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Reports Say Apple May Manufacture Its Own Chips

Posted by timothy on from the jalapeno-flavored-are-great dept.

afabbro writes "There are scattered reports today that Apple is building a team to design its own chips, with an eye towards reducing power consumption on iPods and iPhones."

202 comments

  1. It didn't work for microsoft... by NeoSkandranon · · Score: 1

    Not terribly hopeful that it'll work for apple.

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    1. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The difference is, MS, by nature does not really innovate, they emulate. Apple, while not 100% innovative, usually ends up taking a cutting-edge idea and comes up with a polished product.

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    2. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Gary+W.+Longsine · · Score: 5, Informative

      Apple participated in the design of the PowerPC. That worked out pretty well. I've had two people tell me within the past week that they went back and used a PowerPC Mac Mini (both upgraded to 1GB of RAM) and how zippy it was under Leopard. They were surprised, since the systems were something like 5 years old, and max out at 1GB of RAM.

      Apple also participated in the design of the initial ARM processors. That seems to be going pretty well. (Direct descendants of the design are in iPhone).

      Apple is also a participant in LLVM, which is going to help Apple shorten the design-to-deployment cycle for new silicon.

      It's going to work out just fine.

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    3. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by rm999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So the difference is that neither one of them really innovates? I don't see the difference. Sure, Apple is good at repackaging things to be pretty and easy-to-use, but that doesn't matter when it comes to chips. In this case, they will *have* to innovate to turn their investments into something useful.

      I think this move has more to do with Apple's obsession with controlling everything - they'd like to be a vertical company. It's a risky move, because hardware is a costly industry to enter. Will their recent purchases be worth it? Very possibly, it's an interesting gamble.

    4. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by SupremoMan · · Score: 1

      Why don't we list other things that didn't work for Microsoft. Or do we have something better to do with the remainder of this week?

    5. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      The difference is that Apple builds hardware. Serious hardware, not mice and keyboards.

      I could be mistaken, but my impression has been that Apple builds all their own MotherBoards, Logic Cards, and possibly even some of the systems chips to provide the clean experience you see with an Apple laptop.

      Microsoft doesn't have that experience, because they don't build systems. They license software to companies like Dell, who in turn obtain their motherboards from a third party, who in turn obtain the chipset from a chipset provider. Apple does everything up to the last step themselves. Now they want to do the last step.

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    6. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Mini was zippy? My friend, in a Mac world the correct term is "snappy". Amateur!

    7. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by je+ne+sais+quoi · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Apple is a hardware company that also makes software. Microsoft is a software company that also makes hardware. The MS hardware I can think of is their keyboards and mice, the Zune and Xbox 360. Considering that the entertainment division of microsoft that builds the zune and xbox lost 31 million dollars last quarter, I wouldn't hold Microsoft up as the paragon of what is possible to do in hardware.

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    8. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Divebus · · Score: 2, Funny

      Why don't we list other things that didn't work for Microsoft.

      Who has that kind of time? An even bigger challenge is to figure out why people bought it anyway.

      --

      Most of the stuff on /. won't survive first contact with facts.
    9. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You are completely mistaken.

      Companies like Foxconn and ASUS build Apple's hardware.

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    10. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Hes+Nikke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Companies like Foxconn and ASUS build Apple's hardware to Apple's specifications.

      fixed it for you.

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    11. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Let me fix that for you:

      Companies like Foxconn and ASUS build Apple's hardware to Apple's specifications, as they do for Dell and just like they used to do for Packard Bell.

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    12. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 1

      Also, Apple has had several internal projects that were oriented towards building chips in the past. The story has it that once Steve Jobs met Seymour Cray and told him that he was using a Cray-1 to design his next computer. Seymour says, "That's great, Steve. I'm using an Apple to design my next computer."

      --
      That is all.
    13. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by rAiNsT0rm · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Nope, not even close. Apple *designs* or works with manufacturers to create custom *designed* boards and hardware but they build nothing. They are the same chips and chipsets as Dell, which actually does the same thing and custom *designs* their gear just like Apple.

      Take off the rose colored glasses please.

      --
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    14. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by westlake · · Score: 1

      Apple participated in the design of the PowerPC.

      The key word here are surely "participants in design." No capital investment. No long term commitments.

      In a deep recession the iPhone can be seen for what it is - a high-tech gadget in a market that is moving towards the low-tech Jitterbug.

      The basic cell phone the geek always says he wants but never actually buys.

    15. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And those specifications are just an outline such as:

      We need a mobo that does this and that without this

      The vendor comes up with some ideas on paper and shows them to Apple. Apple then points out what they do or don't like and pass it back to the vendor. This cycle continues until Apple is satisfied with what the vendor has and then they move on to a prototype and iron out any wrinkles.

      So overall, no Apple does not do it totally themselves.

    16. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Cyner · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Apple knows how they intend to use the chip, but that is not the same as knowing how the chip gets it done. Participating by writing various specifications and testing is a very long way from designing logic circuity.

      That's not to say they can't do it, or wont be good at it. But your making a leap.

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    17. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by DCstewieG · · Score: 2, Funny

      Maybe he hadn't updated Safari yet...

    18. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by JBdH · · Score: 1

      Remember the 'woz' machine in the Apple //c, kids?

    19. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does this mean we can't blame Microsoft for the high failure rate of the Xbox 360, or that it is not "serious" hardware?

    20. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Xtravar · · Score: 1

      Although I never really understood why MS wants to penetrate entrenched markets, I thought the Xbox was turning a profit now... so that must be new R&D or the Zune totally bombing.

      2008 Q1
      http://www.joystiq.com/2008/01/24/the-xbox-turns-a-profit/

      2008 Q2
      http://www.joystiq.com/2008/04/25/the-xbox-360-turns-a-profit-again/

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    21. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think this move has more to do with Apple's obsession with controlling everything - they'd like to be a vertical company.

      BS. Crack open any Mac and the boards are full of non-Apple chips and always will be. Apple is not going to waste money developing their own chips just for bragging rights. I imagine that they won't be simply replacing the current chips, such as codec chips, with their own versions, but they'll be adding bits of their OS to it, so it may well make more sense for them to make their own chips at some point.

    22. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by ThrowAwaySociety · · Score: 5, Informative

      Before the Intel switch, Apple absolutely designed its own chipsets and boards. Apple was responsible, for example, for the first marrying of the PPC 970 and HyperTransport.

      Apple has never owned a fab, but then, neither do many dedicated chip "manufacturers."

    23. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by drerwk · · Score: 1

      Well it worked when they did the ASC "Apple Sound Chip", the IWM "Integrated Woz Machine", SWIM "Super Integrated Woz Machine" and some others. I don't know from the newfangled Intel Macs though what sorts of custom Apple chips are used any more.

    24. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Companies like Foxconn and ASUS build Apple's hardware to Apple's specifications, just as they build hardware to Intel's reference specifications with tiny tweaks and layout changes for Dell and used to do for Packard Bell.

      There. Fixed that for you.

    25. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by bhtooefr · · Score: 3, Informative

      Apple also participated in the design of the initial ARM processors. That seems to be going pretty well. (Direct descendants of the design are in iPhone).

      Nitpick: Acorn, not Apple, solely did the design of the initial ARM1, ARM2, and ARM3. They then spun the ARM CPU (which originally stood for Acorn RISC Machine) off into another company, Advanced RISC Machines, which was a joint venture between themselves (40%,) VLSI (who did most manufacturing of ARM CPUs and chipsets at that point - 40%,) and Apple (20%,) as Apple had expressed interest in using the chip, but didn't want to use a competitor's chip (Acorn directly competed with Apple in the personal computer market, especially in schools.)

      Only the ARM6 (there was no ARM4 or ARM5) and newer had any Apple involvement, and I doubt anything newer than the DEC StrongARM had much of any Apple influence. (The ARM6, ARM7, and StrongARM were all used in the Newton.)

      And, the ARM6 and ARM7 are essentially tweaked versions of the ARM3 with 32-bit addressing (as opposed to 26-bit on the previous ARMs,) and more cache and a slightly faster clock in the case of the ARM7. As for the StrongARM, it wasn't even designed by ARM, it was designed by Digital, to meet the ARMv4 ISA.

    26. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The difference is thus: If they build everything in house, they don't have to deal with 'leaks' from other companies publishing stuff or giving too much infor before apple believes its time. Apple lives and dies by its appearance and when it brings stuff out and how.

    27. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by bhtooefr · · Score: 1

      If you had said the Nokia 1100, I might have not said you were insane.

      But the Jitterbug? Seriously? For starters, it has a color screen - something that the Slashdot favorite "basic phone" doesn't have at all. And, second, it costs more than some modern smartphones. Yes, I know, it's not on contract... but the prepaid prices are ridiculous, so if you actually use this "basic phone," you're paying OUT THE ASS.

