Didn't apple acquire PA Semi not too long ago? I figured they might use it in this new iPod touch, but they didn't. Does anyone have any info on the situation?
No info, but plenty of rampant speculation. The most popular theories seem to revolve around a tablet or some sort of device that is somewhere between an iPhone and Mac in terms of size and power.
Didn't apple acquire PA Semi not too long ago? I figured they might use it in this new iPod touch, but they didn't. Does anyone have any info on the situation?
There have been a number of facts which point toward Apple using a ARM processor core with PowerVR for Graphics. If Apple is making their own SOC, they will probably use the basic design in all their mobile products because the real cost savings come when you make alot of them. Assuming they go with an A9 with PowerVR they can vary the clock speed to meet power requirements for the individual devices higher clock for tablet and lower for Iphone/Touch. IF we want a rough idea of what the design will look like, look at what TI is delivering in the OMAP 4.
Apple already has OS X running on 2 different architectures:
Mac OS X and the iPhone/iPod touch OS.
I'm no programmer, but from what I understand both OSes share quite a bit of code.
In fantasyland i could see the mythical tablet..
A. running the iPhone/iPod touch OS
or
B. running Mac OS X with the ability to run iPhone/iPod touch apps directly.
I tend to think A.
At some point, I could also see both OSes running concurrently on the Mac OS X desktop (like Parallels, Fusion and VirtualBox) AND possibly expanding the capabilities of the AppleTV by making it able to run the iPhone/iPod touch OS.
It just feels like there's some sort of OS X convergence heading our way. Soon? Maybe?
Fantasyland is not A, but B, for sure. Sigh! It's what I'd prefer to see,
All you have to realise is that there are already tablets and UMP's running Windows Vista on Atom chips, that get somewhere between "half-assed" and "okay" performance and you can see how Apple's tablet could have rather remarkable performance using this technology.
The Cortex 8 outperforms the Atom, and OS-X for iPhone outperforms Vista on small devices. The Cortex 9 is much faster than that, and PA-Semi is supposedly working on a custom SOC based on the Cortex 9 with integrated hardware acceleration and OpenCL support.
We won't know until we see it, but the processor in the tablet (if there even *is* a tablet), could easily be an order of magnitude faster than anything seen so far in the small portable market IMO.
When my daughter went to school abroad this summer, she just wanted a small light simple machine for e-mail, Skype, and browsing. I bought her a Toshiba mini 200NB. It's a great machine for a netbook, but it's reeaally slow. And it just uses XP STarter.
Today, we went to the Apple store on 58th st, and she bought (that is, I bought) a MacBook Pro 15.4" 2.8 GHz, 500 GB drive with 4 GB RAM, and a, this is the kicker for all of you who took part in the arguments, a matte screen upgrade.
Well its a LITTLE bit faster.
Considering how well reports say that OS X runs on even slow netbooks, I would say that there's likely no problem. But what will Apple want to do?
Comments
Didn't apple acquire PA Semi not too long ago? I figured they might use it in this new iPod touch, but they didn't. Does anyone have any info on the situation?
No info, but plenty of rampant speculation. The most popular theories seem to revolve around a tablet or some sort of device that is somewhere between an iPhone and Mac in terms of size and power.
Didn't apple acquire PA Semi not too long ago? I figured they might use it in this new iPod touch, but they didn't. Does anyone have any info on the situation?
There have been a number of facts which point toward Apple using a ARM processor core with PowerVR for Graphics. If Apple is making their own SOC, they will probably use the basic design in all their mobile products because the real cost savings come when you make alot of them. Assuming they go with an A9 with PowerVR they can vary the clock speed to meet power requirements for the individual devices higher clock for tablet and lower for Iphone/Touch. IF we want a rough idea of what the design will look like, look at what TI is delivering in the OMAP 4.
OMAP 4
Apple Tablet:
Mac inside.
As light as possible (no more than 400 g or so).
As small as possible (pocketable would be great).
Video-out.
USB 2.
Funny looking iPhone.
Agreed ! What kind of giant old man pants are people taking about for pocketing a tablet any bigger than an iPhone?!
At a future Apple event Steve will unveil ManBags crafted from the finest Corinthian leather - to carry our tablets around.
Can you pair the A9 with the Nvidia 9400M?
I have no idea.
Agreed ! What kind of giant old man pants are people taking about for pocketing a tablet any bigger than an iPhone?!
At a future Apple event Steve will unveil ManBags crafted from the finest Corinthian leather - to carry our tablets around.
Hmm! Cargo pants aren't "old man's" pants (though I have some, and a few of you will think I'm old
Apple already has OS X running on 2 different architectures:
Mac OS X and the iPhone/iPod touch OS.
I'm no programmer, but from what I understand both OSes share quite a bit of code.
In fantasyland i could see the mythical tablet..
A. running the iPhone/iPod touch OS
or
B. running Mac OS X with the ability to run iPhone/iPod touch apps directly.
I tend to think A.
At some point, I could also see both OSes running concurrently on the Mac OS X desktop (like Parallels, Fusion and VirtualBox) AND possibly expanding the capabilities of the AppleTV by making it able to run the iPhone/iPod touch OS.
It just feels like there's some sort of OS X convergence heading our way. Soon? Maybe?
Fantasyland is not A, but B, for sure. Sigh! It's what I'd prefer to see,
All you have to realise is that there are already tablets and UMP's running Windows Vista on Atom chips, that get somewhere between "half-assed" and "okay" performance and you can see how Apple's tablet could have rather remarkable performance using this technology.
The Cortex 8 outperforms the Atom, and OS-X for iPhone outperforms Vista on small devices. The Cortex 9 is much faster than that, and PA-Semi is supposedly working on a custom SOC based on the Cortex 9 with integrated hardware acceleration and OpenCL support.
We won't know until we see it, but the processor in the tablet (if there even *is* a tablet), could easily be an order of magnitude faster than anything seen so far in the small portable market IMO.
When my daughter went to school abroad this summer, she just wanted a small light simple machine for e-mail, Skype, and browsing. I bought her a Toshiba mini 200NB. It's a great machine for a netbook, but it's reeaally slow. And it just uses XP STarter.
Today, we went to the Apple store on 58th st, and she bought (that is, I bought) a MacBook Pro 15.4" 2.8 GHz, 500 GB drive with 4 GB RAM, and a, this is the kicker for all of you who took part in the arguments, a matte screen upgrade.
Well its a LITTLE bit faster.
Considering how well reports say that OS X runs on even slow netbooks, I would say that there's likely no problem. But what will Apple want to do?
Funny looking iPhone.
This is what Apple should do, without the phone capabilities: the ultimate pocketable Mac:
xpPhone
http://www.xpphone.com/en/product/configuration.html
Hmm! Cargo pants aren't "old man's" pants (though I have some, and a few of you will think I'm old
I'm old. And sometimes I wear cargo pants. But I wouldn't want to walk around with a tablet in the pocket.
I'm old. And sometimes I wear cargo pants. But I wouldn't want to walk around with a tablet in the pocket.
It depends on how big it is.