While Apple’s iPhones house the best chips in market, leaving any Snapdragon variant to bite the dust, Macs have had a rough history. Innovation on the devices has stagnated for years, and Apple seems to have finally woken up the fact that changes are in order. According to a Bloomberg report, the Cupertino giant is planning to introduce Macs with in house chips, starting as soon as 2021.
Bloomberg uncovers the mission codenamed Kalamata, under which Apple is planning to build multiple chips for Mac devices in the coming future. The company also predicts that at least one device with such a chip would find its way to the market by next year.
The chips will be based on the same technology that Apple employs for its iPhones and iPads, but just a whole lot faster. Currently, Apple is working on 3 chips based on the A14 processors that will come with the next iPhone. However, the first Mac chip will be much faster than any iPhone chips the company has launched so far.
Going into specifics, current iPhones have octa-core processors. To put it in layman’s terms, the chips on board can divide any work load into 8 different sections. 4 of these cores are for performance-intensive workloads, with another four ready to handle low-power tasks to preserve battery life. Bloomberg states that first Mac chips will have at least 8 high-performance cores, codenamed Firestorm, and at least four energy-efficient cores, known internally as Icestorm. The company is also planning to scale up from 12 cores in the future.
This will enhance the performance on Mac devices to never-seen-before heights, as the current entry level Mac has 2 cores.
The chips will be prepared by Apple’s current chip provider for iPhones, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. These chips will be based on a 5-nanometer production technique, similar to the chips Apple has in store for the next line of iPhones and iPads.
Currently, Mac devices are powered by chips from Intel, and the transition from the company will not be easy. However, Intel’s inability to come up with new innovation for Mac devices has forced Apple to take matter into its own hands.
Moreover, designing its own chips for Mac devices allows for the possibility of a more sophistically integrated ecosystem for Apple devices, something that Apple users desperately want. However, Mac devices will still run macOS, and the shift to iOS does not seem like a possibility.
