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A Close Look At Apple's A4 Chip
PabloSandoval48 writes "Apple's A4 processor is heavily influenced by Apple's long-established relationship with Samsung and represents an evolution rather than a revolution in circuit design. A team of experts takes a look at the evidence on A4 in an attempt to determine its origins and the influence of recent Apple acquisitions in the area of chip design."
A team of experts takes a look at the evidence on A4 in an attempt to determine its origins and the influence of recent Apple acquisitions in the area of chip design."
The team of experts concludes the A4 was designed by Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Revolver.
...but if I remember correctly, the same A4 chip in the iPad is supposed to be showing up in the new iPhone. Can someone confirm?
Living With a Nerd
I hear that the new A4 chip will allow the iPad to grow to 210 × 297 mm!
I don't see what's so interesting here. It's a standard, general-purpose, consumer-grade embedded processor. There are billions of these around in all sorts of devices.
Is this one of those things that people get excited about just because it's from Apple, but is otherwise totally unremarkable?
Apparently we spell bingo differently in my world.
The A4 chip doesn't really seem to have any really fancy technologies in it. Mostly, it's just repackaging and combination of other components that already exist, but instead of combining them in the generic, general purpose manner they normally are, putting them all together in one chip allows a bunch of superfluous stuff to be eliminated.
Are you adequate?
that's some "close look" with not much to show for it.
I don't see what's so interesting here. It's a standard, general-purpose, consumer-grade embedded processor. There are billions of these around in all sorts of devices.
Is this one of those things that people get excited about just because it's from Apple, but is otherwise totally unremarkable?
I think it is just because it is Apple. For some reason, the thought of Apple being involved in processor design makes these people jizz in their pants.
Around here, we spell bingo link this: L-A-I-D
Living With a Nerd
This is just a re-hash (to put it kindly) of many existing articles spun out and waffled into 5 page views. There is absolutely no information here that hasn't been printed already.
Apple is not a semiconductor company. Sure, they bought one but it's not their core competency. So like everything, they thought they could do a better job than everyone else at this too.
They're going to have to spend money keeping the A4 competitive with other ARM SoC offerings from companies who make them for a living. They're going to have to keep them competitive with the ever-improving Atom chips which are slowly encroaching on sub-watt territory held by ARM. Otherwise, their hardware will lag behind. They're already in a world of hurt with so many vendors ramping to release Android portable devices of all sorts form factors, now they have to compete in the CPU arena too?
I just don't see the point. It'll be interesting in 3 years to look back and see if this was a wise decision.
Chipworks had some interesting eye-candy die photos and a breakdown of the iPad and A4 for those who haven't seen that yet:
iPad Teardown
I don't see what's so interesting here. It's a standard, general-purpose, consumer-grade embedded processor.
Not exactly, which is what the article is all about. While the A4 is nothing revolutionary, it's not an off-the-shelf item either. Apple took a general purpose processor and re-designed it specifically for use in its mobile devices.
This ain't rocket surgery.
What? Pay people more? Unthinkable.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Are there ARM designs yet which support the Trusted Platform Module specification? (Remember this fuzz years ago wrt. Microsoft and TCPA/NGSCB?)
If I were a hardware company and want to sell DRM'ed content with a hardware dongle, this would be the way to go, having the encryption key which ties the media to the device stored directly inside the CPU would make my platform very attractive, maybe even a de-facto standard, for certain media control freaks. And you could make sure that only signed code runs it from the moment it boots, turning it into the ultimate closed system where the producing company stays in control.
What makes it interesting is indeed only that it's made by apple. However, if you have a look at these market cap numbers, you may see why this could have some significant implications:
Apple
Intel
Of course it is an off-the-shelf processor, with an Apple logo on it.
Can I ask you what part that is not off the shelf (logo not counted)?
What part is redesigned *specifically* for their devices (logo not counted)?
3. A forced 30% cut of all software sales for the iDevices.
4. And now a 40% cut of ad sales in Apps(while conveniently banning Admob).
So Apple reduces developer's profit, but they still continue to support them, helping along their growth in to a monopoly.***
And if they do becoming a monopoly, they will have the power to cut of a developer's "oxygen supply" but banning them from their app store.
***Lets face it, iDevices are on the verge of being the "standard" platform for mobile applications.
PS: I figured since my karma is already shot from criticising Apple in a previous story might as well let it going all the way down.
Say what you will about the position Apple is currently in, but they have been screwed over many times by other companies (Microsoft with Office, Adobe with Premiere, IBM with PowerPC @ 3ghz), and they figured that it was critical to their success that they take control of their own destiny.
What they've done is made a streamlined version of an ARM processor that is useful for their current needs; they do not need to "keep up" with anyone in that they get their processor to do what they want it to do for this particular need. If anything, by not having to cater to anyone but themselves, they have the ability to have custom hardware, but still based on the widely-used ARM architecture, so they don't have to completely re-tool when they come up with an A5 or A6 or whatever. Jobs himself said that they are not in the business of licensing their technology. You won't see an A4 being offered in lots of 100 to anyone for other purposes, it's a chip for Apple and their products only.
I was wondering too about the wisdom of this move, but it shows that they are not going to hitch their wagon to anyone's horse but their own, and that they have the ability to modify the horse to pull whatever load is necessary at that moment, a new iPad, new iPhone, AppleTV, whatever.
Don't get too caught up measuring market cap. It's a number that financial analysts like to toss around, but it has little bearing in the real world.
Just look at what Apple sells, versus what Intel sells. Apple sells a huge number of over-priced products that provide little to no productivity improvements. People buy Apple products for entertainment, for pleasure, and as a status symbol. A hipster looking at Facebook on his iPad bought with daddy's money isn't contributing anything to society, aside from consuming a few $5 lattes and putting some cash in Starbucks' coffers.
Intel, on the other hand, goes out of its way to provide the most value at the lowest price possible. Their products are used not just for entertainment/pleasure/status symbols, but many users actually use them to get real work done. The real value that Intel provides is far greater than that which Apple could ever hope to provide.
It's foolish to compare them on market cap.
You do realize that the suicide rate at that Chinese plant is actually *lower* than the national average, right?
What boggles the mind is why can't they pay a few more bucks to the people working in Foxconn(who are jumping off buildings) who actually make these iDevices?
Because Apple isn't responsible for the salaries of Foxconn employees? And why do you single out Apple in contrast to the dozens of other huge companies that contract with Foxconn like Microsoft, Logitech, Intel, Cisco, Dell, Nokia, HP, or Sony?
Didn't samsung end up as the last supplier licensed to use Alpha tech?
Since I choose to believe that Apple has resurrected Alpha, no reasoned argument can change my mind :)
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Yes, but these deaths can be tenuously linked to Apple! zOMG TEH STEVE JOBS IS KILLING INNOCENT CHINESE FACTORY WORKERS!!! Never mind that Foxconn is the one who determines and pays their salary not Apple or any of the other contractors of Foxconn's plants.
Looks like Apple is looking to dominate the entire vertical space from the silicon in the chip and selling directly to consumers with Apple stores along with all the software that consumers buy. And it wants a cut of everything:
For your conspiracy theory to make some sort of sense, Apple would have to get a cut of anything that Samsung makes. It doesn't. Apple contracted Samsung to make a chip for them. Like other customers, Apple created their own design for Samsung to manufacture. Unlike other customers, Apple went deeper into the design customizations than other customers. Samsung does not owe Apple for any other ARM chips they make for other customers; and it is unlikely that Apple will allow Samsung to manufacture the A4 for their other customers.
1. Hardware of the iDevices
The last time I checked, Apple made their hardware or contracted parties to make it. This is no different than any manufacturer these days. Dell, HP does exactly the same Are you objecting that these companies make money off their own products?
