News & Analysis
Replace Cirrus’ design slots in Apple? Fuhgeddaboudit!
Junko Yoshida
8/8/2012 10:04 AM EDT
NEW YORK -- Cirrus Logic’s big design wins with Apple’s upcoming products is, unquestionably, the envy of many in the electronics industry.
But before climbing onto the Cirrus-envy bandwagon, let’s ask a few questions anyway:
- Is Cirrus Logic expanding its design sockets in Apple’s new products at the expense of another chip company, like Dialog Semiconductor?
- Are Cirrus Logic audio chips so special that there are no alternatives?
- What would take for Cirrus Logic’s competitors to unseat Cirrus Logic’s socket in Apple?
When it comes to audio chips for mobile phones, Cirrus Logic isn’t the only game in town. Cirrus Logic’s competitors include: Dialog Semiconductor; Wolfson Microelectronics; Maxim; and Texas Instruments.
Among these vendors, Dialog has been as much an Apple captive as Cirrus. For Apple’s design sockets, Dialog has been picked for its power management chip, while Cirrus is Apple’s supplier of choice for its audio codec chip. The two companies have kept their design-in slots in Apple products for a couple of generations now.
Meanwhile, Maxim is considered “the number one merchant market supplier of cellphone Power Management Unit/audio chips, slightly trailing Qualcomm,” according to Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, a market research firm based in Tempe, Ariz. Qualcomm is a captive supplier for its own cellphone chips. “TI is the number two in that merchant market (probably because of Nokia), only slightly behind Maxim,” he added.
Although each vendor claims audio chip’s superiority (high audio quality at low power), their strategies tread slightly different paths.
A general trend among audio ICs used in mobile handsets, however, is that “audio amplifiers are already included with audio chip; and most cellphones have implemented audio codecs (yes, including DSP capability); and they are integrating it on the same chip as power management units (PMUs),” observed Forward Concepts’ Strauss.
Could Cirrus “unseat” Dialog?
Strauss suggested that Cirrus, presumably, could add power management functions onto its own audio chip, paving the way to unseat Dialog in Apple’s design sockets.
However, “That’s not our focus,” said Carl Alberty, director of marketing for Cirrus’ Audio Division in an interview with EE Times on Monday (August 6th). “We integrate features that intelligently optimize the power management of our [audio] device, but we don’t do a system-level power management,” he added.
In contrast, Dialog is hanging its hat on the integration of audio into its own power management IC (PMIC).
Dialog has been shipping since last year system-level power management and low-power audio ICs for Samsung’s TD-SCDMA based smartphones in China. Dialog recently announced that its second PMIC including integrated audio has won Samsung’s global Smartphone platform design socket. Dialog attributes its success to the company’s ability to combine “in a single package or monolithically integrating, highly complex system power management functionality that is fully configurable for multiple platforms, together with low power class D audio.” The upshot for Dialog’s solution is “significant power and board space savings,” while delivering the highest quality audio for Samsung’s new smartphones, according to the company.
Cirrus, whose largest customer is Apple, demurs from that view.
Asked about Dialog’s PMIC with integrated audio, Alberty said, “We absolutely looked at it, but we are not seeing enough value in it.” He added, “There is a class of customers who may prefer that. Calling it ‘the-jack-of-all-trades approach’ may not be fair to [Dialog], but it isn’t what we are interested in.”
Translation: Apple says, “No.”
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junko.yoshida
8/8/2012 12:41 PM EDT
When I started to research this story, I was intrigued by different paths each audio chip vendor is taking -- in terms of integration -- to get their chips designed into smartphones.
There seem to be diverging plans driven by handset OEMs.
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lcovey
8/8/2012 1:08 PM EDT
The difficulty in integrating power management and audio into a single chip has been around for quite a while. No one has really solved the problem because when you reduce the power on the audio chip, you degrade the sound quality. Some companies, like Wolfson, have in-house sound studios where audio engineers listen what the chips produce and then decide which is best. I would imagine that customers, like Apple, have their own team to determine sound quality. It seems to be a highly subjective process for the untrained ear, but having raised a budding sound engineer they can hear things that most of us miss. I sat in a recording session with three of them once and they were arguing and fiddling with the EQ for a couple of hours before they arrived at a sound they thought was acceptable. I never could tell the difference.
And in my experience with the audio chip industry, I've learned that each audio chip has its very own sound signature. Changing the chip means changing the end product. That, in itself, makes switching out Cirrus nearly impossible. And the effect of power management on the sound the chip produces would have to be absolutely nil to pass muster for Apple.
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junko.yoshida
8/8/2012 1:17 PM EDT
All make sense. But Apple has a track record in the past using both Wolfson's chip and Cirrus' chip in their different iterations of iPod.
I am not certain how the changes happened; but I do see a lot of iPod users are commenting that one audio codec was better than the other...
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Frank Eory
8/8/2012 1:58 PM EDT
"...when you reduce the power on the audio chip, you degrade the sound quality."
Generally true, but I think the real difficulty of integrating system power management and audio into a single chip is that system power management is a big noise-maker -- switching regulators running at high currents.
Putting those things on the same substrate as an audio CODEC and maintaining the same audio performance as a stand-alone CODEC is a real challenge.
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DMcCunney
8/8/2012 3:02 PM EDT
"I sat in a recording session with three of them once and they were arguing and fiddling with the EQ for a couple of hours before they arrived at a sound they thought was acceptable. I never could tell the difference."
