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Apple and Samsung Already Working On A9 Processor
itwbennett writes According to a report in Korean IT Times, Samsung Electronics has begun production of the A9 processor, the next generation ARM-based CPU for iPhone and iPad. Korea IT Times says Samsung has production lines capable of FinFET process production (a cutting-edge design for semiconductors that many other manufacturers, including AMD, IBM and TSMC, are adopting) in Austin, Texas and Giheung, Korea, but production is only taking place in Austin. Samsung invested $3.9 billion in that plant specifically to make chips for Apple. So now Apple can say its CPU is "Made in America."
And as soon as the first chip comes off the assembly line, Apple will sue Samsung for patent infringement. :-)
So they better have already been working on their next-gen chips by now.
A11 chips should already be on HDL level by now.
I seriously doubt they spent $3.9 billion so they can say its CPU is "Made in America."
Seriously, 1 GB of RAM? Still?
Oh my god no way! There's a version N+1 coming of a product that's making billions of dollars? Who could have guessed!?
The byzantine balance of relationships between Samsung and Apple seem beyond even Milo Minderbinder's capacity for finding vested interests between mortal enemies.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
What I see in this is Apple is NOT letting up their push for better CPU/Graphics.
The long term plan is obviously to be able to DOMINATE through superiority.
These chips are actually made in malta. They just move them here to get a better price.
Designed in Germany by Indians for production in China by Koreans to be unpacked by Texans and purchased by Mexicans.
Still relevant, still funny...
>Samsung has production lines capable of FinFET process production (a cutting-edge design for semiconductors that many other manufacturers, including AMD, IBM and TSMC, are adopting)
Wooo! Cutting edge! Or maybe that's the same finfet technology Intel has been casually making in high yield production since Ivy Bridge.
It will be 37 x 26 mm and have a Gatling cannon. Performance is expected to be quite reliable.
...by a bunch of cheap H1B's
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I think the relevant points got left out... the summary missed the most interesting parts:
1G L2 - all of graphics memory now fits in the L2 cache
14nm design - someone needs to update Wikipedia; they can probably clock it faster than the op speed listed there
Quad core - this thing may be in the next MacBook Air
Memory bus - Apple's memory bus is still faster than everyone else's by a mile; pays to have the Alpha->NetScaler->PA Semi guys on the payroll
This things is probably going to beat the pants off every other ARM chip in a while. Oh yeah, forgot: they're already sampling.
List of third-party implementations of ARM architecture shows Qualcomm Snapdragon (ARMv7), Apple A series (ARMv8), Applied Micro X-Gene (ARMv8), NVIDIA Denver (ARMv8), and Cavium ThunderX (ARMv8). Everything else is ARM's own Cortex reference design.
says the user of a phone OS that requires more than 1GB of RAM.
If I wanted just a phone, I'd buy a flip phone and pay a lower monthly bill. People buy iPhone or Android devices instead of flip phones because they want a multi-purpose* mobile computing device.
Or maybe that's the same finfet technology Intel has been casually making in high yield production since Ivy Bridge.
In the real world, theoretical performance matters less than observed performance on the specific applications that end users want to run on a device. How well do Intel's FinFET CPUs run the existing library of games and other proprietary ARM-native apps for phones and tablets that aren't yet available as fat binaries? Is its ARM-to-x86 JIT up to even half the performance of native code yet?
The vast majority of what's different between iOS and OSX is the UI
That and end users' inability to configure iOS's Gatekeeper.
and the OSX UI wouldn't be appropriate in any way for a phone.
How would the OS X UI be inappropriate for a phone docked to a Bluetooth keyboard and AirPlay monitor? The docked phone's touch screen would behave like a trackpad. Or how would it be inappropriate for an iPad with a clip-on keyboard and trackpad?
That's probably not what he means. It's been hypothesized and rumored that Apple will eventually move all their laptops and desktops away from Intel and use ARM as the CPU. Intel has been behind schedule delivering next-generation chips, which leads to the conclusion that Apple would want to control its own destiny with its own CPUs.
The hammer has been ordered to come down, and American courts are fucking over Samsung and other foreign companies where it matters. Invest your billions in manufacturing in your own country, not in the U.S.
They have been going to get divorced and accusing each other of all kind of horrible things for the last decade, yet they are constantly on some romantic trip together. Can't these two decide if they love or hate each other already?
Is 'Made in America' going to be a premium?
It might sell in the USofA but the rest of the world should become very suspicious when something this complex has been made in the land of the three letter agencies and National Security Letters...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
They went 680x0 -> PowerPC 6xx -> x86.
There's probably a better pun there somewhere but it's been a long day.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
So, the cheapest TV stick imaginable has a Cortex A9 processor, so reading about the A9 processor in development by Apple is something that doesn't inspire much in the way of excitement up front for me. But it looks like Apple's A5 is more / less the Cortex A9 with some tweaks, so now we literally have two similar products with the same name that are generations apart.
I know of their technical strength in the low-power scene, and the MIPS/Watt race, ARM still leads by a mile, but ARM could also really stand to have some standards for naming the variants in a semi-consistent way so that the merely technically proficient have a chance of keeping up. And, (dare I say it?) this is what trademarks are for and why they exist.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
"-Lol, you sue me and i sue yo. Then we both can rise our product prices."