1/ Apple's upcoming ARM MacBooks isn't just going to save them some money and run a bit faster. It marks the beginning of the end of the x86 era and Intel's four decade empire.

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2/ In the computer industry, victories are won through standards and scale. Intel invented the x86 standard. And by winning in the largest market of the 90s—PCs, it moved upmarket and eclipsed all server CPU vendors in a decade.

3/ Today smartphones are by far the largest computer market. At $600B, it’s larger than PCs and servers combined. Smartphones use ARM CPUs while PCs and servers use x86. Through the forces of standards and scale, it ought to displace x86 CPUs in PCs and servers. Why hasn’t it?

4/ In a word—developers. Developers are the third force that influences which platforms win or lose. Apps are written for phones but not on phones. Almost all code is written on x86 PCs or x86 servers in the cloud. x86 has developers locked in.

5/ Many companies have tried building ARM servers without success. Why? Linus Torvalds offers a simple explanation: developers want the cloud to run the same code as their laptops. Since devs code on x86 laptops, they want to deploy on x86 servers in the cloud.

6/ If Linus is right, the catalyst for the rest of the computer market to shift to ARM is a credible ARM based laptop for developers.

Enter Apple—and the rumors of its upcoming ARM powered MacBook. https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/27/21196611/arm-macbook-desktop-apple-2021-release-date

7/ Apple isn’t just any PC vendor. It may only have 8% PC market share, but it has 29% share among sw developers. If Apple moves to ARM, it moves a large and highly influential developer base with it. With their laptops running ARM, devs will default to ARM in the cloud.

8/ Independent of Apple, ARM is going all-in on servers, promising 30% annual performance improvements. Using ARM’s Neoverse IP, Marvell, Ampere, Amazon, and others are building massive, Xeon-scale server CPUs.

9/ Amazon’s Graviton 2 ARM chip was just benchmarked by AnandTech—a website not known for hyperbole. Its conclusion? “An x86 Massacre.” ARM’s cost for the same performance was almost half of Intel and AMD x86 parts.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15578/cloud-clash-amazon-graviton2-arm-against-intel-and-amd/9

10/ Amazon switching to ARM should deeply worry Intel. AWS doesn’t just rent servers, it’s increasingly an OS, a dev platform. Intel’s Developer Forum last drew 6k attendees. AWS reinvent drew 60k. While CPUs were the target platforms of past eras, today’s target is the cloud.

11/ After decades of spectacular success by winning over developers, x86 now faces the threat of losing them. Apple & Amazon control 1/3 and 1/2 of local and cloud developers respectively. Both are re-platforming to ARM. When they’re done, so too will be the x86 era.