Apple's PA Semi working on next-gen ARM chip for iPhone

[AppleInsider]

The boutique chip design firm purchased by Apple earlier this year has been tasked with developing a specialized ARM processor for the next-generation iPhone, one of the company's engineers has revealed.

A New York Times blog post points to the public LinkedIn profile of PA Semi's senior principle architect Wei-han Lien, where he lists his current job function as "Senior Manager Chip CPU Architect at Apple" managing the "ARM CPU architecture team for iPhone."

The small revelation appears to confirm speculation that Apple was indeed the "leading handset OEM" who purchased earlier this year "a long-term architecture license" to ARM's current and future technology portfolio for use in its future mobile products.

Although analysts have long fingered an ARM-based processor at the heart of the first two generations of the iPhone, Apple has refused to confirm or deny the specific type of chip employed by the handsets.

Without providing details, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs told the Times earlier this year that his company's $278 million acquisition of P.A. Semi would drive the future of Apple's handheld products.

"PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods," he said.

By returning to its roots and developing its own brand of ARM chip in-house, Apple stands to keep a tighter lid on its future product plans while possibly saving on costs at the same time. It will allow the company to innovate in a way going forward that will differentiate its handheld products from a growing array of competitive devices that will be left to rely on technologies available to the broader industry.

Separately, Apple is also believed to be the mysterious licensee of Imagination Technologie's current and future PowerVR graphics technologies, which will be tied into future ARM-based iPhone system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs.

For a more detailed explanation of how all the pieces fit together, please see AppleInsider's two page report: Apple's bionic ARM to muscle advanced gaming graphics into iPhones.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[razorpit]

Reading a story like this makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside having just bought an iPhone yesterday.

Oh well life goes on!

[SpamSandwich]

Looks like Wei-han Lien is about to be out of a job. Keep us updated...

[solipsism]

This may be used in their enabled handheld line, but I still think that the P.A. Semi purchase is more focused on the Mac side of the things.

Originally Posted by razorpit

Oh well life goes on!

Unless you plan on waiting at least 6 months for a new iPhone to be announced, and more likely 12 if it's going to be used in a new iPhone design, then your purchase isn't at the bleeding edge of their update cycle.

[bloggerblog]

Not unless it was an intentional leak, which is atypical from Apple.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

Looks like Wei-han Lien is about to be out of a job. Keep us updated...

That would be unfortunate, but it doesn't look like much of a revelation, even if it's not something Apple wants outsiders to know. The skills of someone like that is probably not something they want to lose, I would imagine a reprimand of some sort and that's all unless it happens again.

[lkrupp]

Here's hoping that Apple will finally be able to put a stop to hacking and jailbreaking the iPhone. With a custom processor it would seem this is a possibility. Jailbreaking has done enormous damage to the Apple brand reputation not to mention lost revenue and profits.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by lkrupp

Here's hoping that Apple will finally be able to put a stop to hacking and jailbreaking the iPhone. With a custom processor it would seem this is a possibility. Jailbreaking has done enormous damage to the Apple brand reputation not to mention lost revenue and profits.

Lost profits I can understand, but damage to brand reputation? I think that's a bit much, I certainly haven't seen evidence of that. A custom processor isn't going to do much if it's the software still has security holes.

[wbrasington]

Originally Posted by lkrupp

Here's hoping that Apple will finally be able to put a stop to hacking and jailbreaking the iPhone. With a custom processor it would seem this is a possibility. Jailbreaking has done enormous damage to the Apple brand reputation not to mention lost revenue and profits.

Sorry, I had to laugh at this.....

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

Looks like Wei-han Lien is about to be out of a job. Keep us updated...

Highly unlikely. This is hardly a revelation. As the AI article states, Steve himself had already said that PA Semi were going to be working on SOCs for the iPhone and iPod. The only thing this adds is a confirmation that they're going to stick with the ARM architecture, which in any case was somewhat of a no-brainer.

Originally Posted by lkrupp

Here's hoping that Apple will finally be able to put a stop to hacking and jailbreaking the iPhone. With a custom processor it would seem this is a possibility. Jailbreaking has done enormous damage to the Apple brand reputation not to mention lost revenue and profits.

