Apple Sessions at Intel Developer Forum

Well..personally, I think AMD CPUs in Macintosh is a good option!

Apple is buying the more expensive CPUs from Intel. It wouldn't surprise me if they were ranked the 3rd largest customer of Intel products in sales. Remember that companies like Dell and HP buy from AMD and also a lot of Celerons that make up a big chunk of users.

Well..personally, I think AMD CPUs in Macintosh is a good option!

I agree. I don't think Apple should tie themselves to one chip vendor. If AMD has a better chip, then by all means use it. It does however, seem somewhat pompous of the CEO of AMD to say that he's sure that Apple will come around.

Well..personally, I think AMD CPUs in Macintosh is a good option!

AMD can't offer Apple a complete solution, not yet at least. Intel can give the fastest processors (now), chipsets, graphics chips, bla bla. Until the AMD/ATi acquisition is a distant memory and they truly become one company.

i thought AMD chip's best strength comes from video gaming. if so, i m not sure AMD would be a viable option for Apple, especially considering Apple Mac's enclosures are thinner than normal PeeCees.

This comes in the wake of comments by AMD CEO that he feels Apple will eventually come around and buy AMD chips as an alternative to Intel. While the comment has received a lot of press, it appears to be a simply speculative comment without any particular basis.

It could be called "wishful thinking" but I think it was also an overture to Apple. Intel is smart to accommodate Apple and make it happy with its decision.

*opens Anandtech.com in new tab

*now waiting until the 26th to continuously Command+R

I think Apple adopting some AMD chips would cause confusion, especially to users who don't know much about computers. Besides, there isn't really a standard way to compare the speeds of Intel and AMD chips so who's to say that an Intel (blah blah blah) is faster than an AMD (blee blee blee)? Like I said, confusing to the normal user.

To us, it probably wouldn't be a big deal because we peruse these sites day-in and day-out, at home, at work, we read up on all the processors and whatnot. But the remaining 80% (at least) of users don't know what-from-what.

Secondly, adopting AMD chips alongside Intel chips would, likely, split the Apple's Pro-users down the middle, some supporting Intel, some supporting AMD.

Thirdly, even though Intel and AMD chips have identical instruction sets, they don't have identical pin-layouts. Apple would, thus, have to create two motherboards for each computer, one for Intel, one for AMD.

Fourthly, Intel and Apple are buddy-buddy right now, since Apple is one of Intel's larger customers nowadays (note the special presentation slot given to Apple) and as long as they remain that way, Apple will reap the benefits thereof. These may or may not include cheaper prices, Apple soft/hardware optimization consideration in future chips, etc.

Fifthly, Apple has written OS X especially to take advantage of multi-core CPUs. (This means nothing in terms of third-party software, but it's at least a start.) Intel is beginning to sprout multi-core chips out of its posterior. A octal-core Mac is theoretically right around the corner (and if Apple doesn't release one, the user can upgrade him/herself). In AMD chips, I don't see anywhere near the progress Intel has made in this area.

Five Point Fively, Software Developers are beginning to write their software to take advantage of multiple cores, giving Intel a further advantage.

Sixthly, I should be working right now, so I'm done.

-Clive

In the big picture, haven't AMD's always been better at "number crunching" while Intel (NOT Celeron) has been better with "graphic processing"?

While that may not necessarily be the case today, and AMD does make some nice chips, I'm with the line of thought that runs along the consumer confusion line.

Also, I agree that Apple is a perfect customer to Intel. If nothing more, they know Apple will be buying the top-end chips and not the low-end models like the Celeron's.

I know this isn't the best way to compare number crunching abilities, but take a look at:

http://www.polyhedron.co.uk/pb05/linux/f90bench_AMD.html
http://www.polyhedron.co.uk/pb05/linux/f90bench_p4.html

Note, however, that these are not results for core duo processors.