2. Monthly kickback from AT&T on iPhone users monthly fees. (This is the real reason for exclusivity to shitty AT&T, Apple is just too greedy)
Many cell phones makers have exclusive contracts with carriers for certain models that have kickbacks. When a carrier advertises "free" phones, do you really think that the manufacturer really got no money when you got a free phone with a new contract/contract extension.
3. A forced 30% cut of all software sales for the iDevices.
I believe that is something called "overhead" that Apple charges a developer to sell through their store. I don't know if you ever developed for mobile devices before but that is very reasonable. Before the App store, some stores charged 45% plus fees. And this is no different than other stores like Android. If a developer charges no fees for the app, Apple will not charge the developer.
4. And now a 40% cut of ad sales in Apps(while conveniently banning Admob).
Apple is setting up an Ad system. They expect to charge for fees. Are you objecting that they should charge for their work?
Looks like Apple is leaving no stone unturned to make money hand over fist and is rolling in billions of cash. What boggles the mind is why can't they pay a few more bucks to the people working in Foxconn(who are jumping off buildings) who actually make these iDevices? Couldn't hurt Apple's bottomline really that much, can it?
First of all, Apple is not Foxconn's only nor biggest customer. Almost everyone from Dell to nintendo to Intel uses Foxconn. Second, Apple did raise the wages for the employees that work on their products. .
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Well, if it's off-the-shelf, where can I procure it ?
This SoC is no more off-the-shelf that any ASIC, even if built from already-designed IP blocks.
I don't see what's so interesting here. It's a standard, general-purpose, consumer-grade embedded processor. There are billions of these around in all sorts of devices.
Isn't that sorta like saying a Core i7 is just another x86 chip. It's a standard, general-purpose, consumer-grade processor. I don't know about you but I can't design an ARM chip and you discount the work of engineers who did the design work. From what I know about it, Apple designed the chip to be more powerful and and more energy efficient than a standard A8. Making something to do both isn't an easy task. Now it won't turn into the next Skynet but it is an improvement for those who might use it.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
***are you sure about this one? Even when looking at impressive number of apps in their store...very large part of those were ebooks packaged as single app. Or audiobooks. Or many non-stellar games (subpar n-th clones or in style of flash games. Having an ebook reader, audiobook player and flash support sort of covers most of the mentioned categories). Better not go into "entertainment" section; but take a look at apps which are essentially packaged rss feeds or UIs for webpages (is mobile Safari suddenly not enough?) or mobile radio stations.
Come to think of it, that's sort of in spirit of how Apple probably wants to be the gatekeeper...
There is of course very worthwile content; few percent probably (on a platform which itself is a very small part of those mobile ones on which one can install apps). With equaivalents typically available on other platforms, "for quite some time" not being uncommon.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I agree, and admit that I put it unnecessarily sensationalist. I'm certainly not claiming that Apple will be producing chips for enterprise servers anytime soon. However, I do believe that we will never see an Apple product equipped with an Intel Atom. Further, I wouldn't say that the iPhone is without "business cred".
Anyway, I also vaguely remember that when Apple switched their computers from PowerPC to Intel, they said something about being pragmatic about processor choices, and that the day when they switch from Intel to another manufacturer's processors might come fairly soon. So, who knows, maybe another 5-10 years down the road we will see powerbooks based on Apple processors...
Did you read the actual article? Do you know anything about how the ARM architecture works?
Its sort of a "plug and play" architecture-- they license out the core design, the Cortex A8, but that design isn't set in stone. It includes options and modules that you can decide what to include or not, and there's all kinds of ways you can choose to optimize it and modify it to suit your needs.
Some people take this design and market their own customized version of the architecture for various purposes -- Nvidia's Tegra is one such. Its an ARM chip, but not all ARM chips are created equal (and it depends greatly on the purpose one customized an ARM chip for).
The A4 isn't some entirely new sort of chip-- its not as custom as Quallcomm's Snapdragon-- but its also not the same as any other chip on the market. They left some things out. They added some things in(or, more, changed some things). They tweaked its design to suit their purposes. Its not a general-purpose chip, needed for multiple vendors and different device types, so they left off some things to optimize it.
Therefore... its not off-the-shelf. You can't buy one. If you're an ARM-licensee, you could make one if you really wanted if you peered close enough and figured out which modules all the various parts on the die are.
Of course its not literally off-the-shelf.
Neither is a Atom CPU with a different logo painted on it (and to be specific so that you do not misinterpret me, I do not claim that the only difference of the A4 is the logo).
The parent of my post said was:
"While the A4 is nothing revolutionary, it's not an off-the-shelf item either. Apple took a general purpose processor and re-designed it specifically for use in its mobile devices."
I see no evidence for that Apple redesigned anything. Do you know any re-design that is made "specifically for use in its mobile devices"?
Scary maybe, though I note that the ease of moving between mobile platforms means that Apple is unlikely to ever achieve any real lock-in of users.I think you're pretty far off, though, on items 2, 3 and 4. More basically, it's with the concept of a company being "greedy," which I'll get to after I address the specific points.
Yes, Apple apparently did initially get a portion of the monthly fee. (Piper Jaffrey's analysts put that at $18 per phone per month, IIRC.) I don't believe that is the case any more. My understanding is that this went away when they started offering the iPhones subsidized by the carriers. Even if they still do get a portion of the fees, though, so what? It's a part of the cost of service, not a tool of generating monopoly. (If anything, it's the opposite, as higher-priced iPhone service plans turn away users.)
Yes, Apple gets a cut of 30% on sales of third party apps. So what? They take 30%, and give me (as an iPhone app developer) a platform for sales, a distribution system and a much reduced cost to advertise. The 30% they take for those services is utterly worthwhile, particularly for independent developers.
Yes, Apple takes a 40% cut of ad sales through iAd. And no cut at all through other services, which pay (last I looked) between $0.30 and $1.00 eCPM. Given the ad customers Apple is signing up, I'd be amazed if iAd didn't pay better. (AdMob is among the worst in terms of eCPM, which is the only number that matters to a developer that wants to make money off of advertising.) As to banning AdMob, what do you think would be Google's reaction to Apple seeking analytics on Google searches about mobile devices? My bet is that it wouldn't be much different in effect than what Apple has done. Apple is under no obligation to provide their competitor with a competitive advantage against Apple.
As for companies being "greedy," that's really an utterly irrelevant consideration. All companies exist first and foremost to deliver a profit to their owners/shareholders. If they don't maximize their profit, they are not doing their fiduciary duty, and in most countries (certainly including the US) can be sued for that. Maximizing profit, though, is trickier than you might think. For example, Android is a real competitor to Apple in the phone business. If Apple gets too stupid (as they are in serious danger of with many of their app store policies, and particularly with the lack of transparency to developers and the interminable delays to get bug-fix releases up on the store), then Android will cannibalize iPhone sales. (Eventually, there will be similar competitors for the iPad and the iPod Touch, one assumes.) Thus, Apple can charge so much that customers flee to other platforms, or be so awful to developers that they flee to other platforms taking customers with them, and in the process Apple would have overreached and the market would correct that. So "greed" isn't really involved, because being "too greedy" inevitably leads a company to failure, unless the government is propping the company up. Or, in the American case, the unions whose workers are employed by the company is more to the point.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
If Apple is so innocent, why do you even have to mention the names of the other companies???
If Apple is so guilty, then why NOT mention those other companies?
You have to answer that first before you are allowed any more paranoid rants. You are trying to defect all ills of the world to fall upon Apple's shoulders. Has any other company but Apple in fact even offered a bonus to workers who work on the products the companies are having produced there?
