The past few days have witnessed a wave of sudden leaks talking about an expected "significant change" in Apple's general strategy regarding microprocessors and operating systems. This change is the modification of its main desktop and laptop computers with high specifications "Macintosh", to work with processors of the type "ARM" originally intended to work on smartphones and mobile devices with less capacity, and this means "Apple" stops using the processors of the company "Intel" And other processors operating with the X86 architecture, to provide cheaper, faster, and specification devices that are compatible with the requirements of the next 10 years, especially the requirements of the fifth generation of the laptop, and away from the computing pattern that the company relied on during the past five decades.
Leaks
Leaks related to the new change have appeared in many websites and blogs specialized in Apple affairs, including: (9to5mac.com), (applemust.com/ speculation), and (macrumors.com), as well as the blog of analyst Ming-chi Kuo, who is one of the most famous and accurate analysts who follow the work of «Apple», and provide about expectations, often accurate.
Almost all of these leaks unite that the expected big change is behind two development and engineering teams inside Apple: The first is the “Silicon Development” team that was able to develop powerful, high-speed, and high-performance A-class processors, which mainly work on iPhone phones. "And iPads, while the second team is" Mac Catalyst "or" Mac Catalyst ", which is responsible for developing a program that enables developers to export their applications and programs more quickly from" iPad "devices to" Macs ", which achieved successes. Significant in bringing the two operating environments in "Macintosh" systems for desktop and laptop computers closer The strong «Apple», and working environment «iPad», Tablet PC Like a Computer The less capabilities, and access to them through the full integration into a single working environment.
Motivated
Among the most important motives that paved the way for the company to move forward in this change, the pressures and requirements imposed by the fifth generation of mobile at the level of networks, and at the level of mobile devices working with them, in addition to the development and great success that occurred in the performance of «ARM» processors.
ARM processors
To clarify the different dimensions of the expected change that the recent wave of leaks are talking about, it is necessary to refer to the concept of "ARM" processors, as it is a type of processor that appeared to work on mobile devices and devices with limited capabilities, and different from the famous processors in the field of personal computers, and the difference is due to the fact that it depends On its own architecture, it is called "RISC", which is a shortcut to the concept of "a computer based on a limited reduced set of commands and instructions", while the processors for personal computers depend on another architecture, known as "x86", in which the processor is run in the group. For full of commands.
The company that developed the RISC architecture was the “RISC Advanced Equipment” company, known as “ARM”, and because it is the developer and the largest producer of this quality, the name “ARM” is used to describe all processors operating in the ARM architecture. Risk, whether produced by ARM or others, and X86 architecture are used by Intel, AMD, Apple, and others.
Strong presence
ARM Risk processors began to register a strong presence since the turn of the millennium, and took control of the mobile devices market, while the market for personal computers and servers remained closed on the X86 processors, and the main field of competition between them is based on the good features offered by the AR processors. M »for any devices you work on. Since it works with a reduced set of commands and operating instructions, it is produced in very small sizes compared to standard x86 processors, and the low size of the processor means light weight, more thinness and less device thickness, in addition to the massive reduction in the energy required to run the processor.
A remarkable move
One of the notable steps that Apple has taken to accelerate the pace of change in its computers is that it appointed RIC's chief engineer, CPU and systems systems, Mike Filippo, to a leadership position within Apple, to be responsible for ARM processor business. . Filippo is the person who led the development of multiple designs for the ARM processors, including the Cortex family, and the 5nm processor chips.