On Oct 24, 2010, at 1:26 AM, Dan wrote:
At 11:19 PM -0700 10/23/2010, Scotty wrote:
Apple relatively recently acquired a company that makes CPUs for
mobile devices like the A4 Processor in the ipad.
In ?2008?, Apple bought PA Semi, a company that *designs* chips.
Like Apple, they don't fabricate ("make") anything - that work is
all farmed out to companies such as Foxconn.
The first result of this "collaboration" is the A4 SoC (System On a
Chip). The SoC contains a licensed ARM Cortex-A9 processor, an ARM
Mali GPU (graphics processor), a memory controller, and some other
things -- all on the *one* chip. The big dealio is its size and
its low low low power usage.
Now I am wondering if I am the only one who is wondering if Apple
has any intention of eventually manufacturing their own CPUs for
their computers instead of looking to Intel or IBM for CPUs.
[snip] Has anyone else been wondering about that?
This speculation has been circulating for months, ever since Apple
bought PA Semi.
L'Jobs has stated over and over that Apple will NOT be beholden to
any other company, period.
When the PowerPC alliance dropped the ball (inability to produce
faster PowerPC G4 processors for laptops), Apple jumped ship by
switching to Intel's new Core architecture.
Don'tcha mean G5?
Now Intel is dropping the ball -- their so-called low-power
offerings are awful. In addition to being power pigs, Intel has
bolted on their own horribly slow graphics processors. Yea, right
- like Mac users will want laptops with shorter battery lives and
lower gaming frame rates. heh. It was shortly after announcing
those products that Apple bought PA Semi.
Apple using the A4 in iPod, iPad, and iPhone is, essentially, a
phaser barrage across Intel's bow. The race is on: If Intel fixes
their offerings, then maybe Apple will stick with 'em. Maybe. If
Apple and PA Semi manage to speed up the A4, then they'll be
perfect for the MB, MBA, and MBP fairly soon.
... Notice please last week's MBA refresh. So much of the MBA is
updated, and yet it's using the same old stale Core 2 Duo
processor! Why? Because Intel's new laptop chips are garbage.
I'm thinking by next summer/fall, Apple will be offering A4
"portables" and Core i7 and i9 "desktops". OS X and iOS merged
(Lion being the first step), and able to run on either ARM or x86.
yum.
Interesting, but I still think that Apple dropped the ball with
regard to option to power sucking G5 chips for laptops. Neither IBM
or Motorola could do it but maybe a special arrangement with other
Intel competitors to work on a low power PPC such as AMD could have
proven fruitful. Power technology is now way up there with regards to
clock speed supporting multiple cores.
Just my 2ยข worth...
JT
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