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| Apple's new Mac can change the PC as we know it |
Apple is expected to release a new Mac computer with a proprietary processor chip on Tuesday. The move could spur competition to take the lead in the desktop and laptop chipset market and benefit manufacturers such as Qualcomm. .
Intel and AMD have dominated the market since 2006, when Apple and most major PC manufacturers used chips based on the Intel x86 computer architecture.
Apple is expected to start a two-year program on Tuesday. To end nearly 15 years of cooperation with Intel, Mac computers are equipped with chipsets developed on the basis of ARM computer engineering technology. NVidia has agreed to purchase the chips from SoftBank Group at a certain price. $ 40 billion.
Apple will use ARM technology to design and manufacture chips from partners. It could be Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which makes processors for iPhone devices from Apple. Note that UK ARM technology also supports most Android smartphones.
Future devices from Apple are already in competition with Qualcomm. Qualcomm has been working with Microsoft since 2016 to adapt the Windows operating system to Qualcomm's ARM processors.
Qualcomm and Microsoft are collaborating with PC manufacturers like Lenovo and Asus to sell laptops with new chipsets. Microsoft Surface Pro X released last year uses Qualcomm processors.
Since these devices are not very popular, Apple's entry is likely to attract consumer attention to a shift in new technologies, especially when Apple started developing processors with similar performance. Intel processors.
Compared to devices that rely on Intel processors, computers based on ARM processors have an advantage: the first is derived from smartphones, and smartphones are the main problem of energy consumption, so they have a longer battery life than conventional devices. Like smartphones, these devices can operate quickly while connected to cellular data networks.
"Working from home increases the importance of connection issues," said Miguel Nunes, Qualcomm's chief product manager. He added, "We see a lot of people realizing that Wi-Fi is not up to par.
However, ARM-based computers still encounter some hurdles, which means that most of the software written over the past 20 years is designed for Intel hardware and you may have to rely on "simulations" to do so. Slow down the request before rewriting the program.
In a press release, Intel said: "The chipset allows users to run their favorite Windows applications without the potential performance degradation associated with running non-native applications on non-x86 architectures on top of Windows and Windows independently. The ability to run favorite applications on their platform."
Ben Bajarin, chief consumer market analyst at Creative Strategies, said the main test for ARM computers is to rewrite the software developers used by the major corporations (which remain the largest PC buyers). Apple's entry into the market does not guarantee that this will happen.