THE FUTURE OF PROCESSORS

With all of this coming from the mainstream manufacturers, you might be forgiven for thinking that’s it for the world of the humble processor. Well, there’s one outlier you might not expect to be making waves, but there are more than just ripples coming from our longmisjudged technical brothers across the battle-ravaged OS ocean. Apple is seemingly picking up the pace when it comes to processor design and overall performance. Take a look at the ARMbased Bionic A12 X processor found in its latest tablets, and even in the iPhone XS, and you’ll see performance numbers equal to a mid-clocked Sky Lake Core i5-6400 or so.

That might seem like small fry when you look at the current state of desktop processors, but given the fact that the company has been working on its own bionic processors for a little over six years, coupled with Intel’s continued delays in hitting its transistor targets, and the big fruit might finally be making its way to forging its own processors to replace the Intel ones found within its consumer devices. This is further backed up by a report from Bloomberg, back in 2017, stating that Apple plans to replace Intel’s processors inside its Mac lineup by 2020.

Given that the iPhone XR scores a hefty 4,793 points in GeekBench’s single-core test, in comparison to an AMD Ryzen Threadripper’s 4,801, it’s not hard to see where this could go if Apple really pushes the boundaries of that ARM processing tech. Apple’s got its foot in the door of single-core performance.