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Apple Buys a Chip Company for $278M
An anonymous reader writes "Apple's just bought a chip company, P.A. Semi that could make chips for iPhones and maybe iPods. Apple wouldn't reveal the exact plans, but Dan Dobberpuhl, lead designer of Alpha's chips, is known for making super efficient processors, like a 64-bit dual core last year that was supposedly about 300% more efficient than the nearest competition, using only 5 to 13 watts at 2GHz. Apple's quarterly results are later today, so we might hear more about the deal. This is something of a blow to ARM, especially with the mobile chip market heating up recently, with forays by Intel and Nvidia adding to competition from established players like VIA."
The Apple Product Cycle
Discuss.
Apple is increasing moving into embedded and mobile markets more and more with iPhone, iPod, etc. I think we're going to start to see more small footprint devices from Apple in the future, maybe even something that creates a whole new product category. Information-based devices and appliances are the future, and Apple is one of the companies poised to do great things in this market.
This is a precursor to some big things and I think Apple is taking itself in an entirely new direction.
Just me $0.02.
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Maybe, but the PA Semi guys have already shown that they can produce good designs for two ISAs, adding a third wouldn't be beyond their abilities. I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing their PowerPC chips in things like the AppleTV and ARM cores designed by the same team in handheld devices.
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G5 LAPTOP WOOOHOOO!!!!!!!
Thank god, I was wondering how long it would take for this to show up on Slashdot (well, actually I'm hoping for Ars, but /. will do for now).
Can someone smarter than me about these matters explain to me what this means? Why did Apple do it? Did they get a good value for it?
The article says 'designer of Alpha chips' not 'designer of Alpha's' chips.
5 to 13 watts at 2GHz? And 100 cycles per command? What kind of range is that "5 to 13"? And obligatory car analogy: 20 to 52MPG seems rather large deviation...
I'm very curious where Apple is going with this. P.A. Semi so far has only put information about one design up on their website and it's been there at least since the rumor that Apple was going to buy them (shortly before they went to Intel). That chip, being somewhere between Atom & Core2 I suppose, doesn't seem to me to good fit to any of Apple's existing products.
The idea that hidden up their sleeves P.A. Semi has an ultra efficient SOC design for a next generation iPhone/iPod/Tablet is sort of interesting but I'd be really surprised if a dark horse came out nowhere and outdid the various upcoming Intel offerings or even the existing ARM SOC designs. Intel is very, very proud of their Low Voltage and Ultra Low Voltage parts but surely that added cost doesn't make it worth Apple's while to go out a buy a company.
The idea that P.A. Semi has a next generation chip suitable workstation or home computer applications for me is even more unlikely. I think it would have to some chip to really motivate Apple to go away from Intel for their Mac lines.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Maybe PA Semi are crucial in getting the power requirements down in a future 3G iPhone to keep battery life reasonable.
Realize that this move could give Apple a means to thwart jailbreaking if they decide to do so. A move away from open firmware is entirely possible (starting with the iPhone of course). How likely? ... discuss.
Discuss. -
They can buy Enron for all I care.
Invenio via vel creo
Ultra-low power chips are enormously important for several key Apple areas. They're buying technology; but also expertise.
There are all sorts of things that Apple could be looking at this for Apple TV, iPhone, Tablet's, Apple EEPC/Macbook Air, Newton, iPod or even something different.
But at the same time they like to work with Intel on chip designs. They had one specially made for the Macbook Air. Besides the implied threat of an ability to go their own way they might find that collaborating with Intel on design may give them a massive say in the ultra-low power chips end up.
Without directly using PA Semi chips they could use PA semi to improve their own power consumption. Ultimately, $278m isn't actually that much money given the importance of low power performance to Apple across most of their product line.
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
... the return of PowerMac, now with dual PowerPC cores?
It's a potential blow the the company, not the architecture. That was pretty obvious from the summary alone.
I've never been a big fan of Apple chips. I prefer sea salt and vinegar. Preferably kettle cooked.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
McCain or Bird's Eye?
(Readers left of the pond may substitute Lays and Herr's, otherwise you won't have a clue what I'm on about).
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
There, fixed it for you.
When you are in Apple's position, you leave the semiconductor development to others and let them battle it out to make the best component at the best price.
This was stupid.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Except that, ARM unlike all the other companies named, doesn't actually _make_ chips. It designs cores, which it licenses to other companies - many other companies in fact.
Apple changing architecture I suppose is possible (not like they haven't before), but it seems like an odd step when there are many ARM-based manufacturers to choose from. ARM themselves wins no matter what.
Posting as AC because I have to bust this myth about once a week and I don't want to karma whore. No modern desktop processor implements its ISA directly. x86 is easily translated into RISC during instruction decode. And since one x86 instruction often represents several RISC instructions, x86 results in a significant savings in data cache. So x86 may be ugly, but there is no valid, objective reason to switch away from it.
