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Apple Is Making Its Own Modem To Compete With Qualcomm, Report Says (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple is apparently working on its own, in-house developed modem to allow it to better compete with Qualcomm, according to several new Apple job listings that task engineers to design and develop a layer 1 cellular PHY chip -- implying that the company is working on actual, physical networking hardware. Two of the job posts are explicitly to hire a pair of cellular modem systems architects, one in Santa Clara and one in San Diego, home of Qualcomm. That's alongside several other job postings Apple has listed in San Diego for RF design engineers. The Information, which spotted the first job posting, cites sources that go a step further, claiming that Apple is not only potentially working to develop its own modem, but is in fact specifically targeting it for use in future iPhones, with the company looking to leave longtime partner Intel behind in favor of its own, in-house solution.
According to The Information's report, the new modem would still be years away, with even Apple's purported 5G iPhone slated for 2020 using Intel's in-development 5G modem instead. It makes sense logically, too -- if Apple is only just starting to hire now, it'll take at least a few years before it'll actually be ready to ship hardware. But the move would have big ramifications for the mobile space, particularly for Qualcomm and Intel, two of the biggest modem suppliers in the world.
According to The Information's report, the new modem would still be years away, with even Apple's purported 5G iPhone slated for 2020 using Intel's in-development 5G modem instead. It makes sense logically, too -- if Apple is only just starting to hire now, it'll take at least a few years before it'll actually be ready to ship hardware. But the move would have big ramifications for the mobile space, particularly for Qualcomm and Intel, two of the biggest modem suppliers in the world.
Apple is apparently working on its own, in-house developed modem to allow it to better compete with Qualcomm
Apple doesn't *compete* with Qualcomm. Apple doesn't sell baseband chipsets and Qualcomm doesn't sell phones. They don't want to use Qualcomm parts anymore.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
When was the last time an electronics manufacturer was this vertically-integrated? They get any guff from a supplier, they just throw up their hands and say "screw it, we'll roll our own."
You mean 'borrow' patents left ,right and center, complain about the fees for using them , then claim it shouldn't be patented as they invented it?
If anyone has put into system to ignore paying patents, it's Apple. They already owe billions to Ericsson, and I don't see how you can develop a modem chip today without stepping on a minefield of existing patents, but somehow the U.S. courts will allow Apple to ignore paying licenses...
I don't know if it will work well, but it will be cool-looking. Maybe a simple orb that's silver, white, translucent, or pearl-esque. Or maybe Saturn-esque.
Table-ized A.I.
It's not a "modulator-demodulator" and analogue lines, it's all digital; cellular-connected router.
Apple is a massive failure when it comes to designing their own chips.
The are eight generations into their A4 to A12 ARM SoC. It is widely viewed as a big success. By controlling their own design, they can put all customizations on-die thereby cutting component count and reducing PCB size. They can also leave off everything they don't need, thus cutting power consumption.
How come Apple goes after the OSX86 community who wants to run Apple's OSX, but not on Apple hardware?
Apple puts in light roadblocks, but nothing serious to anyone that wants to make a Hackintosh. How do they "go after" such people?
For instance, if Apple really wanted to go after Hackitosh users, wouldn't they disallow Mac App Store use (it would be trivial for them to detect - they do not even try)? Yet the Mac App Store works fine on a Hackintosh.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If they're advertising for RF design engineers, they are way behind. You can't just roll technology like that out from scratch. It's beyond most 'digital' people to do something that analog very well.
Locked in protection for the Apple iProduct line. Also... each and every RX/TX byte will be closely monitored by our team of H1b experts to make sure you are using it right.
Apple has always been about brains. Now they are about Baud.
This Baud's for you Apple!
I retired from QC in '08 after 20 years. Went sailing with a friend and her BF some 4-5 years later. He'd left a job at Texas Instruments and moved from Texas to San Diego less than a year earlier. He didn't want to talk about QC, but said he regretted making the move. A year or so later went sailing with the same friend, same BF (she'd dumped her hubby of 20-30 years and moved in with the BF), and a new guy. Dude I worked with at QC in the 90s. He was debating leaving, said the company had changed once Paul Jacobs took over (which was a few months after I retired).
Christmas parties? QC had awesome Christmas parties. Cancelled.
Summer picnics, aimed at the kids of worker bees? Used to be awesome, cancelled.
And neither Ken nor Bill wanted to talk about it, but the whole vibe was more hours for not only less money, but fewer intangibles like a subsidized cafeteria and flex hours not being as flexible.
