Intel officials say Mac ARMs could come in 2020

By Mike Wuerthele
Thursday, February 21, 2019, 11:50 am Pacific Time (2:50 pm ET)

According to some rumors, for some time, a possible switch to a Series A processor on a Mac, a new report says that Intel is certain that it will happen soon.

According to what is mainly a summary of recent news about AxiosIntel officials said privately to the room that they "were expecting such an initiative as early as next year," which means 2020. Cited as additional evidence, the report Wednesday on Apple's "Marzipan Project", potentially extended to WWDC 2019, as the beginning of executives at WWDC 2018.

Apple has convinced its enthusiasts to switch to new hardware architectures in the Mac itself twice, once with PowerPC 68000 series processors, and once from PowerPC to Intel. But, in reality, the potential marketing nightmare of big changes for users has been curbed.

Any ARM changes will not be immediate and will not cover the entire product line at once. It will probably start on the low end of Apple, like the MacBook and maybe a Mac mini migration. In addition, Microsoft now has Windows on ARM, with a 32-bit software compatibility layer, so that virtualization or even Windows over one of these new machines is not out of the question, but is not not likely to launch.

Rumors of a change in the supply chain had begun before the publication of the "Marzipan Project". Industry sources said as early as September 2017 that Apple was actively trying to reduce Intel's reliance on the MacBook or MacBook Pro. The account said that Apple was looking to take advantage of ARM processors, such as the A-series chips that are currently found in the iPad and the iPhone for future models.

Since this initial supply chain report, Ming-Chi Kuo has indicated that he expects the change to begin in 2020 or 2021. A "Kalamata project" was also discussed , with prototypes of the Pegatron device that would use a touch screen, SIM card slot, GPS, compass and a water-resistant case, suggesting a form factor totally different from that of the MacBook Air or the MacBook.

At the very moment these rumors broke, Apple shipped the A11 Bionic processor. The single-core processor speed of this processor is 4205, with a multicore speed of 10122. The performance is very similar to that of the MacBook Pro i7 2016 and 2017 in terms of single-core performance, as well as the multicore performance of the original system. inch MacBook Pro with Retina display of 2012.

The Apple A12 has since come out, with benchmarks tied with the processors used in laptops and laptops, and at a striking distance from the best desktop processors, depending on the load working.