Even if all of them are evil, Apple is less so if only because of that one aspect. Yet, you single Apple out - so obviously you have some other motive in mind rather than Foxconn worker well being. It's pretty sick to take advantage of Chinese suicides to further your own holy crusade against Apple (and Apple only).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is overly pedantic, but it's the "iPhone 4", not the "iPhone 4G". It is the 4th generation of the iPhone, so it's "4G" in that sense, but it does not make use of any 4G mobile network.
Well since we are being pedantic, the iPhone 4 (and 3Gs for that matter) has full support for a variety of 4G networks being deployed, basically LTE.
AT&T is supposedly doing some trials next year and rolling out 4G in 2011.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What boggles the mind is why can't they pay a few more bucks to the people working in Foxconn(who are jumping off buildings) who actually make these iDevices? Couldn't hurt Apple's bottomline really that much, can it?
Uhh, they did -- http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/05/31/said.to.stem.from.internal.investigation/
Further... You know that Foxconn plant isn't like, an Apple exclusive manufacturer don't you? Dell, HP, Playstations, Wii's, Xbox, the Kindle... phones by plenty of other people, and basically practically anything electronic.
But Apple's greedy and is running the sweatshop and should direct a few bucks to the poor guys (... which they did, a 30% raise). No one else does. Bad, evil, greedy Apple does.
The whole suicide thing is way overplayed in the media. Its a sweatshop and can't have anything to do with the fact that Foxconn was paying silly amounts of compensation to families when this happened (a year's salary!), practically giving incentive in a society with very different social values then western ones (look up the differences between a shame and a guilt-based society: they're the former, we're the latter). And it can't be anything like a suicide chain which has happened more then once in this country.
No, It's Apple's fault.
Apple is not a semiconductor company. Sure, they bought one but it's not their core competency.
Why can't it be?
Why would a company so focused on making consumer electronics and computers, not decide that over time it is of benefit to move in the direction of also being strong in semiconductor design?
After all, it's not like they built the A4 from scratch thinking they could do better than anyone. That would be hubris. No, instead they took the ARM core and customized around it, which seems perfectly within the limits of what Apple can do given the companies they have acquired. There's no reason to think they are overreaching in abilities here.
Over time they may do more actual design, but it makes perfect sense to start down that road now that they have the capital given the direction they are headed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> And why do you single out Apple in contrast to the dozens of other huge companies that contract with Foxconn like Microsoft, Logitech, Intel, Cisco, Dell, Nokia, HP, or Sony?
Because this is a comment on an Apple story, perhaps? The flipside of massive publicity whoring à la Apple is commensurately increased discussion of all the company's activities, including the less savoury ones. When /. starts running nine stories a day on Cisco, we might get more discussion on their employment practices.
Funny how a guy named "Lunix Nutcase" consistently provides one of the few voices of reason around here.
Surely people are missing the next step? Apple want's to bring the SoC design in-house. It's currently a very fragile all-in-one unit provider. You pay for nothing revolutionary in an Apple product, instead you pay for a unique design/interface and the Apple goodwill 'mark-up'. The latter of which is a license the print money. So really Apple need to hit the semi-conductor market to maintain market dominance through R&D. In-house developments don't run the risk of being licenced to your competitor, and give you a technology lead that is hard and expensive to beat.
But did we all forget about the possible purchase of ARM? I don't think it'll happen soon (ARM's stock is higher than 2002). I don't really want it to happen either. ARM licences to far too many companies, therefore there will be monopoly considerations and any deal will be scuppered by a race to it by anyone with £5bln cash: Nokia, Motorola... even IBM or MS. The loss of ARM will actually hurt the "open" fabrication platform they've developed (think of all the individual ARM fabers that are out there... no are licence, no work) and we use benefit from (ARM chip competition has driven down price).
And what about the PowerVR licensing from Imagination Technologies - Apple increased it's shareholding this. I predict that apple will buy ImgTec by the end of the year. Possibly over the summer. They've got an good back catalogue of products, and despite the fact they didn't hire me, I think they're a brilliant acquisition for Apple: real chip fabricating people. A lot of their new stuff is low power which apple lacks experience with. Relying on an ARM development time-table means competitors can get to market relatively quickly, with similar specs. ImgTec are a good fit.
Matt
It helps to keep things in perspective. AMD has a market capitalization of 6 billion dollars. Apple has 4x that in cash alone, and is worth 40x what AMD is. Apple's interest in the CPU market is far less involved than AMD's, so even this isn't a fair comparison. It is a fairly minor investment, considering Apple's size.
Another way of looking at it is that Apple is a company that primarily sells CPUs and other computer components packaged really well. In this context, control over the components is important, especially when the component manufacturers they depend on could one day decide to compete with them. I'd say the security, control, and customization of such an integral part are worth the 1% of their company's value the investment involved.
Regarding the last part: you're generally correct of course - too bad that some measures of success work in a bit perverted fashion. Especially when we look at stock market. But also, overall, not rewarding long-term positive societal effects, for example.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Is this one of those things that people get excited about just because it's from Apple, but is otherwise totally unremarkable?
No more or less unremarkable than Snapdragon, Tegra 2, or any of the other similar products that are of great interest in this space. Those are all fairly standard ARM cores, too, but nobody's saying anything about their limited scope of customization as being "off the shelf".
It's more likely that this is one of those things that provides a springboard for bitching about Apple out of selective and convenient comparisons, because that Apple logo is a waving red cape in the bullfightingshit arena. Instead of exploring the technical achievements and engineering, it devolves into a bitchfest by people with nothing better to do than call each other fanboys.
Failed troll
1. True, and why not?
2. False - Apple stopped getting a cut of monthly fees sometime during sales of the original iPhone. They just get a subsidy from AT&T like pretty much all other phone manufacturers.
3. So? Apple is not forcing anyone to develop for the iPhone. I've been in this industry a long, long time, and while the iOS market is pretty saturated, 30% to cover distribution and a lot of the marketing is pretty cheap. iOS developers get a lot more eyeballs on their product that a random independent developer paying for AdWords
4. Again, So? You don't have to use the Apple service. AdMob is not specifically banned. It's their practice of collecting personal info and sharing it with the developer of Android that is the issue.
There was a data packet that started to have un pure thoughts, so the Apple A4 processor rejected the packet and sent it packing.
Well, to be fair - at least part of the companies you mention didn't set up themselves in a way which makes them rely to such a large degree on Foxconn (or similar); having their own fabs, most of them not in China, for starters.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Plenty of companies do this. They do it sometimes without being experts in processor design, by having others help them customize off the shelf processors. They're just taking an ARM core, and then adding stuff on the periphery. They're not changing the core itself; not optimizing the pipelines, not adding instructions, etc. It's not even to the level of re-design.
Processors chips are basically at the stage now where you can customize them. This is analogous to me going to a store and building my own PC from off-the-shelf boards and parts; or maybe going to a web site and choosing which components I want in my PC.
This article is of interest in terms of the detective work and reverse engineering though. But it seems uninteresting in terms of it being about Apple.
Yes, Apple gets a cut of 30% on sales of third party apps. So what? They take 30%, and give me (as an iPhone app developer) a platform for sales, a distribution system and a much reduced cost to advertise. The 30% they take for those services is utterly worthwhile, particularly for independent developer
I am getting sick of this argument. The issue is that it's a forced cut and there is no chance for stores that might, say, take only 20%. Same with Admob, if the service sucks, developers will use iAds instead, no need to ban competitors.
The fanboys making these argument seem to be suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
What boggles the mind is why can't they pay a few more bucks to the people working in Foxconn(who are jumping off buildings) who actually make these iDevices?
Because Apple isn't responsible for the salaries of Foxconn employees? And why do you single out Apple in contrast to the dozens of other huge companies that contract with Foxconn like Microsoft, Logitech, Intel, Cisco, Dell, Nokia, HP, or Sony?
This story is about Apple, and it's known that Apple has the highest margins by a big lot among all the companies that you have listed.
This space for rent.