    28. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How did this get modded up to Score 5: Interesting?

    29. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by jcr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When Apple moves into a new area, they go and hire the people they need to do it right. They knew nothing about retailing, so they hired Ron Johnson. When they decided to make the iPod, they hired Tony Fadell, who had a lot of experience in portable devices.

      Apple now employs Dan Dobberpuhl , who was the lead architect of the DEC Alpha, and the StrongARM. He was the founder of PA Semi. One of their more recent hires was a GPU designer at ATI and AMD, who also happens to have worked on the Pixar Image Computer back before Pixar became a movie studio.

      The way I read the writing on the wall is Apple's going to start making their own CPUs, and possibly their own GPUs as well. Whatever they come up with, I expect it to fit in very well with the work they're doing on LLVM and their software OpenGL implementation.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    30. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by gabebear · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the OP's point has been completely lost. Apple, Dell, and HP design/sell "real hardware", and microsoft designs/sells peripherals.

      I believe the original point was that microsoft has never attempted any serious hardware development; so comparing microsoft's supposed failure to design "simple hardware" to Apple's attempt to design "real hardware" is stupid.

      Generally the hardware is designed well by every company; it's the software where things fall down. I have several Apple and Microsoft Keyboards and Mice.

      Of my peripherals that are at least 2yrs old that should still be supported:

      1xUSB MS mouse = support officially discontinued(3 out of 5 buttons work with default driver).

      1xUSB Apple mouse = supported (but only 1 has button)

      2xUSB Apple Keyboards = supported (but new Macs/PCs no longer support the power-button on the keyboard to power on when turned off)

      All in all, a pretty pathetic amount of support. Microsoft drops support for their own USB mice(you can still find 3rd party drivers to enable all 5 buttons). Apple didn't officially drop support, but no longer provides the needed circuitry on their motherboards to power-up a computer via a USB keyboard's power button(I'm wondering if this is so they use less power when turned off).

    31. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by acsinc · · Score: 1

      Last time I disassembled a Mac the motherboard was designed and manufactured by Apple. Granted this was back in the early PPC era, but it goes to show that they have done it before.

      They even had the designer's signatures on finished boards. Always a nice touch I thought.

    32. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by jcr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Apple is not going to waste money developing their own chips just for bragging rights.

      That's right, they won't do it just for bragging rights. They'll do it for a compelling performance, power consumption, and/or cost advantage. Right now, they pay Intel, Nvidia, and AMD a hell of a lot of money for CPUs and GPUs, and I'm sure they'll do their homework before making the next build or buy decision.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    33. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by jcr · · Score: 1

      If they build everything in house, they don't have to deal with 'leaks' from other companies

      That would be a major factor, but not as big as whatever advantages they could realize from having parts made entirely to their specs. Another major factor would be that if their products are built around their own parts, cloning becomes infeasible.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    34. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Burkin · · Score: 2, Informative

      Microsoft doesn't have that experience, because they don't build systems.

      So the Xbox, Xbox 360 and Zune are what now?

    35. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by toleraen · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My 8 year old 5 button MS Explorer mouse works perfectly with Win7, dunno what you're talking about...

      Also, didn't MS design that one thing, what was it called, the xbox (or something)? I heard it was just a repackaged computer.

    36. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 1

      Which is still one step closer to Apple than it is to Microsoft.

      Apple is like Dell. Microsoft licenses software to Dell. That's the difference.

      Not that they don't invent anything themselves. Who else has a magneticly-attached power cord? (If you know of one, please let me know -- it's a very cool idea, but I don't want to buy a Mac.)

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    37. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Skuld-Chan · · Score: 1

      I think this move has more to do with Apple's obsession with controlling everything - they'd like to be a vertical company. It's a risky move, because hardware is a costly industry to enter. Will their recent purchases be worth it? Very possibly, it's an interesting gamble.

      This worked really well for Commodore - and they kinda died over it. Up until their bankruptcy almost all Commodore machines used custom chips designed and manufactured by them.

      While initially it gave them an edge over the competition (since they could keep prices down on cpu's, roms, controllers and video/sound chips) they couldn't compete with chip companies that did nothing but make video chips, or nothing but memory chips or nothing but motherboard logic chips - who were every year making things faster and cheaper than they could.

      So their machines got more outdated as time went on.

      I think Apple should really evaluate if they can honestly build more powerful (or lower power as the case may be) and versatile chips than companies like AMD/ATI, Intel, and NVidia who have all been doing this for decades in some cases.

    38. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Skuld-Chan · · Score: 1

      According to the article they own P.A Semi...

    39. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Dogtanian · · Score: 1

      Apple is not going to waste money developing their own chips just for bragging rights.

      That's right, they won't do it just for bragging rights. They'll do it for a compelling performance, power consumption, and/or cost advantage. Right now, they pay Intel, Nvidia, and AMD a hell of a lot of money for CPUs and GPUs, and I'm sure they'll do their homework before making the next build or buy decision.

      The question is, would Apple seriously get into developing their own CPUs? I find that hard to believe, if only because- in terms of worldwide market share- the Mac is still probably quite small compared to Intel and even AMD based PCs.

      Given how competitive the CPU market is and how hard AMD have to work to even compete with Intel, I find it hard to believe that Apple could afford to develop a chip that was competitive in terms of price *and* performance with either Intel or AMD solely for their own use. And would the incredible hassle of (effectively) getting in the CPU market outweigh the competitive and cost advantage? My gut reaction is that it wouldn't.

      They could do a Commodore and buy AMD, but then they'd probably have to still sell CPUs to other people to justify it economically and (again) do Apple *really* want all that hassle? More likely that they'll concentrate on the other custom chips in their computers, iPods, etc.

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    40. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by cellurl · · Score: 1

      Just think how much they could power reduce and cost reduce if they dictated the chip-specs!

      Every year chips get more complicated for one specific reason. To prop up the cost. Often the designer didn't want it, but it is forced down his throat along with the higher pricetag.

      I think this is a great move by apple. It must be related to that Verizon deal. They are now the king of the little-screenies..

    41. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by jcr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The question is, would Apple seriously get into developing their own CPUs?

      That would depend on what advantages they thought they could gain from it. They can certainly afford to do it, they've got about 37 billion dollars in cash on hand, they've got most of the talent they'd need for such a project, and they could easily recruit anyone else they might need. Building a whole new architecture isn't an opportunity that comes along that often for a hardware designer these days.

      Given how competitive the CPU market is and how hard AMD have to work to even compete with Intel

      That's the market for commodity parts. It doesn't apply to vertically integrated companies like IBM with their POWER CPUs or Sun with the SPARC. The question for Apple isn't whether a new CPU would fly with other users, it would be whether it works for Apple's needs. Outside OEM sales would be gravy.

      Another thing to keep in mind here is that Apple's very big on recruiting the top talent in any area they go into, and you don't get the best chip designers by offering them run-of-the-mill projects to work on.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    42. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by tyrione · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Let me fix that for you:

      Companies like Foxconn and ASUS build Apple's hardware to Apple's specifications, as they do for Dell and just like they used to do for Packard Bell.

      I'll fix it for everyone. Apple builds them, tests them and sends them to be assembled to their specs. Done. Get over it.

    43. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't know for sure, but just because they own a chip "manufacturer" doesn't mean they own a fab. I'd be willing to bet they don't. There's lots of semiconductor companies that don't have fabs at all; they're called "fabless". P.A. Semi was probably one of them. Here's some others you may have heard of: Qualcomm, Broadcom, NVIDIA, Marvell, MediaTek, ATI (before AMD acquired them), Xilinx. Here's an article about them. These companies simply design chips; they get other companies called "foundries" to make their chips for them. The largest and oldest of these is TSMC, a Taiwanese company.

    44. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by GaryPatterson · · Score: 1

      Don't mistake "build" for "design."

      Apple design their hardware, inside and out, down to the motherboard and chip placement. They outsource the manufacturing, but the actual system builder isn't just sticking an Apple badge on a generic piece of hardware.

      These aren't just Intel reference boards being stuck into Macs.

    45. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Brett+Buck · · Score: 1

      I have found the same thing. I just got my work Mac upgraded from a 8600/300 w/8.6 to a PowerMac Dual 1.23Ghz (Mirror Drive Door)/OS 10.4.11 and I have been pretty amazed at how quickly it runs some stuff compared to my Intel Core 2 Duo WinXP machine. I have a scientific simulation that runs in about 10 minutes on the PC, same code runs in less than a minute on the MDD Mac. Exactly the same FORTRAN source code, simple text-only console application, only difference is it targeted to PPC vice Intel. None too shabby for a 5-year-old machine. Other things, like launching applications, don't leap out at me as particularly fast but it's a very nice machine.

                  Brett

             

    46. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by artor3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just think how much [Apple] could power reduce and cost reduce if they dictated the chip-specs!