I've always wondered why Steve Jobs didn't announce a dual-architecture strategy from the get-go. But perhaps that was the plan all along, and Apple simply needed to announce "Intel only" to get all their developers moved as quickly as possible to universal binaries. Now that Microsoft and Adobe, the last holdouts, have complied, Apple can go back to a dual (or even tri, with iPhone's ARM) architecture approach, choosing the right processor core for the right device and maximizing its flexibility and distinctiveness.
For example, the PowerPC core would be perfect for AppleTV and possibly a new Mac nano, where the cost of an Intel chip simply doesn't make sense. Apple is probably losing money on every AppleTV box right now. Every universal binary already runs on PowerPC, so all the applications and development ecosystem are already in place. The fact VMware and Parallels don't run on PowerPC is a feature, not a bug: Apple can wean some more users away from Microsoft Windows as certain devices hit the market and get some better market segmentation. Users who want Intel can buy Intel, and users who want alternative form factors, alternative power consumption profiles, lower cost, and/or new device categories can get PowerPC under the hood and still run the full Mac OS X portfolio of software. And having their own chip company helps keep Intel honest. Apple probably didn't like Intel's forced march from Santa Rosa to Penryn. That was inconsistent with Apple's longer product cycles. And all the game consoles are PowerPC-based, so that could be appealing if Apple ever wants to entice some game developers over to some of their devices. (Games do tend to work down on the iron.) IBM continues to underwrite PowerPC for its own server lines and has cranked up POWER6 to 5.0 GHz in its servers, way beyond Intel's best, so it's still an architecture with a lot of interesting advantages.
Welcome to the fold, Hillary. Now you know what it's like to have all of the vitriol of the far-left propaganda machine, including your former allies in the media, directed at you while your opponent gets a pass on some very glaring problems. In their rush to coronate ObamaJesus, they're pushing a candidate with a glass jaw which an experienced John McCain will shatter with a few taps. So tell me, Hill. In retrospect, do you still believe in affirmative action (i.e. giving a person something they didn't earn based on an arbitrary qualification like skin-color)?
This isn't that surprising really. Apple is very much a hardware company these days. They must ensure that they have control over not only the software and external design of their products, but also the "guts" of their products.
Jobs is obviously a fanatic about design and as time goes on, we'll see more and more "vertical integration" like this. Also remember that Apple is growing and is relatively flush with cash.
This is perhaps a very solid investment (bean counting as it were), outside the realm of design, software, hardware, and other technical matters.
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With the iPhone, iPod, and so on, to save power and keep prices down you really want system-on-a-chip designs. But if you buy commodity, then you get the same system-on-a-chip everyone else can get. It's hard to do something different. For desktop machines, you can distinguish yourself by the combination of features (even though Apple machines aren't that different to anyone elses these days, except possibly for firewire), but you can't do that in the embedded/mobile space if cost and power dictate it's a single chip design. So, my guess is they want their own in-house capability to build system-on-a-chip designs that are different from everyone else. Different in what way though, I have no idea.
This kind of processor is right at home in embedded applications. A new storage product or a new and vastly improved AppleTV may be coming.
;-)
Either that or a new Macintosh LC
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It's debatable. There have been plenty of people who've said that if they were in Apple's position, they'd license the Mac OS and let others battle it out to make the hardware. That would be a seriously foolish move for Apple partly because they make so much money off of hardware, but also because one of their main design philosophies is designing the whole "widget". Apple seems to really like being in direct control of as many pieces of their products as they can. I bet if they thought they could realistically design and manufacture their own CPUs, they'd do that to.
Maybe they've got something in mind but that they don't think they can convince different chip makers to move in that direction. They've just got a ton of cash laying around, maybe they felt like taking a little risk is worth it to get certain types of chips that they really want. This isn't Apple just blindly jumping into an industry that they have no idea about. There's got to be a specific reason for this.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Fixed again.
PA Semi is fabless. Other companies will be battling it out to make them.
But Apple gets to design chips to perfectly match the features they want in upcoming iPhones, without allowing the competitors to follow quickly behind by buying the same chip.
Universal Binary.
Hey, you never know.
Before you say "Apple will never do that", let me remind you of some things we all heard before:
- Apple will never release a low-cost computer
- Apple will never make a music player
- Apple will never enter the cellphone market
- Apple will never dump support for Mac OS classic
- Apple will never switch to Intel
Vertical integration is not necessarily stupid.
This company that they bought simply licenses the Power architecture from IBM, and then makes manufacturing/design changes to make the chips more energy efficient. They make a dual-core 2GHz power chip with 2MB of cache, and integrated DDR2 controller with DMA controller... burning just 5-13W. AFAIK, no one else is making anything similar. Atom seems similar on the x86 side, but is larger and does not have the same features.
If Apple gained the ability to produce a product that others cannot match, then the move was not stupid. If Apple bought a commodity chip maker, then the move was stupid. They can always spin it back off if the product becomes a commodity.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
A rational player in Apple's position would do that.
But we are talking about Apple here.
I doubt they are trying to get into semiconductor development other than for their own products. And considering Apple has billions in cash, $278M is a fairly small amount, anyway.
And now some retarded Slashdot moderator have modded me flamebait again.
