficient CPU designs they license to other companies. The vast majority of today’s mobile devices are based on ARM blueprints rather than Intel’s inefficient mobile processors. The world’s largest processor maker is very well aware that it fell behind in the mobile race. The company has not anticipated an explosive growth of smartphones and missed out on an opportunity to make up for lost ground with tablet chips. Today, if you’re building a tablet or a smartphone, you’re either Apple and therefore use in-house designed processors, or buy your chips from Nvidia, Samsung, Qualcomm or Texas Instruments. All those suppliers share one thing in common: The CPU part of their system-on-a-chip package is based on ARM’s blueprints. Apple, an early investor in ARM in the late 1980s, has a lot of experience incorporating those designs into their products, from the Newton PDA which was based around the ARM6-based ARM 610 architecture to the A4 and A5 chips. The A4 chip sports a single-core ARM Cortex-A8 CPU core paired with a PowerVR SGX 535 graphics processor built on Samsung’s 45-nanometer silicon chip fabrication process. The A5 has a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU with Neon SIMD accelerator and a dual-core PowerVR SGX543MP2 graphics unit. Both chips are believed to benefit from performance enhancements developed by chip designer Intrinsity, acquired by Apple in 2010.


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Inspired by iPad and the Air, Intel talks up Ultrabooks and Android-friendly tablet chips

Forget about Chromebooks, here come the Ultrabooks. Ultra-what? Per Intel’s presser at the Computex show in Taipei, Taiwan, Ultrabooks represent an entirely new class of notebooks that include the best features of tablets. If this sounds suspiciously familiar, look no further than the upcoming Mac OS X Lion operating system that is being pitched by Apple as “taking our best thinking from iPad and bringing it all to the Mac” or the MacBook Air’s iPad-like instant-on promise. Intel is playing exactly the same iPad card, their senior vice president Tom Kilroy telling Reuters:

We’re shooting for ultra responsive. You’ll have always-on, always-connected, much more responsive devices, similar to what you would see with a tablet today such as an iPad.
This sounds a lot like a catch-up to the MacBook Air’s all-flash instantaneous performance, cynics would argue. Ultrabooks are about Intel’s latest chips and reference designs. Intel also took the wraps off of its new fanless netbook platform code-named “Cedar Trail” and proposed a “Medfield” tablet reference design for sub-9mm designs, weighing less than 1.5 pounds and supporting a choice of operating system, per press release. So when can we expect first Ultrabooks to challenge MacBook Air’s dominance?

Intel says first Ultrabooks will be available in time for the holiday shopping season, priced in the sub-$1000 range and eventually settling at around $600 within a couple of years. Intel has high hopes for these machines, telling the news gathering organization that Ultrabooks should account for 40 percent of all consumer notebook sales by the end of 2012. Intel has been attempting to make a dent in mobile for years. The company’s latest moves in this space include the Oak Trail processor, their first designed specifically for tablets, and the new tri-gate transistor technology that crams more transistors onto chips, making them speedier yet at the same time power efficient.




Another part to this strategy is the Ivy Bridge platform. Billed as a Sandy Bridge successor, Ivy Bridge will improve graphics performance and power efficiency while enabling better responsiveness and stronger security. First Ivy Bridge chips fabbed on the new 22-nanometer tri-gate transistor technology are expected by April 2012. Intel will also launch “Haswell” processors in 2013, said to cut power requirements to half of today’s chips. Meanwhile, ViewSonic showed off a tablet yesterday engineered around the new Oak Trail chip. Acer is also expected to come out with an Android tablet with an Oak Trail chip inside and yesterday they showed off the ultra-thin UX2 notebook, depicted in the video below. A number of companies have been trying to replicate Apple’s engineering solutions with the MacBook Air, from Samsung’s Series 9 to Dell’s thin notebook.

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Intel Design Flaw to Delay MacBooks by Just Two Weeks?

A design flaw in Intel's 6 Series Cougar Point chipsets will only delay some MacBooks by less than two weeks, according to an AppleInsider report.

One person familiar with the matter tells AppleInsider that some -- not all -- of the company's upcoming MacBook Pros were affected by the situation. According to this person, the Mac maker elected to make minor tweaks to the logic boards of those models, but that those changes would translate to a delay of less than two weeks.

Intel says the problem with the chips was the potential for four of the SATA ports -- 2 through 5 -- to "degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives."

The problem does not affect SATA ports 0 or 1, and since MacBook Pros only make use of two SATA ports, Apple would only have to make minor changes to avoid any issues.

"There are two connections on the board -- one for optical drive, and one for HDD," said iFixit's Kyle Wiens. "The other internal devices (trackpad, keyboard, SD card reader, etc.) use USB."




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MacBook Air to Get Sandy Bridge CPU in June?

Apple may be planning to give the MacBook Air a speed bump by updating it with Intel's new Sandy Bridge processor, according to CNET.

Initial shipments of Intel's Sandy Bridge processor were snafued on January 31 by a minor glitch in the accompanying chipset, though the chipmaker will resume shipments of fixed chipsets as early as mid-month. The Sandy Bridge processor itself is not affected.

