Apple might give up Intel for custom A-series chips in new Macs within 1-2 years

Mac buyers in 2016 and beyond could have the option of purchasing a machine powered by Apple’s A-series processors

A new report released on Wednesday gives analyst Kuo’s take on the Apple in-house chips. According to his suggestions, these chips are going to reach a new level of performance which will fall between Intel‘s Atom and Core i3 lines within the next 1-2 years. According to his speculations, if Apple managed to find a replacement for Intel, this will allow it to have a better control on the launch of the Mac.

He has furthered stated that the fruit company is laying groundwork in order to diversify the fabrication of its custom-designed processing units which include the iPhone and iPad’s A-series and the Apple Watch’s S-series. It is also very likely that Samsung is going to split orders for the iPhone’s next-generation A9 with Global Foundries and TSMC is going to handle the A10 in 2016. The A9X would power both the iPad and new low end version of Mac and is going to be fabbed on TSMC’s 16nm line, with the A10X moving to Samsung’s 10nm plant.

Things would start getting busier for TSMC as it is also expected to take over S-series production from Samsung, starting off with the S2 in the second-generation Apple Watch. Apple was clearly working towards its custom silicon and the groundwork for that had been set in 2012 when the A7 chip had debuted. In 2013 Apple had followed up with the more powerful A8 and also the beefed-up A8X CPU that powers the iPad Air 2.

It has been a long time since we are hearing about the future Macs being powered custom ARM-based, Apple-designed chips, even before the A-series processors became desktop-caliber CPUs. But Intel was quick to move over and made progress towards power consumption with its own silicon in the past few years. And these developments have allowed MacBook models with battery life beyond 15 hours of maximum uptime. But whenever Apple has to schedule the release of its Macs, it has to highly depend on Intel and the release schedule has failed to show any improvements. On the other hand, a switch from Intel processors to custom ARM chips is going to be a drastic change for Apple.

source: appleinsider