APPLE DOES INDEED NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THEIR COMPUTERS AND OSES _FOR GAMING_.
They don't care about game developers, their OpenGL perform bad, and the H2 2007 MBPs only had 128MB vram (if you didn't wanted to pay an extra leg for 256MB...), Macbook run integrated graphics, cheapest iMac have worse gfx than the mbp, Mac Pro ships with crappy gfx, and so on.
This was stupid.
Unless they have something really, really specific in mind that the market can't provide.
Remember, macs had SCSI despite the expense because the market had nothing that did anything similar available at the time. They had SCSI until peripheral busses like Firewire and USB arrived, at which point they dumped it like a dead rat. See also their long string of proprietary monitor connectors - the 25-pin mac standard, Applevision, ACD - the latter two of which provide essentially the same functionality for two different generations of technology.
In my experience, Apple's the kind of company who's willing to let other companies make the bits (including software), if the bits do what they need. If they can't get anything useful from third parties, they will make it themselves. The best example there (after the Mac itself) would be software - MP3 players on MacOS were unstable, crash-prone winamp clones until Apple bought an audio software company and then iTunes came along.... and entry level through prosumer (and even pro, depending on who you talk to) video editing on the mac SUCKED ASS until Apple bought a chunk of video editing software and twisted it into the awesome that is Final Cut Pro.
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"When you are in Apple's position, you leave the semiconductor development to others and let them battle it out to make the best component at the best price. This was stupid."
How in the world would this help Apple? If they could make their own, cutting out the middle men that need to make a profit, it seems to me that this would be a great move. Developing in house almost always yields cheaper components, better fits, etc... You own it! Now couple this with the fact that Apple at least seems to think that these would be better than what is out there now, and this truly is a no-brainer.
You make it seem as if there are a few 10 year olds deciding Apple's business practice over peanut butter and jelly's. And if that's true, then they deserve a higher allowance.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Everyones knows steve jobs is a control freak
Everyone also knows that Steve jobs is someone you don't mess with in a face to face negotiation. He will cut you up. This move, i believe is one that is basically a stick to waggle at big ol' intel. Steve Jobs buys lots of chips from intel. He would like to purchase them at a cheaper cost. This company can force them to give apple that price point.
Also Apple gains more expertise in the chip biz. Apple can now say those designs are bullshit, gimme a better price or those can be made smaller.
Of course apple will continue to develop it's own chips, so when intel, like IBM, can't take any more of apples games, Apple jumps ship.
When you are in Apple's position, you leave the semiconductor development to others and let them battle it out to make the best component at the best price.
This was stupid.
But what if Apple just denied all other small device makers the use of a chip that's three times more efficient than the competition?
Then Apple has the best chip, that no-one else can have at any price...
It's easy to say something looks stupid now, but without the roadmap for the company and for Apple you are just guessing. And Apple has a record of making smart choices, especially in the last few years. Therefore, we can reasonably say it's way more likely your pronouncement is of the "iPod Lame" sort that SLashdot is so famous for.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Their current product is 65 nm and probably competitive with 65 nm Core2 Duo at the 2 GHz clockspeed, possibly with current 45 nm Core 2 at the 2GHz speed. Note:
1. Full VMX
2. Crossbar ("Connexium" trademark)
3. DMA controller with crypto, RAID and TCP offload (secure hard drives with RAID?)
4. About 40% of the power dissipation of Core2, and that with 65 nm vs 45 nm.
5. iPod wheels present at the negotiations. Hmmmm?
Bump
Sig this!
Here's a thought: Special purpose coprocessors for media appliances. Increased battery efficiency for video playback on iPhone, lower processor overhead for AppleTV, longer battery life on the iPod, etc. Maybe a standardized, dedicated, and proprietary AppleDRM chip, embedded across the entire line of Apple media products.
I dunno. Just a thought.
When you are in Apple's position, you leave the semiconductor development to others and let them battle it out to make the best component at the best price.
The semiconductor industry is really only interested in creating the best "general-purpose" semiconductor. If a hardware company like Apple has specific or divergent needs, their choices are to pay through the nose to "partner" with a chipmaker to accommodate their requirements (if they can find one willing), or to buy a chipmaker outright and do whatever they want.
Apple doesn't want to be stuck in the situation they were just a few years ago, needing IBM to improve the PowerPC so their business could move forward, but finding IBM uninterested in investing the effort because it wasn't profitable enough to them.
Idiots who are bothered by people to lazy to type more than a subject.
Discuss.
The odd thing is that it is a POWER instruction set CPU. Whilst I know that Apple are flexible, it seems an odd move.
Far more likely is that Apple want them to design a 2GHz dual-core ARM compatible CPU. Depending on the design of their current CPUs, it could be possible that this work could just affect a relatively small part of the overall CPU (although still a lot of work).
Then again, why not move to using POWER in Apple's mobile devices instead of ARM... hmm.
It's less than 2% of Apple's savings, and I believe the company already has clients and sales so it could just be a good investment in the long term.
Well, if you own a large percentage of a market, and that market requires a specific type of processor, then you're essentially - by buying large quantities of it - paying for this processor's development anyway, thus subsidising your competition.
