Apple Inc. is preparing to announce a change in Mac processors, replacing those from Intel, as early as this month at its annual WWDC 2020 developer conference, according to people familiar with the plans.
The company is holding WWDC the week of June 22. The unveiling of the initiative, dubbed "Kalamata," at the event will give developers time to adjust before new Macs are reportedly launched in 2021. Since the transition still needs several months, the timing of the announcement could change, they added, asking not to be identified because they are discussing confidential plans.
The new processors will be based on the same technology used in iPhone and iPad chips designed by Apple. However, future Macs will still use the macOS operating system rather than iOS software like its mobile devices.
Apple uses technology licensed from Arm Ltd. of SoftBank Group Corp. This architecture differs from the underlying technology in Intel chips, so developers will need time to optimize their software. Apple and Intel declined to comment on this information.
This will be the first time in the 36-year history of the Mac that Apple designers will power these machines. The company has changed supplier only two other times. In the early 1990s, Apple switched from Motorola processors to PowerPC. At WWDC in 2005, Steve Jobs announced the switch from PowerPCs to Intel, and Apple introduced the first Intel-based Macs in January 2006. As then, the company plans to transition its entire Mac line to processors based on Arm, including the more expensive desktops, as mentioned.
Apple has about 10% of the PC market, so the change may not dent Intel's sales much. However, Macs are considered premium products. So if the company moves away from Intel for performance reasons, it may prompt other PC makers to consider different options. Microsoft, Samsung and Lenovo already have laptops powered by Arm chips.
Apple's chip development team, led by Johny Srouji, decided to make the switch after Intel's annual performance gains slowed. Apple engineers worry that sticking to Intel's roadmap will delay or derail some future Macs, according to those familiar with the effort. Inside Apple, tests of new Macs with Arm-based chips have shown significant improvements over Intel-powered versions, especially in graphics performance and applications using artificial intelligence, they said. Apple's processors are also more efficient than Intel's, which could mean thinner and lighter Mac laptops in the future.
Apple's move would be the focus of this year's WWDC, which will be held online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to the fluid nature of the global health crisis and its impact on Apple's product development, the timing of the announcement may change.
At the conference, Apple is also preparing updates for its other operating systems — iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS — with changes to augmented reality capabilities, deeper integration with external apps and services, and improved Apple Watch fitness features. A big priority is improving the performance of the mobile software after the release of iOS 13, which suffered from various issues. The company is working on at least three of its Mac processors, known as systems-on-a-chip, with the first based on the A14 processor in the next iPhone. In addition to the main CPU, there will be a graphics processing unit and a neural engine to handle machine learning, a popular and powerful type of AI, they say.
The "Kalamata" project has been underway for several years and is considered one of the most secretive efforts of the company. In 2018, Apple successfully deployed a Mac chip based on the iPad Pro's processor for internal testing, prompting the company to announce such a change this year.
The article was based on Mark Gurman's Bloomberg report which can be found here .
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