      (I am an electronics engineer, and make chips that Apple buys for many of their products)

      They already do, to an extent.

      Chip design companies are constantly battling it out to get design wins at big companies like Apple. If Apple tells them, "Hey, we want this chip to do X and Y while consuming Z mA," then those companies are going to try their best to meet those requirements so that they can get Apple as a customer.

      Your assertion that chips are being overcomplicated for the purpose of driving up cost is incorrect. Semiconductor companies are constantly trying to simplify their chips' designs, in order to improve yield and reduce costs, while charging the same price to their customers. It's much, much easier to improve margin than it is to convince your customers to pay more.

      I doubt that Apple will be able to substantially improve cost or power consumption. While they do have some experience in chip design, it's highly unlikely that they'll be able to go in and do a better job than all of the companies that do nothing else.

    47. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by binarylarry · · Score: 1

      Actually, Microsoft DID design and build much of the Xbox 360's hardware.

      This decision is what many people are saying is the cause of all the failures.

      Microsoft can barely handle software, I don't know what made them think they could do hardware.

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    48. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by ciroknight · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Let me fix that for you:

      Companies like Foxconn and ASUS build Apple's hardware to Apple's specifications, as they do for Dell and just like they used to do for Packard Bell.

      One more time and we'll get it right: Companies like Foxconn and ASUS build Apple's hardware to Apple's specifications. Companies like Foxconn and ASUS also build hardware for Dell and Packard Bell, most of which was (reference) designed by engineers at Intel. Hell, for the longest time, Dell's boards had "Intel" silkscreened on them, since they were literally carbon copies of Intel's reference board and nobdoy bothered to change it.

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    49. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Informative

      And we all know how well the 360 ended up turning out. Lets see, drives that scratched disks, red rings of death, etc. Sure, they have fixed most of their problems now, but at the start of the 360 lifetime it was a total mess. On the other hand, the PS3 and Wii consoles had little to no issues (about the only one I can think of is that some Wii units could have a dirty optical lens because of smoke, dust, etc. that made it hard to read some dual-layer disks but that is mostly all fixed now)

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    50. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Having interned in Apple's VLSI group in 2005, they certainly did at one point have their own chip designers as they definitely did a lot of their own design/testing regarding system PCB layout and chipsets (e.g. North bridges). The chipsets in particular were worked on in some degree with Agere Systems. I worked on power characterization, but there were indeed people around me doing real VLSI design.
      That said, I don't know to what capacity they still do this as shortly after my time was done there they switched to Intel chips which would seem to have reduced the needs for an Apple VLSI group.

    51. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by bennomatic · · Score: 1

      Click... Boom!

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    52. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      Apple may see an advantage in being able to build small bits of custom hardware. The supposed DRM chip on the new shuffle is an example which comes to mind. It also occured to me that they want to employ chip designers to improve their interface with existing suppliers. It might help them write better specifications and to understand hardware requirements.

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    53. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Umm, I have a dual-G5 2.0ghz Power Mac and, under Leopard, it is dog slow. My Mac Pro under Tiger is not merely faster, it's a completely different experience. I honestly have a hard time understanding why twin G5's with 2.5 gigs of memory can feel so slow. I have a hard time believing a G5 is really that outdated, but I guess it is.

    54. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by toleraen · · Score: 1

      Even though it's a piece of crap it still counts as a "serious hardware development" that the GP says MS lacks, so I'm not sure what your point is. Or maybe you're saying MS is about on par with Apple's hardware development by implying that both companies screw up their first revision of hardware, as everyone knows you shouldn't buy first gen Apple products.

    55. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by spud603 · · Score: 1

      Dell's boards had "Intel" silkscreened on them, since they were literally carbon copies of Intel's reference board and nobdoy bothered to change it.

      Not literally carbon copies, unless there's a lot less to board design and manufacture than I think.

    56. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by ciroknight · · Score: 2, Informative

      There's really not as much to it as you think. They're just layers of etched copper in a fiberglass substrate. Intel makes a lot of reference board designs with the complete layout of the traces and layers in the copper and fiberglass, and Dell is notorious for just taking those and putting their names on it. Formerly they didn't even bother to go that far, but now they actually do change the silkscreens (and sometimes the shape a bit to make them fit in their case, which really isn't hard for even a first grader to do as long as they're not moving RAM or CPU traces). Dell (and Asus, Gigabyte.. pretty much anyone building generic motherboards for the ubercheap computer range) does this because it's incredibly cheap; Intel's licensing allows Dell access to the reference designs basically for free, which means they don't have to pay for prototypes and don't have to pay engineers hundreds of thousands a year to lay them out.

      Apple has, more or less since the beginning of their company, designed their own boards from scratch, taking the chips they want, then laying out the boards themselves and sending those designs off to be built. This alone doesn't mean much; anyone who's been through an electronics course in college has probably done a board or two. However, building modern boards actually is a really damned hard (thousands of pins, some traces need to have even length, enough substrate between them to eliminate crosstalk, power/noise concerns, etc). The fact that Apple cares to do this, and makes boards that are very high quality is a testament to their dedication to build the machine from the bare metal up.

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    57. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by ciroknight · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nope, not even close. Apple *designs* or works with manufacturers to create custom *designed* boards and hardware but they build nothing. They are the same chips and chipsets as Dell, which actually does the same thing and custom *designs* their gear just like Apple.

      So in the same way, all cars and buildings are exactly alike because they all use exactly the same materials, the design is just a bit different. Right?

      Yeah, the CPU and chipset are the same. They even use copper and solder to make their boards, oh my! But there's are millions of ways to lay out the same components, and they do yield different results. Take cities: they all have similar needs (hospitals, police stations.. just play Sim City), but how you lay them out can be the entire difference between a traffic-congested, slow ass stinky, cheap and broken down city, and a beautiful, traffic-free, low crime city.

      Of course, we're geeks here. We don't care, as long as it's got the bigger numbers next to its MHz and GBs, we're happy. Meanwhile, there are people who like having computers that last more than 6 months to a year, computers that don't crash whenever someone turns on the microwave down the hall or accidentally turns off the air conditioner, or who's components are literally melting off of the machine (as is the acse with my 2 year old Toshitba laptop).

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    58. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by mgblst · · Score: 1

      Just keep moving the point along.

      Microsoft did design some major hardware, they have specialist hardware people as well. Sure, they aren't great at it, and Apple is, but that was not the point.

    59. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by SnowZero · · Score: 1

      Not that they don't invent anything themselves. Who else has a magneticly-attached power cord?

      Anyone with an Asian-branded kitchen water heater from the last 20 years?

      You won't see it on other computers however, since Apple patented the idea for electronic devices (with no reference to tons of prior art in electric devices). While copying an idea from one field to another is important, I don't know if it ought to qualify as a patentable invention. Anyone skilled in the art should be able to make the leap from the AC cord on their tea heater to a DC one on their laptop.

      It's true that Apple is just using the patent system as others do, but I'm not going to call it a cool invention/innovation on their part.

    60. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Another question is how will this effect prices?

      I would assume that designing a chip can be quite costly. If the designers are planning to sell the tech to as many people as possible, they've got a better chance of getting a positive return on their work.

      If Apple is designing its own chips in an attempt to gain a market lead and aren't planning on selling to competitors - are they going to have pass the whole cost of designing the chips onto their products? Will the cost of in-house designed chips create a real 'apple tax'?

    61. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by rAiNsT0rm · · Score: 1

      No, not even close... but good try. The components of a Chevy and a Mercedes are not even remotely the same. I don't care how you lay out an Intel C2D and an Intel P45 board your are not going to achieve anything beyond a cosmetic difference.

      Stick to a reference design or get creative and results will be identical. Sorry, thanks for playing.

      --
      http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
    62. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Joseph+Lam · · Score: 1

      The way I read the writing on the wall is Apple's going to start making their own CPUs, and possibly their own GPUs as well. Whatever they come up with, I expect it to fit in very well with the work they're doing on LLVM and their software OpenGL implementation.

      -jcr

      I guess you mean OpenCL
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL

    63. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My 15 year old deep fryer has one.

    64. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by pohl · · Score: 1

      I guess you mean OpenCL

      I'm not sure why OpenGL doesn't fit within the context jcr used it. Commodity GPUs tend to be optimized for Direct X first, with Open GL as an afterthought layered upon it. It doesn't look like NVidia or ATI are going to invert that priority any time soon, so why not make their own that suits OpenGL well? And OpenCL too, of course.

      --

      The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...

    65. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by OwnedByTwoCats · · Score: 1

      All three articles suggested that Apple was going to design their own chips for iPods and iPhones. They won't use this in desktop or laptop systems. There's no way to cover the design costs off the miniscule number of chips compared to Intel and AMD.