Also, if you have a chip that is better than everyone else's, and you own that chip, that's a huge competitive advantage.
I'm not saying this is the case here. Just saying that there may be sound reasons for a move such as Apple's.
You mean, like, Frito Lay? Sweet!
Apple is buying itself a bargaining chip (pun) for negotiating with Intel on their pc line. They were able to tell Mot/IBM to f off using Intel. Now they will be able to repeat the same thing to Intel if Intel does not do their bidding. In fact they are in a stronger position since they will be in the CPU business themselves.
We need to move away from x86 to a modern design, rather than one that has gradually been modified beyond all recognition and hacked to gain 32 bit then 64 bit compatibility, etc. As an Amiga/Mac user for most of my early life, I've always thought of x86 as an inferior and inefficient chip design. Apple has demonstrated twice now how well they can adapt their OS for any architecture.
Apple is no longer free to change their CPU architecture. They are "locked in" to x86 due to their dependence on running Windows. Mac market share jumped significantly when they switched to Intel and jumped significantly again when they offered Windows compatibility. While Windows emulation has been available since at least G3 PowerPC Macs, it suffered greatly because it had to emulate the x86 CPU instruction set. The switch to Intel made that unnecessary and made emulation viable. The decades old question, should I go Mac or PC, largely ended. You could have both on a single machine. When dual boot became an option then the last barrier fell, those who needed absolute performance, gamers for example, could now have both on a single machine. Switching to a non-x86 Mac architecture would probably destroy the 50% increase in market share, 4% to 6%, that Intel brought them.
You are echoing the same argument that the PowerPC consortium made in the very early 90s. The flaw in their logic and yours is that Intel can overcome x86 inefficiency and difficulty of working with it by spending more money. PowerPC was more efficient and a modern design that could more easily be enhanced, but Intel could throw 10x the resources at x86. PowerPC did not really fail because it failed to improve, it failed because no one ever imagined that Intel could get the x86 to the levels of performance that they did. The PowerPC folks expected Intel to try to move x86 users to a new CPU, Itanium as it turned out, and that would break the x86 lock and allow buyers to consider other non-x86 alternatives. I believe you are making the same mistake. Consider that the x86 architecture is really a facade, that underneath this facade Intel is free to change from one modern RISC design to another, or to whatever is next, allowing them to increase performance without breaking compatibility. On the fly translation of x86 operations into RISC micro-ops combined with reordering and other technologies is going to be far harder to overcome than you suggest.
Power Architecture is not a chip design, it's an ISA design license. You pay IBM and you get to make a chip which runs code off the Power ISA.
:)
They didn't "make design/manufacturing changes to make chips more energy efficient", they started the core and all the peripheral units from scratch, from the ground up, and just made sure it ran 64-bit PPC code at the end of it. Far more than an IBM licensed chip
What is hard to get to grips to is what plans Apple have for a company that makes PPC chip designs, when they have just thrown PPC away and moved to x86, and are making inroads to ARM. It may be they want the ARM (StrongARM/XScale) design experience that PASemi's staff have, and not the PPC chip. But that's like throwing the baby away and drinking the bathwater..
I think this is a wrong move. Many system companies have tried to make their own silicon and it usually works for the first generation but to keep an internal team motivated and keep delivering cutting edge chips has not worked. Cisco comes to mind.
Also never underestimate Intel..
From one of the links: "The PA6T-1682SM is dual-core, 64-bit system on a chip (SoC) that consumes only 25 watts of power when running at 2GHz. PA Semi achieved this remarkable combination of clockspeed, features, and power efficiency through a number of techniques."
;).
The PA Semi's site says 5-13W _typical_.
Intel already has a 2.13GHz _quad_ core at 40W TDP, it's called the L5408.
And Intel are coming up with even lower power chips soon (Intel Atom). 1.6GHz - TDP = 2.3W. Naturally these won't benchmark as well, but how well do the PA Semi chips do?
So lets see some SPEC benchmarks - especially comparing FPU and integer performance. Because there are already low watt x86 CPUs with crap FPU performance (e.g. Via's stuff). AMD also has low power stuff too - Sempron, Geode etc.
I'm glad I'm not competing against Intel
So, I think Apple is perfectly willing to use these chips, and I suspect already did any porting work several years ago. Hell, they might even have some Rosetta-esque technology that obviates the need for a recompile from PowerPC - should perform much better than Rosetta for Intel!
Heck, I remember this company being pretty miffed at Apple for the Intel switch - perhaps this whole deal is just a way for Apple to avoid any contractual obligations or potential lawsuits. It might have been cheaper to buy them than to fulfill some contract.
Like I said, gotta love that speculation!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Look at what's in a modern Mac. Everything is an off-the-shelf component except for the firmware. This is an eerily similar situation to IBM when they designed the original PC. There too, the PC was made entirely from off-the-shelf components except for the BIOS code. The big difference being that Apple owns their operating system rather than licensing it from a third party, as IBM did with DOS. They presumably have the right to refuse others the right to use OS X on non-Apple branded PC's. Although, according to some recent articles posted here, that may not be true.