(After a detour to intel who bought patents and quashed them.) The alpha CPU was quite respected in its day. But since it commercially failed like nearly every other none x86 chip family.
Isn't that sorta like saying a Core i7 is just another x86 chip. It's a standard, general-purpose, consumer-grade processor. I don't know about you but I can't design an ARM chip and you discount the work of engineers who did the design work.
Doesn't the article discount the work of ARM's engineers by pretending that Apple created this thing?
Of course they didn't took "a general purpose processor", they just made some modifications to a design which is already pretty appropriate to have a SoC they want. Lots of companies do that...
One that hath name thou can not otter
But What I would find really interesting is what it would take to make Apple scrap the chip designs they bought and go back to Intel processors.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
I'd be very surprised to see Apple computers based around processors that are "Apple" in anything more than name and, possibly, specific arrangement of cookie-cutter functional units around a licensed ARM or x86 core.
Apple has historically and to the present day, shown considerable distaste for entering low margin markets(with occasional exceptions in the service of making their high margin gear more attractive: the original "airport", for instance, was actually cheaper than the Lucent gear that it was a rebadge of; but it was sold to give the high-margin macs the "wireless" feature comparatively cheaply and easily, for the user). Chips, unless you are the top dog(like Intel, who after their rather embarrassing P4 vs. A64 era, are pretty firmly back on top of the x86 world) or a huge supplier of licensed blocks(like ARM), are a cutthroat business. The poor bastards churning out commodity Flash or DRAM seem to be losing money and/or going out of business all the time.
Apple might well(and, indeed, already have), commission a big stack of semi-custom chips, with their own preferred core and functional groups, and have somebody fab it, and(with an order of that size) whoever is contracted to package it will be happy to stamp whatever Apple wants on the casing. However, actually going into chip design/fabrication in a serious way would be entering a seriously cutthroat market to no obvious advantage.
On the x86 side, Intel has already demonstrated a willingness to give Apple some months of exclusivity and press hype for their newest gear(Xeons in the mac pros, small-package core2s in the macbook air), presumably in exchange for better margins than dell and HP's knife-fight-in-a-telephone-booth offers. As long as Intel is willing to do the hard, capital intensive, work of running cutting edge fabs, and provide their fanciest silicon at modest per-unit cost, with an exclusivity period, what would Apple have to gain?
On the ARM side, the world is crawling with vendors who have their own, slightly different, spins of ARM core + functional units. The barrier to entry to having your own isn't exactly huge; but neither are the margins or differentiation. The fact that Apple also has one, to suit their particular embedded devices, isn't surprising; but it isn't a huge strategic thing. All the assorted ARM licensees of a particular ARM generation are pretty similar.
The components on the die are different then any other chip, including the basic Cortex A8 design its based on. Ergo, it is different then any other chip. Ergo, they redesigned the chip.
Exactly how, no one is entirely sure. They can't actually tell yet exactly what all the components are. Its very similar to a Samsung chip that the company they bought (Intrinsity) previously designed, but in a couple notable places, it is different. But its possible there's other changes in the other modules, even if said modules appear in the same places and are of similar sizes.
Its different. That's all we know, but its known for a fact. Its not like Apple posts the full design of the silicon or anything for analysis :P
There's really absolutely no argument that's supportable for the position that they didn't re-design the chip to specialize it: even if specialize is only "remove a module from the die that are not needed" -- that's all that's required to fulfill the requirements to have been made "specifically for use in its mobile devices". I'm not saying that's all they did, but they did at least that, and so the statement holds.
Its actually not terribly easy to look at a microchip and tell exactly what all is going on in it.
Oh, yeah, I agree--it's not particularly exciting. My post was in response to the AC who apparently didn't read TFA and said the A4 is just a "standard, general-purpose consumer-grade embedded processor." It's not; as I said, it's nothing revolutionary but it has been customized for Apple's purposes.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Because Apple isn't responsible for the salaries of Foxconn employees?
Apple IS responsible, because they know the workers' conditions, and still accept to make business with their direct employers. Those workers work FOR Apple, it doesn't matter how long the control chain between Apple and them is.
Look at all the hype the shiny "A4" name has garnered them despite it being essentially made with commonplace cores that are already widely used. The switch to Intel took away the special "uniqueness" factor that Macs had on 68k and PPC. This is just a marketing ploy to convince the fanboys that these new platforms have something extra special that you can't get with any old beigebox phone.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
They probably just took a normal ARM SoC and removed any MPEG2 or DIVX support.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's unlikely the CPU core was modified much, they probably used some more efficient in comparison to what they had DSPs/etc., or throttling methods of those; so A8 part doesn't really come into consideration (and even if - then Apple has it just in time for A9 SoCs showing up, for example)
Oh, and you overestimate how designing SoC can often look nowadays... (screenshot; yes, even basically point'n'click CPU customisation)
One that hath name thou can not otter
IOW. There is no reason for this to be news. The only reason anyone even noticed or bothered to submit it here is the fact that it is Apple.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Think Programming instead of IC design.
These days design of chips like A4 is more like programming than IC design of the 80s.
- Import the ARM Cortex 8 library, customized with configuration
- import other libraries e.g. memory controller, graphics chip etc
- write code to bind them together
compile... oops.. I mean send to foundry. Get back A4 or your Snapdragon.
What boggles the mind is why can't they pay a few more bucks to the people working in Foxconn(who are jumping off buildings) who actually make these iDevices?
Because Apple isn't responsible for the salaries of Foxconn employees? And why do you single out Apple in contrast to the dozens of other huge companies that contract with Foxconn like Microsoft, Logitech, Intel, Cisco, Dell, Nokia, HP, or Sony?
Actually from a financial perspective Apple should monitor the difference between the raw material costs and the contract price they pay. Generally if a company is willing to cheat and screw one party, they are very willing to do to other parties, namely Apple Inc., as well. Same reason I don't buy my goods from thieves, if they are clearly willing to be crooked once, they are willing to cheat or steal from me too.
Plus just think of the bad press from an iPhone or iPad packaged with a body part of a suicide victim. Now just imagine that you were planning on getting it for your daughter as a birthday gift. People won't care if it was from a Foxxconn or Apple employee once the media covers the story.
Bad numerology is all a part of Apple's marketing game.
They took a page out of IBM's playbook from the 80s and decided to give it a facelift.
It sounds really convincing to people that aren't particularly detail oriented or math impaired (which is most consumers).
You don't typically hear about specific "killer apps" so much.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> Scary maybe, though I note that the ease of moving between mobile platforms means that Apple is unlikely to ever achieve any real lock-in of users.
Yes. The lock in presented by DRM in books and videos doesn't mean anything.
Nor does the lock in represented by proprietary applications (that Apple takes that 30% cut from).
[/sarcasm]
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
ARM processors don't come pre-packaged. You license the core design, then you have to do everything else is needed to turn that into a physical chip. That's what *every SOC manufacturer* who uses an ARM chip does. Thus every ARM-based chip out in the wild is "different from any other chip". And we should get a slashdot story for each one of them.
I don't care about the cut. I object to the monopoly on distribution.
My wife's favorite iPad app is from Cydia.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"Off-the-shelf" means it's a vendor's product, not a custom in-house design. It means Apple ordered it from Samsung as a finished product, though they ordered specific design features to be included (which is common in industries with customers who spend millions of dollars on a single run of parts). It does not mean there is a literal shelf the average Joe can go and find an A4 for purchase.
You could, however, order an S5PC110A01 from Samsung, it's the same chip. The S5PC110A01 is found in other devices, including Samsung's own "Wave" phone. You won't find a web site to buy it from, but if you were to call Samsung you could almost certainly negotiate a price for a single chip, and they'd sell it to you.