Some of you may remember John Rogers. President of Comic Con, died a month back. He was my boss. He was 100% a company man, I could not see him leaving QC. His obit never mentioned QC, the impression was he didn't work for them anymore. On the one hand, I get that. He had to be worth millions. On the other hand, he was a company man, loved his job, and I honestly thought he would die filling out my performance review. Combined with everything else I've heard, QC may not be a good place to work anymore.
Oh, did I mention the local newspaper runs an annual Best Places to Work every year? For 20 years QC was on that list. They've been absent for 5-8 years now.
Oh yeah, they've had layoffs for 2-3 years running now.
As an interested observer (I still hold lots of stock) I have to wonder if QC is driving out the 20-30 year folks who know their tech, and not being somewhere younger folks (or older transplants) want to work.
If they're advertising for RF design engineers, they are way behind.
I doubt if they are planning on having working silicon next week. They have deep pockets, and can afford to invest for the long term.
Even if it takes them a few years, it will pay off big time. Qualcomm has had it too easy for too long. We need more competition.
The company this hurts is Intel. They have invested huge amounts of capital into developing a modem and the only real way to make it back was slowly over many years with huge partners like Apple. It will likely take Apple significantly more than 2 years to make a modem, but even if it takes 4 I'm sure Intel would be unhappy with their investment in a modem unless they find other ways money with it. Samsung already makes their own modem. It seems likely that other big Chinese phone makers will do their own modems. So I predict things are going to get tough for Qualcomm and nearly impossible for Intel's modem.
I think I have an old USR Courier 56K unit in my closet somewhere. Apple can have for free, if it will help them out.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Why would the POTS modem, that being play old telephone service and modulator demodulator, remain what they are. Seriously one of these in pretty much every house world wide. What else can a modem be, well, router, switch and firewall just for a start. Now typical is file server, coming up web server and even email server and far smarter social media server. The scope for that core family device, taking up similar core roles like the smart TV, will expand and take up a much larger role in the family digital landscape. Apple is making a very smart move and probably started a while ago and is not just making an early announcement, I would guess they are much further along then they are indicated.
In all reality, the broadband modem is probably in need of a name change, to reflect its expanding role.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Modems are hardly a complex project. I designed one as part of a wireless bridge and router for my CS300 level networking course. It all makes a lot more sense if you just divide total bandwidth info half send and half receive. The top of every time slice (hour/millisecond) is listen, the bottom is sending.
You can slide the windows around and do calculus and speed of light for radio propagation delays if you want, but it is 99% the same if you just think of even minutes as 100% listen and odd minutes as 100% send windows. Everything else is just optimization for component and SLA constraints.
Designing a competitive lte modem is not at all easy. Implementing the physical layer with all modulation and coding options is already a significant task. And this is just for a working basic implementation, to optimize it for good performance requires a lot of math and experience. Then there are the higher layers, this has a different kind of complexity and requires engineers with different experience.
Research groups have implemented the lte modem in software running on a pc in a few manyears. Implementing it in hardware will take more time.
Leaving stuff off has zero effect on power consumption. All modern chipsets can completely disable unused parts, it's literally a few transistors to completely cut power and reduce consumption to zero. Also compare battery life of the iPhone to high end Android phones and they are about the same for a similar battery size.
Apple make their own SoCs to differentiate themselves and to make sure that iOS can't be hacked to run on non-Apple hardware without extensive work. It also allows them to get some largely meaningless benchmark wins that fanboys wank over.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Apple is clearly worried about slowing iPhone sales, which let's be honest is much of Apple's business along with its App Store. This is obvious when it takes years to refresh what used to be your most affordable Mac's and best sellers. I also expect Apple to begin the process of replacing Intel CPU's for some of its Mac lineup as well in the near future.
Apple could have saved a couple of years and avoided two transitions had they adopted the PWRficient. Instead, they scavenged P.A. Semi for their brilliant design team and sent them back to the drawing board for an ARM variant. There is no doubt that the A-series is worthy of praise, but that is in spite of Apple wasting their designers efforts and their customers time with a vain architectural transition.
They're actually hunting down the Hays 300 baud modems with acoustic couplers. There's nothing like the challenge of shoving that into an iPhone form factor. I mean, how engineer are you?
RF is sorted, They can licence off Huiwei if they want. There is muck with noise levels, and power management for polling and you are done.Or go exotic and have some teflon on the pcb.
As for vertical, the last leader was Sony, that died off when they let Samsung make the absolute best. Engineers fron Nokia or Motorola will enable a drop in replacement easy enough. The threat is SCO like patent teasing - cause they do not want to loose out on easy money.
Apple had 8 years worth of motherboard failures because they couldn't spec out a proper capacitor, and they want to build their own modems... RIGHT!