At this point, Apple is nothing but a high-end VAR with strong branding. (At least in the desktop market. Their position in the mobile device market is somewhat different) Apple computers are just high priced port keys for OS X. If someone reverse-engineers Apple's firmware and successfully defends itself from Apple's lawyers, then Apple will become an OS vendor directly in competition with Microsoft. I believe that Apple wants to avoid that situation. Porting back to PPC cores would do it. However, I think a move like that would backfire on them. The ability to cherry pick the best hardware designs from the large and mature x86 market is a tremendous advantage. Moving back to a PPC design would likely mean a decline in performance over time. (less competition, less innovation in CPU's) Chipsets would be less mature and potentially less stable. Because of these performance issues, desktop and laptop market shares would decline. Manufacturing costs would also increase, biting into Apple's profit margins.
The truth is, the market is trying to force them out of the retail PC-desktop market. They could respond to that by going proprietary, or they could choose to license OSX before getting forced into it. I believe they would be wise to admit that they are an OS vendor and begin licensing OS X at a time of their choosing, rather than letting the market choose for them. Apple would be better served by spinning off their desktop division and concentrating on mobile devices, software, and services like the iTunes music store. If they ever want to grow beyond a 20% share in the PC market, that is what they will have to do.
But this also gives them a nice intermediate step for making their own desktop/laptop chips. They manufacture their own CPUs for the ipod, they could start making their own CPUs for the desktop with some work. Whether they want to do this or not, it takes them one giant step closer while being profitable if they never do. At the very least it gives them a more powerful bargaining position against Intel, because now Apple really doesn't need them. They can switch to AMD in the short term, get their own chip manufacturing capacity and design up to speed, then dump AMD.
All things considered, I'm surprised they haven't made this move earlier. Makes me wonder if this means they're going to be announcing a new product line soon.
Thanks for correcting me. You learn something every day - or at least I do.
These are the guys Apple was working with just before the Intel shift, trying to get a decent laptop chip. They may have connections to the company that we are not aware of.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"They make a dual-core 2GHz power chip with 2MB of cache, and integrated DDR2 controller with DMA controller... burning just 5-13W. AFAIK, no one else is making anything similar. Atom seems similar on the x86 side, but is larger and does not have the same features."
Atom is smaller, Centrino Atom is a bit larger, but also has all of those other pesky features you need to build a platform (PCI-Express, USB, etc. etc). Atom burns 3W max, with under 0.2W being the average load. Centrino Atom is competitive with ~10W max.
PA Semi doesn't compete with Intel at all in this market. PA Semi's chips are more comparable to the back-plane models of Intel's Pentium-M chips, where it wins hands down. Of course, nobody's saying you can't build a desktop or server machine around them, but they really aren't designed for that kind of work, nor were they designed to be competitive with deeply embedded processors like ARM and the Atom.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
1. Apple gave up using PPC processors back a couple of years ago in favor of the switch to Intel, to satisfy the volume requirements of Apple's customers.
2. P.A. Semi makes devices and processors based on the PPC and PPC64 architecture
3. Apple buys P.A. Semi
Am I the only one who is confused here?
Well, I think they just want to integrate more. The key to inexpensive and low power computing in portable devices is getting more and more on one chip. So they probably just want to put an ARM, power management, I/O and all the custom stuff they have on outside-the-CPU chips on one chip. The iPhone is half battery, and with speakers, switches, jacks and such there's hardly any room in there for chips!
They bought the expertise to put more of their custom stuff inside a system-on-chip, for iPhone, iPod, and that touch-tablet in the wings.
Mike from www.myallo.com/blog
Well even if this was an ARM killer Apple don't have anywhere near the fab capacity to produce the arm chips that are put EVERYWHERE. You cna buy 5$ micro controlers with ARM cpus, you can buy massive FPGA's that have arm cpu's intigrated. Your DVD player probobly has at least one... hell nowerdays your mouse has a god chance of having one.
One little detail you overlooked is important to understanding what Apple might possibly do with this stuff.
Apple doesn't have much in the way of ARM code at all, to the extent that nearly all of their ARM code is generated by a compiler. Apple has C and Objective C code, and has LLVM sitting between the hardware and the Apple application source code. Apple can run on any hardware platform they like. They can support more than one hardware platform at almost negligible marginal cost. While the rest of the industry flails about, with their obsolete notions of "platform wars", Apple can simultaneously participate on the industry standards platform (or platforms as the case happens to be) and also invent a better platform, for one or many other product categories. Those can also overlap.
Apple is essentially platform agnostic, with respect to hardware.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Also the iPod too. The 1st gen iPods were designed by Apple but was heavily based on software by PortalPlayer and the UI was contracted out to Pixio. With each generation, Apple has taken over more control of the product to include new features like video, mobile phone, etc. that the original design components could never handle.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Oblig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiAgrrwL_mk
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
There was a lot of talk a while back of Apple buying up Sun or SGI, or having a merger, which would enable them to muscle into the hard-core server market, soup up their unix-based OS, and get a ton of chip-level hardware wizards on board. Now knowing that this is basically impossible, I wonder if execs at those two now also-rans are getting ready to byte the bullet or bail out.