That's what off-the-shelf means - it's not a product that is owned by Apple, or exclusive to Apple (though they were apparently influential in its design). It's a Samsung product and other manufacturers can buy the chip directly from Samsung if they want to use it.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Unlike other customers, Apple went deeper into the design customizations than other customers.
How do we know that? Sure, there are certainly many customers who might just take what Samsung offers, but are there no other who wanted their SoCs modified among some desired lines? (modifications which equal or exceeding those wanted by Apple). And it is quite likely that Samsung is already selling pretty close SoCs to others...
Hell, for that matter why exclude Samsung themselves? You can bet they modify heavily their SoCs for their own needs.
@1. - last time I checked, Apple actually contracted virtually everything (while some phone manufacturers try to have the fabs uner their own wings)
All of the above of course only lessens the conspiracy theory of GP. Though...would Apple really object?
One that hath name thou can not otter
Except, Apple's got a microarchitecture license. They haven't really used it much, aince the A4 is a modified Cortex A8, but the other licensees are Marvell (who got it from Intel, who got it from Compaq, who got it from DEC...), and Qualcomm (for the Snapdragon).
Next, Apple acquires Intrinsity, who up to then had been working with Samsung (who used to provide the processors for Apple) to modify the Cortex A8 core to be faster or more power efficient.
Apple's bought a lot of VLSI talent. They have PA Semi, who are well known at making very low power PowerPC chips, and Intrinsity, who are great at modifying existing designs. PA Semi may be working on a brand new ARM-compatible chip, while Intrinsity works on improving the A8/A9/etc, so Apple has a range of options for processors. Intrinsity gets them a processor "now" (since it's modified A8 plus peripherals), while PA Semi works on a future processor.
The A4 isn't interesting at all. The next gen chips, though, are. And Apple is poised to be a gadget provider that makes their own processors. If PA Semi + Intrinsity comes up with a super high speed design or super lower power design, it's all Apple's IP and technology, and Apple doesn't have to share wirh anyone else.
The article seems to suggest that while Apple's chip doesn't include any breaking technology, it is more highly customized than a standard A8 in placement.
Apple is designing their chips like their MBs so I'll use MB as an example. For a while you couldn't get a PC MB that didn't have an IR port even though I can't remember ever using it. Only recently have MBs dropped the parallel ports. But almost all of them have PS/2 ports still. Apple dropped their proprietary connectors in favor of USB/Firewire a decade ago. That allows to them to do some interesting things on models like MacMini where they keep shrinking the footprint. Apple couldn't do that if they stuck with the limitations that other MBs have. They are doing the same with chips. This first implementation seems to be the base/clean model. They'll add to it later.
You are correct that other customers could do the same with Samsung. But do other manufacturers have the expertise to do so? I believe this is why Apple bought PA Semi. Also it is probably far easier to get something from Samsung with as few customizations as possible for cost/time-to-market considerations. Apple wants a better chip for their smart phones and is willing to spend the time and money.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The use of a modified ARM based chip for mobile devices is in itself not interesting either. That it is a relatively fast version, well OK.
What's interesting is that they use it specifically within their company. I would expect that most ARM derivatives are created by chip companies which then sell them to device manufacturers.
Technically it is interesting exactly what they've added and in what configuration. Unfortunately they article is very light on the devices embedded within the SoC. We'll probably have to wait a bit more for that information.
That's not very precise analogy IMHO; what Apple needs in SoC is pretty damn close to what other mobile phones need (plus...A4 is also for tablets; seems it could be not-so-optimal after all for one of the products in which it is used, don't you think?)
Also, from TFA: "What we found was an APL0398 chip, presumably the next-generation processor from the APL0298 that we found in the iPhone 3GS."
And Samsung has the expertise, that's almost as good already. Or, here, grab the tools & data used with GPL CPU design mentioned in this article and play with creating your own chip.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Don't you mean "The next gen chips, though, might be"? Plus - how much of an advantage can they really give, considering the expense of investing in heaviliy custom designs? Especially if Apple seems like to like the recent high margins afforded by using commodity hardware...
One that hath name thou can not otter
You could, however, order an S5PC110A01 from Samsung, it's the same chip.
[Citation Needed]
Considering the guys with the infrared microphotography equipment couldn't say that for certain--in fact, they suggested otherwise--I don't understand how you can make that statement.
This ain't rocket surgery.
That's not very precise analogy IMHO; what Apple needs in SoC is pretty damn close to what other mobile phones need (plus...A4 is also for tablets; seems it could be not-so-optimal after all for one of the products in which it is used, don't you think?)
One of the things that Apple touts is the power efficiency of the A4. Apple has placed that as a priority for this design. Also remember this is the first design. The A5 might be a major step up as they done the initial work and placed everything exactly where they wanted. This has been Apple's modus operandi for many products. The first implementation doesn't appear to be anything special but the base design is solid. They add to it in subsequent steps which would have been much harder had they not designed a good base.
And Samsung has the expertise, that's almost as good already. Or, here, grab the tools & data used with GPL CPU design mentioned in this article [design-reuse.com] and play with creating your own chip.
While Samsung might have expertise in manufacturing, they don't know what Apple intends to do long term. And remember Samsung is also a competitor to Apple in phones. Apple probably would not let Samsung know too much about what they intend only what they want them to make right now. And Apple may also go to another supplier in the future
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Is it so interesting? The other company involved somehow in this news, Samsung, also certainly makes SoCs which suit them and are used specifically within their company; and having 21% of mobile phones, versus 2% of Apple, and also directly manufacturing those chips, they are a bit more notable.
Generally A4 is certainly not much different from comparable SoCs used in mobile devices. But it certainly does have some "bloat" at least in some devices ;p (like that would matter much...but, for fun, compare specs of iPad vs. iPhone vs. iPod Touch)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Doesn't the article discount the work of ARM's engineers by pretending that Apple created this thing?
No.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
From what I know about it, Apple designed the chip to be more powerful and and more energy efficient than a standard A8. Making something to do both isn't an easy task.
More powerful and more energy efficient than a standard A8,
I'm constantly amazed when I see Apple fanbois making up stuff to hype up Apple's products. Just curious, how do you know that's what Apple did? Can you prove that?
take a look at apps which are essentially packaged rss feeds or UIs for webpages (is mobile Safari suddenly not enough?)
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! It is so unbelievably annoying that site developers seem to want to create an app for their site rather than just a mobile version of their standard web page! One site I frequent actually wants to *sell* that app to me! It's only 99 cents, but seriously??
Don't worry my karma is shot for defending Apple. We're not so different, you and I, Zelgadiss.
Apple took a general purpose processor and re-designed it specifically for use in its mobile devices.
By all appearances, the A8 ARM core was not redesigned by Apple in any respect. This looks more like a cookbook integration of various IP cores, including a standard ARM core.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
We should be far from being enthusiasthic about something which Apple touts now but, more or less, neglected a bit up to this point. Also, A5 might be a "major step up"...while at the same time ending up pretty much where other comparable SoCs are.
I don't think your description of Apple's modus operandi is accurate BTW - they actually like to wooe people with first attractive implementation; but during next gens, other providers tend to catch up (MacOS Classic & earlier Win versions; OSX & XP->Vista->7; iPod which...is vastly outsold by media players from other manufacturers; iTunes on the verge of loosing #1 spot in one of few markets where it's event present (Europe), iPhone & quickly catching up Android plus remaking of Symbian)
That also means everybody will do pretty much the same thing long term; there is not a lot of functionality which SoCs would need to have added, and limiting power consumption is something generally appreciated. Apple would have a hard time finding somebody who isn't also a competitor one way or another.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Android will cannibalize iPhone sales
Sorry, but this is a pet peeve of mine: sales of a competing company's product cannot "cannibalize" the competition. That term is used when a product lessens the sales of another product made by the same company. /pedant
So investors are caught up in the hype and RDF as much as the media or anyone else right now...
