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posted by martyb on Friday February 03 2017, @04:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the witty-connection-between-chips,-fries,-and-[Big]-Macs dept.

Apple, which makes its own ARM SoCs for its mobile products such as iPhones and iPads, is planning to include ARM chips in Mac laptops alongside Intel CPUs. The ARM chips will handle various tasks during power conservation modes:

Apple Inc. is designing a new chip for future Mac laptops that would take on more of the functionality currently handled by Intel Corp. processors, according to people familiar with the matter. The chip, which went into development last year, is similar to one already used in the latest MacBook Pro to power the keyboard's Touch Bar feature, the people said. The updated part, internally codenamed T310, would handle some of the computer's low-power mode functionality, they said. The people asked not to be identified talking about private product development. It's built using ARM Holdings Plc. technology and will work alongside an Intel processor.

Although Apple only accounted for 7.5 percent of worldwide computer shipments in the fourth quarter, according to data from IDC, the Mac line has long set the standard for design and component improvements. Its feature additions often start new technology trends that other manufacturers rush to follow. Apple and Intel declined to comment. [...] Apple engineers are planning to offload the Mac's low-power mode, a feature marketed as "Power Nap," to the next-generation ARM-based chip. This function allows Mac laptops to retrieve e-mails, install software updates, and synchronize calendar appointments with the display shut and not in use. The feature currently uses little battery life while run on the Intel chip, but the move to ARM would conserve even more power, according to one of the people.

Do you think we will see Dell, Acer, ASUS, et al. produce mainstream dual-processor laptops? How about big.LITTLE clusters in Chromebooks?

Also at Ars Technica, TechCrunch, and Computerworld.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday February 03 2017, @07:28PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday February 03 2017, @07:28PM (#462546) Journal

    It would be neat to see Intel and AMD take a page from the ARM big.LITTLE approach and include one or two wimpy low-power cores alongside all x86 chips. Disable it or remove it in the bleeding performance enthusiast desktop chips, or not... since even desktops could benefit from the faux-hibernation mode.

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  • (Score: 2) by gman003 on Saturday February 04 2017, @03:32AM

    by gman003 (4155) on Saturday February 04 2017, @03:32AM (#462724)

    If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, you're thinking more along the lines of Nintendo's last few home consoles, which included an ARM core to download and install updates while otherwise powered off. big.LITTLE doesn't step down enough to be a faux-hibernation mode, since it's still multiple live cores at minimum, and it's more about switching tasks from high-performance to high-efficiency cores as needed.

    I certainly wouldn't mind having an OS-accessible Quark chip (think a 586-class CPU on a near-modern fab node) to do stuff while the main chip is off. Download and install updates, sync my RSS feeds, maybe keep my PuTTY sessions alive, stuff like that. I'm not sure having something Atom-class on the CPU die would be worth it, Intel seems to be much better at power-gating, and race-to-sleep seems like a better strategy than big.LITTLE's core-switching.