Right you are... OS X and all Universal Binary apps support both platforms, x86 and PowerPC. The work to accomplish this is done, in the bag. To maintain support for both platforms going forward would be relatively easy. As non-Universal apps fall by the wayside, users care less and less about what kind of processor happens to be under the hood.
has cranked up POWER6 to 5.0 GHz in its servers, way beyond Intel's best, so it's still an architecture with a lot of interesting advantages.
Indeed. It would make sense to put POWER6 in Xserves. Maintaining the ability to resume building PPC Macs would be a tremendous advantage for Apple. The assembly line could make the switch often: this week we're installing PPC processors, but the buyers have a batch of Intel processors on order, and next week we'll install those. Whichever happens to offer the best price / performance ratio at the moment. Always riding the horse that's out in front.
Now for an unlikely scenario: there once was a version of Windows NT that ran on PPC machines. If POWER's performance lead becomes large enough, it would be in M$'s interest to revive that project. (Granted, it would have to be a pretty darn large performance lead.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
5 to 13 watts at 2GHz is not very clever and is not going anywhere near my ear or pocket. I doubt an iPhone can dissipate that much heat.
.5Ghz. Even Atom - which is a much better bet for apple to reign in their codebase and target platforms only sucks down a Watt at 1Ghz.
Coretex A8 produces about 300mW at
Fair enough, but in a lot of ways, Steve Jobs = Apple right now. Since he's the CEO, what he says goes. He's been right more than he's been wrong, and Apple has prospered.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
"Apple Inc. may have to face the ire of the U.S. Department of Defense following its planned acquisition of P.A. Semi Inc. The startup's PWRficient processor is designed into DoD programs in every major branch of the armed services, said one P.A. Semi customer who expects Apple will end production of the parts."
LINK:http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207401605
Hope of some interest
Couple this efficient processor with this new video can communications processor that is rumored to debut in Australia;
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/backstage/comments/what-s-gold3-could-really-mean-for-the-next-iphone/
The pertinent paragraph;
Enhanced Data Networks and Rates: Arguably the most important new features of S-GOLD3H are also semi-obvious ones. The new chip supports the 3G network standards picked by leading domestic and foreign mobile phone companies, including HSDPA category 8 (7.2Mbit/second) data transfers, as well as WCDMA with 384kbit/second simultaneous upload and downloads, or 640kbit/second independent uploading or downloading. It also adds support for third-generation GRPS, versus the second-generation GPRS in the current iPhone. Together, these standards could allow the new iPhone to work in virtually any country on the planet, and deliver tremendous improvements in web page, e-mail, and other data delivery: four to eight times faster with WCDMA, and potentially ten times that with the right HSDPA network. Real world speeds are likely to fall short of the theoretical maximums, but they'll still be a lot better, and iPhone will be more compatible, too.
If -- and this is a big "if", Telephone companies like AT&T support these higher bandwidth cellphone systems at a reasonable price, you can say good-bye to needing a phone at home, at work and an internet connection in both places. Your iPhone with a blue-tooth connection, could provide in most cases a faster connection. The only stumbling point would be the cost per minute. I expect all the greedy monopolies to charge dearly for these things, while places like Europe, Australia, Asia and Israel will have always-connected phones providing video and web services. Anyway, for the people lucky enough to be in countries with actual telecommunications competition, the next-gen iPhone could replace all the duplicate communications devices and media devices you own. That would be about $250 a month for me -- so even if there is a $150 per month charge on a phone like this, it would be worth it, if your company were savvy enough to support you using the phone, rather than setting up a network and phone system at your job.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Apple has $18 billion in cash and no debt. The P.A. Semi acquisition costs $0.278 billion and involves a 150 person engineering team. Apple can acquire P.A. Semi just because. Of course, Apple under Jobs is known for successful execution of visionary long-term business plans, not for reckless acquisitions.
So what can Apple do with P.A. Semi?
P.A. Semi doesn't have a significant revenue stream, as far as I can tell, but it does have technology and talent. According to Wikipedia, P.A. Semi's engineering team includes expertise in Itanium, Opteron, and UltraSPARC. Their products boast high performance embedded computing at 1/3 power consumption. This tells me the PWRficient processors are higher-performance than the ARM currently used in iPhone and iPods, but uses much less power than the Core 2 processors used everywhere else in Apple's product line.
Suppose P.A. Semi can scale their CPUs smaller or larger to compete with the fastest ARMs and the slowest Core 2's. With scaled-down PWRficient processors, Apple can produce iPhones/iPods with dramatically longer battery life than their ARM-equipped competitors (or smaller devices with the same battery life). Similarly, Apple can produce subnotebook computers with dramatically longer battery life than their x86 competition.
If nothing else, Apple can use PWRficient as a bargaining chip with Intel. How much is Intel willing to discount sales to Apple, if Apple agrees not to use PWRficient in Apple TV? Considering the pains Apple went through when it was dependent on Motorola or IBM for PowerPC processors, Apple would be wise to keep several options open.
