The exceptionally scary design flaw in Intel's processors (as well as other manufacturers silicon), that could put nearly all Mac, Windows, and Linux users at risk, appears to have been primarily addressed in the recent macOS 10.13.2 update.
The first implementable specification for the emerging millimeter wave fifth-generation wireless technology (5G) has now been finalized, paving the way for accelerated deployment.
Apple will continue to dual-source cellular modems for 2018 iPhones from chip makers Intel and Qualcomm, with the updated pre-5G baseband chips enabling faster LTE speeds.
Tensions between Apple and Qualcomm have been on the rise, which has in part caused Apple to look elsewhere for the iPhone's upcoming 5G modem. Apple is aiming to include 5G in the iPhone by 2019-2020, which means they are getting close to choosing a manufacturer.
Per a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Apple is designing its future iPhones and iPads in order to end reliance on Qualcomm components.
Samsung's chip-making unit has been making some great strides in the past few years and now the South Korean chaebol is predicted to overtake Intel and become the world's top producer of computer chips. Should the prediction come true, this will be a major blow to Intel, which has been the leading chip maker in terms of sales for 26 years since 1991.
According to researchers with NH Investment & Securities, cited in a report by The Korea Herald, Samsung could overtake Intel as soon as this summer due to the rise in number of data centers and expanded demand of solid state drives.
Intel captured an estimated thirteen percent of global chip sales in the first quarter of 2016 versus Samsung's 9.1 percent share. But during the March quarter of 2017, Intel took up 14.7 percent while Samsung held a comparable figure of 13.4 percent.
“Starting the March-June period, Samsung's global market share of chips will surpass the 15-percent mark to outpace its rival, helped by its improved competitiveness in the memory segment,” the report added.
Apple no longer uses Samsung's chip fabrication plants to build its in-house designed processors for iOS devices, but iPhones and iPads still use Samsung-built flash memory modules and the iPhone 7's LTE modem is being dual-sourced from Intel and Samsung.
Apple is expected to up its LTE chip orders from Intel as it looks to distance itself from Qualcomm, reports DigiTimes. Despite inferior performance, Intel has gone from supplying around 30% of iPhone 7 baseband chips in 2016 to 50% in 2017. And experts say it could be supplying over 70% of the baseband products for iPhones by 2018.
Earlier this year, Apple filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm in a California district court for charging unfair prices to license its tech. Qualcomm has since countersued Apple, and withheld around $1 billion in royalty rebates from the iPhone-maker as retaliation for its participation in a Korean Fair Trade Commission investigation.
Given the nature of this feud, don't be surprised to see Apple work to dramatically reduce its reliance on Qualcomm over the next several months. The company recently hired Esin Terzioglu, Qualcomm's VP of Engineering, to head up a new chip project. It's believed they are developing their own, in-house baseband modems.
Source: DigiTimes
At Computex today, chip giant Intel unveiled a new Core X line of high-end processors for desktop computers. The new chips are mostly based on an updated version of Intel's sixth-generation Skylake platform, called Skylake X, with the exception of a pair of entry-level four-core models that are based on the Kaby Lake X platform.
Billed as Intel's most scalable, accessible and powerful desktop platform ever, the lineup includes a new Core i9 processor brand along with a Core i9 Extreme Edition processor—the first consumer desktop chip with a whopping 18 cores and 36 threads of power.
Intel's Turbo Boost technology has been updated with Turbo Boost Max 3.0 technology as well.
According to Intel, the new Core X family sports ten percent faster multithread performance over the previous generation, and a 15 percent boost in single thread performance.
The entry-level Core X i5-7640X chip with four cores and as many threads starts at $242.
The more powerful Core i7 X-Series starts at $339 for a four-core, eight-thread model and goes all the way up to a $599 eight-core, 16-thread chip.
The flagship Core i9 X-Series chip, which stars at ten processor cores and 16 threads, is priced at $999, with its 16-core, 32-thread variant going for $1,699.
The new desktop Core X chips are designed to work with Intel’s new X299 motherboard chipset which should be rolling out on partner products in the coming weeks, along with the new CPUs.
As you know, Apple is expected to update its iMac all-in-ones with server-grade Intel Xeon processors and discreet graphics later this year.
The chip giant says its upcoming eighth-generation Coffe Lake platform will see up to a thirty percent performance improvement over the current seventh-generation Kaby Lake.
It did not provide a timeframe for Coffe Lake chips. “We will have more to say about the eightht-generaiton Core processor in the future,” said Intel.
The Coffe Lake chips may power updated MacBook Pros, coming later this year.
Intel announced today it will be making Thunderbolt 3 royalty-free for manufacturers in 2018 to boost adoption. Moreover, the chip giant will be natively integrating Thunderbolt 3 into its future CPUs, which should help reduce the overall solution cost on the computer.
“We think the first thing is going to drive broader adoption and deployment of Thunderbolt 3 in PCs,” Jason Ziller, Intel’s lead for Thunderbolt development, told Wired. “The second will drive also broader adoption in the ecosystem, with a lot of different peripherals and other devices.”
Intel is continually working with the industry to lower the cost of the cables and the devices. The improving USB-C economies of scale should help Thunderbolt 3 drive down costs.
There are currently about 60 Thunderbolt-compatible peripherals.
About 180 seventh-generation Core CPUs from Intel include native Thunderbolt 3 integration, with another 30 or so expected by the end of the year.
Dan Riccio, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, said:
Apple and Intel have collaborated on Thunderbolt from the beginning, and as the industry leader in its adoption, we applaud Intel’s efforts to integrate Thunderbolt technology into its CPUs and open it up to the rest of the industry.
The Thunderbolt protocol has been struggling to gain traction.
Jointly developed by Apple and Intel six years ago, it's failed to go mainstream due to the royalty fees vendors are required to pay and a combination of high cost and low availability.
Thunderbolt 3 supports data speeds of up to 40 Gbps, allowing you to transfer a 4K movie in about thirty seconds. In addition to data, the protocol allows for power, USB, DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA to be carried over a single reversible port that's compatible with USB-C.
“There always have been and probably will continue to be some wired ports on even the thinnest and lightest computers,” says Ziller. “So having a single port that really do everything that you need is our vision for Thunderbolt 3.”
Apple's MacBook Pro uses a dedicated Thunderbolt 3 controller measuring 10.7mm × 10.7mm.
Microsoft has enhanced Thunderbolt 3 device plug-and-play support in the now available Windows 10 Creators Update, with additional enhancements planned for future OS releases.
By integrating the protocol into its CPUs and making the Thunderbolt specification available to third-party chipmakers royalty-free next year should help Thunderbolt 3 become an industry-standard it was always meant to become.
We know Apple is working on pro-level iMacs slated for release this year and one source has already described some of the features allegedly found on higher-end models, including faster Intel Xeon chips, ECC RAM and more. Citing sources from supply chain makers, Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes said Tuesday that Apple is testing a new server-grade iMac model aimed at high-end users that will take on Microsoft's recently released Surface Studio.
A developer-only preview of what would become the macOS Sierra 10.12.4 software update references a total of eight next-generation MacBook Pro models with the latest Kaby Lake processors from Intel. First discovered by the Apple-centric blog named Pike’s Universum, the code strings in question point to unused IDs for three motherboard identifiers. Aside from other improvements, the Kaby Lake platform enables lower power consumption while possibly bringing support for 32GB RAM.
Intel on Tuesday officially announced its full 7th generation Intel Core processor line, known by many as Kaby Lake, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. There are over 40 new performance-class processors in the family, which are based on Intel's 14nm+ process technology, that offer more speed, productivity and security than previous generations.