The MacBook Air refresh is expected in June, according to a source familiar with Apple's plans.

The MacBook Pros are also rumored to get an update which could come as early as March.




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Intel Finds Design Flaw in Sandy Bridge Support Chip, Issues Recall.

Intel has discovered a design issue in a recently released support chip, the Intel 6 Series, code-named Cougar Point, and has implemented a silicon fix. In some cases, the Serial-ATA (SATA) ports within the chipsets may degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives. The chipset is utilized in PCs with Intel's latest Second Generation Intel Core processors, code-named Sandy Bridge. Intel has stopped shipment of the affected support chip from its factories. Intel has corrected the design issue, and has begun manufacturing a new version of the support chip which will resolve the issue. The Sandy Bridge microprocessor is unaffected and no other products are affected by this issue.

The company expects to begin delivering the updated version of the chipset to customers in late February and expects full volume recovery in April. Intel stands behind its products and is committed to product quality. For computer makers and other Intel customers that have bought potentially affected chipsets or systems, Intel will work with its OEM partners to accept the return of the affected chipsets, and plans to support modifications or replacements needed on motherboards or systems. The systems with the affected support chips have only been shipping since January 9th and the company believes that relatively few consumers are impacted by this issue. The only systems sold to an end customer potentially impacted are Second Generation Core i5 and Core i7 quad core based systems. Intel believes that consumers can continue to use their systems with confidence, while working with their computer manufacturer for a permanent solution. For further information consumers should contact Intel at www.intel.com on the support page or contact their OEM manufacturer.

For the first quarter of 2011, Intel expects this issue to reduce revenue by approximately $300 million as the company discontinues production of the current version of the chipset and begins manufacturing the new version. Full-year revenue is not expected to be materially affected by the issue. Total cost to repair and replace affected materials and systems in the market is estimated to be $700 million. Since this issue affected some of the chipset units shipped and produced in the fourth quarter of 2010, the company will take a charge against cost of goods sold, which is expected to reduce the fourth quarter gross margin percentage by approximately 4 percentage points from the previously reported 67.5 percent. The company will also take a charge in the first quarter of 2011 which will lower the previously communicated gross margin percentage by 2 percentage points and the full-year gross margin percentage by one percentage point.




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Snow Leopard Already Running on New Sandy Bridge CPUs

Tonymacx86 has already managed to get Mac OS X Snow Leopard running on Intel's new Sandy Bridge CPU.

Today Intel lifted the Non-Disclosure Agreement on it's new Sandy Bridge LGA Socket-1155 next generation performance chipset and CPUs. The good news is, we've already successfully installed Mac OS X Snow Leopard!

The bad news is, until Apple uses these CPUs, it's a bit of a science experiment, as you'll need to use a "patched" non-standard Darwin kernel in order to boot the system. For those of you buying new systems anyway, we're opening a special section of the forum dedicated to Sandy Bridge.

The new processor brings a significant performance improvement; however, it is quite a bit of work to get things running. You can find some instructions at the link below to help you get started.




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Intel Debuts Second Generation 'Sandy Bridge' CPUs

Intel has debuted its second generation Intel Core Processor family of CPUs, codenamed 'Sandy Bridge'.

The 2nd Generation Intel Core processor family is the first "visibly smart" microarchitecture to combine visual and 3D graphics technology with performance-leading microprocessors on a single chip. Incorporating the newly architected Intel HD Graphics on each 32nm die enables significant graphics performance improvements over previous generation graphics, for both HD media processing and mainstream gaming. The chips improve performance and yet still offer great battery life and the ability to design thinner, lighter and more innovative laptops and all-in-one PCs.

Highlights:
● The Core i3, i5 and i7 processors include the enhanced Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0. This feature automatically reallocates processor core and processor graphics resources to accelerate performance, giving users an immediate performance boost when and where it's needed.
● New chip features include Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX), Intel InTru 3-D, and Intel Clear Video Technology HD. Intel InTru 3-D enables immersive stereoscopic 3D to 3D-capable HDTVs or monitors via HDMI 1.4, making movie excitement almost come out of the screen. Intel AVX increases performance for demanding visual applications like audio processing and professional video image editing like stitching together multiple photographs. Intel Clear Video improves the visual quality and color fidelity during video playback for a spectacular screen experience.
● The chips are made on Intel's 32 nanometer manufacturing process on the company's second-generation high-k metal gate transistors. These unique advantages further boost performance; reduce power consumption for better battery life and smaller designs, and lower overall manufacturing costs.
● Intel WiDi 2.0 improvements include support for 1080p HD as well as protected content either streaming from the Internet or played locally from a Blu-ray or DVD player.

Availability:
Intel announced more than 20 processors, wireless adapters and chipsets, including new Intel Core i7, i5 and i3 processors, Intel 6 Series Chipsets, and Intel Centrino Wi-Fi and WiMAX adapters. More than 500 laptop and desktop PC platform designs are expected from all major computer makers worldwide based on these products.

The quad core (four processors inside one chip) based systems will be available on January 9 and additional dual-core versions in February.












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