      Recall the history. High-end workstation vendors Sun, Apollo, Silicon Graphics all used Motorola chips. All designed their own RISC processors. All of the RISC processors lost out to Intel/AMD on the low end workstation market, and have almost been obliterated at the high end server market as well.

      On the other hand, Apple's investment in ARM payed off quite handsomely. But ARM isn't a desktop processor that competes with Intel/AMD, is it?

    66. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by jcr · · Score: 1

      I guess you mean OpenCL

      No, I was speaking of their software GL renderer. They've put rather more effort into it than one would expect, given that all Macs sold today have some kind of GPU. By maintaining and improving their software implementation, they've got a starting point to put it on any new architecture that they might develop.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    67. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by jcr · · Score: 1

      . It doesn't look like NVidia or ATI are going to invert that priority any time soon, so why not make their own that suits OpenGL well?

      This ship has probably sailed, but I'd love to see Apple make some hardware optimized for RenderMan. ;-)

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    68. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by jcr · · Score: 1

      Another question is how will this effect prices?

      I'm sure that's near the top of the list of considerations when they're making the build or buy decision. If they can get the same kind of product life cycle out of a new architecture that Sun got out of SPARC, it's probably worth doing.

      Will the cost of in-house designed chips create a real 'apple tax'?

      I would expect that the cost of doing their own designs would be offset by not having to pay the profit margins on Intel, NVidia and AMD parts. Those vendors don't sell Apple parts at cost.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    69. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by ncc74656 · · Score: 1

      Not that they don't invent anything themselves. Who else has a magneticly-attached power cord?

      Anyone with an Asian-branded kitchen water heater from the last 20 years?

      Don't know what such a device would be (isn't your water heater usually in the garage or a closet?), but most deep fryers use magnetically-attached power cords nowadays. Someone tripping on a cord that's inexplicably run across the floor won't then send hot oil flying across the kitchen to burninate everything in its path.

      --
      20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
    70. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by tellthepeople · · Score: 1

      new Macs/PCs no longer support the power-button on the keyboard to power on when turned off.

      This may be a BIOS setting, I know in mine you have to set the "Power On By Keyboard" option to "Keyboard 98" for a keyboard power button to work

      --
      Tanto nomini nullum par elogium.
    71. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by badkarmadayaccount · · Score: 1

      And this, children, is a person who doesn't use his on-board audio with headphones, and has not built fanless systems with noisy motherboards...
      Or had to deal with BSODs and data corruption not from faulty RAM or CPU, or PSU, but from a crappy FSB for Pete's sake!

      --
      I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
    72. Re:It didn't work for microsoft... by symbolset · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There's no way to cover the design costs off the miniscule number of chips compared to Intel and AMD.

      On the other hand, AMD's market cap is $2.9B. Apple could buy them. Then the economy of scale would work out, wouldnt it?

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
  2. design it's own chips, not manufacture by Gary+W.+Longsine · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't think anybody has seriously suggested that Apple is planning to build their own fab.

    --
    If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
    1. Re:design it's own chips, not manufacture by oldhack · · Score: 1, Funny

      No, timothy meant "iManufacture". Spelling error, you see.

      --
      Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
    2. Re:design it's own chips, not manufacture by homey+of+my+owney · · Score: 1

      Well, design it's own chips is not news, but neither is manufacture. They did after all spend a pile acquiring P.A. Semiconductor.

    3. Re:design it's own chips, not manufacture by Skuld-Chan · · Score: 1

      I don't think anybody has seriously suggested that Apple is planning to build their own fab.

      According to the article they bought PA Semi who has a fab...

    4. Re:design it's own chips, not manufacture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PA Semi was a fabless chip design firm. They came up with designs, and then contracted out the actual manufacturing to other firms. That's why everyone has focused on the design possibilies.

    5. Re:design it's own chips, not manufacture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It wouldnt be fiscally responsible to invest in fabrication but little overhead is involved in the design. They simply need to partner with a reliable wafer fab like TI to make it possible.

  3. Manufacture or design? by Cutie+Pi · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's a big difference between manufacturing a chip and designing one. Unless Apple suddenly acquires the capital and know how to run a fab, manufacturing is best left to foundries like TSMC.

    I'd even be surprised if they did the design completely in-house. Most likely it would be a collaborative effort with an already established low-power design house like ARM.

    1. Re:Manufacture or design? by InsurrctionConsltant · · Score: 1

      Oh, completely. There's absolutely no way, and nobody is seriously suggesting, that apple can or should manufacture chips. I think there's a growing consensus, though, that apple is going to be doing some serious customizing on an ARM basis.

    2. Re:Manufacture or design? by QuantumRiff · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Course, people were saying the same thing about manufacturing laptop cases, like out of single blocks of aluminum.

      Steve jobs seems to get a hard on from fully automated factories. The NEXT factory could produce thousands of computers a week, with a handful of employees.. (they could just never sell that many)

      --

      What are we going to do tonight Brain?
    3. Re:Manufacture or design? by EMB+Numbers · · Score: 2, Informative

      You mean "an already established low-power design house like" PAsemi http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/23/apple-buys-pasemi-tech-ebiz-cz_eb_0422apple.html

    4. Re:Manufacture or design? by cabjf · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm willing to bet they have enough know-how available to do the design in-house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PA_semi

    5. Re:Manufacture or design? by UnknowingFool · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'd even be surprised if they did the design completely in-house. Most likely it would be a collaborative effort with an already established low-power design house like ARM.

      Yes, if only Apple bought out a chip design company. Then maybe they could design their own chips.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    6. Re:Manufacture or design? by scatterbrained · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'd guess there's at least a few billion dollars difference between a reasonably up-to-date fab and the people/infrastructure it requires, and what is required to cast and CNC chunks of metal (unless it's something like sub propellers). If Apple was throwing around that kind of cash it wouldn't be a secret.

      --
      -- All that's left of me, is slight insanity, whats on the right, I don't know. -- Bob Mould
    7. Re:Manufacture or design? by nurb432 · · Score: 1

      I agree on the fab side unless they have a few extra billion laying around, but they could go hire people with chip design experience and move that in house.

      --
      ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    8. Re:Manufacture or design? by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      Not necessarily. These days, when you make a CPU for some type of embedded application (like a mobile device), you don't design an entirely new CPU core. You just take an off-the-shelf core, like an ARM or PPC, and then create a SoC (system on chip) using that. The core stays the same, whether it's an ARM9 or ARM11 or PPC e300 or PPC e500, but all the other stuff on the chip is different, and specific to its application. If it's for something like an iPhone, it probably has a logic block that controls the LCD screen, and a block to handle GSM/GPRS, etc. If it's for some security-related device, it probably has some encryption device built in. They also have things like USB controllers, UARTs, I2C buses, etc. built-in as well. All these modules are connected together with an on-chip bus, such as the AHB on ARM chips.

      So if Apple wants to make a custom CPU for the iPhone, most likely they're going to take a high-speed low-power ARM core and then customize things such as the display logic, the power-saving logic, etc. They might also put in some little custom encryption block so that people can't "jailbreak" their iPhones and run unauthorized software. They're most likely not going to make any changes to the ARM core itself.

    9. Re:Manufacture or design? by Nicky+G · · Score: 1

      Apple most certainly has the capital to open their own fab. With zero debt and over $25 Billion in liquid assets, they could do it. They have no reason to, but they could. However, design chips they do. They did buy P.A. Semi after all.

    10. Re:Manufacture or design? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The a$$holes are filtering the comments here. They've already removed at least 2 or 3 that provided good details. You biased dip$h1ts!!

  4. In other reports... by ravenspear · · Score: 4, Funny

    It was actually revealed that their real motivation behind the Apple team's efforts is to build an uber sophisticated intelligent computer system capable of downloading Steve Jobs' brain in case he becomes too ill to continue his role as RDF overlor...er...CEO.

    1. Re:In other reports... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Don't forget the Apple sticker to put on the outside of the brain case. :P

    2. Re:In other reports... by jDeepbeep · · Score: 5, Funny

      It was actually revealed that their real motivation behind the Apple team's efforts is to build an uber sophisticated intelligent computer system capable of downloading Steve Jobs' brain in case he becomes too ill to continue his role as RDF overlor...er...CEO.

      I, for one, welcome our new mock-turtlenecked overlord.

      --
      Reply to That ||
    3. Re:In other reports... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It wouldn't be a sticker, being Apple, it would be embossed metal.

    4. Re:In other reports... by nurb432 · · Score: 1

      Rather have that then Gates or Ellison.

      --
      ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    5. Re:In other reports... by Eli+Gottlieb · · Score: 1

      OH DEAR GOD. Steve Jobs is going to create the Cybermen. I mean the Applemen.

    6. Re:In other reports... by grotgrot · · Score: 1

      Not to mention someone has to build Skynet.

