A5 and Retina made by Samsung, LG?

apachemanapacheman
Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
Is it true that Apple's A5 chipset and their "Retina" displays were made and are manufactured by Samsung and LG ?

Two of the best features of my iPhone 4S are made by Samsung, LG? OMG....!!



"Apple relies on Samsung for chips despite patent wars" : UK Times

http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/23308...-iphone-4s.htm

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-n...e-A5-processor

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/07...by-lg-samsung/

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 3
    linkgx1linkgx1 Posts: 742member
    This is very true. The stuff they do under the sheets is amazing.
  • Reply 2 of 3
    repairzoomrepairzoom Posts: 72member
    Awww the tangled webs we weave... but it makes since, Apple cant possible make everything in house and why would they. Economics of scale wouldn't be on their side ( Samsung makes way more chips than apple ever could)
  • Reply 3 of 3
    shrikeshrike Posts: 494member
    Actually, it's a little more complicated than what you are thinking.



    You can continue the jibe by saying X company manufactures every part of an Apple product: Flash memory from Toshiba, Hynix, Samsung; radio chipsets from Broadcomm; camera parts from Sony, Omnivision, Largan; amps, resistors, sensors, capacitors from companies you've never heard of, but it really doesn't elucidate us on anything. You can make the same point for any cell phone or computing device. Where do Samsung phones get their radio chips? Where does LG get its ARM SoCs?



    It is more complicated. The Retina Display part of LG? Dollars to donuts, I bet Apple owns much of the tooling for it and that's the reason you really haven't seen any 330 DPI LCD in mass production in the 16 months since the iPhone 4, save for some Korea-only or Japan-only specials. Certainly not internationally. When the iPad ships with a 2048x1536 resolution screen, it is because Apple bought and paid for all the tooling to make that happen.



    That Apple A5 SoC? It doesn't ship in any devices but Apple's. If it was a Samsung part, why aren't they using it? Where aren't other companies using it? It's a dual-core A9 with all the bells and whistles (pipelined FPU, Neon SIMD), and a PowerVR SGX543MP2, the most powerful GPU by at least a 2x in a smartphone or a tablet. How come no other smartphone or tablet is using this chip?



    The contractor-contractee relationship for companies at the scale of an Apple isn't like going to Ace Hardware Supply and buying a part off-the-shelf. Apple literally owns much of the tooling for many of components it uses, including the assembly line at the various assembly places. Apple custom designs it own SoC with the A4 and A5. They license out the masks from ARM and ImagineTech and contracts Samsung to deposit the circuits onto silicon. They have a contract with a separate assembler to take the CPU/GPU/IO chip and DRAM and put into a package (the gray looking ceramic part that most everyone thinks is the chip).
Sign In or Register to comment.