But yes - maybe now people can drop the myth that Apple are a "little company": "Look how amazing it is that Apple have done so well, managing a whole 5% of the phone market in just 3 years" they cry, as if Apple weren't some billion dollar company that can easily enter any market it wants. Or "Isn't it amazing that Apple can create a device for me to access the Internet" as if this was anything special in 2007 onwards; or "Let's all root for the small guys, against those nasty big companies like Intel and Microsoft"...
If your implication is that the Apple A4 is going to outdo Intel x86 just because of market cap, I don't think so. Intel x86 is well established on the desktop (as well as laptops and netbooks), and isn't going anywhere, especially with the dominance of Windows. And anyhow, the A4 is based on ARM anyway, so it's they who ultimately get the credit for owning the embedded/portable market.
Except this is how ARM work - they don't make the CPUs themselves, they license the architecture designs ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#ARM_licensees ). There's no such thing as an "off-the-shelf" CPU from ARM!
Are we going to get stories about every other company that makes an ARM CPU? No, because this is an Apple new site.
You're right, but this still leads us to the same conclusion - since this is how it works for every ARM processor (none of them are "off-the-shelf"), there's still nothing special about the A4, and we don't get news stories about every other ARM processor manufacturer.
I agree about the fears, but note you're being too generous to Apple about them being anywhere near monopoly status yet:
***Lets face it, iDevices are on the verge of being the "standard" platform for mobile applications.
"Standard" as in 5% of the mobile market? :) Even if we count just the "high end" platforms, they're at about 15-20% IIRC, behind Symbian (who have 50%) and RIM (and possibly falling behind Android too now)...
And why do you single out Apple in contrast to the dozens of other huge companies that contract with Foxconn like Microsoft, Logitech, Intel, Cisco, Dell, Nokia, HP, or Sony?
Fair's fair. We get a news story (or possibly ten) when Apple does some mundane thing, whilst the same thing is done by many other companies (e.g., releases a phone, or indeed this very story about making an ARM CPU); so they're also going to be singled out when they do something bad :)
We should be far from being enthusiasthic about something which Apple touts now but, more or less, neglected a bit up to this point. Also, A5 might be a "major step up"...while at the same time ending up pretty much where other comparable SoCs are.
I don't think that the A4 is the next Skynet. I just think it is a necessary first step if Apple wants to control more in their chip design. We'll see where Apple goes with it.
I don't think your description of Apple's modus operandi is accurate BTW - they actually like to wooe people with first attractive implementation;
Which of Apple's products doesn't fit this mold? The iPod Classic pretty much as the same form factor now as it did when it first launched. The replaced the scroll wheel with the click-wheel, added video, etc. The Mac mini has only gotten smaller. The iMac still is an all-in-machine but now with LCD instead of CRT.
iPod which...is vastly outsold by media players from other manufacturers;
Do you have actual data to support that claim? From Amazon's top seller list, the iPod Touch (#2 and #3) are only out sold in Electronics by a Kindle. Out of the top 20 spots, 6 of them are iPods. #20 is the only other MP3 player, a Sansa. According to some estimates, the iPod holds about 73% of the market.
iTunes on the verge of loosing #1 spot in one of few markets where it's event present (Europe)
[Citation needed] First of all if you are referring to iTunes, the software, it's free so I don't see how it is losing any markets. If you are referring to the store, Apple sold it's 10 billionth song in February and is considered the #1 music store in the world surpassing Wal-mart 2 years ago. And that's just in music. It is the #1 App store at the present as well.
That also means everybody will do pretty much the same thing long term; there is not a lot of functionality which SoCs would need to have added, and limiting power consumption is something generally appreciated. Apple would have a hard time finding somebody who isn't also a competitor one way or another.
Apple is now firmly in control now is every aspect of their chip design. Before they would have to rely on Samsung to implement changes. If Apple wanted to implement encryption on the chip, they could do it instead of waiting for Samsung. They could also drop Samsung which wouldn't have been a practical option if they didn't do their own designs.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I obviously don't need to tell you to take what Apple says with a grain of salt, as you seem to be perfectly well practiced at doing so already. But every time Apple talks about the A4, they talk about how it's been optimized for highly-efficient, low-power-consumption computing.
"Apple engineers designed the A4 chip to be a remarkably powerful yet remarkably power-efficient mobile processor. With it, iPhone 4 can easily perform complex jobs such as multitasking, editing video, and placing FaceTime calls. All while maximizing battery life."
"The A4 chip inside iPad was custom-designed by Apple engineers to be extremely powerful yet extremely power efficient. The performance is unlike anything you’ve ever seen on a touch-based device. Which makes iPad fantastic for everything from productivity apps to games. At the same time, the A4 chip is so power efficient that it helps iPad get up to 10 hours of battery life on a single charge."
From the iPhone 4 and iPad pages at apple.com, respectively. Again, take it at face value, but they've definitely done some custom work and optimization. They're not claiming to have built a new CPU architecture or anything that drastic... this is more along the lines of performance-tuning trimming out unused functionality.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Actually, many are off-the-shelf: at least, after a licensee makes them and sells them as such. Nvidia's Tegra for example, Qualcomm's Snapdragon. Those are off-the-shelf in that they're commodity items that basically any hardware manufacturer can decide to integrate.
ARM itself isn't off-the-shelf ever, no; you're right about that. ARM just sells specs. But licensees can take that and foundation and make chips of their own. Those can be commodity, off-the-shelf sort of items. This one isn't, Apple's keeping it to itself. That's interesting. (Interesting, not surprising)
And we indeed did get a Slashdot story when Nvidia came out with the Tegra and entered the market: its a new chip, its interesting. We've also gotten a Slashdot article about an upcoming Snapdragon release. So yeah, we do get news about this stuff. Why not about the A4?
Apple deciding to make their own CPU instead of going for a commodity one, and the fact that it seems to be unusually low-powered, and is going to end up in millions and millions and millions of devices -- it seems to be a natural nerd-interest to tear it apart and get a closer look. Seems quite appropriate to \.
You're right, but this still leads us to the same conclusion - since this is how it works for every ARM processor (none of them are "off-the-shelf"), there's still nothing special about the A4, and we don't get news stories about every other ARM processor manufacturer.
Like... because all people are different they're actually all the same and there is no need to get stories about what certain people have done?
"News for nerds"? I certainly am interested in details about the A4. Apple is good in certain things (or rather prioritizes certain things) and I would surely like to learn more about the power-management in that chip. Or about DRM-support in hardware.
Because Apple isn't responsible for the salaries of Foxconn employees?
Apple IS responsible, because they know the workers' conditions, and still accept to make business with their direct employers. Those workers work FOR Apple, it doesn't matter how long the control chain between Apple and them is.
Interestingly, among all the companies using that factory (Dell, HP, Nokia, ...) Apple is the only one that has insisted in reviews and reports about the conditions even before this suicide row.
And please don't stop there. 99% of the other chinese crap (not limited to electronics) you buy has been manufactured under conditions that are probably much, much worse than those at Foxconn.
Apple has become a scapegoat of certain people and I totally hate that. Not because I love Apple so much, but because it lets others get away who are often much worse.
This PDF has photographs of the S5PC110A01 and A4. It's clear that, aside from the Cortex A8, they don't share much in common. The S5PC110A01 is 9mm^2 bigger, so you can tell that they aren't the same chip just from the size of the die, but the Cortex A8 is not even in the same location on both. They both use the A8, but so does the OMAP3500-series, like the one found in the N900 - it's pretty much the standard core for the current generation of handhelds.
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Much less remarkable than the Snapdragon. In designing the Snapdragon, Qualcomm replaced most of the floating point pipeline, tweaked most of the rest of the code, and got about a 5-10% improvement over the standard A8 design, clock for clock.
