Report Suggest Apple To Opt For Custom ARM Chips For MacBooks in 2021: Announcement During WWDC 2020
Apple has been offering significant performance gains with its laptops. The only issue we have seen, significantly in the older 15-inch MacBook Pros and other models is the heat dissipation. Apple refuses to change the thickness of the device and focuses more on the design. They even put peak clock limits to handle the thermal situation. Now though, it has been quite some time that the company has been looking to switch to custom, in-house chips. We see that they are doing quite well with their iPad and iPhone chips. These are custom ARM-based processors which actually deliver unprecedented power.
According to an article from 9to5Mac, the company has going to announce at WWDC this month that it would opt for custom in-house ARM-based processors for its laptops as well. The story is picked up from a report from Bloomberg. According to the report, Apple would be transitioning to the chips by next year. They’d hope to eventually shift their desktops to the new system as well.
ARM over Intel?
We can get a lead to this story from a previous claim from Bloomberg stating that Apple is working on a custom 12-Core ARM-based processor based on a 5nm process. Now, it seems as if this is going to become a reality. The advantage of these ARM processors is that their performance to power ratio for the devices is way better than Intel chips. Not to mention, Apple would be tweaking them in-house, meaning integration would make them work quite well. This is quite apparent in the new iPad Pro models which can deliver laptop-like performance. Additionally, the company would be able to save quite a lot per chip as well. This may reduce the overall cost, although it is uncertain if the end-user may get to benefit from it.
Lastly, the question arises, which models would be the first ones to get these new processors. Developers still need to custom design their apps for the new platform and obviously this would take time. For devices such as MacBook Pros, it won’t be that simple. This is because these devices are meant for heavy-duty tasks and require a plethora of software. This may just take quite a while for these machines to fully convert. As for devices such as MacBook Air or the expected MacBook 12-inch making its return, we may see those devices running on the new processors in the coming year. It would be quite advantageous for them as well as they’d result in excellent battery life and a boost in performance which they lack currently.