Is this a joke post? I can't quite tell. I hope it is.

[aegisdesign]

Originally Posted by lkrupp

Here's hoping that Apple will finally be able to put a stop to hacking and jailbreaking the iPhone. With a custom processor it would seem this is a possibility. Jailbreaking has done enormous damage to the Apple brand reputation not to mention lost revenue and profits.

And who said you Americans couldn't do satire. Fantastic job.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

Lost profits I can understand, but damage to brand reputation? I think that's a bit much, I certainly haven't seen evidence of that. A custom processor isn't going to do much if it's the software still has security holes.

I'd argue that Jailbreaking of the iPhone increased sales of the EDGE iPhone dramatically, has sped up the development of Apple's SDK and has made the iPhone better because of it.

Similar to how the hacker community quickly jumped onto getting dual boot working on the first Intel Macs (that seems so long ago) which prompted Apple to release earlier than intended (or at all) the ability to dual boot Windows with a complete set of proper drivers.

[Olternaut]

My predictions for MacWorld 2009:

Steve is going to debut some product that includes a chip designed by PA Semi. My guess is it will be a iphone variant that will start Steve's plan to expand the the iphone into family of products.
It won't be a next gen iphone but something else....perhaps the iphone "nano" or even an iphone "pro". It won't be called an imobile or an itablet because the sad reality is we are stuck with AT&T and their primitive 3G data plans and old fashioned celluar tech. 4G isn't here yet. So its still going to be an "iphone" type product.
Whatever the mystery product that Steve will show off at MacWorld you can bet its going to be a wireless product. The new macs will be there but......so what.

And there will be nothing exciting at the October 14th macbook event. Just updated macbooks with aggressively slashed prices.

[wbrasington]

Originally Posted by solipsism

I'd argue that Jailbreaking of the iPhone increased sales of the EDGE iPhone dramatically, has sped up the development of Apple's SDK and has made the iPhone better because of it.

Similar to how the hacker community quickly jumped onto getting dual boot working on the first Intel Macs (that seems so long ago) which prompted Apple to release earlier than intended (or at all) the ability to dual boot Windows with a complete set of proper drivers.

It can be argued, by forcing Apple to respond to these things on a schdule that they do not envision, leads to things like the crap they released for the 2.0 software.
Now THAT is not good for the brand and does cost money.
I understand the notion of forcing the software and hardware designs to move forward and make for a better consumer experience.
But it is not without pain, ramming down Apple's throat the need to add features not currently planned at a rate of change they clearly can not handle.
I'm not in favor of a final solution that would kill off jail-breaking, unless it would mean Apple would improve stability in the product line. At this point, it looks to me like their forced response to certain issues is coming too fast and could be a result of pressure from it's own devloper base and not from the competition or their competitions developer base.

We've seen lots of delays for their products, and even with the delays the quality has not been very good. Probably by scaling back Snow Leopard they will be able to maintain and at least not get worse.

I do think the iPhone 3.0 will be so propriatary that jail breaking will be a thing of the past, good or bad.

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by solipsism

This may be used in their enabled handheld line, but I still think that the P.A. Semi purchase is more focused on the Mac side of the things....

I'm not saying you are wrong, but I don't know where you get that from when every story on these developments specifically mentions ARM. The only likely destination for ARM chips are mobile devices, the absolute fanciest "closest to a real Mac" one of that category being the mythical tablet. Even if they come out with the tablet, it's far more likely to be running iPhone OS-X than Mac OS-X.

On a side note could someone who knows anyone at Apple let them know how absolutely stupid, lame and confusing their OS nomenclature is?

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by wbrasington

It can be argued, by forcing Apple to respond to these things on a schdule that they do not envision, leads to things like the crap they released for the 2.0 software.

That is certainly true, but that is Apple's fault for releasing poor code, not the hacker community's. In the long run, competition is making Apple produce better products.

Probably by scaling back Snow Leopard they will be able to maintain and at least not get worse.