Tegra 2 is also more interesting. nVidia didn't do anything with the core design, but they used the A9 core, rather than the A8, which supports SMP (up to four cores per chip), out-of-order execution, and better performance. They also added their own GPU design, while Apple just added one licensed from another third party.
In short, the A4 is a pretty dull chip. The interesting thing about it is that it manages to be about 15-20% smaller than similar off-the-shelf chips because Apple aggressively removed all of the features in a typical ARM SoC that they didn't need. This means that cost saving, rather than performance, was the most likely motive for Apple's design of a custom CPU. A smaller die means higher yields and less money spent per chip. Of course, that's only worthwhile if you are expecting to sell a lot of them, because the custom setup and design costs offset this for small numbers. A million sales might be enough though, so Apple have probably saved money overall by going with the A4 instead of something like the OMAP3530 or i.MX515.
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ARM Cortex-A9
Same as everybody else
Didn't Apple and Intel designed a special chip for the first gen Macbook Air? Wasn't Apple also part of the AIM alliance? which also included IBM and Motorola.
I hope you have never shopped at a BP petrol station, since then YOU are responsible for the oil spill, it doesn't matter how long the control chain between BP and you is.
Much less remarkable than the Snapdragon. In designing the Snapdragon, Qualcomm replaced most of the floating point pipeline, tweaked most of the rest of the code, and got about a 5-10% improvement over the standard A8 design, clock for clock.
A new floating point unit and some power efficiency gains is not exactly in a different ballpark.
They also added their own GPU design, while Apple just added one licensed from another third party.
They selected an existing GPU and shrunk it down, which is exactly what Apple did to the overall package.
In short, the A4 is a pretty dull chip. The interesting thing about it is that it manages to be about 15-20% smaller than similar off-the-shelf chips because Apple aggressively removed all of the features in a typical ARM SoC that they didn't need. This means that cost saving,
It means cost savings, power savings, and logic board savings, all of which are significant in product design. A 5% improvement in artificial benchmarking isn't terribly exciting compared to a 15-20% size reduction, nor is nVidia's repurposing of a trimmed-down GPU in a vanilla design any more impressive than Intrinsity scaling down the package for Apple.
The Snapdragon is not so much different from the Cortex A8 that it is any way revolutionary, nor is the A4. Both were specifically optimized for their intended application at non-trivial expense and with non-trivial objectives. That you find one set of optimizations "dull" in comparison because of personal preferences does nothing to detract from the work that went into the product, nor does it excuse the flamewar.
C'mon. This is apple.slashdot.org and they needed to fill some space between now and the Iphone 4 hoopla for next week.
Talk to Samsung maybe?
Samsung are using the A4 in their own phones, so it's likely they played as much part in the design as Apple did.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20007162-64.html
Who knows, maybe they will sell it to you if you order enough.
"From what I know about it..."
Which is not to say you know very much.
Along with that PR came unprecedented performance, so it's not *just* PR...
Except that nothing Apple did, apparently, was anything near as complicated as redesigning a GPU core or a floating point unit. That's the point you seem to be objecting to, and failing.
Also, since Apple controls the whole platform, they can make changes to the hardware in future revs and just watch for and handle those changes in the software, designing both in parallel so you don't get an out-of-step release schedule like we're seeing with Android devices. It's the big benefit of controlling the whole platform.
so apple is darwinian
As for companies being "greedy," that's really an utterly irrelevant consideration. All companies exist first and foremost to deliver a profit to their owners/shareholders. If they don't maximize their profit, they are not doing their fiduciary duty, and in most countries (certainly including the US) can be sued for that.
This is wrong. Even assuming the company is for-profit there are are variety of ways to charter a company. The responsibility of the company is to follow their charter, NOT to the shareholders. Now, it is possible to charter a company to say "maximise shareholder value" but this is actually fairly uncommon ("increase shareholder value" is more common, but you'll agree they are two very different things).
Of course, shareholders are free to sue who ever they like. Anybody can sue whoever they like. It will then be up to the courts to decide what "value" means - but it isn't always fiducial either.
I've no idea how this concept became so pervasive - it is certainly exploited for shock value in films like "the Corporation" - but for everybody to just accept the worst from corporations is harmful to society and has to stop.
I'm sure many people from Louisiana are finding your comment funny.
Except that nothing Apple did, apparently, was anything near as complicated as redesigning a GPU core
On the contrary, die shrinking and block stripping is exactly what Apple and nVidia did.
or a floating point unit.
I haven't seen anything suggesting that Qualcomm radically altered anything.
The point is that all ARM products that differ from reference designs in non-trivial ways, achieved through non-trivial effort and non-trivial expenditure, are all still far more alike than different. Intrinsity's design isn't any more "off the shelf" than TI's OMAP3 or Tegra or Snapdragon. Samsung's Hummingbird was even given quite a bit of attention, and as it turns out, it may be extremely similar to the A4, but no one knocked Samsung. In other words, this has nothing to do with Apple and everything to do with flamewars.
Anyway, it looks like in the end this will result in an improvement of the working conditions at Foxconn thanks to Apple, which will in turn get a benefit in terms of image.
Depends on what you mean by "licensed core". If you look at the history of Apple, you'll see a clear pattern: Apple licenses other people's cores or buys their chips at the end of the design process, but is quite frequently involved in designing those cores to begin with.
Let's review:
Apple has a long history of working with chip vendors and adding significant functionality to their designs. Sure, those bits end up in other companies' products, but there's Apple IP in an awful lot of CPUs out there, including many of the CPUs that have appeared in Apple products over the years....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
On the contrary, die shrinking and block stripping is exactly what Apple and nVidia did.
Apple did not to a die shrink - this is a technical term meaning taking an existing die and producing it at a newer process. Apple simply removed components that they did not need, such as USB and serial controllers. Or, more accurately, they simply didn't add them. Aside from that, the chip is unremarkable.
I haven't seen anything suggesting that Qualcomm radically altered anything.
Which tells me more about you than anything else - specifically that you know absolutely nothing about the ARM marketplace. Please look at some technical details for the Snapdragon - it doesn't even have the same length pipeline as the A8.
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I think it is just because it is Apple. For some reason, the thought of Apple being involved in processor design makes these people jizz in their pants.
It shouldn't, the last time Apple (AIM) made their own processors it was such a big hit that they dropped it and went with Intel.
And ... they use still use Intel above all that, too bad too sad, take your reality distortion field elsewhere.
Next you'll tell me they invented RISC, FPU, L3 shared caching, and multi-cores? IBM paved the way to RISC and also FPU (through coprocessor). L3 caching was an Intel thing^ and multi-core design was AMD. What did Apple do? name one significant aspect to the modern processor Apple had anything to do with?
^ Citation needed
Ahhh, I see the idiot patrol is out in full force today. Let's address your inaccuracies one at a time.
"1. Hardware of the iDevices"
- How dare they want to make money on the product they sell?!!
"2. Monthly kickback from AT&T on iPhone users monthly fees. (This is the real reason for exclusivity to shitty AT&T, Apple is just too greedy)"
- Nooooo, the real reason for exclusivity with AT&T was AT&T was the only (big) cellular provider that would give Apple the terms and conditions they wanted with regards to features, promotion, warranty of their product, etc. At the time the carriers held all the cards and Verizon (who was approached first) was unwilling to give Apple the terms they wanted so they went to AT&T. And let's be clear here, the terms that Apple wanted are what makes the iPhone so popular.
"3. A forced 30% cut of all software sales for the iDevices."
- The use of the word "forced" is undoubtably meant to conjure up images of brutal prison guards pointing a gun at the heads of small children. Apple provides the store front, the advertising, one stop shopping, ratings, the whole ecosystem and they simply want 30% to cover costs and make a small profit on their idea. Did you think they should give all that work away for free? And I don't think the developers thought it was unreasonable considering they flocked to the business model in droves.
