Apple processors: Designed differently but here to stay

2/20/2013 1:23 PM EST

Though it may be difficult I am sure Apple will lic the LTE Ip or work on a custom design with the IP vendor (Qualcom/Intel etc). Otherwise it can not differentiate with competition if it simply buys a chip and plugs it in the device.

2/22/2013 2:37 AM EST

Rumor has it that Apple hired almost all the ex-ATI guys that left AMD last fall, so I think doing their own GPU is a foregone conclusion. I'd look for it in the summer/fall 2014 iteration of iPhone, assuming they hit the ground running late last year and have something taped out by Halloween this year.

2/24/2013 3:02 PM EST

Finally, the big one: Will there be an Apple http://www.katalogstron-seo.pl/ designed GPU? Very unlikely

2/22/2013 2:51 AM EST

BTW, I agree that Apple will probably want to add LTE to the device in the long run, though buying Qualcomm's and attaching it to their SoC using TSVs would be a way to do it without actually integrating the IP.

You're wrong in saying they don't have any LTE IP. They actually own 5% of the LTE patent pool through their purchase of Nortel's patents. Of course, owning IP and having the expertise to design an LTE block for their SoC are two very different things. As you say, they'd need to acquire someone for that.

The question is, is there really any differentiation or improvement to be derived from doing LTE yourself versus buying a standard part. If ZTE sells a phone with a buggy LTE chip and has to recall a million of them, that's expensive. If Apple did that and had to recall 50 million of them, it'd be really expensive (not counting the publicity damage, which would make the maps thing seem like nothing)

Having a better LTE chip doesn't make the phone go any faster, the only thing you can improve upon is power usage. That's more about the process used to make it than the way it is designed. Get an LTE chip from Intel made on a superior process, and you have more of an advantage than you could ever get from a superior design using a TSMC/Samsung/GF process everyone else uses that's a generation behind Intel.

2/22/2013 1:38 PM EST

great comments, especially since keeping all those LTE bands running increases the RF power consumption by up to 20 % and forces you to charge your 4G phone before you can get to the Happy Hour after a hard day's work.

20 nm FinFET would certainly make a diff. over TSMC's 28 nm LP and at this point Intel would probably be happy to just become THE Foundry for A7,8,.. designed by Apple rather than keep insisting on Fab-ing only their own x86 designs. Perhaps they would be happy making their own Merrifield ( x 86, 20 nm FinFET ) for high volume low priced / mid range Smartphone brands like Lenovo for emerging markets and gain new markets on the basis of price and power efficiency thanks to smaller and less leaky transistors ( the FinFETs ).

2/22/2013 6:55 AM EST

Apple needs to try to erase the memory of history and have large screen billboards erected in every important city location on the planet with the face of big brother Steve telling everyone how awesome Apple products are and that Google is the enemy.

2/20/2013 4:59 PM EST

On another subject, I'm curious what exactly Chipworks means by "custom design" and "manual layout."
Actually Otellini was referring to "manual" layout (don't recall at what occasion) but the way I recall he said Intel and Apple are two companies that still use significant "manual" layout.
BTW Dick James
(chipworks) has a great blog and you can ask him directly
http://www.electroiq.com/blogs/chipworks_real_chips_blog/2013/01/intel-foundries-mems-for-fuel-cell-start-up-nectar.html
DICK JAMES is a 40-year veteran of the semiconductor industry and the senior technology analyst for Chipworks, an Ottawa, Canada-based specialty reverse engineering company. Chipworks analyses a broad range of devices, giving Dick a unique overview of what technologies make it into the real world of semiconductor production.

2/20/2013 5:49 PM EST

Actually all you have to do is to click on the link provided in the article....

http://www.chipworks.com/blog/recentteardowns/2012/09/21/apple-iphone-5-the-a6-application-processor/

2/20/2013 9:22 PM EST

Thanks floating_gate, I see that Chipworks believes the ARM CPU was laid out by hand, and I would at least agree that there was a lot of manual intervention there.