I'm not sure what scaling back SL means. What they have stated so far s a lot of work to the OS X foundation. There are a great many things that can go wrong with Grand Central and OpenCL. Dropping PPC will definitely help, but if they add Resolution Independence as standard I think that SL will be a pretty wonky at first.

[paxman]

Originally Posted by lkrupp

Here's hoping that Apple will finally be able to put a stop to hacking and jailbreaking the iPhone. With a custom processor it would seem this is a possibility. Jailbreaking has done enormous damage to the Apple brand reputation not to mention lost revenue and profits.

Wrong - How many jail broken iPhones were there? These were walking advertisements for a product not yet on the market in many territories. Highly targeted marketing at that. And lets not for a minute delude ourselves that Apple and the carriers in the said territories didn't see that. The most effective viral campaign ever.

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by solipsism

T... I'm not sure what scaling back SL means. ... I think that SL will be a pretty wonky at first.

To millions of people around the world, "SL" stands for "Second Life" and while I'm sure that's the dominant usage of those initials for the past five years or so, there are undoubtedly many, many others as well.

Is it really that hard to simply spell out "Snow Leopard?" And for those who are just so hot to use poor acronyms at the drop of a hat, why not use a text expander utility. That way you can continue to use the lazy contractions and the the rest of us can actually make sense of what you are writing.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

To millions of people around the world, "SL" stands for "Second Life" and while I'm sure that's the dominant usage of those initials for the past five years or so, there are undoubtedly many, many others as well.

Is it really that hard to simply spell out "Snow Leopard?" And for those who are just so hot to use poor acronyms at the drop of a hat, why not use a text expander utility. That way you can continue to use the lazy contractions and the the rest of us can actually make sense of what you are writing.

In all fairness, before your post, I've never seen anyone mention Second Life here.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

In all fairness, before your post, I've never seen anyone mention Second Life here.

I only use the Apple related abbreviations on Apple-related forums. I had to look up Second Life as I had absolutely no clue what it meant.

Sometimes you have to learn a new trick. I know I found 'HD' and 'HDD' annoying at first after spending so many years using 'HD' to refer to hard drive.

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by solipsism

This may be used in their enabled handheld line, but I still think that the P.A. Semi purchase is more focused on the Mac side of the things.

I doubt it. PA Semi is into low-powered chips, which Apple is going to use in their consumer electronics.

They'll stay Intel for their Macs as it gives an advantage in gaining market share for their Macs.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by Leonard

I doubt it. PA Semi is into low-powered chips, which Apple is going to use in their consumer electronics.

They'll stay Intel for their Macs as it gives an advantage in gaining market share for their Macs.

I did not mean to imply they would be replacing Intel CPUs with P.A. Semi chips. I have something else in mind, but I don't have the time right now now adequately describe what I think the future will hold for Macs.

[wbrasington]

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

To millions of people around the world, "SL" stands for "Second Life" and while I'm sure that's the dominant usage of those initials for the past five years or so, there are undoubtedly many, many others as well.

Is it really that hard to simply spell out "Snow Leopard?" And for those who are just so hot to use poor acronyms at the drop of a hat, why not use a text expander utility. That way you can continue to use the lazy contractions and the the rest of us can actually make sense of what you are writing.

All I have to say, to the tens and tens of people on AppleInsider that think any reference to SL means "Second Life", even when used in a respose to a post when the post is actually contained in the respose with "Snow Lep." spelled out is....

OMG..... OMFG...... WTF....??? LOL, ROTF, ROTFLMAO.

If you and the tens and tens of people on this or any other board, can't follow the logic of cummunication using quick-typed bad spelling and made up abbreviations than I think you're certainly not going to be able to..... how did you put it....

"actually make sense of what you are writing"

IMHO..... UR not going to make sense of some of the conversation no matter what we do so ..... ba-bye.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by solipsism

I'd argue that Jailbreaking of the iPhone increased sales of the EDGE iPhone dramatically, has sped up the development of Apple's SDK and has made the iPhone better because of it.

Similar to how the hacker community quickly jumped onto getting dual boot working on the first Intel Macs (that seems so long ago) which prompted Apple to release earlier than intended (or at all) the ability to dual boot Windows with a complete set of proper drivers.

