Apple Inc., which had famously associated itself with Intel, for making the processors for its Mac range of computers in 2005, when it’s founder and CEO Steve Jobs was still alive, has now reportedly decided to make its own chips from 2020 onward.
There’s a long history to the way Apple has gone about developing the chipsets for its various devices. To begin with, Apple relied on IBM and Motorola for designing and developing the processors for the Macs. Then came the iPhones and iPads and Apple designed and developed its own processors and had them manufactured by the Taiwanese chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd and has gone with this arrangement till now. It helped the company integrate the different devices running on the in-house OS, iOS.
The present decision to switch to its own processor in place of Intel’s for the Mac and iMac operated devices is also meant to make it seamless for the operation of these devices and finally integrate them with the entire range of its devices.
Apple has codenamed the project ‘Kalamata’ and it is still early days with the timescale set for 2020 to effect the change. However, this information itself has not emerged from the company and neither has Intel reacted to the news and there is the other possibility that Apple may not go ahead with this change at all.
If Macs do come with the in-house processors, it may signal the end of use of outside components in the Apple product and may even be useful in apple deciding on its own schedules for launch of new products or models instead of having to depend on Intel’s R & D efforts and results. It would also make Apple standout among the manufacturers of personal computing devices like desktops and laptops with their own processors; most other majors in the space, like Dell, HP and Lenovo release their devices with either Intel or AMD processors.
Intel may suffer a small setback if Apple stops buying the processors from it since it contributes to around 5% of its revenue overall. Its stock did take a tumble following the release of this information.
With the change in the hardware, if it happens, Apple will be making changes to the software also by making the suitable updates to make the devices operate seamlessly with the iOS operated devices as well. Such a change may come much sooner than 2020 and the project is internally codenamed Marzipan.
Pending the complete switch to its own processors, Apple has been fitting some of its devices with a co-processor, that is meant to strengthening the security of the devices and are ARM based chips.
One significant observation made by experts, in this context, is that the other chip makers, including Apple’s partner in Taiwan seem to have greatly reduced the gap in the capability levels between theirs and that of Intel’s. This could definitely bring down the domination that the chip maker currently enjoys.