    7. Re:In other reports... by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      Don't worry. They will be so gay, that the only thing they'll throw at you will be balls of cotton wool. Until you bleed. :P

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  5. Apple Product Cycle revisions by nlawalker · · Score: 3, Funny

    Looks like the Apple Product Cycle may have to be revised slightly.

    1. Re:Apple Product Cycle revisions by JumpDrive · · Score: 1

      To bad the author didn't number the steps, so we could say which step we're at.

    2. Re:Apple Product Cycle revisions by JumpDrive · · Score: 1

      I'm sure he will in the next revision along with adding and changing some of fonts and colors.
      I think part of the background should be magenta and get rid of those bold faced type sets.

    3. Re:Apple Product Cycle revisions by JumpDrive · · Score: 1

      Are you sure their is going to be a revision to this website?

    4. Re:Apple Product Cycle revisions by JumpDrive · · Score: 1

      Absolutely, saw it on CNBC.

  6. it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by gravesb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The WSJ story talked about how Apple had designed a variant already, but were unhappy that so much design was being sold to other companies. It looks like they want to design their own extension of the ARM and gain a real competitive advantage. Certain aspects include better power consumption, network interface, handwriting recognition, and more horsepower. There is some speculation that it will also bleed over to the desktop design. Maybe they are getting tired of using commodity hardware and want to differentiate themselves from Dell.

    --
    http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
    1. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can see how designing their own chips for portable devices makes sense. But they will only hurt themselves if they once again go down the path of proprietary desktop designs. Moving to commodity hardware and Intel CPU's was the best decision Apple ever made. Presumably they would continue to use standard CPU's, but they would loose the economy of scale and proven reliability that commodity components bring to the table.

    2. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by CopaceticOpus · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes, at last Apple will step out from under Dell's shadow!

    3. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by the_humeister · · Score: 1

      Maybe they are getting tired of using commodity hardware and want to differentiate themselves from Dell.

      And that's why they dropped PowerPC in favor of Intel's chips? I don't think so.

    4. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by cabjf · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No, they dropped PowerPC because IBM couldn't keep up with producing faster chips and lower power envelopes (for laptops). Remember, they were never able to stuff a G5 into a Powerbook. I doubt it had anything to do with whether the hardware was "commodity" or not.

    5. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      THIS is what it takes to get flash running on ARM?

      Sheesh. Next thing, you'll be telling there's an IWM in the next iMac... harrr....

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    6. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would expect a custom video processor, as both of the new hires are from AMD/ATI. It would be integrated with a vanilla ARM core and integrate to the internal bus.

      You can contract big chunks of the chip development out, but you need top people defining the architecture and benchmarking it. If you are paranoid, you contract pieces with different design houses... just like Batman does ;)

    7. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by jcr · · Score: 3, Insightful

      SJ stood on a stage a promised a 3GHZ G5 in one year (because IBM had promised it to Apple), and IBM let him down. That, together with IBM's decision not to develop a low-power G5 suitable for laptops is what closed the book on Apple's PPC machines.

      They switched to Intel instead of AMD because they had had quite enough of vendor disappointments. AMD was a far riskier prospect.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    8. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, they dropped PowerPC because IBM couldn't keep up with producing faster chips and lower power envelopes (for laptops). Remember, they were never able to stuff a G5 into a Powerbook. I doubt it had anything to do with whether the hardware was "commodity" or not.

      Apple dropped IBM's POWER series for Intel marketing dollars and Intel x86 familiar developers. The Power series is faster than the Intel or AMD chips, and has been for years. IBM released a 4.7GHZ dual core chip more than 2 years ago...

      http://www.itwire.com%2Fcontent%2Fview%2F12337%2F53%2F&ei=uiP6SdGiJ5jGM_DE2a0E&usg=AFQjCNGpXM8NGG_5FI0MNI97aTBgQe-JKA

    9. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      They also don't seem to be able to stuff a quad-core into a Macbook...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    10. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      They switched to Intel instead of AMD because they had had quite enough of vendor disappointments. AMD was a far riskier prospect.

      AMD was not a riskier prospect, AMD was a backup plan while intel was the lowest bidder. Or, so I would speculate. Remember, this was a time when it had become clear that AMD could be taken seriously. A friend of mine has an Athlon 64 laptop from back when that was a new idea; it's still one of her best machines. (I helped her pick it out, at Best Buy... on clearance. But I wouldn't expect many savvy customers there anyway. IIRC it was around $900 with 1GB memory and maybe 60 or 80GB disk and I think the power jack maybe was finally abused into oblivion.)

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    11. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by jcr · · Score: 1

      Apple dropped IBM's POWER series for Intel marketing dollars and Intel x86 familiar developers.

      Wrong on both counts. Intel had been offering money to Apple for years to make the switch, that wasn't a deciding factor. As for x86 familiarity, Apple had no shortage of developers on the platform before the switch.

      PPC was abandoned because IBM let them down.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    12. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by jcr · · Score: 1

      AMD was not a riskier prospect, AMD was a backup plan while intel was the lowest bidder. Or, so I would speculate.

      Your speculation is wrong. AMD had arguably better parts; Apple didn't choose them because they weren't confident in AMDs ability to maintain their performance edge over Intel, or deliver sufficient quantities to meet Apple's schedules. They weren't about to go through all the pain of switching to land right back in the same situation they'd had with IBM.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    13. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      Apple dropped IBM's POWER series for Intel marketing dollars and Intel x86 familiar developers. The Power series is faster than the Intel or AMD chips, and has been for years. IBM released a 4.7GHZ dual core chip more than 2 years ago...

      And this fits in a low-power laptop like the MacBook Air?

    14. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by Ascagnel · · Score: 1

      This sounds like it might actually work. One of the big focuses in Snow Leopard is on GPGPU, so having a kickass video processor would be more important than ever before.

      --
      "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."
    15. Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I remember the explanation being that Intel's roadmap provided the better chips for Apple. Those chips turned out to be the Intel Core series which did in fact turn out to be extremely low power and remarkably fast at the same time. It is entirely reasonable that Apple found the Intel offering a better match than AMD plans at the time.

  7. Obligatory by Dripdry · · Score: 1

    http://www.misterbg.org/AppleProductCycle/
    Should we even be falling for this stuff anymore?

    --
    -
  8. yawn - another ARM licence by jc66 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They'll just hire some taiwanese design team to take and ARM core and hang some extra bits on it like a functions for mp3 decoding, then get TSMC or some other taiwanese Fab to produce it. AFAIK they didn't even design the ipod tech themselves, just decide on the look of the thing and contract all the rest out.

    1. Re:yawn - another ARM licence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Actually, at my university's job tracker, Apple has had VLSI design job postings up for well over a month, with a description very similar to what the articles are suggesting.

  9. Apple chips by Hatta · · Score: 3, Funny

    What kind of dip goes with that?

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    1. Re:Apple chips by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What kind of dip goes with that?

      Carmel

    2. Re:Apple chips by An+ominous+Cow+art · · Score: 4, Funny

      This kind, of course.

    3. Re:Apple chips by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Dip shits often go with Apple.

    4. Re:Apple chips by mkiwi · · Score: 1

      dip?

      I doubt Apple uses DIP at all. I would expect something more like SOIC.

    5. Re:Apple chips by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These chips are huge!! By the ruler on the second picture they are 1 meter wide...

      Probably manufactured by carving on stone blocks.

  10. Multimedia always runs better on specialized chips by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apple knows the direction things are going, 99% of people just want to play movies and music on their portable devices, so why not make specialized hardware that can run at slower speeds while doing soto save power? Its just another company recognizing the CPU/GPU merge.

  11. May? MAY??? by gordguide · · Score: 4, Informative

    " ... Reports Say Apple May Manufacture Its Own Chips ..."

    " ... "PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods," Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, according to The New York Times during Apple's June 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference. ..."

    From the Horse's Mouth, 9 months ago, announced publicly at the WDC. I think I would be going with " ... will manufacture it's own chips ..." since that's what they said they would be doing, right out loud in front of God and everybody.

    1. Re:May? MAY??? by Yvanhoe · · Score: 1

      And we even already have pictures of them !

      --
      The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
  12. Apple Core by tom17 · · Score: 1

    If they can call is something like "Apple Core" then they will be onto a sure winner.

    Especially if they can incorporate lots of "Programming Interface Pathways" or some such jargon.

    Tom...

    1. Re:Apple Core by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you mean the iCore right?

  13. Yummy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dried apple chips are delicious and chewy.

  14. Shouldn't surprise, they own a chipmaker by MarkEst1973 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They already own a chip maker. That bit of news was from last year. It shouldn't surprise you today that they plan on actually using the chipmaker they bought.

    1. Re:Shouldn't surprise, they own a chipmaker by the_humeister · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They're a chip designer. Chip makers actually have fabrication plants.