Not jailbreaking, but unlocking did that. While some people did jailbreak their phones, I doubt it was even 10% the number of those who unlocked them to take to another country.

Over a half million in China. over 20,000 a MONTH arriving in Russia, according to the Times, etc. THAT was what drove the sales.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by Olternaut

My predictions for MacWorld 2009:

Steve is going to debut some product that includes a chip designed by PA Semi. My guess is it will be a iphone variant that will start Steve's plan to expand the the iphone into family of products.
It won't be a next gen iphone but something else....perhaps the iphone "nano" or even an iphone "pro". It won't be called an imobile or an itablet because the sad reality is we are stuck with AT&T and their primitive 3G data plans and old fashioned celluar tech. 4G isn't here yet. So its still going to be an "iphone" type product.
Whatever the mystery product that Steve will show off at MacWorld you can bet its going to be a wireless product. The new macs will be there but......so what.

I doubt it. It takes some time to design a chip, even with the info at hand. It takes months just to tape it out correctly, and then to get working silicon. They then need to improve chip efficiency, get a good percentage out of the wafer, etc. They've had no time for all that. Sometime next year we may see something, possibly by the ADC, but it's doubtful anytime sooner.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by paxman

Wrong - How many jail broken iPhones were there? These were walking advertisements for a product not yet on the market in many territories. Highly targeted marketing at that. And lets not for a minute delude ourselves that Apple and the carriers in the said territories didn't see that. The most effective viral campaign ever.

I rhink it's been exaggerated by those who want us to think it's been a bigger thing than it is.

Again, unlocking phones was a much bigger force around the world than jailbreaking.

But it seems as though some people are constantly confusing the two.

[aplnub]

Originally Posted by lkrupp

Here's hoping that Apple will finally be able to put a stop to hacking and jailbreaking the iPhone. With a custom processor it would seem this is a possibility. Jailbreaking has done enormous damage to the Apple brand reputation not to mention lost revenue and profits.

I have to agree with Ikrupp. I was just talking with a lady the other day working behind the counter at McDonald's and she said the same thing. The Apple brand is all washed up at this point because people customizing their phones. It really is a crying shame.

[Olternaut]

Originally Posted by melgross

I doubt it. It takes some time to design a chip, even with the info at hand. It takes months just to tape it out correctly, and then to get working silicon. They then need to improve chip efficiency, get a good percentage out of the wafer, etc. They've had no time for all that. Sometime next year we may see something, possibly by the ADC, but it's doubtful anytime sooner.

Well, when the original iphone was introduced it did take them 6 months to actually release the thing. First off, lets not talk about the iphone 3G. That product was not a next generation product but more of a 1.5 advance or simply an update to the first gen and it was released shortly after it was announced. Lets not talk about the 3G.

I seriously think that the all the work your describing was done (or mostly done) months ago. And I really think some sort of product (most likely a handheld wireless product) containing a PA Semi designed component will debut at MacWorld 2009. So this brand new product can be announced then debuted later by June I would think. This should give them wayyyy enough time to produce the product.

I betcha this is what is going to happen.

Just like the ipod event, the macbook event will be very nice but at the same time almost boring because all the major secret stuff will spill out long before the event. The new macbooks will be thinner (duh) sport better case designs similar to the macbook air, have LED backlighting (regular and pro models), have new components and drastically reduced pricing.
All extremely welcome. But thats it. Glorified to the extreme but still ultimately just updates.
Steve is going to save the new stuff for MacWorld and I bet its going to be PA Semi based.

I bet you a chocolate chip macadamia nut cookie!

[NasserAE]

Originally Posted by Olternaut

My predictions for MacWorld 2009:

Steve is going to debut some product that includes a chip designed by PA Semi. My guess is it will be a iphone variant that will start Steve's plan to expand the the iphone into family of products.
It won't be a next gen iphone but something else....perhaps the iphone "nano" or even an iphone "pro". It won't be called an imobile or an itablet because the sad reality is we are stuck with AT&T and their primitive 3G data plans and old fashioned celluar tech. 4G isn't here yet. So its still going to be an "iphone" type product.
Whatever the mystery product that Steve will show off at MacWorld you can bet its going to be a wireless product. The new macs will be there but......so what.

