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Apple to use AMD Zen SoCs for future iMacs?

Apple has been working pretty closely with AMD over the last couple of years. You can find AMD's Fire Pro graphics cards in the Mac Pro, you can also find Radeon graphics chips in some of the new iMacs and now it seems that Apple may tap AMD again, this time for Zen powered custom processors for future generation iMacs.

AMD has proven that it is capable of building solid APUs or SoCs with the recent generation of consoles. Now, Apple may want similar chips for its next generation iMacs, according to new reports. This System on Chip will be based on the Zen architecture as well, which is currently on the roadmap for 2016.

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While not all enthusiasts are fond of Apple, it is still the biggest company in the world, with potentially a lot of business to give. AMD has spent years working on its upcoming Zen architecture and with the company's current financial state, it needs to see a return on investment, something that Apple could easily help provide if it began ordering custom x86 SoC units for new products.

The initial rumours come from Wccftech, which claims that these AMD powered iMacs wouldn't hit the market until 2017 or 2018, so things are still quite a way off, though AMD CEO, Lisa Su, did admit in a recent quarterly earnings call that the company had secured “two new semi-custom design wins” and this could very well be one of them.

KitGuru Says: Apple is a huge company with a lot of money, so this could potentially be a big win for AMD and help generate some more money, though we have yet to see Zen chips out in the wild yet. During Q3 of 2015 AMD announced a financial loss of £127 million, so hopefully next year we will start to see that turn around. 

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8 comments

  1. Wccftech is trash

    Why is it being used as a source?

  2. Current/Next Gen consoles, Apple Macs, Zen, Arctic Islands. If they string together good results on this then it should help AMD tremendously. Hopefully help with OEM interests.

  3. This is something very interesting that is worth paying your extreme attention ,a very good chance to work for those people who want to use their free time so that they can make some extra money using their computers… I have been working on this for last two and half years and I am earning 60-90 dollar/ hour … In the past week I have earned 13,70 dollars for almost 20 hours sitting ….

    Any special qualification, degree or skills is not necessary for this, just keyboard typing and a good working and reliable internet connection ….

    Not any Time limitations to start work … You may do this work at any time when you willing to do it ….

    Just know how I have been doing this…..….see this (webiste-Iink) on my !profile!` to know how I am working` on this`

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  4. if AMD sells those at little to no profits it’s still a loss, let’s hope for sunnier days for AMD.

  5. Its about time. Still, apple can easily use carrizo SOCs in their imacs and still improve their margins as well as performance of the imacs.

  6. This rumor falls into the same category as http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-develops-custom-server-microprocessor-for-facebook-source/ which never materialized at all…

  7. Nikolas Karampelas

    It is no secret that apple feel a bit weird depending for CPUs on just one company but the energy efficiency of the last generation of AMD chips wasn’t very appealing to consider them.
    If AMD can really manage to give what they promise it is not unlikely for apple to consider adding their CPUs on their machines.

    However given that apple take steps on making their own ARM chips stronger and stronger and knowing that AMD provide custom SoCs to customers (like the console makers) we may even see ARM/x86 hybrids designed in collaboration between Apple and AMD.

    This will give apple way more freedom from just using from out of the self chips from intel or amd, something that apple is craving for since they left RISC CPUs behind.

    So yeah remember you heard it here first 😛

  8. I would never do what his sister does. But it was fun to watch her doing pervy stuff.