After saying goodbye to apple's 5G baseband, Intel is saying goodbye to Mac processors

According to bloomberg, apple hired ARM's chief architect Mike Filippo to fill the void left by Gerard Williams III.Gerard Williams III is a former chief architect of iPhone and iPad chips.

Mike Filippo helps apple develop its own processors.

ARM supports most of the world's smartphones and tablets and is leading the way in new computer components.The microprocessors and licensed technology ARM designs are the basis for chip development by apple, samsung, qualcomm and huawei.

Mike Filippo worked for ARM (from 2009 to 2019) and led the development of cortex-a76, cortex-a72, cortex-a57 and the upcoming 7nm + and 5nm chips.Prior to that, he was chief CPU and systems architect at Intel from 2004 to 2009, and chip designer at AMD from 1996 to 2004.

Mike Filippo joined apple in May and now works in Austin, according to his LinkedIn profile.ARM confirmed this. A spokesman for ARM said, "Mike Filippo is one of the most valuable members of ARM family. We thank him for all his efforts and wish him every success in his next job."

For apple, the entry of Mike Filippo means a replacement for Gerard Williams III, who left earlier this year.Mike Filippo's rich experience in chip manufacturing will also help the development of apple's product processors -- ARM has been providing technical support for apple's a-series processors.

Rumors about a self-developed Mac processor

At WWDC 2005, Steve Jobs officially announced the migration of Mac main processors from IBM PowerPC to Intel processors.The first intel-powered Mac came out in January 2006.

However, rumors of apple's plans to rid the Mac of Intel's processors have persisted since 2012.

In November 2012, bloomberg reported that apple was developing its own processors to replace the Mac's Intel processors.And apple's engineers are confident they can pull it off.

Although the news has not been officially confirmed, the rumors are not unfounded.

Since apple introduced the Retina MacBook Pro in 2012, the MacBook Pro design has gone through a long, painful process -- with no major new features or performance improvements.Consumers waited more than 500 days for the Touch Bar model to be released in 2016.While there are several reasons for this, the main reason is that the CPU delivery on the Intel roadmap that best fits this machine is severely delayed.

While apple and Intel continued to work together over the years, rumors that apple was developing its own arm-based Mac processor have been rife.Today, the news of Mike Filippo joining apple confirms the outside world's speculation to some extent.

Slow progress on Intel's processors is dragging its feet

The shift will be a defining moment for apple, since Intel's processors remain an integral part of the Mac.But it is important to take this step.

The slow progress of Intel's processor roadmap has taken its toll on apple, which, if it builds its own chips for the Mac, will have more freedom to release new models of the Mac and just iterate through the Mac line at its own pace.In addition, in the long run, using its own Mac processor will save apple a lot of costs, thus providing consumers with a cheaper Mac and gaining more market share.

For now, apple has enough experience with its own processors to make it a matter of time.Apple also plans to expand its self-developed chips into new categories of devices, such as augmented and virtual reality headsets.

But this is a blow to Intel: apple generates 5% of Intel's annual revenue;Intel shares fell 9.2 percent after Mike Filippo joined apple, the biggest intraday decline in more than two years.

summary

In short, whether or not apple really wants to replace Intel's processors with its own, full independence from Intel isn't realistic, at least for a few years.Even if arm-based processors are used on the Mac by 2020, it is likely to be a dedicated computer in the Mac family, most of which will be based on Intel processors.

What's more, the move from PowerPC to Intel processors helped make the Mac mainstream, and the Mac has become increasingly popular with software developers who develop applications for multiple platforms, including iOS, macOS and Android.

Despite apple's ambitions, dumping Intel overnight may not be a smart move.