And there will be nothing exciting at the October 14th macbook event. Just updated macbooks with aggressively slashed prices.

Apple already driving over speed limit trying to fix the 3G iPhone software bugs and add new features. It is unlikely that we will see another iPhone model anytime soon (not talking about HW upgrade here). What we know, or think we know, is that they have been working on a tablet device when they came up with the iPhone. IMO, if Apple use PA Semi they will use them on the new tablet that will probably have built-in SIM card slot for data (since it is used worldwide). Think about MBA with touch screen. What I would like to see is what Apple is going to use for the OS since 10.6 will be intel only (Mac OS or more advanced iPhone OS). If they use 10.6, then they might be dropping the PPC compatibility to include new one for the PA Semi chips! Then in few years Apple don't have to worry about Psystar and any anti-trust lawsuit

This is just my opinion and I might be wrong.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by melgross

I doubt it. It takes some time to design a chip, even with the info at hand.

We have no idea how far they were along when the buyout happened.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by Olternaut

Well, when the original iphone was introduced it did take them 6 months to actually release the thing. First off, lets not talk about the iphone 3G. That product was not a next generation product but more of a 1.5 advance or simply an update to the first gen and it was released shortly after it was announced. Lets not talk about the 3G.

I didn't mention which phone. You just did. Both phones use the same processor, so it doesn't matter.

I seriously think that the all the work your describing was done (or mostly done) months ago. And I really think some sort of product (most likely a handheld wireless product) containing a PA Semi designed component will debut at MacWorld 2009. So this brand new product can be announced then debuted later by June I would think. This should give them wayyyy enough time to produce the product.

You may think so, but I'm willing to bet they're no more than part way through. This isn't something that can be done in a few months. remember that PA wasn't working on an ARM chip for years before Apple bought them. They had to get up to speed again. The fact that some people had worked on much more primitive versions years before didn't give them much more than a step into that world again. This is all pretty much new to them again.

You also must consider that things don't always go the way one expects. Look to IMB's promise to Jobs that the G5 would be at 3.0 GHz within a year.

Look to all the problems AMD has has with their new K10 process.

And these are companies with decades of experience with not only design, but their own fabs.

Don't assume that this will work out perfectly, it likely will be a bumpy road. That's esp. if Apple wants to add to the design. And if they don't, there would have no point to buying the company at all.

Are you now also telling us that you expect a NEW wireless product? That so called "brick" that's just been rumored?

I betcha this is what is going to happen.

Steve is going to save the new stuff for MacWorld and I bet its going to be PA Semi based.

I bet you a chocolate chip macadamia nut cookie!

The bet's on, because I doubt it.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by solipsism

We have no idea how far they were along when the buyout happened.

What we do know is that they were producing specialized PPC chips.

We don't know that they were even considering looking at ARM chips.

That part is pure speculation on the part of some people who WANT it to look as though they were, but who have no evidence whatsoever that they were.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by melgross

What we do know is that they were producing specialized PPC chips.

We don't know that they were even considering looking at ARM chips.

That part is pure speculation on the part of some people who WANT it to look as though they were, but who have no evidence whatsoever that they were.

I'm in the boat that speculates that it's most likely a specialized chip for Macs that is not PPC and probably not ARM. BTW, I have no evidence, hence the word 'speculate'.

[wizard69]

Originally Posted by lkrupp

Here's hoping that Apple will finally be able to put a stop to hacking and jailbreaking the iPhone. With a custom processor it would seem this is a possibility. Jailbreaking has done enormous damage to the Apple brand reputation not to mention lost revenue and profits.

Man have you got this wrong or what. Jailbreaking has resulted in hundreds of thousands of iPhones sold that wouldn't have been sold otherwise. Frankly you sound like a corporate puppet here. Maybe Apple didn't realize the AT&T revenues that they where hoping for but hey screw them and their consumer unfriendly marketing ploys.