I can believe it. There's a story about the late Les Paul, guitarist and guitar designer, visiting a recording studio where his audio engineer son was recording a session. He listened for a moment and said "You're a fifth flat." His son was disbelieving, but instrument measurement proved dad was right. Les had perfect pitch, and heard a variance most folks would not.
Age is also a factor: the ability to hear high pitched sounds deteriorates with age. Those younger audio engineers probably did hear things you couldn't.
What you play back on is also a factor. The late Frank Zappa used to do his final mix-down using KLH 5 speakers instead of the usual JBL studio monitors, because he figured that was representative of what his audience would be using to listen to his albums, and he wanted it to sound good to them.
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junko.yoshida
8/8/2012 3:18 PM EDT
The fidelity audio people pursue is really incredible. But do you think that's also what's happening here for next generation iPhone designs ?
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ughhhh
8/8/2012 4:49 PM EDT
Listening to heavily compressed audio through medium quality earbuds ... I don't think most consumer care about audio quality. My home audio set uses 10+ year old components (Marantz and B&W803) that are still ages ahead of iPhone quality. iPad speakers are terribly bad. I also wonder why people do not spend on better earbuds, already $40 will give a huge improvement.
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junko.yoshida
8/8/2012 5:11 PM EDT
I totally hear you about shoddy earbuds.
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bordersboy
8/9/2012 9:31 AM EDT
the sound quality on a phone or music player is totally irrelevant and Apple know that. Price and power matter more and how subservient they can make the supplier, how else do they make the profit because its not passed onto the consumer. Take any Apple product appart and its put together from low cost parts same as its competitors
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bordersboy
8/9/2012 9:28 AM EDT
wolfson were designed out by Cirrus on price not performance.....
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junko.yoshida
8/9/2012 10:06 AM EDT
If that's the theory (and I think you are right), the next audio codec socket in Apple products will go to a Chinese company, who can cut the price and power.
No?
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junko.yoshida
8/8/2012 2:30 PM EDT
Good point, Frank. We will know more, when Samsugn actually starts u sing Dialog's PMIC with integrated audio. (The annoncement was made only recently) My understanding is that Samsung's currnet Galaxy S3 is using Wolfson's audio chip with Maxim's power management chip.
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Eric Verhulst_Altreonic
8/8/2012 2:49 PM EDT
Who cares?
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bordersboy
8/9/2012 9:33 AM EDT
exactly, its all down to price and power
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sranje
8/8/2012 5:32 PM EDT
Dear Junko, I am not sure what you really wanted to say since you are describing two roads that are fairly well known and established:
1 Phones (or any other product) requiring a high-quality (Hi-Fi) audio uses a separate audio processing chip (DSP-based codec/coder-decoder).
Lower audio quality end-products integrate this function together with Power management (Dialog and Wolfson’s specialty, and Maxim’s newer business)
2 Two distinctly different “stories” (roads): (1) focus on a broad system-level integration (“jack-of-all-trades” in the chip) versus (2) focus on analog (audio) performance. Both require lowest possible power for mobile devices.
3 Cirrus (and Wolfson) has “married” the two “stories”: Integration of all audio-relevant (only) functionality as well as the commonly required minimal power. Namely, Audio subsystem integration (Audio SoC), without compromising the top-level analog audio performance. This need is driven by an increasing functional complexity and audio performance requirements of mobile devices (“theater-in-a- pocket”, so to speak).
But, as usual, great coverage and topics
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junko.yoshida
8/8/2012 7:16 PM EDT
Thanks for a great summary. I see these are well-recognized diverging paths. And yet, when I heard a few people speculating that Cirrus, too, could potentially integrate PMIC into their audio chip, I wanted to find out if that's really an option.
For now, it doesn't seem like a scenario that is panning out as far as Apple is concerned...but then, are we saying that "jack of all trades" chips -- i.e. Dialog's new PMIC with integrated audio --has a scant chance in Apple products in the future?
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GREAT-Terry
8/8/2012 11:54 PM EDT
Interesting. Without seeing/hearing the Dialog's new PMIC with integrated audio, it is still hard to say if Apple will switch. I believe Apple cares about the audio quality but this may not be the case in Samsung. So, if Curris keeps on doing well with the audio while it also can simplify the design, they may not need to care about the PMIC integration. They however can build another PMIC to compete with other PMIC giants. As far as PMIC, I wonder why Maxim can't get in Apple. Is it because Apple just won't pick what Samsung has picked?
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elctrnx_lyf
8/9/2012 4:55 AM EDT
I think many companies would be delighted to win a socket in apple product. And they could just become big like Apple with in a year or two. But is it really that easy. I feel only one who gains is actually Apple.
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bordersboy
8/9/2012 9:27 AM EDT
Apple buy on price and performance. The audio footprint stuff is irrelevant as Wolfson used to have the slots until undercut by Cirrus. Watch out and soon you will see a cheaper asian solution in the slot. Remember MP3 coding removes the best devices benefits. Power consumption would matter more
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any1
8/9/2012 10:07 AM EDT
All of this reminds me that some months ago Neil Young (the musician) claimed that he and Steve Jobs were hatching a plan for Apple to offer higher quality audio. Do we think now that idea died with Steve Jobs?
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BobsUrUncle
8/9/2012 10:54 AM EDT
In the long term being an Apple supplier can't be all that good for business. Sure there's higher volume, but Apple is going to squeeze the heck out of your margins. You'll be forced to sell at cost just to maintain the socket.
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