According to the latest rumors, Apple could pick AMD as its supplier for chips in next-gen iMac desktops and notebooks.

AMD has been doing quite well with its semi-custom SoCs that are powering current Xbox One and Playstation 4 consoles as well as upcoming Playstation 4 Pro and Project Scorpio consoles, showing that it is possible to squeeze in plenty of CPU and GPU performance in a single SoC.

This apparently pushed Apple to consider AMD's custom SoC for its future notebook and desktop systems, especially with strong performance predictions regarding AMD's upcoming Zen CPU architecture.

Apple is already using AMD's GPUs for its 5K iMac and Mac Pro devices but the advantages of a custom SoC is certainly something that Apple could be considering. The fact that it can make a single chip that needs a single cooler, similar to the Xbox One and PS4 consoles, would certainly suit Apple and its design concept.

AMD also has another advantage over Intel, the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA), a cross-vendor set of specifications which allow the integration of CPU and GPU on the same bus, sharing both memory and tasks. This also allow AMD to increase productivity in certain tasks, which should allow Apple to further optimize its software to take advantage of that additional productivity.

We suspect that Apple could be aiming for a custom SoC that could be in line with AMD's upcoming Raven Ridge APU, with Zen CPU architecture paired up with a Polaris GPU, offering both decent amount of CPU and GPU performance.





Source: via Overclock3D.net.