More so it is becoming very clear that app store isn't going to be the open market that people where lead to believe it would be. So if you have need of an app that Apple finds objectionable what are your choices? Frankly you only have two choices, transition to a new platform or Jailbreak.

Frankly your post is very disturbing and leads me to believe you are some sort of Democrat!

Dave

[TenoBell]

Originally Posted by solipsism

This may be used in their enabled handheld line, but I still think that the P.A. Semi purchase is more focused on the Mac side of the things.

Apple has had a clear course of spreading new technology and designs across its various product lines. From the evidence we have the main reason for acquiring P.A. Semi is for the handheld gadgets. Back when the acquisition first happened it was announced that the vice president of the iPod division pushed for Jobs to acquire P.A. Semi.

While Apple has these engineers I certainly see them using the opportunity to develop specialized chips for the Mac. The same as with its acquisition of FingerWorks initially for the iPhone but is being used in other ways.

[TenoBell]

Originally Posted by melgross

What we do know is that they were producing specialized PPC chips.

We don't know that they were even considering looking at ARM chips.

That part is pure speculation on the part of some people who WANT it to look as though they were, but who have no evidence whatsoever that they were.

We do know that P.A. Semi has experience with ARM chips.

We do know the vice president of the iPod division wanted Apple to acquire them.

[melgross]

Originally Posted by solipsism

I'm in the boat that speculates that it's most likely a specialized chip for Macs that is not PPC and probably not ARM. BTW, I have no evidence, hence the word 'speculate'.

We can wildly speculate on anything we want to. But the further it gets from what is likely, the less useful the speculation is.

When people start making guesses as to what was happening, without knowing anything at all that would support it, it becomes so far out, that it is best ignored.

I prefer to think about what is actually possible.

What people here often do, is to push what they want very badly, no matter how far from Apple's interest it may be, and then try to come up with a highly unlikely scenario to support that far out idea.

We know what PA was doing. We can pretend that they were doing other things as well, if it make some people happy to do so. But it tells us nothing useful.

We now know that PA is, at this time, working on ARM chips, and that according to Jobs, their products will be for handheld devices. Thats all we know.

[wizard69]

Originally Posted by melgross

What we do know is that they were producing specialized PPC chips.

We don't know that they were even considering looking at ARM chips.

If one looks at who is on the staff there, you would see people that where deeply involved in Intels old ARM ventures. Everything indicates that the staff would be able to easily transition to modern ARM hardware.

That part is pure speculation on the part of some people who WANT it to look as though they were, but who have no evidence whatsoever that they were.

Well speculation is all you can get right now. I do know that trade papers from the valley at one time stated that PA was purchased so that a project could be finished up. Of course that could be speculation too.

What we do have now is photos of the physical Touch 2G. One thing is obvious is the much smaller logic board. The question then becomes where did all the discrete components go. I'm wondering if we are looking at a PA based iPod right now. it is an incredibly small logic board yet duplicates the functionality of the old and adds features.

It wouldn't surprise me if the first PA SoC was a modest effort. In this case to shrink the logic board. Touch production by itself is strong enough to justify a custom chip.

Dave

[melgross]

Originally Posted by TenoBell

We do know that P.A. Semi has experience with ARM chips.

That's meaningless. I already acknowledged that OLD experience. The industry moves on very rapidly. The ARM chips that a few in PA Semi worked on were very different, and much more primitive, that what is being done today. So their experience amounts to a basic understanding of the thrust of the designs, which is nice. But they still have to come up to speed on the new technology, and develop any new features for the chips that Apple now wants incorporated into them. That's not such an easy task.

I don't know why some here seem to think it is.

We do know the vice president of the iPod division wanted Apple to acquire them.

So?

[wizard69]

Originally Posted by TenoBell

We do know that P.A. Semi has experience with ARM chips.

Yes they have ARM experience which everybody needs to understand. However they also have experience with a broad array of other architectures.

We do know the vice president of the iPod division wanted Apple to acquire them.

This is a huge part of the equation. So the question becomes is Apple already shipping PA based hardware.


Dave