    2. Re:Shouldn't surprise, they own a chipmaker by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      These days most chip companies don't really make their all own chips anyways. They make the design and get foundries like TSMC to do actual fabrication. Companies like TI, Intel, AMD, and IBM make some chips in-house but also farm out the work to chip foundries.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    3. Re:Shouldn't surprise, they own a chipmaker by gordguide · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Maybe, but it's a line not often drawn by many ... ATI never had a fab.

    4. Re:Shouldn't surprise, they own a chipmaker by _avs_007 · · Score: 1

      Companies like TI, Intel, AMD, and IBM make some chips in-house but also farm out the work to chip foundries.

      Intel produces more chips in house than it outsources to foundries.

    5. Re:Shouldn't surprise, they own a chipmaker by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      But my point is still valid. Everyone is saying, "Well Apple can't make their own chips even if they bought PA Semi. A REAL chip company makes their own chips." My point was not even a REAL chip company like Intel makes all their own chips. TI and AMD use chip foundries as much as their own fabs. Intel, while it may use more in-house fabs, it still uses foundries. IBM designs and makes some of their own chips and acts as a chip foundry for other companies. Most likely Apple will design their own chips and use a foundry for fabrication.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  15. Reducing power consumption? by m1ss1ontomars2k4 · · Score: 1

    FINALLY, we can get that PowerBook G5 we've been waiting for!

  16. Title correction... by burnin1965 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Reports Say Apple May DESIGN Its Own Chips

    The objective likely to be more proprietary enhancements to their product lines that require licensing and royalties from secondary vendors who wish to manufacture and sell peripherals and products to work with Apple products. Its all about building monopolies, U.S. businesses believe competition is a bad thing.

    1. Re:Title correction... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      U.S. companies are so good due to intense competition and low barriers to entry. I have no excuses for our auto industry, though.

    2. Re:Title correction... by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      The auto industry shows why a lack of competition and high barriers to entry are bad. When presented with serious competition, like the Tucker, the US automakers resorted to bribing politicians and judges to shut down their smaller competitors. When they couldn't stay solvent themselves, they got sweet government loans and bailouts (not just recently, but in the 80s too) that other companies didn't have access to. Despite all this history, our stupid government continues to bail out these fumbling, failing companies.

  17. Apple chips? by Locke2005 · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's already been done. Pictures of the new chips are available here and here

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    1. Re:Apple chips? by fm6 · · Score: 3, Funny

      I know for a fact that those chips are from a different company! Do Apple's lawyers know about this?

    2. Re:Apple chips? by curtix7 · · Score: 1

      mod parent +1 tasty My mom used to buy those all the time, they aren't bad.

  18. innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by JonTurner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Steve Jobs said it well: "Real artists ship."

    It's a very entrepreneurial idea -- quit all the talking and hand-waving and actually ship something! There's not much value in developing great ideas that never get out of the lab.
    As for the claim that neither innovates? Hogwash. Taking an idea and integrating it into a viable product IS innovation by definition -- it is something that has not been done before that point. Both MS and Apple innovate, to different degrees, which we can squabble about, ad infinitum. :) I would say MSFT is far better at marketing their ideas and capturing market share, while Apple is better at inventing. Others will have a different view.

    But back to the original subject, I suspect Apple's desire for custom chips comes not from a desire to save power (there are already many viable low-power CPUs and chipsets available) but rather a desire to fight off Hackintosh clones (OSX running on non-apple hardware, such as the Dell mini 9 or generic desktop PCs). Technologically, there's no reason why this can't happen but one must consider that Apple's hardware sales are quite profitable and that share is worth protecting.

    1. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think also for their iPods/iPhones, Apple probably wants more customization than they have right now. They have to accept whatever chip that they are buying balancing processing power/power consumption/functionality. Incidentally this may have been driven by the iPhone. While the iPod is fine with an underpowered chip as its functionality is limited, the iPod touch/iPhone require more computing power. There are rumors that Apple was not happy with the original chip on the iPhone. The problem is the chip was exactly what they specced out. Apple may have lost the chip expertise that they had with the original Macs.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    2. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by Frequency+Domain · · Score: 1

      But back to the original subject, I suspect Apple's desire for custom chips comes not from a desire to save power (there are already many viable low-power CPUs and chipsets available) but rather a desire to fight off Hackintosh clones (OSX running on non-apple hardware, such as the Dell mini 9 or generic desktop PCs).

      This doesn't make sense to me for their desktop machines. If that's their plan, they have to either 1) have all of the standard chipset for a commodity PC plus their proprietary chips and duplicate functionality, or 2) lose Windows compatibility because some subset of the operations are being pushed onto proprietary chips, and Windows doesn't speak their instruction set. Option 1 would increase the complexity on their motherboards and increase power usage, and I'd bet pretty strongly that they're not going to go with option 2.

    3. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by binarylarry · · Score: 4, Funny

      I can see it now:

      Apple Strategic Planning Meeting

      Steve Jobs: "So, from this point on, we'll build our own iProcessors, "

      Edward Applebee: "But sir, then our macs won't be able to run windows!"

      Steve Jobs: "Hey... you next to Edward, I want you to go over and hit that fucker in the face, really fucking hard!"

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    4. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by Firehed · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I doubt that the hackintoshes are a serious concern to Apple. The fact they exists demonstrates that a certain market exists, but not one that's likely too profitable right now. It's something relatively few people are willing to do, or even have the knowledge (or at least patience) to pull off. Not much of a problem among the Slashdot crowd, but certainly among the general public. More importantly, in order to fight that off, Apple would have to transition back off of the x86 architecture - not a feat of engineering that they probably want to do again after the PPC switch.

      More likely, it's for specialized chips in upcoming devices. Something along the lines of the custom-designed Intel chip that went into the Macbook Air. It's the whole argument of DRM* - you can either spend your time trying to come up with technological measures to stop people doing something, or you can innovate and make products that people want to buy by addressing an existing market (or often in Apple's case, creating an entirely new one). While Apple is certainly a very closed vendor on the whole, I think they're better off putting their resources towards innovation rather than protection.

      *Yes, I'm aware of the DRM in OS X, particularly with regard to BIOS/EFI. I'd call it quite unobtrusive compared to the phone-home activation in Windows, but that's overall quite irrelevant to this discussion.

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    5. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Either way it doesn't surprise me. Apple is a control freak just like the government. I don't care how good the products are, if they have a hidden agenda to control what I do and how I do it only on their machines then they can ef-off in every fashionable way. If the arrogant idiot had let those clones continue they Apple would have a much larger piece of the pie right now making much more than they currently do. They could have laid out some strict guidelines for the clones to keep them in order.

    6. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      But back to the original subject, I suspect Apple's desire for custom chips comes not from a desire to save power (there are already many viable low-power CPUs and chipsets available) but rather a desire to fight off Hackintosh clones (OSX running on non-apple hardware, such as the Dell mini 9 or generic desktop PCs). Technologically, there's no reason why this can't happen but one must consider that Apple's hardware sales are quite profitable and that share is worth protecting.

      I find this hard to believe. I doubt Apple cares about individuals building hackintoshes and using them for themselves. The amount of work to do this is considerable for most people (present company excluded) and would never amount to a tangible loss of sales since those people are obviously unwilling to pay Apple's higher prices anyway. Now for companies like the notorious Psystar that are trying to make money off the mass marketing and sale of hackintoshes, Apple already has a great tool in place for dealing with this: the US legal system. As expensive as lawyers are, I'll bet that they only cost a small fraction of the amount of money that starting your own semiconductor design/fabrication division would cost. Frankly, I've seen no indication that Psystar's hackintosh business is even making them any money. The only reason they're in the headlines so often is because of their defiance against Apple, but defiance doesn't pay the bills.

      Now that I've pointed out the economic drawbacks of this approach, I'll point out the technical drawbacks. Apple already effectively has two major technical barriers that prevent people from installing OS X on non-Apple hardware. The first is somewhat incidental and unintentional: EFI. Despite the sheer old timey ridiculousness of the BIOS, nearly every motherboard shipped still uses it instead of the newer/nicer/cleaner/better EFI. Hackintoshes have to trick the OS into believing that they're talking to EFI instead of BIOS. The second barrier is the TPM (Trusted Platform Module). It's basically a decryption chip that decrypts some of the binaries that are required to run OS X. The hackintosh community has managed to pull off this decryption with software.
      So what's the next step beyond EFI and TPM? I could only imagine that it would be a more robust, proprietary version of TPM. This will probably just end up being emulated by software eventually, too. But the big problem with adding these new counter-measures is that it would have to break legacy compatibility with every Intel Mac that's shipped in the last few years. Apple has already hung out to dry the PowerPC Macs with the coming version of OS X, so if they were going to make this type of modification, it would have to be several years from now and if there exists a huge problem with people using hackintoshes, maybe someone smart at Apple will finally stand up and say that they should just sell OS X standalone the same way Windows is sold.

