alt Hacker News> It was about x64 being unable to keep up - independent of Intel’s Fab capabilities which have improved lately.
But the big reason x64 couldn't keep up was that Intel's fab capabilities were horrible. Intel got stuck and couldn't get smaller nodes out and competing fabs caught up and left Intel in the dust.
Apple was able to ship 22nm Intel processors in Summer 2012 while their iPhone processors were 32nm that Fall and 28nm in Fall 2013. Spring 2015, Apple shipped 14nm Intel laptops and later that Fall 14/16nm iPhones. Competitors had caught up and soon TSMC started surpassing Intel.
Yes, Intel's fab capabilities have improved lately, but Intel's fab failures were causing x64 to fall behind. If Intel had retained fab supremacy, x64 wouldn't have fallen behind. I think Apple still likes the idea of being able to build exactly the parts they want (so they can optimize for power, thermals, etc), but Intel fell behind because their fabs stopped being competitive.
>> It was about x64 being unable to keep up - independent of Intel’s fab capabilities, which have improved lately.
> But the big reason x64 couldn't keep up was that Intel's fab capabilities were horrible. Intel got stuck and couldn't get smaller nodes out, and competing fabs caught up and left Intel in the dust.
It also was that Intel couldn’t execute reliably on their own roadmap, forcing Apple at the time to do extra engineering to incorporate Intel's chips. Apple sells a lot of laptops; Intel never got their act together regarding mobile processors for MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
The 8-core Mac Pro used Intel Xeon 5500 series; at idle, it used 309 W; it used 9 fans for cooling [1]. It sounded like a jet engine when it was running. And while it was an elegant design for the time, they shouldn’t have needed to jump through these hoops.
[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102839