Posted by
timothy
on from the jalapeno-flavored-are-great dept.
afabbro writes "There are scatteredreportstoday that Apple is building a team to design its own chips, with an eye towards reducing power consumption on iPods and iPhones."
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
Re:it seems that this will be a variant of the ARM
by
cabjf
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· 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.
Re:Manufacture or design?
by
cabjf
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Re:It didn't work for microsoft...
by
rAiNsT0rm
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· 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.
-- http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
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."
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."
Slashdot Mirror
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
I'm willing to bet they have enough know-how available to do the design in-house. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PA_semi
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.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
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."
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."