As for the other blocks, who knows? The GPUs still look to me like netlists were dumped into ICC and autorouted until timing converged.

2/20/2013 9:32 PM EST

Lest I sound like a newbie, I fully appreciate that P&R tools do a lot of great incremental synthesis, so I probably should've said "physically optimized until timing converged" rather than "autorouted." The back end is way more than just P&R these days, and has been for some years.

2/21/2013 2:20 PM EST

The GPUs are PowerVR cores, same basic thing so many other mobile devices use. They're certainly autorouted. It's just Apple's "Swift" processor core that's different.

They did spend all this money, acquiring both PA Semiconductor and Intrinsity... I don't believe that's any kind of "stop gap" measure.

Apple was shopping for a non-Samsung fab. Intel's already said they see fab work as a growing thing. No shock if they talked. Another rumor suggested Apple had offered TSMC a billion-dollar bounty for all of their 28nm output, but were turned down. Doesn't mean they have any interest in another company's products, they just want to get their stuff made.

2/21/2013 2:22 PM EST

Funny thing, these rumors. The previous one suggested that Apple was likely to take all CPU development in-house, switching the Macintosh over to a more desktopy new ARM processor. Given that Apple only uses mid-range x86 chips, and that the Mac is only about 10% of Apple's business these days, some kind of convergence is not hard to imagine.

2/21/2013 3:58 PM EST

I expect financial analysts to follow the money.

The whole "OMG! Apple is considering moving to Intel for mobile devices!" brouhaha that seems to surface periodically raises the question "What's in it for Apple?" Switching architectures is a non-trivial process, as an entire eco-system is affected.

I can see why it would be good for Intel, but don't see what Apple would gain that would make it worth the while.

Part of me suspects the unnamed investment analysts work for outfits that have placed bets on Intel. A vaguely credible rumor that Apple was contemplating such a switch would produce a pop in Intel's stock price, and they could unload at a profit.

Cynical? Me? Why, yes.

2/21/2013 1:53 AM EST

I wonder if they don't. I saw couple of instances of bankruptcies or sell-off when Apple pulled plug on the suppliers.

2/22/2013 8:05 AM EST

Always a chance but last time I heard both Intel and Apple owned a significant piece of Imagination.

Apple had about 10 percent and Intel about 15 percent back in 2009.

http://eetimes.com/electronics-news/4195660/Apple-follows-Intel-tops-up-stake-in-U-K-graphics-provider

Of course, those holdings could have drifted down with gradual sell offs since then.

But they showed a clear commitment to keeping Imagination alive at the time.

2/21/2013 11:27 PM EST

ARM has Cotex A57 which is the 64b version of Cortex A15s.. IMO Apple, would want use that instead of developing there own.

2/22/2013 2:41 AM EST

Why would Apple want to use the A57 versus designing their own? They designed the A6 for a reason, and it beats dual core A15 which is not bad for their first effort. It isn't much of a stretch to think that Apple could beat A57.

Their design target for a 64 bit ARM SoC would probably be different than the Android vendors. Those guys will mostly sell 64 bits as a checklist spec item, like how a quad core CPU is a checklist item for any high end Android phone now, despite little reason for having four cores in a phone.

Apple would be more likely to want a 64 bit ARM for Macbook Air (or the rumored TV) Get the 64 bit ARM OS X API out there on Macs, and then a year later stick it in a phone that can connect to a monitor and a bluetooth keyboard/mouse and viola, a full OS X desktop is available when used that way and mobile devices start to eat into PC sales in a big way.

2/26/2013 5:12 PM EST

Apple probably feels that they can do better. The most succesful ARM processors come from Qualcomm and the CPUs are Qualcomm's own and not ARMs.

I would also guess that the royalty associated with ARM architecture license is lower than that of an ARM CPU design.