By Christopher Mims
Laptops, which haven't been exciting for years, are about to get
interesting again.
Despite the rise of tablets and smartphones, laptops are still
the way most people get work done. The difference between the
mobile touchscreen devices and their bulkier clamshell counterparts
isn't just their physical design: They actually use different sorts
of processors.
While chip maker Intel Corp. has powered most computers you've
ever used, that might not be the case much longer. Many
manufacturers are already using mobile chips from smartphones in
laptops running Google's Chrome OS, and are starting to put them in
laptops running Microsoft Windows. Apple Inc. already designs its
own chips, which are arguably the fastest mobile processors in the
world -- will it use them in its own MacBooks?
A shift in this direction would blur the line between laptops
and mobile devices further, changing our expectations of computers
large and small.
This doesn't mean that the form of the laptop -- trackpad,
keyboard, screen -- must change. Apple has tried to convince
consumers that the iPad is for work, but relatively flat iPad sales
suggest few are using mobile devices as their primary means of
productivity.
So imagine something that looks like a MacBook and works like a
MacBook, but has the guts of an iPhone. In addition to things like
facial recognition and AR capabilities, it could have longer
battery life, built-in always-on connectivity to fast 5G networks,
and more.
The ARM insurgency
Since the dawn of the smartphone, mobile processors based on
designs licensed from ARM Holdings have been the mainstay of phones
and tablets. Over time, ARM and its licensees, which include
Qualcomm Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple, have worked to
make these processors faster, without using more power.
Year after year, these chips have seen double-digit increases in
their performance. Last September, Apple declared that its A10X
processor, which powers the iPad Pro tablet, was already faster
than 80% of the Windows notebooks sold in the past year. The iPhone
X's A11 Bionic is even faster.
ARM and its partners claim its processors for forthcoming
Windows laptops are also comparable to lower-end Intel laptop
chips.
Intel is contributing to this trend. The intervals between
ever-faster Intel chip launches have gotten longer and longer,
leaving its PC partners scratching their heads about how to excite
customers to buy the latest and greatest models.
The size of the circuitry on a microchip, known as a process
node, determines its power consumption, performance and cost. The
smaller the transistors on the chip, the wider the variety of stuff
you can put on it, such as wireless modems, GPS receivers, image
processors and the like. Each new silicon breakthrough is named
after the ever-smaller distance between certain chip components,
measured in nanometers.
In its last earnings call, TSMC, the chip fabricator for Apple
and AMD, said it's producing chips at the 7-nanometer level, and it
expects 7nm chips to represent 20% of its revenue by the end of
2018.
TSMC is the world's largest contract maker of semiconductors,
having accrued $8.46 billion in revenue in the first quarter of
2018 alone. If it expects to ship millions of these chips soon,
it's a safe bet that a big chunk of those will be Apple's
next-generation A12 mobile processor.
The iPhone...Book?
A big reason for Apple and its competitors to consider switching
to ARM-based laptops is that mobile processors are gaining
capabilities that are less common in larger computers. Today, the
depth sensor on the iPhone X enables face recognition, but it could
someday play a key role in Apple's augmented-reality software.
(Qualcomm has its own Snapdragon XR1 platform for augmented
reality.)
Apple is also pushing capabilities such as on-device artificial
intelligence, which could enable better voice recognition and other
capabilities, and the company aims to support only its own graphics
software in the future. Because Apple's in-house chip designers
only have one customer -- Apple -- they're able to tune its silicon
to run all these things as fast as possible.
"You see Intel delaying new technologies anywhere from six to
eight months, and that hurts Apple's roadmap," says Ben Bajarin, an
analyst at market-research firm Creative Strategies. "Apple in
particular doesn't want to have to be hamstrung." By using its own
silicon, Apple could potentially offer machines that do things
other notebook manufacturers might not match for some time, he
says.
The result would be an ARM-powered variation on the MacBook or
MacBook Air, or something new that meets similar needs and runs
MacOS.
There is a limit to what ARM chips can pull off. Apple's MacBook
Pro laptops are powered by Intel's Core i5 and i7 processors and --
like Apple's desktop computers -- will probably continue to be for
a long time.
Workhorse computers need processors that are good at general
computing tasks, more than the specialized, task-specific silicon
that powers mobile devices. (In fact, Apple's MacBook Pro already
does have an ARM chip inside, a supplemental one specifically
designed to handle security functions such as the Touch ID
fingerprint reader.)
It's possible that Apple could allow its cheaper MacBook lines
to stagnate, depriving them of the capabilities of spatial, visual
and auditory capturing and processing that we now take for granted
in mobile devices. If so, it might be to drive customers toward the
iPad. Apple could even give more powers to the iPhone -- with a few
software additions like a trackpad cursor and resizable windows,
iOS could give the MacOS a run for its money on big screens.
Even Intel seems aware of this eventuality. The company
announced that its initial wave of 7nm chips will be available
first to its data-center customers -- who are driving its greatest
revenue growth -- not to the companies that build laptops and
tablets. Intel is transforming "from a PC-centric company to a
data-centric company," Intel finance chief Bob Swan recently told
the Journal.
Apparently Intel is doing just fine selling the high-powered
chips required to run the cloud software on which all these phones,
tablets and laptops depend.
Write to Christopher Mims at christopher.mims@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 14, 2018 12:17 ET (16:17 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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