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Comment by kag0 | Hacker News Reader

I agree in general, but is this really true?

> the legacy chip makers have a business model that doesn't work

It seems like this implicitly assumes that everyone switching to Apple silicon is a possibility. But it doesn't seem likely that all the android users are going to switch to iphones or that all the windows/linux users are going to switch to macs.

This is hugely embarrassing for Intel and Qualcomm in particular, and stocks will fall. But the business model outside the walled garden isn't necessarily going to change.

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> It seems like this implicitly assumes that everyone switching to Apple silicon is a possibility.

Apple has flipped the tables. They went from being way behind the pack in terms of price/ performance pile in the 90s and 00s to the point where Apple's base MacBook Air is now competitive in terms of performance with laptops that cost twice as much.

I suspect they will absolutely pick up share. I also expect AMD will gain some share here as OEMs look to compete with Apple's offerings and Intel has come up short.

Also, by losing Apple, Intel is also losing one of their most profitable customers. While Apple isn't Intel's biggest customer in terms of units shipped, Apple tended to buy Intel's higher end CPUs which other OEMs avoided.

Everyone isn't switching to Apple, but the competitive scene is changing a lot and it doesn't favor Intel.

Also people are seriously underestimating the impact of being able to run iPhone/iPad apps.

My partner is now able to run dozens of Korean apps which never have had a Mac equivalent.

If one is living on US or comparable countries, maybe.

Over here Apple has to do much more to win market share over PC sales.

I'm not sure where "Over Here" might be, but I know in some places Macs are ridiculously expensive due to tariffs and whatnot. It's hard to account for regional differences.

Though I expect they will pick up share everywhere, just might go from 0.5% to 0.9%. I suspect everyone will benefit from the secondary effects.

It proves the viability of ARM for desktops, laptops, and probably eventually servers too. Intel having been humiliated by this will loosen their grip on OEMs who will now be under pressure in the inevitable rush to produce appealing, performance-oriented ARM laptops, as the current market has basically been Chromebooks and some half-hearted Windows ARM tablets, all based on chips adapted from phones.

And of course there will also be the rush on the fab side to produce a non-Apple chip that's actually suitable for these machines, which will in turn have performance characteristics far more suited to server use than any previous ARM chip, enabling that market and feeding back a demand for larger and more performant server ARM chips and mainboards— and who knows, maybe even some kind of socket standard so they aren't soldered down like it is today.

ARM is already pretty viable for servers. At least viable enough that most of the major cloud providers have arm64 based instances available.

I think there’s a qualitative difference here between viable (which is where we’re currently at) and utterly dominant (which is where I suspect we’ll be in five or so years).

I agree, but even still how does that affect Intel’s business model? Are they incapable of building ARM chips and selling them the same way as their x86 chips? Seems like the business model is fine but the product will need to change, no?

Sure they can, but at vastly lower profit margins.

Yup, because they'll actually be in competition with all the other ARM licensees, instead of just in a duopoly with AMD.

ARM started on the desktop.

But for the last twenty years, surely pretty much every linux-capable ARM part produced in excess of Q>1M has fallen into one of two buckets— either a) a device that runs on batteries, or b) an embedded, specialized processor such as for a router, vehicle infotainment, or home appliance.

That sums pretty much the actual usefulness of Linux itself.

Not sure. There are clearly some problems with the x86-64 ISA. If the world switches to ARM in the coming decade, that leaves Intel in a perilous position: no advantage in IP and no advantage in fabrication.

Right, the problem for Intel & AMD is not that everybody will switch over to Apple chips (they can't, because Apple likely won't sell it to them), but rather that Apple has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that ARM chips _can_ be this good when scaled up to laptop-level power envelopes.

That will probably prompt other ARM vendors and certain PC manufacturers (Microsoft who already has the ARM based SQ chips, for instance) to further invest in similar products that chip away at Intel/AMD's lead and likely eventually overtake them.

The world may want to switch to ARM but right now there aren't really any options to switch _to_ right? Beyond Apple I can't think of any chip manufacturers offering desktop ARM cpus...

I think it has less to do with everyone switching to Apple silicon and more to do with the clarification of viable business models: you either become an IP company and outsource production (AMD) or you go completely vertical and design and produce custom-designed SoCs to be used exclusively in your consumer products (Apple). The Intel model of designing and producing all-purpose commodity CPUs seems to have hit a wall due to both lack of demand and unanticipated manufacturing problems.

The (apparent) lack of demand for intel chips is because their manufacturing problems have disrupted their roadmaps. Because their 10 nm process is still not really working, and they were working on multiple releases assuming the process would be there when the design was, they're in a bad place.

From public statements, it seems like they've thought 10 nm was going to work soon for the whole time since 2018 that it's been in limited production. And they haven't really done substantial design work on the 14 nm processors (there's some releases, but it's mostly smashing more cores on there, and less architectural changes; afaik, coffe lake and comet lake don't have much in the way of ipc gains vs kaby lake). Also, they clearly need a new naming person.

It doesn't help that they killed their atom for phones program wheb they did. Right around the time Microsoft announced continuum for windows mobile 10, which would have been much cooler if it was running on an x86 chip (and if Microsoft didn't do a terrible job with Windows mobile 10 in general).

Atom underperformed too though.

There was a Lenovo Zenfone that shipped with an atom and even in Java apps or running the few Android NDK apps that shipped x86 APK's, they weren't fast.

Fun fact, Android used libhoudini (basically, reverse Rosetta2) allowing arm NDK apps to run (but they were pretty rough).

Samsung and Microsoft are the two to watch.

Both have followed Apple's direction and neither is going to want to let the PC market get away from them.

No, it’s not true. Most people buy their computers because of the price, style, and easily observable features (not necessarily performance, certainly not the type of difference that only shows up in benchmarks). Hacker News commenters are far from your average PC buyer. I’m sure the M1 and future desktop Apple silicon will have an impact, but it’s far from a killing stroke. If people only cared about maximum performance, budget machines wouldn’t sell at all. In reality, they sell in much higher volumes than high end devices.

The biggest game changer is the battery life, it's so good that feature alone will put it ahead of most of the competition.

And not all HN readers are won over either. I for one am not willing to switch to Apple's closed ecosystem for a chip that is a little faster. Or even a lot faster.

Up until two days ago, I was using a 6 year old laptop with a Celeron processor as my main home computer.

I think the whole Apple Silicon thing seems really interesting, but honestly, the only thing I do that is remotely taxing on decade-old hardware is load Facebook.

Eventually someone will build a laptop using chips like this and an acceptable OS.

Same here, I do use Macs at work, but at home is all Windows and a surviving Linux laptop.

Nor I, so I contributed to the patreon for a linux port to the M1.

Not getting hot or loud while lasting forever on battery are easily observeable selling points I’d say.

There are plenty of other laptops out there that don't get hot or loud and have all day battery life, though the M1 has multi-day battery life so fair point there.

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