Of course, P.A. Semi has no fabs, so Apple is dependent on P.A.s current agreements with Texas Instruments for production. But, AMD is struggling to keep up with Intel's technology, and may have excess production capacity. If Intel doesn't give Apple deep enough discounts, AMD surely could do so.
Those not familiar with Apple's unique strengths may object to the complexities of supporting multiple platforms, but Apple has already solved that problem. Apple Universal Binaries can include binary code for up to four platforms: i386, x86_64, ppc, ppc64. What's one more? If Apple's history with Intel support is any indicator, Apple has probably had their software running on PWRficient all along, in their secret internal labs.
Also consider that one of Apple's research projects is LLVM, specifically designed for dynamic compilation and optimization of intermediate-level code for any supported hardware platform. Apple can borrow P.A. Semi's engineering talent to help with LLVM.
Unlike Microsoft's courtship (if you can call it that) of Yahoo!, the P.A. Semi employees would probably have no objection to working for Apple. This is likely to be a smooth acquisition.
Apple could do a lot of useful things with P.A. Semi. With the low cost of the acquisition, the small size of P.A. Semi, and Apple's abundance of cash, this is a low-risk acquisition with lots of possibilities.
Apple is essentially platform agnostic, with respect to hardware.
Due to economies of scale, Apple must choose hardware with somewhat similar production volumes as the most popular hardware platform in that category. For desk-/laptop, that means x86. If you remember, Apple dropped PPC because of lower production volumes which translated to less R&D and cutting edge fab investments, which in turn led to PPC falling behind x86 in price/performance. On the handheld/ultramobile side, any new hardware platform will have to compete with the large existing ARM market (and soon the well-funded and x86 compatible Intel Atom). Unless Apple can get economies of scale within shouting distance of the most prevalent hardware platform in a given category, they will be in for an expensive lesson in how "obsolete" the "platform wars" are.
Not to mention that while Apple might be hardware agnostic, 3rd party software isn't.
Anyway.. they bought a chip design company that specializes in high performance low power network storage server chips, not mobile/laptop chips. In the short term nothing is likely to come from this except perhaps a hefty upgrade in the next XServe RAID.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
Let's hope this chip manufacturer fares better than MOS.
Would Apple get into the business of UMPC/WindowsMobile space by buying PA Semi? They already have a MacOS for Power platform and PA Semi can be used in a small form factor. Other obvious applications could be Apple TV, set top boxes etc. Whatever it is, Apple would want to dive into it with full force to justify a purchase.
Now if only Heisenberg had invented a contraption that could tell whether or not the cat was alive and well without opening the box. I guess we'll never know...
Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing.
Jobs seems to really like being in direct control of as many pieces of his products as he can. There, fixed that for you. It's a power trip for him.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Lets be honest, Apple is all about controlling its consumers and hardware, so seeing Apple purchase a CPU design house doesnt surprise me at all.
Apple could still keep using PPC chips for their server range...
Apple has been using Intel Xeons on it's Xserve for a while now. Xserves can be configured with two 3.0GHz Quad-core (8 core) Xeons.
FalconShould there be a Law?
IMO the lack of air-holes was a dead giveaway (pun intended, of course). You're the first to comment on my sig btw, I wonder how many people even get it..
which is totally what she said
Whatever, it works for him, and it's working for Apple. It doesn't seem to me to be a bad thing at all.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Apple has demonstrated twice now how well they can adapt their OS for any architecture. Would be nice if Microsoft took up the challenge..
Ah but Microsoft has developed software, apps and OSes, for different architectures. Right under the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on I have a PC with the DEC Alpha CPU running Windows NT 4.0. Windows NT also ran on Mips, PowerPC, SPARC, Intel i860, and Intel i960.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Have you compared Apple prices in the last few years? Apple prices have been comparable to PC prices for years.
The last thing they want to sell is a low margin $400 laptop. As a shareholder, I'd be pretty pissed if they were to waste time/money/effort on the low end market.
And as a stockholder I'd be pissed if they didn't try to expand their markets.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Apple was one of the companies that was behind the founding of ARM. Do they still have shares of them?
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
OT:And you thought *IAA was heavy handed, at least they don't have the powers of DoD or The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay (HBC was allowed to raise armies and make war...).
Just a point of clarification: Apple didn't buy the whole software company (which was not, by the way, an audio software company...it was Casady & Greene, a software utility developer), they basically bought iTunes (only then it was called SoundJam).
gameDB
The semiconductor industry is really only interested in creating the best "general-purpose" semiconductor. If a hardware company like Apple has specific or divergent needs, their choices are to pay through the nose to "partner" with a chipmaker to accommodate their requirements (if they can find one willing), or to buy a chipmaker outright and do whatever they want.
However PA Semi isn't a chip maker, it's a chip designer. Apple could still find itself in the position it was in with IBM and Freescale with no one to manufacture what it needs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Apple is buying itself a bargaining chip (pun) for negotiating with Intel on their pc line. They were able to tell Mot/IBM to f off using Intel. Now they will be able to repeat the same thing to Intel if Intel does not do their bidding. In fact they are in a stronger position since they will be in the CPU business themselves.