"4. And now a 40% cut of ad sales in Apps(while conveniently banning Admob)."
- Admob is most certainly NOT banned. Admob can advertise, but they can not send analytic info back to Google so Google can steal Apple's data and use it to improve their competing OS, Android. Google can't get an eternal free ride on Apple's innovation.
"What boggles the mind is why can't they pay a few more bucks to the people working in Foxconn(who are jumping off buildings) who actually make these iDevices?"
- What boggles the mind is how you could say something so incredibly stupid and still try to take the moral high ground. Foxconn makes lots of electronic devices from many companies, but somehow you have singled Apple out as the lone bad guy. Dell, HP, etc. have stuff manufactured there, but no one is picking on them? And what about Foxconn management and Chinese employment practices, no one is ripping on that? Seems a bit hypocritical to just pick on Apple. And what's worse is Apple DID offer to take reduced profits and so they could up worker pay (it was in the news last week I think) so please learn what you're talking about.
In the end this is not about any moral high ground, but rather your blind hatred of Apple. You are either woefully uninformed or just lying to spread disinformation.
Apple did not to a die shrink - this is a technical term meaning taking an existing die and producing it at a newer process.
Excuse me, I meant package shrinking.
Aside from that, the chip is unremarkable.
That's not what TFA says.
Which tells me more about you than anything else - specifically that you know absolutely nothing about the ARM marketplace. Please look at some technical details for the Snapdragon - it doesn't even have the same length pipeline as the A8.
On the contrary, it shows your dancing around the periphery of the issue. I've not seen any "technical details" claiming the Snapdragon is any sort of revolution, nor is the Snapdragon design under attack for its technical achievements. You insist on defending that which no one is attacking while ignoring the actual point of the argument and making silly personal comments, which says a lot about you.
As ever, the point is that everyone that modifies the design of the basic ARM unit does so at non-trivial expense, with non-trivial effort, and arrives at a non-trivial alteration for their specific needs and goals. No one is claiming the A4 is a revolution. It is, like the OMAP3, like the Tegra, like the Tegra 2, like the Hummingbird, and yes, even like the Snapdragon, a modified design built for a specific purpose, and customized to the necessary extent to serve that purpose. What a given person chooses to find interesting or remarkable is irrelevant and does not support belittling the engineers who did the work (few of whom, by the way, even worked at Apple).
You're drawing an arbitrary line. It's possible to improve a chip design without creating a fundamental new building block that nobody else has ever built.... By your standards, the Centre Pompidou is not architecturally unique because other buildings have air ducts and water pipes.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Though some of those companies rely to much lesser degree on Chinese OEMs (the way Apple set up themselves like that).
Citation (with details) needed.
such a high percentage of what americans buy is made there.
Most of their workforce elligible for any raises...also not there.
Citation (with details) needed.
For example Nokia owns all of their manufacturing fabs (over a dozen); most of them not in China / half of them in the EU.
http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia/company/production-units
You can check some of the rest as an exercise in using Google, etc.
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So, basically this is pretty similar to the Cyrix Media GX processor that powered Tablet PC's in the 90's except with an ARM core instead of x86 and minus the audio subsystem?
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
The publishers mandate DRM on books and videos, bitch at them if you don't like it.
And as for the lock in on proprietary applications, do you mean like the same lock in present on BB, Android, Win Mobile, Palm, etc? It's the same for every phone that uses a different OS, so why are you singling Apple out?
Try to understand the issue before commenting on it in the future.
Granted but improving something which has already been created is one thing. To say Apple had anything to do with developing IP that now trickles in to the chip making industry paving the way so-to-speak, sorry that's just ... *BZZT* WRONG!
Your words ...
Apple has a long history of working with chip vendors and adding significant functionality to their designs. Sure, those bits end up in other companies' products, but there's Apple IP in an awful lot of CPUs out there, including many of the CPUs that have appeared in Apple products over the years....
If anything Apple helped engineers create something typically easier for them to implement you know like a rich guy getting flown over to Germany to have his BMW custom built.
Now over to ARM, we wont even talk about AIM we'll be like Apple and act like it never happened, with ARM a very sturdy chip with a nice architecture (It's caching is conservatively and brilliantly done) If you were to use ARM's development as a basis or representation of Apple's chip making abilities maybe you get confused thinking a lot of what it brings to the table is new. ARM has the habit of changing the name of various things within the processor but when you look at it closer still follows the same basic principles already set down. The terminology might differ though its still pretty much the same thing it just holds a bit more a of conservative approach (and that might have something to do with it being designed for portable devices).
When it comes to CPU design it's not so much about innovation anymore. The concepts which have already been put forward by Intel, AMD^ and IBM over the years suffice now its all about the cost of chip and whether its cost effective to add various components. Simply put, If cost wasn't a factor we'd be running around with lots more cache memory and do away with slow ass RAM therefore reducing BUS (ahh BSB should of mentioned this before, another IBM innovation) speed bottlenecks and creating computers that would blaze in comparison too what we have now.
All these things HT, FPU, UDMA (not really processor but holds argument here) its all about getting away from the CPU or distributing the responsibilities of the CPU because of this cost factor involved.
^ Yeah they're worth a mention and they did a shitload more than Apple ever did / could for pioneering chip design.
Developers are free to create apps that use ads from Admob. Admob is not free to collect analytical data about Apple's customers because they are owned by a cell phone company. If AdMob decides not to allow their ads to be displayed, that is an AdMob decision, not an Apple decision.
Not anywhere in the Universe of falling behind Android in market share, but the rest of your numbers are accurate for now.
So? They added something else to their device and ended up with a bit bigger die and components are in slightly different places. That means very little, since all of the die layouts are done automatically these days by CAD software. It still can be the same device, just with additional components.
Well maybe you could become a great investigative journalist and uncover the real conditions and suicide rates in other Chinese factories.
Using page loads as a metric is really giving you a better view at Safari vs Chrome than CPU comparisons, and we all know that Chrome is faster.
You can't really use things like standby time either because Android multitasks, and we all know that kills battery life.
However, looking at the iPad on the A4 compared to previous devices that used ARM chips by Samsung and also ran the same OS, the iPad does much, much better. I bought an iPad a few weeks after it came out for a trip to Asia that I am just finishing up, and it's markedly more resourceful than other Apple portables I've used. Standby time is great, I left it unplugged and mostly unused for a week and it only went down 10%. It plays movies for like 9 hours without having to recharge. Games aren't as good as movies, but you still get like 7 or 8 hours of gaming out of it.
The A4 is definitely much better than previous chips that Apple has used, PR switch enabled or not.
You forgot to mention the whole 6-8% of the browser market Apple owns. You know vs the 60% MSIE and the 20% Firefox owns.
Apple basically fights over the last 20% with Google Chrome. Yep, their attempts at killing flash is going to work isn't it?
BINGO!!!
Some teardown analyses suggest that the A4 is nothing more nor less than a rebranded Samsung Hummingbird, which, though not a bad chip, breaks no new ground. Hopefully, something more innovative will come of it before too long. It appears that the NVidia Tegra 2 is a much more advanced SoC.
One has to wonder about the timing of an iPad replacement as the iPhone 4 has already made it clear that the iPad (1) is yesterday's news in far too many ways. Unless Apple has an iPad (2) out for Christmas I should think the competition will have something out that will be more attractive to many consumers.
I wonder, how precisely it looked in the case of IBM? (not only I wouldn't remember much, IBM wasn't ever very big in my place - embargo of Comecon, etc.)
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Hell, "standard" (mot much of a standard practise that is) webpages should be just structured in a way that's conductive to low resolutions and reformatting...
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One would hope they could leave it mostly blank for a few days, to maintain some balance...
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