Apple computers will be moving away from Intel chips to its own ARM-based design. An interesting thing about Apple as a company is that it has never felt the need to tie itself to a particular system architecture or ISA. Whereas a company like Microsoft mostly tied its fortunes to Intel’s x86 architecture, and IBM, Sun, HP and other giants preferred vertical integration, Apple is currently moving towards its fifth system architecture for its computers since the company was formed.
What makes this latest change possibly unique, however, is that instead of Apple relying on an external supplier for CPUs and peripheral ICs, they are now targeting a vertical integration approach. Although the ARM ISA is licensed to Apple by Arm Holdings, the ‘Apple Silicon’ design that is used in Apple’s ARM processors is their own, produced by Apple’s own engineers and produced by foundries at the behest of Apple.
In this article I would like to take a look back at Apple’s architectural decisions over the decades and how they made Apple’s move towards vertical integration practically a certainty.
A Product of its Time
The Apple I. Wooden board not included in delivery.
The 1970s was definitely the era when computing was brought to living rooms around the USA, with the Commodore PET, Tandy TRS-80 and the Apple II microcomputers defining the late 1970s. Only about a year before the Apple II’s release, the newly formed partnership between Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs had produced the Apple I computer. The latter was sold as a bare, assembled PCB for $666.66 ($2,995 in 2019), with about 200 units sold.
Like the Apple I, the Apple II and the ..
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