    7. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      I would say MSFT is far better at marketing their ideas and capturing market share, while Apple is better at inventing.

      Considering I've never met anyone who thought the MSN butterfly commercials were anything besides ghastly, I'd have to say that Apple is far better at marketing. Unfortunately, despite their clever ads, Apple hasn't been able to capture much marketshare from MSFT simply because of their monopoly power (and probably other factors, like lower initial cost for a Dell/HP PC vs. an Apple one).

      Want to see some more bad MSFT marketing? Check out the MS SongSmith commercial on YouTube. Everyone I've shown that to was literally horrified.

    8. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by Ren.Tamek · · Score: 1

      Things do not always turn out exactly to plan, for any company. I think that Apple set out to create an iPod with a phone in it, which incidentally could also run applications and games. What people wanted to buy was a machine which ran applications and games, which also had a phone and an iPod in it. Perhaps the focus of the device was not as expected. Or perhaps, like a tortured artist, the architect of the iPhone will never be happy with his own designs...

      --
      "If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." - George Orwell, 1984
    9. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      I think for the iPhone they got the chip that they specced out, it's just that they didn't have the expertise to spell clearly to their chip maker what it was they wanted. Buying PA Semi helps them in that regard because PA Semi did design work and not fabrication. When they go to a company for fabrication like TI, Samsung, Motorola, or IBM, they can clearly tell them what it is they want in correct terminology. With the iPhone they probably had to use whatever that company had with whatever customizations they chip maker suggested. Now they can drive the process.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    10. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by Lars+T. · · Score: 1

      The second barrier is the TPM (Trusted Platform Module). It's basically a decryption chip that decrypts some of the binaries that are required to run OS X. The hackintosh community has managed to pull off this decryption with software.

      So current Macs can't run Mac OS X. That's interesting alright. Hint: they don't contain a TPM chi. Oh,and Mac OS X never used it on the older Macs.

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    11. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by makomk · · Score: 1

      So current Macs can't run Mac OS X. That's interesting alright. Hint: they don't contain a TPM chi. Oh,and Mac OS X never used it on the older Macs.

      You're quite right, they don't use the TPM chip. The actual decryption key is, IIRC, hidden in another custom chip which serves as a dongle of sort. It's required to decrypt the binaries of various important programs.

    12. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're tying to use logic - I'm afraid that won't work with Lars T.

    13. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by Lars+T. · · Score: 1

      Projecting again, WMF?

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    14. Re:innovation, custom chips == !hackintosh by Lars+T. · · Score: 1

      So why didn't you reply to the factual incorrect "Insightful" post?

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

  19. The by-product by AnalPerfume · · Score: 0, Troll

    Having their own chips will make it much easier for them to lock consumers out of using their devices in ways that Apple can't monetize.....well, even more than they already do. They do seem hell bent on becoming a designer digital island with strait jackets as mandatory uniforms.

  20. Apple Rumors by fm6 · · Score: 1

    Not newsworthy. Apple fanboys play telephone more creatively than anybody this side of John Dvorak.

  21. Scattered reports??? by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 1

    Apple's purchase of PASemi was big news. Scattered reports, my ass.

    --
    retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  22. Apple shoulda never left IBM, Cell woulda been it by rAiNsT0rm · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Apple made a mistake (*gasp* yes they are capable of it) by ditching IBM when it did. Now that IBM has an amazing chip in the Cell processor, Apple has the same Intels as every other PC. PowerPC was what made Apples so great for a number of applications and uses, they've lost that now.

    They bought up PA Semi but I think that was a flailing effort that may or may not pay off... even if it does it would most likely only affect small subsystems and things like the iPod/iPhone.

    The Cell chip coupled with the CUDA tech from NVDA would have catapulted them lightyears ahead of standard PCs. Hey, everyone makes mistakes.

    --
    http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
  23. Re:Apple shoulda never left IBM, Cell woulda been by atezun · · Score: 1

    Apple looked at the Cell before switching to Intel, they weren't interested.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/11/technology/11apple.html?_r=1&oref=login

  24. The problem with Cell... by tlambert · · Score: 1

    The problem with Cell is that in a general purpose computer, threads need to talk to each other; you can't just have non-barriered pipelines you keep fed. That's OK for some types of specialized processing, but most of that type of processing is going onto general purpose GPUs these days (e.g. OpenCL), rather than building specialized hardware for it.

    A personally would have liked to work on a port of xnu to the Cell architecture, since I think it would have yielded a lot of useful information about the OS from a non-ccNUMA standpoint, and would have potentially improved the code, but really, these days I'd be more likely to try and port it to a Tilera chip, since it has a larger number of CPUs to deal with, and it'd get you to where you want to be when companies like Intel finally catch up with them on processor-on-die count. It's a lot easier to build large and scale down than it is to buld smal and add on ad hoc to scale up.

    -- Terry

    1. Re:The problem with Cell... by badkarmadayaccount · · Score: 1

      I though the SPEs to the PPC core were suposed to be the on-chip GPGPU. They are general purpose vector co-processors, while GPUs are specialized ones. Am I missing something?

      --
      I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
  25. Re:Apple shoulda never left IBM, Cell woulda been by nobodyman · · Score: 1

    You are mistaken. It's not as though Apple didn't see the Cell coming. Sony shopped it to them but they simply weren't interested.

    Mr. Jobs rejected the idea, telling Mr. Kutaragi that he was disappointed with the Cell design, which he believes will be even less effective than the PowerPC.

    And this was way back in 2005. The Cell is arguably good in it's role as the cpu for a game console / blu-ray playback device, but that doesn't mean that is the best choice for a general-purpose computing device.

  26. New iProduct by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So its going to be c

  27. Re:Apple shoulda never left IBM, Cell woulda been by Morky · · Score: 1

    Apple's domestic market share has doubled in the three years since moving to Intel. They moved to Intel just as Intel was introducing a great leap in technology. Going with Intel also allowed for virtualizing MS Windows or dual booting, eliminating most of the risk for switchers. They bought PA Semi specifically for iPod/iPhone systems. It had nothing to do with Macs, so how is that a "flailing effort"? They haven't even introduced a PA Semi-designed product yet. CUDA tech is basically what they are doing with Open CL in Snow Leopard, so nothing missed there. You are a looking 0 for 3 to me.

  28. Re:Apple shoulda never left IBM, Cell woulda been by bonch · · Score: 1

    Apple already considered the Cell processor at the time and rejected it as being less effective than the PowerPC.

  29. Re:Apple shoulda never left IBM, Cell woulda been by flabbergast · · Score: 1

    Sticking with IBM for Cell would have made very little sense. The Cell processor is very similar to how NVidia's CUDA presents the graphics card to you: limited cache (shared memory), lots of very simple hardware threads, almost no branch predication, etc. So, both CUDA and Cell would crank out great numbers on things like a particle simulator, MPM, image processing, and the like, but are not equipped to do some useful things like running a scheduler, or a word processor. Basically anything that's very difficult to multi-thread would be very hard/impossible to adapt to a Cell like architecture.

    And some of the applications that are would be useful in Cell most likely work in CUDA. So, instead of having to have a regular processor + Cell + CUDA, why not just have a regular processor + CUDA?

  30. Re:Apple shoulda never left IBM, Cell woulda been by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Cell is a PowerPC...

  31. Re:Apple shoulda never left IBM, Cell woulda been by rAiNsT0rm · · Score: 1

    Well, because before hipsters and "cool" kids flocked to Macs they were amazing at... Image processing and the like. Imagine a cell CPU with say 8 cores or so and CUDA with an additional ton of cores all churning out amazing shit like Pixars latest flick or handling massive RAW files and tons of filters.

    See, then fine, have your commodity Intel crap for the in-the-know crowd. Ever notice how the "pro" lines are anything but since the switch to Intel? Well, probably not because actually doing the things that made Apple what they are has become a thing of the past.

    The other thing you and others miss is that Apple has complete control over the OS so many perceived shortcomings of Cell could have been worked on at a low level and made to be massive assets.

    --
    http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
  32. ... and by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Further preventing clones using the already abused US patent system

  33. What IF by Jerry+Smith · · Score: 1

    they had acquired SUN? They could have run on SPARC!

    --
    All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
  34. I always wished... by toby · · Score: 1

    They had bought Transmeta (or, more recently, Sun) - Both have world class low-power technology. At least Oracle will make good data centre use of that. (I hope.)