There are at least two problems with this argument. One is that Apple didn't need to acquire another company to put pressure on Intel. If Apple wants to pressure Intel all they need to do is tell Intel they're in discussions with AMD. Second, it wouldn't be a good idea to risk having the US Department of Defense veto the buyout.
FalconShould there be a Law?
P.A. Semi doesn't have a significant revenue stream
It does however have Department of Defense contracts.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You're right about not much platform specific code, but dead wrong about LLVM. Apple's approach is more traditional, isolating most of the platform specific code in the OS kernel. I'd estimate that 95% of the platform specific code in the kernel is written in plain old C, with a few assembly language routines to do the MMU heavy lifting. Don't take my word for it, download Darwin's xnu component and have a look for yourself.
Hehehe.. excellent.. didn't know Red vs Blue did stuff like that.
which is totally what she said
That's what it was called. I couldn't remember - it's been years and years since I switched over.
OSX's core kernel runs on PowerPC. Right now, Apple has to license the OS for the iPod/iPhone from a 3rd party vendor, as OSX does not run on StrongARM. Now, here's Apple with access to the necessary low-power PowerPC CPU....
This is a move to cut overhead costs on their iPod/iPhone products I'd imagine more than anything else.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
> This isn't Apple just blindly jumping into an industry that they have no idea about.
I'll remind of Palm's Ed Colligan's remarks: "We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in."
Does anyone think that Apple "just walked in" with the iPhone, or do you think they spent a fair amount of time thinking about the problems presented by the current crop of "smart" phones and coming up with innovative and irresistable solutions?
Don't believe for a second that Apple "just walks in" to any major undertaking like overhauling an OS, designing a music player and a phone, or buying a chip maker. They've got a plan with a specific target, and it's very likely going to turn somebody's industry on its head.
When it is running Vista, there's no reason to upgrade of course.
if you're running Vista more than likely you got a new PC or you upgraded an old PC to be Vista capable.
Photoshop
Adobe recommends that if you're running Photoshop on Vista that you get CS3. And it cost $650 while Photoshop CS3 Extended cost $1000.
Upgrades to stuff like Photoshop would surely be cheaper than a decent new PC?
First, to install an upgrade for Photoshop, Photoshop already has to be installed, I believe, and as I state above Adobe recommends CS3 for Vista, so it may be foolish to install CS2 on a Vista PC. Next, a decent PC should cost less than $1000, even to run Photoshop CS3 on. The following are headless: An HP that beats Photoshop's minimum requirements is less than $900, though this one's on sale. A Dell that exceeds CS3's minimum configuration is less than $820.
However even photographers are likely to get software other than Photoshop, perhaps a design suite and an office suite. Add all the software cost up and they can easily exceed the hardware cost.
Should there be a Law?
The annoying thing is that I have to admit MS have occasionally made some decent products in the last decade
The only decent thing I can credit Microsoft with is Windows NT4, and I admit I loved it.
now I'm amused and delighted that they've managed to screw up Vista, but I'm also really pissed about it because it means that if the Apple/Linux crowd don't capitalise on this mistake
The Mac's market share is growing quite a bit. Morgan Stanley expects 40% of college students plan to buy Macs". From "Fortune" "Analyst: Apple's U.S. consumer market share now 21 percent". While the industry's sales growth was 15% Apple's growth was 37%, more than twice the industry's growth.
FalconShould there be a Law?
On the other hand, the strong have not only survived, but have *flourished*. I take all of my Apple problems to MacMedia, a local shop, even though there are two Apple stores in the Phoenix metro region.
One Apple reseller I know closed some years ago but another one, 10 to 15 minutes walk for me, seems to be doing well. I don't recall if the first one had any but this one regularly has a number of classes. It's basically a full service store, besides selling software and peripherals and servicing and repairing hardware it even sells old Macs. And there are 4 Apple stores around here. I've been to 3 of them, each within 20 minutes drive. My own Mac I bought online, as a member of the Apple Developer Connection I got a discount on it but purchases need to be ordered online or by phone.
FalconShould there be a Law?
? The best example there (after the Mac itself) would be software - MP3 players on MacOS were unstable, crash-prone winamp clones until Apple bought an audio software company and then iTunes came along....
Not completely accurate. Apple hired the guy who made SoundJam. Before he worked there, iTunes was already in development (in a prototype form). The company that made SoundJam just closed up shop in the transition to OS X. Apparently they had trouble making the switch to OS X.
Burn Hollywood Burn
I liked Borland C++ Power Builder.
And the Exchange/Windows Mobile DirectPUSH combo is way better for email on the go than those crapberry things..
These I know nothing about these other than MS doesn't have Exchange for Macs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm tired of Lays and Doritos. Please God let Apple buy Krunchers....no more wimpy chips!
Erm, Apple ported OS X to ARM for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It's exactly the same core OS, apart from the interface layer being Cocoa Touch instead of Cocoa.