    --
    you had me at #!
  35. Re:Apple shoulda never left IBM, Cell woulda been by bomanbot · · Score: 1

    Well as a few others already pointed out Apple did look at the Cell chip and rejected it. There are in my opinion two big problems why Apple could never seriously consider the Cell:

    First of all, it was new architecture, which consisted more or less of a PowerPC chip which shares some similarities to the G5 and the SPUs which the PPC part had to feed with data. Well, to truly take adavantage of the Cell architecture, all programs would have to be optimized to the Cell architecture, which is not an easy task, as any PS3 programmer can attest you. So all the amazing applications you envisioned would have to rewritten for the Cell and if we remember how long it took to for true Altivec adoption, this could take a long time. But without the usage of the SPUs, the PowerPC part of the Cell is even weaker than a G5, so the transition would have been awful, as exisiting software would struggle to run decently on the Cell while all the applications are rewritten. Not to speak of the fact that not alle computing tasks are really well suited for the Cell architecture anyway...

    Second and I think some others commented on this already as well: The biggest problem Apple had with the G5 was that it did not scale as well as expected due to thermal reasons (hence all that watercooling stuff they built into the later PowerMacs) and more importantly, that IBM was not able to make a G5 chip capable of being used in a laptop, both for thermal and power inefficency. But if you think about how important the laptop systems are to Apple, how long could Apple realistically wait for IBM to deliver a chip like that? And if you think about the Cell, I would wager to believe that even today with better and more efficient production capabilities, the Cell would still be a relatively poor laptop chip.

    So yeah, I can see where you think the Cell could have theoretically been an interesting alternative, in the beginning I also thought that this would have been a possible alternative for Apple to consider. But since Cell programming is so specialized and difficult and Apple needing especially laptop chips in the worst possible way, I think at least in that regard, the switch to Intel was the correct one. Now dont get me started on that x86 architecture, however.. ;-)

  36. Of course! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why do you guys think they bougth PA Semi ?!

    Of course they will use their own chips !

  37. I like Apple chips. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    They're great with yogurt.

  38. The great circle of silicon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This pops up every few years-- "Hey, we're making money! We must know what we're doing! Let's try doing something completely different that we know nothing about!"

    Apple tried making their own floppy disk drives. Major Fail squared.

    Then they tried making their own 20MB hard drives. Major fail, like cubed.

    Then they tried making their own Mac Northbridge on a chip- Major Fail to the major fail power.

    Then Jobs had two large custom chips made for the NeXT box. No barn-burners there and no lasting impact.

    Then they tried making their own video card on a chip. This one actually made it to market but was more expensive than buying VGA chips from like Trident.

    Here's an idea-- how about they stick to making sleek and incompatible with anything else gadgets as has made them several billion?

  39. i for one mock our turtlenecked overlord by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    or something like that

  40. drawing lines by Gary+W.+Longsine · · Score: 1

    Uhm... it's a line drawn by anyone who designs chips and must pay someone else to build them. Like... anyone whose opinion on the topic matters.

    --
    If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
  41. Big deal by commodoresloat · · Score: 1

    People have been designing Apple chips for a long time. Wake me when they make an edible iPod shuffle.

  42. Re:Apple shoulda never left IBM, Cell woulda been by nobodyman · · Score: 1

    That's kinda the point. Jobs' take was that powerpc core surrounded by umpteen signal processors was *inferrior* to simply a powerpc cpu for the general purpose computing role Apple needed it for.

    If anything it would have made more sense for Apple to go with the Xbox 360's tri-core version of the powerpc, but even that wasn't very well geared towards general purpose environment. Similar to a Pentium4, the they increased the number of pipeline stage so they could jack up the clock speed and theoretical maximum performance. The problem is that to achieve that performance you need to minimize the use of branching logic.

    Also, Jobs kinda hates Microsoft and using a Microsoft-designed cpu would be an admission of defeat.

  43. Power netbook? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

    Apple have publicly denigrated the netbook market in the past. i.e. the iPhone is an internet appliance and for everything else there's the 13" MacBook Air.

    The conspiracy theory would suggest that Apple is clearly worried about netbooks cannibalising their student notebook market. [A white Macbook at $US1K is their cheapest offering.] That they will only divide and conquer the 10" netbook market when they have developed a killer solution.

    Specs on the CPU for the netbook market are fairly low. Single core in the low end, 32 bit only, performance rivalling a 4 year old PowerbookG4.

    Now, see, Apple owns a line of CPUs ideal for this market. multi-core, 64 bit (in line with snow leopard), energy efficient - PWRficient. The best bit is they own the CPU; with no one else using their chips they don't have to worry about 'unofficial' clones on that architecture. Battery life mightn't be the same as the new ARM devices but should be better than a Core 2 while spanking an Atom in performance.

  44. Re:Apple shoulda never left IBM, Cell woulda been by Nicky+G · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry, you clearly didn't get the memo. Even us crazed Apple fanboys gave up on making this argument, like, two years ago. Cell + CUDA? Personally I am more interested in Nehalem + OpenCL + Grand Central. You can keep your Cell + CUDA thank you very much.

  45. Ingenious! by lm317t · · Score: 1

    Now they can design a special chip enabling their mouse to have more than one button. This multi-button mouse would be useful AND aesthetically pleasing! Just what will that Steve Jobs think of next?

    --
    EOF
  46. Yeah, right. ARM. :rolleyes: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why the hell would you build ARM chips when you're wanting high speed and low power (and not just low power), and you have a world-class, extremely low power PowerPC design team which you just picked up for millions on the billion?

    Considering what hires they made and the acquisition of PA Semi, one can quickly deduce that they're likely building a very low power mobile PowerPC chip, likely with a very wide vector engine (ala Larrabee) such that they can use their recently acquired LLVM talent to drive their OpenGL (ES) implementation.

    From what I understand, Apple really hates the video chip in the iPhone, and for good reason. Sadly, the market really only has a couple of vendors in this realm, and the biggest one produces the worst chip (by a wide margin): the PowerVX, quite possibly the worst new graphics chip on the face of the planet.

    Also, by designing their own chip, they can decide which logic stays, and which goes (i.e. they're not stuck with the crap fest of current market ARMs which contain two of everything including the kitchen sink, but you have to tippy-toe while balancing a stack of plates on your back to make more than a third of it work at the same time). Likely they'll strip the thing down to bare metal and ship (DDR2/3 controller, LCD controller, input controller, maybe crypto if they don't use the vector engine for that).

    And while, yes, it will probably be manufactured at TSMC or UMC (like 80% of the rest of the silicon manufacturing companies do; who the hell owns their own fabs today? Even AMD spun theirs off!), that says pretty much nothing about its quality.

  47. It just works! by ElitistWhiner · · Score: 1

    You get what you want by design only from Apple.

    Programmable silicon...

  48. Mighty-Mouse by krischik · · Score: 1

    I guess you want to be funny but you lost me. After all the Mighty-Mouse is out for quite a while and it is quite aesthetically pleasing - If you don't know that it is a 4 button mouse you would hardly notice.

    Ahh that's it: You don't try to be funny, you just don't know that the Mighty-Mouse has 4 buttons.

    But then everybody must know that by now. Well, you just lost me here.

    1. Re:Mighty-Mouse by lm317t · · Score: 1

      It might have four buttons but its impossible to use them. Do you have one? I had to take my wife's back and get a logitech laser mouse.

      This new Apple product has a whole keyboard in one wheel. I can't wait to get one.

      --
      EOF
  49. Will be the kewlest chips evar!! by zmollusc · · Score: 1

    'Mr Jobs, sir? It's the chip fab here. You are going to be pleased with this latest batch, sir. The etching guys have got the sinusoidal edges down now and the colours you see reflecting off the chip surface are really beautiful. Much better than the previous runs. Jim's new process has finally paid off and the whole chip is 30 microns slimmer. Basically, I think we have met all the requirements you set :-) I might be a little ahead of myself but the team are really looking forward to stage two. If you can let us know which model will be the cpu, which will be the ram etc, we can start laying out the transistors and interconnects and all that bullshit. Thanks.'

    --
    They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
    1. Re:Will be the kewlest chips evar!! by nickrao · · Score: 1

      Apple won't manufacture their own chips. That would be way too expensive, since they would not be able to spread the development cost as could an OEM supplier. This is just a dumb ass rumor.

  50. Mighty-Mouse trouble by krischik · · Score: 1

    Well, our main problem was that all buttons where set to the same function. Took us some time to figure that out.

    Apart from that my wive is quite happy with her mighty mouse. On the other hand: I use a Microsoft Natural Desktop set.

    Note that I never said that the mighty mouse is perfect - I only comented on available its features - not how good they are.

    Martin

  51. Re:Apple shoulda never left IBM, Cell woulda been by badkarmadayaccount · · Score: 1

    I though barrel processors (multiple hardware threads per core) were supposed to cure the problem of pipeline stalls, since in a n-way CPU, the 1 clock-cycle goes to the first virtual core, the second to the second virtual core, up until the n-th thread and core. Even if a pipeline stall occurs in a virtual core, the adjacent clock cycles aren't wasted. That's what Intel probably had in mind with Hyperthreading, but the software world wasn't (isn'?) ready for it.

    --
    I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.